SPOKE takes readers from the lunch-counter sit-ins of the early 1960s to the draft board and FBI office raids later that same decade; from Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington to the 1968 DC Mobilization Against the War; from the nightmarish conditions of mid-century state mental institutions to the soul-less sterility of the federal prison system; from the advent of women's lib to the dawn of the sexual revolution.

Coleman's new full-length play, TO SPEAK SO FORTHRIGHTLY AS TO OFFEND, is a dramatized version of the book, SPOKE.