The Black Garden chronicles a small slice of the life of Jessie, a young Black Male, political activist, student of philosophy, living in Northern California during the nineteen sixties. He meets a young girl, Brenda, who is the niece of his next door’s neighbor. They develop their relations against the backdrop of the Civil Rights struggle and Anti-Vietnam War protests in which Jessie is an active participant. Jessie experienced a severe crisis when he learns that Brenda had spent the night with another man; ironically, he had done the same himself that same evening with a woman that he had recently met at his voice coach’s house. He was driven to some rather drastic measures and suffered some near fatal consequences including an outrageous verbal attack on Brenda, two suicide attempts, being placed in mental institution for 72 hours, and lying in a coma for over eight months from a policeman’s baton strike to his head at an anti-war demonstration. The most redeeming thing to come out of all of these near fatal events was the fact that during the period of his recuperation from the coma, his friends and political associates were able to complete the first phase of a project that was dear to his heart; that being the construction of a Black Garden to serve as an iconic and symbolic representation of the phrase, “Black Is Beautiful”.

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