BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS IN AMERICA 1858-1970 PDF Free Download
1 / 145/145
100%
BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS
IN
AMERICA 1858-1970
APPROVED;
'{dlM.
Majcri/ ProfessorX
Consulting
Pro
fessor
Tyr*
11
11'111 "Jig"1 "»'igi ifeunt
Minor Professor
?. S*.
Director
of
thjp Department
of
English
of the
Graduate School
Mahaney, Teri
D.,
Black Playwrights
in
America 1558-1970*
Master
of
Arts (English), August,
1971? 139 pp.
bibliography,
67
titles.
This study
is a
survey
of
plays
of
Negro authorship
in
America from
1858 to 1970. It is
intended
to
give
a
historical
view
of the
Negro effort
in the
drama
and
show general trends
during
the
twentieth century.
The
paper
is
arranged chrono-
logically
,
beginning with
the
first play
by a
Negro author
in
1858 and
continuing through
the
1960's. Synopses
of
plays
are
offered,
but
very little historical
or
sociological information
is
given
and
little literary criticism
is
added. Primary
sources
are
utilized
as
much
as
possible, though
two
secondary
«
sources
are
used consistently: Loften Mitchell1s Black Drama
and
Doris Abramson's Negro Playwright
in the
American Theatre
issj-Lm-
The
pioneer dramatists, William Wells Brown, Joseph Cotter,
and
Angelina GrirnkS, writing between
1858 and 1916, are
treated
together,
and
their works establish
the
precedent
of
protest
drama that
is to be
followed
for a
century.
The
Negro Renais-
sance
is
discussed,
and
most
of the
plays
of the
twenties
are
briefly examined.
The
dual development
in the
thirties
of the
professional theatre (mainly through
the
influence
of the
Federal Theatre Project)
and the
educational theatre
in the
schools
is
explored,
and
playG from both areas
are
discussed.
The
plays
of the
forties
are
sho.,yn
to be the
turning point
in
Negro drama,
for in
that decade Negro dramatists ceased
to
write with concern
.for the
sensitivities
of the
white
audiences,
and the
race-war plays
of
both
the
19^0's
and
*1960's result from their change
of
attitude.
The new
trend
of the
sixties
in
which blacks appear
as
well-armed adversaries
of
whites receives considerable attention. This study also
examines
the
more notable exceptions
to
this dominant trend
of the
last decade.
This overall view
of
Negro drama, covering both major
and
minor works, reveals recurrent themes.
The
oppression,
exploitation,
and
humiliation
of
Negroes
is a
recurrent
sub-
ject,
and
violence-ilatent
or
overV-is almost always expressed.
The
Negro caste system
is
almost always evident
as
well, Reli-
gion appears
as a
dominant factor
in
Negro life,
and the
Christian-inspired "Negro endurance"
is
demonstrated with
great regularity prior
to the
sixties.
Among
the
Negro writers whose marks
are
emphasized
in the:
study
of the
development
of
black drama since
the,
Negro
Renaissance
of the
19201s
are
Langston Hughes, Theodore Ward,
Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry,
and
LeRoi Jones, Mulatto
(1935)
by
Langston Hughes
was the
first play
by a
Negro
to
have
a
long
run on
Broadway,
and it ran
over
two
years,
a
record
not
broken until
A
Raisin
in the Sun
(1959)*
In 19^1,
Native
£on?
by
Richard Wright,
was
produced,
and it
clearly contained
an
indictment
of the
white American society. Theodore Ward
wrote
Our Lan'
(19^7) which
has
been called
the
finest play-
written
by a
Negro.
The
most famous Negro play,
A
Raisin
in
the Sun
(1959),
by
Lorraine I-Iansberry stressed
the
need
for
compassion
and
mutual understanding. LeRoi JonOs emerged
as
the
dominant Negro playwright
of the
sixties,
and his
play,
Dutchman (196*f)
won the
Obie Award
for the 1
96j>~6*+ season.
It is
hoped that
the
historical nature
of
this v/ork will
help establish
a
proper' perspective
for the
future study
of
Negro drama
and
will lead others
to
work
on
more specific
topics
in
later studies.
BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS
IN
AMERICA 1858-1970.
