Student leaders at Oak Park and River Forest High School worked for months to plan a two-day event highlighting the intersection of art and justice.
OPRF hosted a workshop Wednesday and a live performance Thursady that was followed by a Q&A panel to deepen students’ knowledge of systematic and racial injustice.
Emmy-award winner Joe Morton and actress Eilis Cahill performed a reading from “Brutal Imagination,” a book by award-winning poet Cornelius Eady, who attended both days, that was turned into a play. The poem is based on the 1994 true story of Susan Smith, a woman who accused a Black man of killing her children, when she was the killer.
“Brutal Imagination” was performed off-Broadway for a one-night benefit for the Innocence Project, a program Morton is an ambassador for that focuses on fighting injustice.
The emotional dialogue was followed by a panel which, in a way, brought the story to life. Charles Johnson and Larod Styles shared their stories of being imprisoned and given life without parole for a double murder in 1995, when they were only teenagers. Johnson and Styles would later be recognized as two men of the Marquette Park Four, who were exonerated in 2024 and given a $50 million settlement.
Johnson had not seen the play, but said it connected with him.
“That play was powerful because it kind of touched on my situation, my actual case,” he said. “It was enlightening, I loved that play.”
Detectives allegedly forced false confessions from the teens, and Johnson said he doesn’t want today’s youth to make the same mistakes. He frequently gives talks to keep them young people on the right track, he said.
“I think it’s important for people to know our stories because a lot of these stories happen, but they don’t get told,” Johnson said.
Eady’s writing focuses on race and society. He recited a poem earlier this year at the inauguration of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City.
Eady said he was happy to share his knowledge and said he hopes he can be something of a role model for the students, something he didn’t have in his youth.
“I hope our experiences are something they can take for themselves and feel inspired by it and feel they can actually be encouraged,” Eady said.
Marley Paxton, a junior at OPRF, said the program was necessary considering how pertinent the topics are.
“Just being able to resort to art and literature instead of doing nothing about it and trying to see where this roots, and how the extent of what stereotypes can affect people and is detrimental to a whole community, and trying to negotiate that is really powerful,” Paxton said.
Posters hung around a lecture hall Wednesday prompted students to answer thought-provoking questions: How does the media contribute to the imagination of people? How does imagination shape systems of power? How can art and activism challenge institutional injustice?
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OPRF seniors Hannah Jones and George Barkidjija began working on the idea in January, even skipping out on some lunch periods, according to faculty members. They said the two-day program was important to bring to students as a way to expand their thinking.
“I think that a lot of students here could use a lot more context, just about, not only (Eady), but like the community of activists,” Jones said. “I think a lot of them need a second to be able to sit on these kinds of questions.”
The students were central to bringing the idea to life, said Tyrone Williams, Jr., a teacher at OPRF. He called it a reflection of what goes on in the classroom.
“When I see students moving the way they are around the room, responding to questions, connecting deeply on a level that requires them to really find out who they are and move beyond the perfunctory, that’s quite gratifying,” Williams said.
Having students lead discussions was beneficial in getting other students to take something away, said Lily Merrick, a junior at OPRF. The program will be more memorable for students, as opposed to a teacher sitting in a classroom “talking at them,” she said.
“I feel like too often in school when we try to teach things it’s a lot of talking at students and there’s a lot of power imbalance and there’s not a lot that you remember from that if you’re not actively participating,” Merrick said.
Barkidjija and Jones said they hope to bring similar programs to other schools, as OPRF is the pilot in a program like this. For Barkidjija, the two-day program held the opportunity to give other students a new way of thinking.
“This whole project encourages conversation, which I think a lot of people at this school perhaps share the same ideas or really don’t differ that much, ideologically, but they don’t feel as comfortable to candidly have these conversations,” he said.