Emmy award-winning actor Ron Jones will portray several characters in “The Movement: 50 Years of Love and Struggle” as part of Cal State San Bernardino’s Conversations on Diversity series, hosted by the University Diversity Committee on Tuesday, Feb. 20.
“The Movement” is free and open to the public. Parking at CSUSB is $6.
A production by Dialogues on Diversity, a social justice and diversity theater company, “The Movement,” is a one-man performance about the ever-changing African-American experience. It is a visual chronicle that highlights numerous political, social and cultural markers of the roughly 50 years since passage of the Voting Rights Acts of 1965.
“Supported by interactive video, stock historical footage, quotes and some of the most memorable music of the last two generations, Jones weaves the tapestry of struggle and triumph,” the Dialogues on Diversity website says. “These developments created the fastest cultural expansion of any group in American history, as a culture and a nation, we are still dealing with these positive and negative ripple effects. The power of the vote enabled much of the movement that protest and boycott could not alone.”
Jones, who takes on 10 personas during the production, tells the stories of both the best and worst African-American experience — from “Black Power 60s,” to the “Blaxploitation 70s,” to the “Cosby 80s” and through the “Post Racial” new millennia.
Jones has been an actor, director and trainer for more than 20 years, and was awarded the Boston/New England Regional Emmy of the National Academy of Television, Arts and Science in 2002.