The police officer’s face was an inch from hers when he started screaming.

“Shut up and stop that singing. I told you to shut up, n–ger.”

But Tisch Jones didn’t stop.

Although the other protesters had quieted, Jones continued singing the next line of the hymn.

“… and before I’d be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.”

That’s when the police officer’s hand closed around her throat.

He threw Jones into the street, kicking her repeatedly as she struggled to get up from the pavement in the pouring rain. Finally, the officer grabbed her by the arm and shoved her into the police car.

It was 1963. She was 15.

Forty-six years later, Jones, now a UI theater associate professor, looks back in awe at the dedication she and her friends had while growing up during the civil-rights era.

“I’m amazed that we did it,” Jones said. “We had to stand up and take it … because our eyes were on the prize.”

Jones was arrested that fall afternoon in 1963 while participating in a civil-rights march in Orangeburg, S.C. Within the next year, she was jailed six more times.

Jones said she remembers learning how to picket in a church with hundreds of people after her mother pushed her to start protesting at 15.

“I was taught what would happen if I got clubbed over the head,” she said. “I spent pretty much every single day after school walking on that picket line back and forth.”

Though their fight for freedom inspired her, Jones said, there was one experience she never wants to repeat.

During her seventh jailing, Jones and her friend were put in the “bull pen” for solitary confinement when the police decided to “make an example” of them.

The girls were kept in a tiny cage in the basement for four nights and five days and given only a jar to urinate in. Jones said she was wary of the other “real” prisoners in the basement who weren’t held in cells and were all white males.

“I mean, anything could have happened to us down there,” she said. “Two little girls? We could have been raped.”

But with all the dangers, Jones said they refused to give up.

“We were willing to fight to the death,” she said. “It was that important.”

After struggling through all-white City High, Tisch received three degrees from the UI and University of Minnesota, and she has worked at the UI for almost nine years as associate professor of directing and theater history.

Her coworker of three years, Sydné Mahone, an associate professor of theater, said Jones’ experiences make her a valuable teacher.

“As a firsthand participant of the civil-rights movement … it gives her more insight than a student can get from reading a book,” Mahone said. “She is a living testament to the struggle for freedom and justice.”

Jones’ journey from teenage struggles to her achievements today speaks to her students, Mahone said.

“Now that she has reached this level of accomplishment, she’s continuing the work by reaching out to those who are following in her footsteps,” Mahone said.