THESIS
Presented
to the
Graduate Council
of the
North Texas State University
in
Partial
Fulfillment
of the
Requirements
For the
Degree
of
MASTER
OF
ARTS
. By
Teri ^lahaney,
B. A.
Denton, Texas
August,
1971
TABLE
OF
CONTENTS
Chapter
=
Page
I.
INTRODUCTION
1
II. THE
PIONEERS
. . . . 5
III. THE
NEGRO RENAISSANCE ............
16
IV. THE
THIRTIES
30
V. THE
FORTIES
58
VI. THE
FIFTIES
77
VII. THE
SIXTIES
95
VIII. CONCLUSION
130
BIBLIOGRAPHY
135
CHAPTER
I
INTRODUCTION
"The
Negro experience
fin
America]
has
been inherently
dramatic,"
yet
"very
few
plays written
by
Negroes have
received major
or
even serious production,
and
fewer still
have enjoyed
a
good
run on
Broadway-—a neglect which.appears
all the
more strange when
we
consider
how
closely Negroes
have been allied with
the
major fields
of
entertainment
in
2
this country." Because
of the
limited number
of
successful
plays
by
Negro authors, studies
of
"Negro drama" usually
include minstrelsy, musicals, plays written
by
whites about
Negroes,
and
plays
in
which Negroes appear. Only
one
scholar,
Doris Abramson, deals with Negro playwrights exclusively,
and
her
major work, Negro Playwrights
in the
American Theatre
1925--1959. covers only twenty plays
by
seventeen authors.^
This study
is
intended
to
fill
a
void
in the
scholarly
works about
the
Negro experience
in
America.
It
will, deal
with plays
of
Negro authorship only
and
will give
a
quanti-
tative view rather than
a
qualitative
one.
Plays will
be
^Alain Locke, Plays
of
Negro Life
(New
York, 1925),
introduction.
2
William Couch,
New
Black Playwrights (Baton Rouge,
1968),
p. x. " ' - —
^Doris Abramson. Negro Playwrights
in the
American Theatre
1925-1959
(New
York, r9^,"~p.
^ ~~ ~ —— —
discussed regardless
of
their financial
or
literary success.
The
term "Negro drama"
in
this work will apply only
to
plays
of
Negro authorship, excluding musicals.
The
study opens with
the
first known play
by a
Negro author,
The
Escape (18^8),
and
moves chronologically
to the
final chapter
on the
Negro drama
of the
1960!s. Obviously,
a
survey paper
of
this kind does
not
include
an
in-depth study
of any
particular play,
but
rather
gives
an
overall view
of the
Negro effort
in
drama.
It is
hoped
that
the
very generality
of the
work will help establish
a
proper perspective
for
Negro drama
and
will lead others
to
work
on
more specific topics
in
future studies.
"The
life
of
practically every American Negro
who has
attained distinction
in any
field
of
activity
has
been
an
evolution filled with drama,and
for
this reason, Negro plays
are
often historical
or
autobiographical.
The
emergence
of
Negro playwrights
has
been dramatic
in
itself,
for
they have
faced almost overwhelming obstacles.
For
instance,
the
first
Negro playwright, William Wells Brown,
was
born
a
slave when
"every Southern state except Maryland
and
Kentucky
had
strin-
gent laws forbidding anyone
to
teach slaves reading
and
writing,
and in
some states
the
penalties applied
to the
educating
of
5
free Negroes
and
mulattoes
as
well."-'
He
escaped, became
an
avid reader,
and
produced
a
large quantity
of
literature
in
his
lifetime.'
^Vernon Loggins,'
The
Negro Author
(New
York,
1931) > P» *f1.
^Stanley Elkins, Slavery (Chicago, 1959),
p. 60.
2
After emancipation,
Jim
Crow lav/s effectively barred
Negroes from
the
theatre
in
most states.
In the
thirties,
Marc Connelly's Green' Pastures,
a
play about Negroes
by a
white author which
had run on
Broadway
for
three years,
went
on
tour.
"In the
capitol city
of
Washington, when
the
play came
to the
National Theatre, members
of the
race
of the
actors themselves were
not
permitted
to
attend, except
at one
6
segregated showing." Negroes were barred
by
tradition from
New
York theatres also,
and
therefore
had no
opportunity
to
view plays
or
learn
any of the
techniques
of
writing
or
stag-
ing
them.
