Wittliff Collections hosts dramatic reading of NAACP Image Award-winning 'Camp Logan'

SAN MARCOS – The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University will host a dramatic reading of the NAACP Image Award-winning play, Camp Logan, on Nov. 15.

Doors open at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. The Wittliff Collections is located on the 7th floor of the Alkek Library at Texas State. 

Camp Logan is based on real-life events in Houston in 1917, when members of highly decorated 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment were subjected to extreme Jim Crow treatment. The ensuing riot left dozens dead, including 17 African American soldiers hanged for mutiny.

Playwright Celeste Bedford Walker’s nuanced, suspenseful dramatization of this event has been performed all over the country, including the Kennedy Center. The Washington Post praised Camp Logan as “a textbook example of how to simultaneously entertain and educate an audience.”

The evening will also feature a conversation with Walker, conducted by Sandra Mayo, professor emeritus with the Department of Theatre and Dance. Walker and her play, Camp Logan, are featured in the Wittliff’s current exhibition, Literary Frontiers: Historical Fiction & the Creative Imagination. The dramatic reading is directed by Sidney Rushing, recent MFA graduate from Texas State, with six student performers participating in the reading.

For more information, visit www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu/about/news/Camp-Logan-Event.html.