The Fertile River

By Vincent Terrell Durham

Mrs. Sarah Woods has been visiting colored families in a small rural community. Armed with her North Carolina Eugenics Board questionnaire, she has been doling out sterilization orders to uninformed and disadvantaged families. The targeted households already feel stigmatized by having imperfect children and impaired family members so they keep their new suffering a tightly held secret. Cora Lee Burden is the latest to receive an appointment notice from Mrs. Woods. The sixty-four- year-old grandmother of a mentally challenged woman has no idea what a white social worker from the government would want with her family. But as a colored woman raised in the Jim Crow south she knows the visit is a call for caution.

Director

Kathy Tyree

Cast of Characters

ARTHUR

RIVER

CORA LEE BURDEN (MAMA CORA)

JESSE LEE JOHNSON (UNCLE JESSE)

SARAH WOODS (MISS SARAH)