Originally published in 1987, “The Meeting” is a one act play written by Jeff Stetson. On Feb. 10, it was brought to life at Madison College’s Mitby Theater by the Nobleman Theater Troupe and UW-Madison alum Director Denzel Taylor.
The production was sponsored by several promotional partners from around Wisconsin in collaboration with Madison College’s Black Student Union, who joined BSU members from local high schools to serve as volunteers to help make the all-day event go as smoothly as possible.
The play started with acknowledgements of all those involved and an audience participation in the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” composed by J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson, with the beautiful accompaniment of a violinist.
The opening scene is set in 1965 in a New York hotel, overlooking the streets of Harlem, where Malcom X, played by Talen Marshall, and his bodyguard Rashad, played by Dos Feurtado, wait for a meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., played by William Toney.
The imagined conversation between the two Black leaders takes place in the middle of the civil rights movement and after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was signed into law on July 2, 1964.
Instead of a conversation, the play seemed to highlight and contrast the ideations of the two prominent civil rights leaders, with moments of bridging dialogue in between.
Thoughtful moments of silence were filled with an interlude of cascading projected images of the various points of the civil rights era accompanied with sound from speeches given by both leaders, which further contextualized the prior bouts of monologue.
Bursts of comedy throughout the play masterfully softened scenes and language that, while a reflection of the times, would be considered abrasive in nature in today’s sociopolitical climate. Malcolm X, known to be an expert of self-deprecating humor and straight talk, contrasted with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s. subtle southern jabs and softened scenes such as Malcom X’s recounting of a dream he had:
“This dream I had, we’d been dead for some time, long enough for the average American to be miseducated. Young Black men and women didn’t know who we were. They knew nothing of the moment, the struggle, it was as if it never happened. I woke up in a cold sweat, shaken and confused. I’ve seen my death, countless nights, Martin. But that vision was never as frightening as this dream. We will be sold out, you and I. It might be over the promise of a job or to be supported as a new leader. It could happen any number of ways, but it will happen. You may even do it to yourself.”
This scene showed that the mistrust Malcolm X had was not because of the in-fighting happening within the Nation of Islam, but because of the American government and its ability to persuade or blackmail those within the Nation of Islam or the Black community, to play a part in the dispatching of either of the great leaders.
The mention of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., potentially dying by his own hands, highlighted the 1964 “suicide letter,” one of many blackmail packages that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had received from the FBI.
In the play, an arm-wrestling scene was used as a physical metaphor and a much-needed processing break for the audience to digest the ebb and flow of dialogue between the two.
The final scene of the play ended with both Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. looking out from the balcony at the bustling lights of Harlem as they both contemplated what their dreams were prior to their lives as civil rights leaders, what their internal mission lead them to do and the future that awaited both themselves, their families and their people within a country that put them and their ideals at odds.
The play wrapped up with a Q&A discussion where audience members were encouraged to submit their questions. The purpose was to stimulate meaningful and mutually respectful dialogue between community members and the troupe.

My Thoughts and Takeaways
Overall, I really enjoyed the play. The talent of the actors and the ability of the director to use images and sound to encompass a moment in time while softening the sharp edges of tough dialogue with occasional humor, really made the play worthwhile.
However, due to its dramatized nature, it is not something I would suggest as a learning point for viewers or even a conversation starter. Its fantastical nature is something to be enjoyed and thought provoking, but not something that someone without much working knowledge of the civil rights movement other than at a surface level can use as a starting point of much discussion.
In my opinion, “The Meeting” did not feel like a conversation with a purpose since I could not follow exactly why they were meeting. Throughout the play, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. seems to be confused as to why Malcolm X called him to meet. There seemed to be no real direction or purpose outside of a back-and-forth rhetorical battle between the two that can just be distilled into individual monologues that converge here and there.
“The Meeting” breezes over moments in history that the average person will not notice. A play can only contextualize so much within the allotted time, so it sometimes speaks above the viewer’s head. That is why I feel it shouldn’t be considered an introduction to discussions of civil rights nor an entry point for meaningful discussion outside of entertainment.
I have a bit of a bias as I have never seen either civil rights leader opposing the other. I have never liked the idea that we, as Black people, have only two real ways to go about our actualization in this country.
For me, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X have always been strategists who excelled in their prospective arenas. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s., tactics served him well and worked within the South. While Malcolm X’s tactics worked and served our people’s needs in the North.
One of the many powerful statements sprinkled throughout the play that stuck with me even after I’d left the theater was said by Malcolm X:
“Progress?! You got some concessions because I was the alternative. They threw some legislation, some money, some cracker-controlled programs your way in the hopes that non-violence would win out. The only problem is, we are the only ones being non-violent. They kill me first you have nothing to negotiate with. They kill you first they bet not let me live. Well, they’ll make you into a martyr Martin. They’ll hold your non-violent message up to the world as a testament to your courage. And if they hold’em up long enough, they won’t even realize the contradiction that you may get killed preaching it.”
This prophetic line was what to come after Malcolm X’s assassination and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s. subsequent assassination.
For me, it highlighted the United States government’s gaming of the two as opposing ideologies and occasional concessions made to Martin Luther King, Jr., as purposeful and calculated. The progress made by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was most definitely progress, and a win is a win no matter how it’s obtained. But I have never seen it as a win in the battle arena of ideas.
Instead, given the vision of hindsight that we have, it was a mere game of half carrots and full sticks. The half carrot is evident within the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act was to ensure that no federal, state or local government could impede people from voting because of their race or ethnicity, abolishing literacy tests and poll taxes that were designed to disenfranchise African American voters. The act was announced by then President Lyndon B. Johnson after Martin Luther King Jr’s. peaceful civil rights march in Selma, Alabama.
The full sticks are evident in the following years, which continued to whittle away at the Voting Rights Act.
In a 2013 case, Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court did away with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The section ensured that states and counties with a history and recent records of racial discrimination in voting had to obtain federal “preclearance” or approval from the Department of Justice or a federal court before implementing changes to voting laws and practices in an effort to curtail impediments on minority voters rights.
The case struck down the ability to identify which states and localities were required to do so, gutting the Voting Rights Act and giving a rise to a wave of anti-voting legislation. In a subsequent case, Brnovich v. The Democratic National Committee, the court imposed new barriers to lawsuits brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act: the nationwide prohibition on racially discriminatory voting laws. This created a completely antithetical standard to the purpose of the Voting Rights Act, to eliminate both blunt and subtle racial discrimination in voting.
While the progress Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made for us amounted to much needed reform and enactment of new legislation, Malcolm X’s prophetic line within the play, “The Meeting,” rings true.
Given this context, I feel that a much more worthwhile discussion would have been the two leaders possessing the privilege of hindsight that we hold now and their thoughts on their methodologies that came before.
Would they have done things differently had they known what was to come? Would they have changed their estimation of what lengths the U.S. government would go to just to be rid of them?
Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have demanded more than a half carrot from legislators? Would Malcom X have pushed harder for meaningful criminal justice reform to properly address the despair he saw in his Harlem streets?
Since the conversation is fantastical, I wonder what it could have been if the meeting was given a purpose rather than a meeting for meeting’s sake.