The
Harlem Theatre Movement grew
up to
answer
the
need
for a
Negro folk drama,
and its
existence, including
the
period
of its
absorption into
the
short-lived Federal Theatre
Project during
the
Depression, made possible
the
development
of
Negro playwrights
of
quality.
However, having
a
theatre
out of
which
to
operate
in
Harlem
did not end all the
problems
of the
Negro playwrights.
One of the
continual problems
was the
dilemma
of the
audience.
Negro audiences, white audiences,
and
mixed audiences often
reacted
in
totally different ways
to the
same material.
For
instance,
the
"Negro play" Emperor Jones,
by
Eugene O'Neill,
which
was
popular with white audiences,
was
shouted
off the
stage
in
Harlem. Plays popular with Negro audiences were often
unpalatable
to
white audiences,
and the
directors
of the
6
Benjamin Brawley,
The
Negro Genius
( New
York, 1966),
p. 292.
Federal Theatre Project were
not
willing
to
produce
any
plays
that might
be
considered "radical"
by
whites. White audiences
•
preferred
the
"stereotyped" Negroes
in
musicals
and
dance
scenes
as
well
as
"shuffle along" comedy scenes. According
to
Loften Mitchell, until recently, white audiences would
not
7
accept Negroes
in
love scenes
on the
stage•
Negro drama
is
'.discussed
in
this study with little
his-
torical
or
sociological data,
for
inclusion
of
such data would
greatly increase
the
length
of the
work.
A
minimum
of
literary
criticism
is
given,
for
considering
the
various limitations
of
Negro drama
in the
past,
it
seems reasonable
to use
only
one
standard
of
evaluation
for all
early plays—how well they illu-
minate
the
Negro
way of
life.
"We
believe
in
progressive
per-
fection: they
[the
Negro dramatists}
did as
much
as
they
O
could given
the
time
and
circumstance."
^Loften Mitchell, Black Drama
(New
York, 1967),
p.
O
Armstead Robinson
and
others, editors, Black Studies
in the
University:
A
Symposium
(New
Haven,
19W), p.
CHAPTER
II
THE
PIONEERS
It
seems only natural that
the
first drama
by an
American Negro,
The
Escape, should
be
written
for the
aboli-
tionist cause,
the
cause which called Negroes forth
to
tell
their stories—to
be "as
harsh
as
truth,
and as
uncompromis-
ing as
justice.Ex-slaves were hired
as
anti-slavery agents
for the
abolitionist lecture circuit
and
were urged
to
record
their experiences
in
v/hat became
a new
American literary form,
the
fugitive slave narrative. Hence, many
men
earned recog-
nition
for
speaking
and
writing abilities that would have gone
undeveloped
and
unnoticed
in
other times. William Wells Brown,
author
of The
Escape,
was one of
these
men, for the
Garrisonians
developed
him
into
a
professional abolitionist—a lecturer,
p
journalist,
and
author."
Of all the
abolitionist writers,
"only Brown's writing evolved into what might
be
called
a
literary career,for
he was the
first American Negro
to
earn
, his
living
by
writing.**"
i
Lerone Bennett,
Jr.,
Before
the
Mayflower (Baltimore.
1969),
p. 132. . .
2W. W.
Brown, Clotelle (Philadelphia, 1955),
p» v.•
3j. P.
Davis, editor, American Negro Reference Book
(New
Jersey, 1966),
p. 867. ""
^Ibid.,
p. 210.
William Wells Brown
was
born
in
slavery
in 1815 or 1816;
after failing
in
numerous attempts
to
escape,
he
finally
sue- •
ceeded
in
1834-, making
his way
eventually
to
Cleveland, where
he
began
his
self-education.
He
read very widely,
for he
felt
the
need
to
catch
up
with
the
rest
of the wo
rid,and
he
viewed
6
education
as the
great equalizer
of men,
regardless
of
race.
He
began
to
write first
for the
abolitionist cause, subse-
quently becoming
the
first American Negro
to
write
a
novel
(Clotelle)
and a
travel book (Sketches
of
Places
and
People
Abroad)
as
well
as a
drama;
he
also wrote three histories
of
his
people
and
compiled their poems
and
songs
in a
book
(The
Anti-Slavery Harp).
