THE SCRIPT

By Dr. Matthew J. Cressler, Jennifer Daubenmier, and Judith Daubenmier 

CHAPTER 1 

Panel 1: Black and white people of all ages march (toward camera) arm-in-arm in roughly equal numbers. They’re dressed in 1960s respectable attire—think Mad Men. Some hold signs that say things like “FREEDOM NOW.” Framed front and center, marching arm-in-arm, are Martin Luther King Jr. and a white Catholic nun in a black-and-white habit—think Sister Act. This should look like a cliché from a civil rights movement documentary. It should also look a bit ethereal (it is a dream sequence). Free-floating music notes indicate that the crowd is singing.

Crowd (singing): We shall overcome, we shall overcome…

Transition: thought-bubble-lines reveal Panel 1 to be an image from El’s daydream.

Panel 2: El is a non-binary white kid (10 years old) with short, stylish strawberry-blonde hair. El daydreams on their bed. Books scattered everywhere. A rosary rests nearby on a nightstand.

Caption: Chicago suburbs, 2022

Panel 3: Close up (CU) on El, sitting bolt upright. Their eyes are wide with excitement.

Mom (off panel): El!!

Panel 4: Mom is a white woman in her forties with red hair and freckles. She’s at the bottom of a flight of stairs calling for El.

Mom: She’s here! 

Panel 5: El flies down the stairs at breakneck speed (almost sliding down the stairs).

El: Coming!!!

Panel 6: El sliding at the bottom of the stairs. Mom is at the door greeting Angelica. Angelica is here. She is a short, older white woman with short-cropped gray hair. She wears thick glasses and modest clothes. 

Panel 7: POV shot from behind Angelica, who stands just inside the front door. Her silhouette is center framed. Over Angelica shoulders we see Mom whispering to El and El interrupting. El stands next to Mom practically vibrating with enthusiasm, clearly struggling to remain calm.

Mom (whispering): Remember, be patient. Aunt Angelica is almost ninety ye—

El (interrupting): Yeahyeahyeah I know I know…

Panel 8: El is talking frantically—mouth wide open, arms waving as they talk. El is peppering Angelica with rapid-fire questions. Angelica is smiling, gently. The image should convey the sense that El’s questions are coming so thick and fast that they’re blurring together. The dialogue circles El. 

El: OMG-

EL: Where do I even begin??? 

El: Mom told me you marched with Dr. King!!!

El: Is that true??! 

Panel 9: Dialogue is now circling Angelica

El: What was he like?!!

El: Where were you?!? 

El: Were you scared? 

Transition: Panels 10-13 are flashbacks triggered by El’s questions. We will see these images again in their proper context in Chapter 3.

Panel 10: A 1960s-era car is burning as a mob of white men cheers on. Smoke and flames billow out of the shattered rear window. Man stands on car with molotov cocktail. El’s questions is fading into the background. [See Panel 44]

El (off panel, getting softer): I bet you weren’t! 

Panel 11: White men flipping a car (see reference photo).

 El (off panel): You must’ve been so proud!

Panel 12:  A group of young white men wearing white t-shirts, white button-down shirts, and jeans make up part of a larger angry crowd. One is flying a Confederate flag. Another holds a hand-made cardboard sign that says “White Power” and is adorned with a Swastika. They’ve got hate in their eyes, but they also look like they’re enjoying themselves. A guy in the back throws a brick. 

El (off panel): You were such a hero!!

Panel 13: CU of young Sr. Angelica’s face. Blood is just starting to soak through her veil.  

Panel 14: El and Angelica standing across from each other in conversation. Angelica looks intently at El. In contrast to the over-excited kid we’ve seen up to this point, El now looks nervous, hesitant, sheepish. El can tell they’ve hit a nerve.

Angelica (whispers): I wasn’t a hero.

El: Oh… errr… I mean… Shero?  

Angelica: No…

Panel 15: Angelica is now seated in a comfortable armchair in the living room. She is gesturing for El to sit down. El is in the process of sitting down on a couch next to their Mom.

Angelica: I was an exception to the rule. / Why don’t you have a seat, sweetie. Let me tell you a story…

CHAPTER 2

Panel 16: Angelica seated in her comfy armchair in the living room across from Mom and El.

