Through Story of Bus Killing in Durham, N.C., “Changing Same” Exposes Discrimination and Violence Faced by Black Soldiers During Jim Crow
A new play premiering this November, “Changing Same,” recounts an incident of racial violence that happened in Durham, North Carolina, just a few blocks north of Duke University’s East Campus — the 1944 killing of Private Booker T. Spicely, a Black Army soldier who pushed back against Jim Crow segregation laws.
After spending an evening on leave in Durham’s Hayti district, Spicely was traveling on a bus back to Camp Butner when the driver, Herman Council, ordered him to move to the back. After initially arguing that he was wearing the same uniform as the white soldiers on the bus, Spicely compiled. When Spicely exited the bus, Council followed and shot him in the heart with a .38 caliber pistol.
Spicely was transported to nearby Watts Hospital, but was refused treatment on account of his race. He was taken to Duke Hospital and died shortly afterward.
At the time, the bus system in Durham was operated by Duke Power, now Duke Energy. Duke Power paid Council’s $2500 bail and kept him on the job. Council was tried and acquitted by an all-white jury, who deliberated for fewer than 30 minutes.
James Williams, former chief public defender for Orange and Chatham counties and longtime civil rights activist, said that he first encountered Spicely’s story while doing historical research on Durham attorney C.J. Gates, who prosecuted the case against Council.
“The more I read, the more I was convinced that something needed to be done,” Williams said. He called several people he knew in Durham, and the Booker T. Spicely Committee was formed.
The committee first applied for a state historical marker to commemorate and honor Spicely. Their application was successful, and the marker was placed at the intersection of Broad Street and Club Boulevard in Durham in December 2023. It stands between the spot where Spicely was shot, now Club and Berkeley Street, and the hospital that refused to treat him, now the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
The committee also petitioned Duke Energy to fund several initiatives: a scholarship in Spicely’s name at the North Carolina Central University School of Law, a symposium, and the commissioning of a play telling Spicely’s story.
When Duke Energy granted their request, the committee wrote to Mike Wiley asking him to write the play. It was the first he’d heard of Booker T. Spicely.
“The arts take a black-and-white picture and fill in all of the shading and the colors. It gives it the dimensions that allow an audience to walk in the shoes of these characters, of these real-life individuals. That’s the importance of being able to utilize art, especially theater, to be able to share history.”
– Mike Wiley
“I spend so much of my time knee-deep in North Carolina history,” Wiley said. “It shocked me that I didn’t know the story of Private Spicely.”
Wiley is an acclaimed actor, playwright, and documentary artist who writes and performs one-man shows about key episodes in African American history. He co-directs America’s Hallowed Ground, a program of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University that works with communities reckoning with painful histories through the power of the arts.
Wiley said that his initial reaction to hearing Spicely’s story gave him an entry point into writing the play.
“You hear it from someone, and then you hear another version or another angle from someone else, and that spurs you on to want to know more about it,” he said. “You want to know every little bit that you can possibly find out about the story.”
Wiley brought on a frequent collaborator, playwright Howard Craft, to co-write “Changing Same.” After assembling their research, they developed the play as a series of monologues from different characters, giving different perspectives on the bus shooting and Council’s trial.
Because they knew from the beginning that they were writing a one-man play that Wiley would perform, they didn’t have to worry about finding an actor who could embody its diverse characters, who range widely in age, race, and gender.
That, Wiley said, is his “wheelhouse.”
“It may sound cliché, but no one does it like he does,” said Tracy Francis, a production manager who has worked with Wiley for nearly 20 years.
It was a few minutes before a “Changing Same” rehearsal in Swain Hall at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Francis was setting up tables for a read-through of the play, along with the play’s director, Joseph Megel, and dramaturg, Elisabeth Corley.
Wiley arrived with a wooden cane, saying he was “going to play with it for Gideon,” the first character to appear in the play.
Gideon’s advanced age becomes obvious as soon as Wiley starts to recite his first monologue — recite, not read, because he closes his eyes as he speaks, rocking his head from side to side. He strokes his thumb against his shirt, seemingly unconsciously. Even the way he holds his lips against his teeth suggests that some of them are loose or missing.
“He’s definitely aged since the last reading,” said Francis, and everyone in the room laughed.
The second character to appear is Mitchell Byrd, an Army lieutenant. As Byrd, Wiley’s spine straightens. All of his movements are controlled and economical, making his smallest motions significant. Before he even asks a question, his eyes narrow into the slightest of squints, looking for — no, demanding — the “Yes, sir” he wants to hear. The effect is authoritative. Byrd is a soldier on a mission.
That mission is to determine the likelihood of civil unrest in Durham following the Council trial and its expected verdict of “not guilty.” Byrd lists three additional incidents in the U.S. South, all taking place within the previous two years, in which bus drivers shot Black soldiers, killing or seriously injuring them. None resulted in a guilty verdict.
“This scene does so much work,” director Joseph Megel said, admiring the monologue.
This scene shows the audience that although the Spicely case is specific to Durham, it is not an isolated one. In spite of serving their countries at home and abroad, Black soldiers and veterans faced rampant discrimination across the United States, and when this discrimination escalated into violence, there was no justice for its victims.
“It’s tough,” James Williams said, his voice full of emotion, as he recalled the first time he read about Spicely’s murder. “How cruel people can be. And it’s not just an individual case. I mean, this is systemic.”
Williams recounted the case of Isaac Woodard, a Black World War II veteran who was traveling home on a bus in South Carolina in 1946 when he had a disagreement with the bus driver about stopping to use the restroom. The driver radioed the police, and when Woodard exited the bus, they beat him with nightsticks. Woodard was permanently blinded.
It’s important to remember cases like Spicely’s and Woodard’s, Williams said, and to educate younger generations about them, because of the ways that the past continues to reverberate in the present.
“I think about James Baldwin, when he talked about ‘We are trapped in history, and history is trapped in us,’” he said. “And until we appreciate that more robustly, I think we’ll never grasp how wide and how deep the changes need to be.”
Wiley believes that the arts can help audiences not only to understand history, but also to experience it, in all its emotional resonance.
“The arts take a black-and-white picture and fill in all of the shading and the colors,” Wiley said. “It gives it the dimensions that allow an audience to walk in the shoes of these characters, of these real-life individuals. That’s the importance of being able to utilize art, especially theater, to be able to share history. Art, in a way, is the bridge between the past and the present.”
“Changing Same: The Cold-Blooded Murder of Booker T. Spicely” runs November 7–10 at Swain Hall at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and November 14–17 at Brody Theater in Branson Hall on Duke University’s East Campus.
Part of The Process Series at UNC, the play is presented by StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance and America’s Hallowed Ground at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