In his day, he was the
most productive
Negro writer
in the
United States
and the
most successful.^
His
non-dramatic works were popular;
his
fugitive slave work,
Narrative
of
William
W.
Brown, went through four editions
in
two
years,
and one of his
histories, Black
Man and His
Antecedents,
was in its
third edition within
a
year
of
publi-
cation.
.
Brown's plays were popular also, though they were
evi-
dently
not
performed. They were written
for
lyceum readings
to
anti-slavery audiences. Quite naturally,
all
were propa-
ganda plays
and
more concerned with emotional impact than form.
Brown
is
credited with four plays: Doughface, Life
at the
W.
Brown, Sketches
of
Places
and
People Abroad
(New
York, 1969),
p.
1157~.
'
^Ibid.,
pa 210.
7
Benjamin Brawley,
The
Negro Genius
(New
York, 1966),
p. ^9,
7
South, Experience;
or, How to
Give
a
Northern
Man a
Backbone
,
and The
Escape;
or,
A
Leap
for
Freedom, Only
the
last
was
published,
and no
portion
of the
other three remains. However,
some
of the
reviews
of
Brown's readings give details
of two
of his
other works.
A
review
in the
Liberator summarized the,plot
of a
play
Brown
had
read publicly
in 1856. In the
play,
a
Northern
pas-
tor is by
chance sold into slavery;
his
experiences
in sla-
very, mainly
the
"breaking
in"
process, completely change
his
pro-Southern attitudes. This play
was
probably Experience;
or, How to
Give
a
Northern
Man a
Backbone. Another review
in
the
Liberator stated that Life
at the
South
"is a
play embrac-
8
ing the
elements
of
truth, style, courage, theme
and
heroism."
The
play
had
been read publicly
in 1862.
According
to the
Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle,
it was set in the
South
and
vividly
depicted slavery.
"It
seemed
to
have been highly relished
by
9
the
audience," which
was
"interested
and
amused"
by the
work.
The
Escape
is
generally cited
as the
first drama
by an
1 o
American Negro.
It was
published
in 18^8. It is a
five-act
auto
bio
graphic
al
melodrama with
a
virtuous hero
and
heroine
and an
evil villain.
The
language ranges from
the
"darky
dia-
lect"
of
Cato
to the
poetic language
of
love
of
Glen
and
Melinda.
O
Frederick Bond,
The
Negro
and the
Drama (College Park,
1969),
p. 26.
^Ibid.
^Victor Sejour,
a
Negro expatriate, presented
a
play,
Diegarias,
in 18kk at the
Th§3.tre Frangais.
In all,
some
twenty-one
of his
plays were produced.
• . 8
The
plot
is not
original;
a
white master wants
a
lovely
slave girl
for
himself, although
she
loves another. Melinda!
is the
"tragic mulattQ" stereotype
so
popular
at the
time,
and she
will
not
"swerve from
the
path
of
virtue."
Her
husband, Glen, swears
to
protect
his
wife
or die. The
pair
attempt escape,
and the
last scene finds them
at the
edge
of
the
Niagara River, awaiting
the
ferry
to
Canada, while
a U. S.
Marshall
and the
master approach
to
capture them. Melinda
utters
the
standard sentiment:
"Oh,
Glen, let's die'here,
11
rather than again
go
into slavery."
Of
course, they escape
to
freedom
at the
last moment.
The
main weakness
of
Brown's work
is
structural,
for no
easy transition
is
made from scene
to
scene,
and the
variety
of
characters introduced gives
a
somewhat disjointed effect.
Because action
is
stressed, character development
is
slighted,
with
a
resulting shallowness
of
development
in all of the
characters.
In
this work, Brown seems intent
on
combining both
tragedy
and
comedy,
and
this gives
a
lack.of unity.
The
scenes
taken separately
are
more effective stylistically than
the
work
as a
whole.
The
play contains some lighthearted scenes
of
satire
directed
at the
hypocrisy
of
slavery, medicine,
and
religion.
A few of the
scenes
are in the
comedy
of
manners tradition
and
bring
to
mind
the
plays
of
Congreve
and
Cibber, especially
when Brown uses ironic asides.
An
excellent example
of
this
W.
Brown.