Angelica: Dr. King and I both came to Chicago in the 1960s, but we might as well have been worlds away. 

Artist Note: I am imagining Panels 17-22 as a series of images that will locate readers in a particular historical place and time. The images will tell the story of what brought Angelica and King to Chicago, it will instruct readers on the reasons King came to Chicago in the first place, and reinforce things Angelica clearly still had to learn about race, racism, and the Church. 

Artist Note 2: Panels 20, 22, 25, and 27 have historical photographic analogues you can see in references and in the book I bought you.

Panels 17-18: A map of the middle United States. Think of it like a plane’s-eye-view or a Google Maps image. The only place names should be “Waterloo, Iowa” and “Atlanta, Georgia,” and “Chicago, Illinois.” Two lines in two different colors connects Waterloo to Chicago and Atlanta to Chicagos as if someone were plotting a course in an Indiana Jones movie. Perhaps there are inset images that then “zoom in” on Melrose Park (northwest suburb) and Lawndale (west side neighborhood) to give a sense of how they both came to Chicago, but were still worlds away.

Angelica (narration): I came to teach Catholic school.   

Angelica (narration): Dr. King came to bring the civil rights movement North.

Panel 19: A young Sr. Angelica dressed in a black-and-white habit stands in front of a schoolteacher’s desk in a Catholic elementary school classroom. The first-grade boys and girls are hard at work on an assignment. It’s clear that this is an affluent and all-white school.

Angelica (narration): I was teaching first graders at Sacred Heart in the lily white suburbs.

Caption: Melrose Park, Chicago suburbs

Panel 20: Dr. King and Coretta Scott King waving from the window of a tenement apartment.

Angelica (narration): Dr. King’s family moved into a slum apartment in the segregated city.

Caption: Lawndale neighborhood, Chicago

Panel 21: Sr. Angelica and another nun smiling in conversation with Black youth of all ages playing on an urban playground. A chain-linked fence surrounds them. A sign posted in the background reads “Welcome to PROJECT CABRINI,” identifying this as part of the Cabrini-Green public housing project. 

Angelica (narration): My eyes began to open as I spent more of my summers serving in those segregated neighborhoods, learning from those who lived there. 

Panel 22: King speaking with a group of Black Chicagoans.  

King: We are here to break down the walls of segregation in this city! We are tired of living in rat-infested slums! We are tired of paying $97 a month to rent four rooms in Lawndale while whites pay $73 a month for five rooms in Melrose Park! 

Panel 23: Present day. Angelica and El sit across from each other in conversation in the living room. El is on the edge of their seat. Angelica seems to be shaking her head, ashamed at the memory of her younger naive self. It’s clear that this image of rat-infested slums and segregation in Chicago is really challenging El’s assumptions about a number of things.

El: Wait… All that was here? In Chicago? I thought segregation was in the South. 

Angelica: Me too. / I had so much to learn. 

Panels 24-25: Angelica is looking down (present day) and looking up (in the past). Split screen Saving-Private-Ryan type shot where Angelica’s old face becomes her younger self. In the present she’s looking down, a bit embarrassed and ashamed of how naive she was as a 20-year-old nun. In the past, she’s looking up, rapt in awe as Dr. King speaks.  

King (off panel): Now’s the time to make real the promises of democracy and open the doors of opportunity to all God's children. Now’s the time to put an end to slums. Now’s the time to confront the forces resisting change, to let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Panel 26: High-angle shot of 30,000 person crowd at Soldier Field on Freedom Sunday, 1966.  

King: We are tired of being lynched physically in the South and being lynched spiritually and economically in the North. We are tired of living on an island of poverty in the midst of an ocean of plenty…

Panel 27: CU of Dr. King giving the Freedom Sunday speech. 

King: This day we must declare our own Emancipation Proclamation! 

Panel 28: Angelica’s dead center of a crowd of civil rights marcher (framed chest-up). POV shot is through the shoulders of the people in front of her, so it’s clear that she’s one among thousands of people marching. She’s fired up and chanting. She’s in the midst of a huge crowd. 

