February 22nd, 2020

The Parrish hosted a special performance of 4 Little Girls: Moving Portraits of the American Civil Rights Movement, by the Edge School of the Arts (ESOTA), co-presented with the Hamptons United Methodist Church and with support from the Jerome Foundation for Jerome Artist Fellow, Kerri Edge. Followed by a conversation with artistic director Kerri Edge, the performers and special guest tap dancer Omar Edwards, moderated by Parrish Director Terrie Sultan.

4 Little Girls: Moving Portraits of the American Civil Rights Movement is an experimental narrative film by Kerri Edge that infuses historical authenticity, contemporary dance movements (tap, modern dance, hip hop, and ballet) choreographed to spoken word and 60’s protest songs to recant the horrific story of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, the four young black girls who were violently murdered by the Ku Klux Klan when a bomb exploded in the basement of the Black 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963.

The story unfolds through the imaginative interpretations of present-day performing arts students whose teacher challenges them to go back in time and recreate the moments leading up to what Martin Luther King Jr. described as, “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.”