Jinho “Piper” Ferreira had no plans to make a play about Black male voters. The Oakland-born rapper-turned-police-officer-turned-playwright simply wanted to take his family on a Black History road trip. With his wife and children, he visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Tuskegee Airmen training fields, the balcony where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and the remains of Black Wall Street in Durham, North Carolina.
“We also drove on roads and highways past places and spaces where Black people had been killed, lynched, raped and discarded,” Ferreira says. “We all kept journals, but when we returned home, I knew I had to write something to commemorate the unique struggle our people have been engaged in in this country. ‘Black Men Everywhere!’ is that.”
He spent 2023 writing “Black Men Everywhere!” which premieres Sept. 20 in Berkeley.
The solo show, set in a slightly alternate reality, features candidates of the U.S. major political parties creating chaos, each courting the Black male vote. Ferreira insists it’s coincidence that his script began to resemble actual news headlines.
“In the play, the Democratic candidate is a woman,” he says. “[But] it was written a year ago. I had no idea Kamala Harris would end up replacing President Biden. I should also be clear that the characters in the play are not representatives of Harris or Trump. The characters in the play are far more extreme!”
It’s a long way from where Ferreira was in 2010, after his friends Jihad Akbar and Gary King Jr. were killed by police in separate incidents. At the time, their deaths received little media attention.
“The Black Lives Matter movement didn’t exist in 2010, and it would’ve been a miracle at the time to get a cop fired, let alone prosecuted,” he recalls. “Cell phone cameras and social media weren’t as widespread, and Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow’ was just being published. I heard the gunshots that killed Gary King Jr. and saw his body lying face down on the ground while holding my 1-year-old son in one hand and holding Gary’s brother back with the other. Oscar Grant being killed [by BART police, which was captured on camera] was the last straw,” Ferreira adds.
“There are so many new tools, organizations, leaders and widespread awareness around the fight for liberation now, that had they existed then, the thought to leave hip-hop and enter law enforcement would’ve probably never crossed my mind,” he says.
He enrolled in the local police academy with the hope of changing the system from the inside.
In 2014, he created “Cops and Robbers,” an acclaimed solo show at The Marsh about an officer-involved shooting of a Black man as seen from multiple perspectives. Its successful run and national tour (he’s written a screenplay) were healing for both him and his audiences.
“‘Cops and Robbers’ was therapy for me,” he admits. “It was a very dark story that allowed me to siphon off some of my frustrations as a Black artist in law enforcement. The No. 1 comment I’ve gotten from police officers who have seen [it] is it made them want to be better people. My new play ‘Black Men Everywhere!’ isn’t born from darkness or frustration. It’s more of a love letter and a nod of understanding to my ancestors and brothers and sisters that continue the struggle.”
Coincidence or not, Ferreira recognizes how both Republicans and Democrats are aggressively courting Black male voters. Though the demographic traditionally has voted blue, Kanye West’s infamous support of Donald Trump after the 2016 election perhaps prompted a significant number of Black men to publicly support Trump and the Republican party.
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, determining which candidate has the support of Black men remains an inconclusive pursuit.
Though Ferreira isn’t enthusiastic about either major candidate, he remains confident of how his demographic will vote.
“Black men are going to vote for Kamala Harris en masse,” he insists. “We might be frustrated and angry, but we’re not crazy. As far as Kanye: Back in the mid-nineties, when hip-hop began to make a serious push toward materialism, almost every prominent rapper gave shout outs to Trump in their rhymes. …. I don’t remember famous rappers dissing Trump before he ran for president. I think somewhere in Kanye’s mind he thinks he’s ‘keeping it real,’ refusing to be told what to think while staying true to the materialistic values he came up on.”
Ferreira is optimistic about the effect his play will have on audiences (he’s personally reached out to Black theatergoers in Oakland and Berkeley) and how the world will look after the election.
“The best thing I could see happening is the American people mark this as our defining moment to move toward inclusivity, peace, empathy and justice,” he says. “The worst thing I can see happening is what happens in my play.”
Jinho “Piper” Ferreira’s “Black Men Everywhere!” runs Sept. 20-Oct. 12 at The Marsh, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. Tickets are $20-$100 at themarsh.org.
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