It is 1940, and Jefferson is doomed to a fate his kind knows all too well. He had five weeks to learn to walk like a man for all blacks of his time, and for years to come.

Jefferson is the lead character in the play “A Lesson Before Dying,” which depicts his journey to find dignity and strength as a black boy living in a prejudice era, after being wrongly accused of murder.

In honor of Black History Month, students, faculty and staff are purchasing tickets for TCU’s night to see “A Lesson Before Dying,” a play adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel by Ernest J. Gaines. The play is showing until Sunday at the Jubilee Theatre in downtown Fort Worth.

Although the show began Jan. 25, the campus community will be offered ticket discounts for the 8 p.m. Thursday show.

Members of the TCU community are also working on the play’s production.

A good number of people from campus are always actively involved with Jubilee Theatre, which attracts a larger TCU audience, said Bob Ray Sanders, an adjunct member of the journalism faculty who will lead a post-show panel discussion with people who have been wrongly convicted, imprisoned and released.

Michael Skinner, a resident lighting designer at TCU, is the set designer. Roma Flowers, a dance lighting designer and instructor at TCU, also participated as the lighting designer for the production.

Skinner said the script is powerful enough to force people to realize that the issues of prejudice and discrimination are not set so far back in our history.

People see a little bit of themselves in Jefferson in that everyone is trying to find the meaning of life, he said. Skinner said Jefferson, unfortunately, had to find it in his death.

Chelsie French, a sophomore news-editorial journalism major who plans to attend the show for her Race, Gender and the Mass Media class, said it will give people a different perspective as to what life was like in the 1940s.

Using the story of an individual wrongly accused of murder will open up the eyes of everyone who attends the show, French said.

Sanders said people never take the time to get to know an individual and instead care about the crime and the number of individuals who are involved. This is why people end up in situations like Jefferson’s, he said.

For Your Info

“A Lesson Before Dying”
Jubilee Theatre TCU Night
8 p.m. Thursday
$5 for students
$10 for faculty/staff
Box office: 817-338-4411