Ths
Esnane
(Nnw
York.
1
QfiQ)
. r>. S1 .
is Mrs.
Gaines5 dialogue
in the
scone
in
which brother
Pinchen
has
told
of his
dream
of
being
in
heaven
and
seeing
•familiar faces there.,
Hannah jjslave)
;
Massa Pinchen,
did you see my ole
man Ben up dar in
hebben?
Mr.
Pinchen:
No,
Hannah;
I
didn't
go
amongst
the
niggers.
_
Mrs.
Gaines:
No, of
course brother Pinchen didn't
go
among
the
blacks. What
are you
asking questions
for? Never mind,
my
lady,
I'll
whip
you
well when
I'm
done here.
I'll
skin
you
from head
to
foot.
(jside]
Do go on
with your heavenly conversation,
brother Pinchen;
it
does
my
very soul good. This
is
indeed
a
precious moment
for me* I do
love
to
hear
of
Christ
and Him
crucified.
There
is no
doubt that Brown's knowledge
of
dramatic
technique
was
considerable,
for he
attended
the
theatre
in
England
and
France
and
read widely
in
English drama.
He was
familiar with Shakespeare, quoting from Hamlet
on the
title
page
of The
Escape.
He was
also familiar with Restoration
drama,
for he
began some chapters
of his
travel book, Sketches
of
Places
and
People Abroad, with lines.from Congreve.
In the
same book,
he
told
an
anecdote about Nell Gwynne
and
said
he
went
to the
birthplaces
of
both David Garrick
and Mrs,
Siddons.
Unfortunately, Brown
did not
write plays
in his
later
years v/hen
his
style
was
better developed,
so
only
his
early
works remain
for
consideration
in a
study
of
drama.
The
Escape,
though unpolished
and
disjointed,
was
effective
and
popular.
Viewed within
the
limits
of its
time,
it
seems quite similar
to
most
of the
melodramas
of the day. The
dialogue
is the
12Ibid.t
p. 15.
10
most outstanding feature
of the
work—the contrasts between
the
"noble" language
of the
hero
and
heroine,
the
comic
dialect
of the
Negro, Cato,
and the
ironic asides
of Mrs.
Gaines.
Like Brown's plays,
the
next play
by an
American Negro,
Caleb,
the
Degenerate,
was a
propaganda play written
by a
self-educated
man who
intended
it to be
read,
not
acted.
The
author, Joseph
S.
Cotter,
Sr., was
born
in 1861 and
spent
practically
all of his
life
in
Louisville, Kentucky.'
He
began
night school
on the
primary level
at the age of
twenty-two
and
ultimately became
the
principal
of the
Colored Ward School,
the job he was
holding when Caleb
was
written.
It is
often
stated that this play
was
written
to
answer Thomas Dixon's
work,
The
Clansman .(1906), which glorified
the Ku
Klux Klan
and
characterized Negroes
as
brutish
and
undeserving
of
emancipa-
13
tion.
^
However,
the
fact that Caleb
was
printed
in 1903,
three years before
The
Clansman
was
printed, makes this theory
impossible. However, Caleb, like
The
Escape,
was
surely written
in
support
of a
cause.
The
work
was
evidently begun
in
support
of
Booker
T.
Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" speech
of
1895«
^
Among
others,
W. E. B0
DuBois took issue with Washington1s-views;
and
there
was
quite
a
controversy
in the
Negro community immedi-
ately prior
to the
writing
of
Caleb,
In his
speech, Washington
^Loften Mitchell, Black Drama
(New
York, 1967),
p. 39 •
1 £i
TDoris Abramson, Negro Playwrights
in the
American Theatre
1925-1959
(New
York, 1955?Tp7T.
""" — —— ——
urged Negroes
to
acquire industrial .skills,
for he
thought
their holding these skills
was
more important than their hold-
•
ing a
seat
in
Congress, DuBois felt industrial education
was
an
admission
of
inferiority which encouraged segregation.
Washington also discouraged Negroes
who
entertained ideas
of
bettering their positions
in a
foreign land; DuBois himself
renounced American citizenship
and
died
a
resident
of
Ghana.