Angelica (narration): That day, Dr. King gave me the push I needed…to start walking the walk.

Caption: Chicago, Freedom Sunday, July 10, 1966

CHAPTER 3

Panel 29: Medium shot of Sr. Angelica and a priest marching side by side. This is a different march than the one that concludes Chapter 2. This one’s through Marquette Park. The priest is a thirty-something-year-old, Black man with dark-rimmed glasses. He’s wearing standard Catholic priest attire: black pants, black button down shirt, black blazer, black collar with the small white patch below the chin. Sr. Angelica looks around in awe. The priest has a knowing smile on his face.

Angelica (narration): As I marched I thought of all the footsteps I followed. My sister nuns who’d marched in Selma, the young men from Cabrini-Green who’d asked me to walk with them.  

Caption: Marquette Park, Chicago / July 31, 1966

Panel 30: Zooming out we see Sr. Angelica, the priest, and a number of young Black men are marching for civil rights through Marquette Park.  

Crowd (chanting): End slums now! End slums now!

Panel 31: A cherry bomb flies through the air trailed by a thin line of smoke.

SFX: PPFFFFFFFFFFF

Transition: Perhaps the cherry bomb somehow travels across panels 31-33? 

Panel 32: The priest looks at something sees the cherry bomb (out of frame). His eyes are wide with concern. He is beginning to brace himself for the explosion. Sr. Angelica is looking at it too, but confused and disoriented. She doesn’t seem to know what the bomb is or why it would be thrown here?

Angelica: Whaa—?

Panel 33: The cherry bomb hits the ground with a small flash and a good deal of smoke. It is very loud. The sound of the explosion takes center stage. The civil rights marchers near the explosion, Sr. Angelica and the priest among them, jump back in fright. 

SFX: BKKKOOOOOOW!!!!!!

Panel 34: Wide shot of the white crowd stationed at the edge of the park. These are counter protestors who have poured out of their family homes that border Marquette Park. We see them from the POV of the civil rights marchers headed straight toward them (they are staring at camera). The crowd is intergenerational—white men and boys, women and girls, even parents with small children. The crowd is enraged. Apoplectic. Spitting bile, shouting hate.

A white man: Go back to where you belong!!!!!

A white woman: We don’t want to integrate!!! 

A white teenager: This is our turf!!!!

Panel 35: CU of Sr. Angelica as she takes in these chaotic scenes.

Panel 36: A group of white men and women, young and old, in the angry crowd. One man flies a Confederate flag. Another holds a hand-made sign that says “White Power,” adorned with a Swastika. They’ve got hate in their eyes, but they’re clearly enjoying themselves. A young white mother (20-something) stands in the center of the crowd.

Panel 37: The white mother and Sr. Angelica exchange tense words as the chaos of the crowd and the march continues in the background. The white mother is yelling, Angelica is trying to respond kindly but is being talked over. Meanwhile, a young white man in a high school letter jacket that has a clearly Catholic High School symbol on the breast (let’s say the “sacred heart” symbol) stands somewhere the background, foreshadowing things to come.

White mother: You should be ashamed of yourself! Parading around with these law breakers!!! 

Angelica: They are our brothers and sisters in Christ. The Gospel calls us to– 

White mother (interrupting): You’re a badI’m a good Catholic! Go back to the convent! 

Panel 38: Wider shot. The white mother is walking out of frame. The priest, who’s been taking all this in, looks angry. Angelica, on the other hand, looks sad. She shakes her head in dismay.

Priest: What bad Catholics! And they call themselves Catholic! 

Angelica: No … This is my fault. / I was their teacher and I failed them. 

Panel 39: CU on the young white man in the letter jacket (the badge on the breast of his jacket has a big Sacred Heart symbol). We don’t necessarily even need to see his face. All we need to see is his jacket, the badge, and the fact that he is clutching a brick in his hand and gearing up to launch it.

Panel 40: The brick flies through the air.

Young white man (off panel): This one’s for you, nun!

Transition: Perhaps like the cherry bomb, the brick actually travels from one panel to the other.

Panel 41: CU of Sr. Angelica’s face. The brick is hitting her in the side of the head, knocking her off kilter. Blood is just beginning to soak through her veil.

