NATCHEZ &045; Dozens gathered Saturday to see local and regional actors tell, with emotion and in vivid detail, the stories of those whose lives intersected at the Forks of the Road.

The program, with several vocal performances and almost 20 narratives of enslaved people and slave owners and traders, was sponsored by the Friends of the Forks of the Road Society and an Alcorn State English class.

&uot;We’re changing the agenda in Natchez to show the other side of slavery can be demonstrated, performed and talked about without some of the hang-ups of the past,&uot; said Ser Seshshab Heter-C.M. Boxley, society co-coordinator.

The intersection of St. Catherine Street and Liberty Road &045; the Forks of the Road, where an interpretive exhibit now stands &045; was the site of one of the South’s largest slave markets in the 1800s.

It was there that Avery Johnson of Woodville, one of several students in Dr. Phyllis Thompson’s English class at Alcorn, stood while waiting to portray Henry Watson, one of the slaves that came through the area.

It wasn’t until a visitor tried to shake Johnson’s hand that she realized his hands were bound, albeit temporarily, by thick iron chains and shackles.

Standing backstage in the cast tent, Johnson found it hard to put into words why he and his fellow students thought it important to bring the narratives to life.

True, they had to choose a project as their class presentation, and Thompson presented them with the narratives of the enslaved people they portrayed Saturday as one possible project.

But more than just a grade, Johnson said, &uot;the Natchez area is just so rich in history.&uot;

That’s a history Dorothy Matthews, who moved back to her native Natchez from California just two years ago, said she didn’t hear much about in the schools of her youth.

Matthews said she came to see the program because &uot;there’s just so much of Natchez’s history I didn’t know, especially as it relates to African-Americans.&uot;

She and a crowd of locals and tourists sat at the hot, dusty site, some under the shade of umbrellas, as they heard actors speak of enslaved people living and dying under whips.

Some spoke of more subtle cruelty. In one narrative, an enslaved man talked of having the pages of a Bible he bought with his last dollar ripped out before his eyes.

Some portrayals were more graphic, as when Renee Shakespeare of Jackson and Mississippi Public Radio’s &uot;The Drinking Gourd Underground Railroad Radio Show&uot; portrayed enslaved woman Charlotte.

Charlotte, in turn, told through Shakespeare her story of being raped and mentally abused over a period of 15 years by a plantation owner.

Her voice breaking, she told of being assaulted by her &uot;master&uot; and verbally abused by other enslaved people. &uot;And you ask why I run away?&uot; she said.

The program, &uot;Slavery Meets Freedom at the Forks of the Road,&uot; will also be performed at 3 p.m. April 16.