Fertile River | Play Reading

Written by Vincent Terrell Durham

Directed by Shaina Rosenthal

THE STORY: It’s the summer of 1958, and white social worker Sarah Woods has been visiting colored families in a small rural North Carolina community. Armed with a state Eugenics Board questionnaire, she issues sterilization orders to families she deems genetically undesirable. The targeted households, already ashamed of having imperfect children, keep their new misery a tightly held secret. Cora Lee Burden is the latest to receive an appointment notice from Mrs. Woods. The 64-year-old grandmother of a mentally challenged young woman has no idea what a white social worker from the government would want with her family, but being a colored woman of the South she knows the visit is a call for caution.