Jackson Free Press

John O'Neal Jr., a civil-rights activist, playwright and actor who cofounded the Free Southern Theater and Junebug Productions, died of vascular disease on Feb. 15 in New Orleans. He was 78.

O'Neal was born in Mound City, Ill., and received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and English at Southern Illinois University in 1962. After graduating, he became an organizer for a civil-rights group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and did work for the organization in Georgia and Mississippi. He also worked as a field secretary and coordinator for the Freedom School Program during Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964.

In 1963, O'Neal co-founded Free Southern Theater at Tougaloo College with fellow SNCC members Gilbert Moses and Doris Derby. The company traveled throughout Mississippi and Louisiana to give African American communities access to theater. The group didn't charge admission for shows, and largely put on productions that emphasized black themes and characters. The troupe performed on makeshift outdoor stages and inside homes and churches.

A common performance O'Neal put on was a one-man show starring a folk character named Junebug Jabbo Jones, who represented a trickster character archetype of African folklore, as well as a type of storyteller called a "griot."

O'Neal also organized a series of "story circles" in which members of a local community could come together and share spoken-word stories within a given amount of time.

Free Southern Theater also held workshops for college students during tours, and offered apprenticeships and a sponsorship program for local artists in Mississippi.

After Free Southern Theater closed in 1980, O'Neal founded Junebug Productions, named for his Junebug Jabbo Jones character, and served as the organization's artistic director. The company works to promote the arts in African American communities throughout the United States.

Some of its most notable productions include the "Homecoming Project," a storytelling performance series launched in 2011 that explores the experiences of black communities in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; and "Gomela: to return, Movement of Our Mother Tongue," a music project launched in 2014 that explores the relationship between contemporary musical genres such as hip-hop and jazz, and traditional African music and dance.

O'Neal received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 1988 and a National Endowment for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship in 1990. He wrote 19 plays over the course of his career, including "Hurricane Season," "Where is the Blood of Your Fathers," "When the Opportunity Scratches, Itch It," "Preacher Man! Preacher Man!" and "Jerusalem Gallows Dream." O'Neal retired in 2011.

His surviving relatives include his wife, Bertha O'Neal; his son, William Edward Burkhardt O'Neal, and daughter, Wendi Moore-O'Neal; his stepson, Arnold Ragas; his brother, Wendell O'Neal, and sister, Pamela O'Neal Moody; seven grandchildren and a great-grandson.