Jimmy Higgins: A play about life in the labor movement
For upcoming performances, please see our calendar of events.
Harlan Baker will appear as Jimmy Higgins in a one man show he has written, "Jimmy Higgins: A Life in the Labor Movement."
The play is directed by Christopher Price and premiered on April 28th 7:30 pm at The St. Lawrence Arts and Community Center 76 Congress Street in Portland, Maine.
The play is set on the eve of the 1960 presidential race. A rank and file union activist is being interviewed by a college student about his life. Higgins recounts his days as a newspaper boy in Sandusky Ohio during the First World War, his meeting with Eugene Debs and other radicals opposed to American participation in the First World War, his experiences in the Lafollette campaign for president in 1924 and his experience covering the union organizing drives of tenant farmers and auto workers in the 1930s.
Baker is an adjunct professor in the Theatre department at the University of Southern Maine, an actor, a former member of the Maine legislature, a union activist, and democratic socialist.
"Jimmy Higgins" has long stood for the name of the rank-and-file union and socialist activist.
April 28th, the date of the premier, is also Workers Memorial Day.
The performance is sponsored by the Southern Maine Labor Council, the Maine State Employees Association and The West End News.