SFX: THHNNKKK 

Angelica: Uuooff—

Panel 42: Sr. Angelica is hunched over, her hands on her knees. One side of her (veiled) head is now soaked with blood. The brick lays near her feet on the ground. The young Black men are at to her side to priest is checking to see if she’s okay, hand on her shoulder. Surrounding civil rights marchers are looking around, stunned, as if looking to see where the brick came from.

Young man (off panel): Ha! Got ‘er!

CHAPTER 4

Panel 43: Present day. CU of El. They both share an expression of shocked disbelief.

El: But how… Where were the police?

Panel 44: CU of present-day Angelica.

Angelica: Oh, they’d be there when Dr. King returned to march the following week.

Panel 45: Flash back to Chicago, 1966. Aftermath of King getting hit in the head by a rock (see reference photo, but do with it what you will/want).

Angelica (narration): Not that it made much difference.

Panel 46: Martin Luther King rubs a sore spot on the back of his head while speaking to journalists. The scene is crowded. Journalists out of view hold up multiple microphones. A wall of police officers in blue shirts and riot helmets surround King and the journalists.

Martin Luther King: This is a terrible thing. I’ve never seen—even in Mississippi and Alabama—mobs as hostile and hate-filled as I’ve seen here in Chicago.

Panel 47: Present-day. El sits stares at their aunt in disbelief. 

El: And all those angry people were…

Angelica: Catholics, yes. / Most of them, anyway.

Panel 48: CU of the top of a typewriter. You’re seeing it type out the letter… 

Angelica (narration): Remember, we were the exceptions. / We had some support, of course…

Panel 49: Waterfall of dozens and dozens of letters…Overlapping signatures that conveys that this one letter is just one of many. The signatures need not all be fully visible (they can overlap). They read: a disappointed Catholic; a disgusted Catholic; Fed Up Catholic; a troubled Catholic, a slowly falling away Catholic; a used to be devout Catholic; another disenchanted Catholic; a very disillusioned Catholic; a disgruntled Catholic; a burned up white Catholic 

Angelica (narration): But many, many more stood on the side of the mob.

Panel 50: Cascading signatures/letters in previous panels becomes this one single letter. A letter to the editor in a newspaper, though we only see a portion of it. The text of the letter fades away at the top and bottom of the panel. Here is the full letter. I’ve highlighted a segment that should be clearly visible.

Particularly Bitter

That nun should not have entered that white area with the Negroes to demonstrate against whites. Whites are particularly bitter against whites who work against them, whether they be nuns or priests. I fear that white Catholics are now losing respect for every nun and priest who demonstrates with Negroes against them.

Let nuns mind their own business—attend to other social work, but don’t demonstrate against their own. Whites will not take that any more. We have no organization to fight for us. The Negroes have money. And as devout a Catholic as I am, my temper would show if a white person—nun or priest—worked against me and my white people. I’d be likely to throw a rock. And I have a daughter a nun—I’ll disown her if she ever marches in a demonstration against her own people.

Respect for nuns has left us. If they want to join the rabble-rouser, their habits no longer protect them because when they act like the common trash they should get what the trash gets.

Mrs. Margaret Reynolds

New York City

September 12, 1966

Panel 51: CU of Angelica.

Angelica: These were their neighbors, after all. Their friends and fellow parishioners. / But the worst part– 

Panel 52: Present-day. Angelica sits in her comfy chair across from Mom and El on the couch. Mom looks sidelong at her child, a look of concern on her face. El is speaking now.

El: Worse?! What could be worse than all that hate?

Panel 53: CU of Angelica, looking directly at the camera (as if at the reader).

Angelica: Most people were simply silent. They did nothing. They said nothing. They clung to comfort. / But, as Dr. King once said, “There comes a time…”

Panel 54: CU on King.

King: When silence is betrayal. 

Panel 55: CU of El, looking directly at the camera/reader. 

El: So what do I do? 

Panel 56: Cut to black. 

Angelica (off panel): Go be the exception... 

Panel 57: Still black. 

Angelica (off panel): And join all the others.

THE END.