Justice

How a Dallas Parking Lot Inspired a Play by William Jackson Harper

The Good Place star wrote Travisville after learning about a civil rights battle that displaced a black community near the Texas State Fair.
William Jackson Harper says he ends 'Travisville' on an ambiguous note in an effort to avoid common trope of civil rights stories.Courtesy of Ensemble Studio Theatre

On TV, William Jackson Harper is known for his role as Chidi Anagonye on The Good Place, where he plays a tortured philosophy professor who helps his friends navigate ethics in a topsy-turvy afterlife.

But Harper got his start in theater, and this fall he returned to his roots, this time as a playwright, to tell the story of a largely forgotten ethical quandary that took place in his hometown during the civil-rights era.