SHREVEPORT, La. – Shreveport resident Carolyn Jones Sullivan wrote a play in two months while she recovered from COVID and gallbladder surgery last year. This weekend, she will see “Beauty in the Ballot Box” live on stage.
The play focuses on Shreveport’s Modern Beauty Shop, a landmark where Sullivan grew up.
“This location of Modern Beauty Shop has been here for 65 years,” she said. “It nurtured the community, and the ladies that worked in this place were amazing change makers.”
The beauty shop served as a community hub during the Civil Rights era, as several women had conversations about civil rights and figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, spurring them on in their own movement locally.
“I wrote the play to honor the legacy,” Sullivan explained. “It came to be very important to me once I had to close these doors due to the pandemic. I was like, oh my goodness, what’s going to become of these women’s legacy? What will become of the lives that were lived inside these walls and the conversations that were had about voting, civil rights, community events or whatever was going on in northwest Louisiana?”
