A professor emerita at Quinnipiac University law school has written and composed a musical about a turning point in Connecticut history. In 1965, Connecticut rewrote its constitution to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ‘one person, one vote’ ruling.
The musical, called “She’s Got to Make This Work: Ella and the Constitution,” features state leaders like Ella Grasso. Connecticut Public’s Lori Mack spoke with the musical’s writer and composer, Linda Ross Meyer.
Here are edited highlights from their conversation:
On the Story
Before she became Connecticut’s first female governor, Ella Grasso was Secretary of State.
“It was her job to make sure that this Constitutional Convention worked. She's got to make it work, hence the song ‘We've Got to Make This Work.'
The stakes were high for Grasso at the time of the Constitutional Convention, when state lawmakers gathered to rewrite the state’s constitution to ban discrimination in voting and align itself with the nation’s highest court. The state legislature was split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. The task required significant cross-party collaboration, and Grasso, a Democrat, knew all eyes would be on her. "She was extremely ambitious. She wanted to be governor. She really wanted to make this convention her set piece in advocating for her own political ambition and her own political aspirations,” Ross Meyer said.
At some point, she has to confront a difficult question: would she put ambition ahead of principle?
“The play kind of has this turning point where she decides, no, she's really going to put her ambition to one side, and she's gonna act out of principle,” she said. “That's the theme of the musical.”
On why It Matters Today
Ross Meyer sees parallels with the events of 1965 and Connecticut today.
“There are so many things that we're still struggling with. For example, obviously, voting rights were front and center in that convention. How to equalize voting, how to make voting more accessible, we're still talking about that,” she said.
“Civil rights were definitely an elephant in the room sometimes in that convention, but they were still at the heart of what was going on,” she said. “We had, obviously, civil rights demonstrations. We had the new Voting Rights Act being passed by Congress. We had Vietnam protests beginning. We had all kinds of concerns about nuclear war, about foreign intervention.”
All of those things are still with us, she said.
“Yet in that divisive time, when you had a convention that was split 50-50, Republican and Democrat, they were still able to reach across the aisle and get to a two-thirds majority,” Ross Meyer said. “ To me, that gives us hope for our own divisive and difficult time.”
Learn more
She’s Got to Make This Work: Ella and the Constitution will be performed at the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford on Friday, March 6, at 2 p.m. Registration for the free event is available through the Connecticut League of Women Voters.
