Patrick Sims’ 10 Perfect explores the essence of James Cameron’s life
A Masterpiece

By Jonathan Gramling

Part 2 of 2

        After about 12 years when UW Professor Patrick Sims first had the idea, his
play “10 Perfect: A Lynching Survivor Story” was performed February 5-6 in the
Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space in Lathrop Hall. It is a one-act play that
features Sims playing 18 characters to tell the story of the fictional character
‘James Solomon’ based on James Cameron, who was the only known African
American to escape a lynch mob in U.S. history. While the focal point is the near-
lynching experience, it is the undertones of race relations in America, a story of
the heinousness acts and redemption, that drew Sims to create the one-hour play.
According to the Tuskegee Institute, 3,437 African Americans were lynched in
1882-1968. Countless others were beaten, many homes and churches were set
ablaze and others simply disappeared. Lynching and the noose became icons for
America’s segregated system from the end of Reconstruction to the triumph of the
Civil Rights movement. While the frequency of these acts has diminished, they
have not totally disappeared.
        “I wanted to connect that dot that what happened in 1930 could easily happen
and has happened to other folk in the South like Columbus, Georgia,” Sims said
during an interview in his Vilas Hall office. “A bunch of college boys were home
for the weekend. This happened in 2002. This kid was home and in the wrong
place at the wrong time. He got pulled over and was reaching in to grab his
identification and the police shot him. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was
trying to abide by the law. There are countless, countless stories like this. There
are so many, we don’t know them all. There was the Diallo shooting in New York,
where it was at its most egregious. He was shot 40 sometimes and he was
reaching for his wallet. The LA Police have a bad rap for a reason. Johnny
Cochran talked a lot about this and how he was instrumental in getting certain
laws changed, particularly a choke-hold maneuver. Black men were dying from
this hold. They were being suffocated. The rationale was they were trying to
subdue them so they could arrest them. In reality, they were killing them. I’m not
saying they were intentionally trying to kill them. But they had a policy in place
where the law could take a life. Those are the larger contexts that I want to talk
about. To me, they are all related to Cameron’s story. They all point back to that
mentality that says it is okay for that to happen”
        While 10 Perfect is an emotionally-touching play, Sims wants it to go beyond
provoking an emotional response to also creating a rational dialogue about race
and how it impacts interpersonal and community relations. “I want to get to a
place where it isn’t about blame or shame,” Sims emphasized. “But it’s more
about what can I personally do that can help shift this dialogue and move it to a
point where we are no longer walking on eggshells, where we can just have a
heart-to-heart talk about what Senator Harry Reid said about President Barack
Obama, which was right. I think he was dead on. I wasn’t offended. It was the
truth. That discussion happened a long time ago, long before Barack Obama even
came on the scene. Now all of a sudden, it becomes like ‘Oh, it is such a big
deal.’ No, it isn’t.”
Sims sees a sincere and open dialogue about race and race relations as the first
step in making sure that these types of crimes do not happen again. “I think we
need to dialogue about it, not to try and say we’re going to solve the problem right
now,” Sims said. “But if we don’t talk about it, we’ll never get to having a
solution. It’s that feeling that this thing is so large and so big that I can’t do
anything. And that’s not true. So for me, to have this story, to present it in this way,
it’s my way of saying ‘This is how I want to make a difference.’”

During the February 6 performance, 10 Perfect was filmed so that it could be
broadcast on the Big Ten Network, possibly on February 23. Consult the Big Ten
Network schedule at www.bigtennetwork.com/schedule/index.asp.
Actor/playwright Patrick Sims (l) teamed up with director
Sheri Williams Pannel (r) to produce 10 Perfect: A
Lynching Survivor Story
Sims depicts the near lynching
The coach of the opposing swim team