One of the goals of the Moses Yale Beach_Revealed Project is to understand today in the context the ideologies enabled and fostered by the Penny Press in Antebellum America. The Teleplay, Fit to Print, examines six entrepreneurial decisions in what Frank Michael O’Brien, author of The Story Of The Sun (New York, 1833 -1918) referred to as Era of Hustle (Chapter VI), the period Beach was publisher.
‘The Question’ encounter was built upon a reference to a letter to Beach in Free Man of Color: The Autobiography of Willis August Hodges (written 1848–49, publ. 1896; ed. Gatewood, 1982).
It’s easy to think about history and how it has transformed and still influences our present. But what isn’t always easy is to understand that same history.
Thinking and understanding are two very different things, and do not necessarily involve each other. However, when you are learning about history, and you are taking up the opportunity to embody an historic figure (as an actor), you cannot simply think about who they were and how they made decisions. You must understand them. The decisions they made, the lives they touched, the people that influenced them and more. When I read about Willis A. Hodges my first thought was “why have I never heard about this man before!”. Hodges was a man of strong convictions and used his platform to push for changes. Born a free Black man still only allowed for some of the freedoms during the 1800s in Virginia, he forged a life dedicated to abolishing slavery and speaking truth to power. I have heard of many others that shared his views and worked to make similar changes such as Ida B. Wells (the present), and Frederick Douglass (legacy), but this man deserves his recognition outside of Virginia. The fact that Willis Hodges played such an important role in our history and I never heard of him made me want to learn more about him so I could serve his legacy and bring him to people that were like me in never hearing about him before. Bringing him to life for a brief moment was important to me and I was able to discover what I did not know I needed.
I needed to think about history and how it has transformed and still influences our present and embody an understanding that does not come easy.
— Elijah Manning, Actor
Embodying the Unspoken: Willis A. Hodges and the Power of the Question
History is often taught as a timeline of sweeping outcomes, but performance demands an accounting of moments.
In the teleplay Fit to Print, Decision 5: THE QUESTION zeroes in on a quiet yet profound transaction in 1846 New York: Willis A. Hodges—a free Black Virginian, activist, and future abolitionist editor—buys temporary access to the authority of the New York Sun. Confronted by a penny press that profits off Black trauma in crime columns while denying Black voices in political debate, Hodges challenges the paper’s lofty motto, “It Shines for All.” Denied space in the editorial section unless he pays, Hodges buys a boxed advertisement containing a single, radical query: “Does the Sun shine for all?”
Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the Sun, agrees to take Hodges’s cash and print the line under the paper’s banner, but buries it in the ad column as a “PAID WARRANT.” Beach sells placement without conceding the answer; Hodges buys space to force readers to confront the lie.
Elijah Manning steps into this tense historical intersection as an actor. Reframing the dramatized conflict, Manning’s performance reveals how historical understanding shapes artistic interpretation—and why Hodges’s legacy can be a vital story for today. Fit to Print exposes the hypocracy of Beach’s claim that The Sun Shines For All.
Understanding vs. Thinking: The Actor’s Method
Manning reflects on how to bridge the gap between historical intellect and lived empathy citing a vital distinction for any historical performance:
“Thinking and understanding are two very different things… when you are learning about history, and you are taking up the opportunity to embody an historic figure, you cannot simply think about who they were and how they made decisions. You must understand them.”
To merely think about Willis A. Hodges in 1846 is to analyze facts:
- Born free in Princess Anne County, Virginia, in 1815.
- Witness to brutal white vigilante violence, including an assault on his mother and raids that displaced his family.
- Sworn to an “eternal war against slavery,” leading him north to organize, edit The Ram’s Horn, and advocate for Black suffrage.
To understand Hodges, however, is to feel the weight of those facts behind his fictionalized actions in the Sun’s office. When Hodges insists on his terms—“Box stays. Motto stays. Question stays.”—it is not polite negotiation. It is the strategy of a man who watched white law function as state-sanctioned violence in Virginia and recognized that the Northern press operated under its own machinery of exclusion. In real life it was the work of the man distilled in the exemplyfying moment.
By insisting that the question sit under the Sun’s house stamp without supplying an answer, Hodges turns the advertisement into a mirror.
Manning captures this resolve, bringing to life a man who understood that if white authority would not grant equality, he would use their own commercial apparatus to expose their hypocrisy.
The Erasure of Radical Voices
Manning’s immediate reaction upon reading the script highlights a recurring tragedy in American historiography:
“When I read about Willis A. Hodges my first thought was ‘why have I never heard about this man before!’… I have heard of many others that shared his views… such as Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass, but this man deserves his recognition outside of Virginia.”
Hodges’s relative absence from popular historical memory is not an accident; it reflects the very dynamic dramatized in Decision 5. Penny papers like the Sun eagerly covered Black Americans when sweeping them into vagrancy arrests or sensationalizing street crime, but routinely erased Black intellectual leadership and political critique.
When an editor told Hodges that the Sun “shines for all white men,” it exposed the limits of 19th-century mainstream media. Hodges’s response was twofold:
- He forced his way into their print run by paying for a boxed ad.
- He went on to co-found The Ram’s Horn in 1847 alongside Thomas Van Rensselaer (and with support from John Brown) to ensure Black Americans owned their own narrative press.
Beach calculates that burying the box dodges responsibility: “If that line runs as news, it’s an attack. If it runs as opinion, it’s a sermon.” But Hodges accepts the ad column placement because he trusts the reader. He doesn’t need the Sun to validate his humanity; he needs the question to linger long enough for the public to answer it themselves.
The scene frames a moral conflict as an ongoing debate rather than a resolved decision. Manning’s performance in Fit to Print, ensures that Hodges is no longer left in the footnotes, linking his legacy directly to iconic crusaders like Douglass and Wells.
The Legacy of the Question
Elijah Manning’s reflection closes with an insight on how historical performance transforms the artist:
“Bringing him to life for a brief moment was important to me and I was able to discover what I did not know I needed. I needed to think about history and how it has transformed and still influences our present and embody an understanding that does not come easy.”
Decision 5 is more than a fictionalized enactment of an 1846 transaction; it is a commentary on access, media ownership, and systemic silence that directly informs our present. By moving past passive historical thinking and stepping into active understanding, Manning’s performance honors Willis A. Hodges’s vow—ensuring that a question posed over 180 years ago continues to demand an answer today.
