Jacob Russell says he’s been part of metro Detroit’s mostly white improv scene for almost 13 years and noticed his peers didn’t know much about contributions Black people made to American history. The comedian, who grew up on Detroit’s west side, said that disconnect inspired “Birth of a Ho’ Ass Nation,” a satirical one-man show to “give them a perspective of how I grew up and what I was taught.”

Russell said he was inspired to write the first play, which he first performed in 2017 and has since become a series, because he wanted to offer his audience something deeper than just jokes.

Along with writing the play, Russell, 38, plays all the characters like Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. He also throws in some non-historical figures–a human version of Jim Crow, a talking lion simply named Lion and a heightened version of himself.

Everything I say is a lie…
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