The Free Southern Theater

Foundations of A Southern Black Arts Movement

The Free Southern Theater (FST) was founded by John O'Neal, Doris Derby, and Gilbert Moses in 1964 as an integrated drama workshop at Tougaloo College (Tougaloo, Mississippi). At the time the theater was established, O'Neal and Derby were both field directors for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Jackson, Mississippi. What O'Neal, Derby, and Moses did not foresee was that the FST would serve as the foundation for a visual and literary arts movement that would permeate the South in the 1960s and 1970s.