The
issues Cotter deals with
in his
play
are the
ones
argued
by
DuBois
and
Washington. Cotter states
in his
preface
to
Caleb that
"the
Negro needs very little politics, much
industrial training,
and a
dogged settledness
as far as
going
i 5
to
Africa
is
concerned."
^ The
fact that
the
play makes such
statements seems
to
uphold
the
view that
it was
written
to
support Washington
in the
debate which
was
still very active
in 1903.
Cotter also stated
in his
preface that
his aim was to
give
a
dramatic picture
of the
Negro which included
the
conditions
resulting from unwise
and
depraved leadership.
Of his
charac-
ters,
he
stated:
RAHAB represents this unwise, depraved leadership.
CALEB
is his
pupil,
and
represents that depraved class
of
Negro referred
to.
The
BISHOP
and
OLIVIA represent
the
highest types
of
cultivated Negro manhood
and
womanhood.
The
DUDE
represents
the
so-called educated young Negro politican,
of
whom something
may be
made
if the
right steps
are
taken
in
time.
1 5
Joseph Cotter. Caleb (Louisville, 1903), preface.
16-
Ibid.
12
The
characters
are the
dominant element
of the
four-act
play,
for the
work
has
little plot. Caleb,
the
degenerate
title character
(he has
killed
his
father
and
idly watches
his
virtuous mother
die)} has
asked
for
Olivia's hand,
and
she
seems intent upon marrying
him.
When
the
Bishop tries
to
change
her
mind, Cotter creates long
and
unlikely discourses
between
the two on
life
and
character. After Patsy, Caleb*s
virtuous mother,
has
died, Olivia admits
she
never intended
marriagej
she had
simply promised Patsy never
to
speak
ill of
Caleb while Patsy lived.
The
mother
had
first visualized
the
industrial school
which Olivia
has
established,
and the
school
is
"real work"
and
"real life"
for the
Negro. "Industrial training makes—for
health, wealth, morals, literature, civilization," according
to
Olivia
and the
Bishop.17 Olivia goes
off to
speak with
millionaires
and
returns with donations
of
$100,000
for her
school,
and the
Bishop says this should mean
ten
million bank
accounts
for
their people. Though written
in
support
of
Washington's views, these
are
claims Washington might have seen
as
more damaging than supporting,
for
they
are
illogical
and
extreme.
The
most interesting
and
unexpected feature
of
Caleb
is
that
it is
written
in
blank verse
(a
short prose version
was
published
in a
Louisville journal prior
to the 1903
printing
in
blank verse form). Cotter said
he
used blank verse
"to
show
17Ibid.,
p. 35.
13
1R
the
possibility
of
individual human expression." Unfor-
tunately,
his
attempt
to
create emotion, suspense,
and a
feeling
of
nobility
of,
thought through this blank verse
is
unsuccessful.
The
following passage illustrates
the
quality
of the
language
in
Caleb:
Work
is the
basis
of
life's heritage•
'
It is the
mountain, bottoming
at sea,
And
rising
far
above
the
angry waves
Whereupon
a
people's hopes
may
fruit
in
life*
It is the
slayer
of
full many boasts,
~
The
v/iper-out
of
dream-encompassed ends.
"
The
interest accorded Brown's Escape
and
Cotter's Caleb
is
mainly historical,
of
course,
for
neither play
was
performed.
Of the two, The
Escape
is the
better work,
for
Caleb
is un~ .
wieldy
and
ineffective
as
propaganda
or
literature.
In con-
trast,
The
Escape
is
effective
as
propaganda;
it is
entertain-
ing as
melodrama;
it is
realistic
as
autobiography.
It is, in
short, more readable
and
enjoyable.
The
next important development
in
Negro drama
was the
actual presentation
of a
play
by a
Negro author
on the
stage.
The
Drama Committee
of the
NAACP produced Rachel,
a
three-act
play
by
Angelina Grimke,
at the
Myrtilla Minor Normal School
PO
in
Washington,
D. C., on
March
3 and 4 of 1916. In
keeping
with
the
emerging tradition
of
Negro drama, this play
was
unselfconsciously "race propaganda";
it was
written
to
show
18
Ibid., preface.
19Ibid.,
p. k7#
^William Couch,
New
Black Playwrights (Baton Rouge,
1968),
p. XV.
\h
the
tragedy
of
being black
in Mer t
deals with lynching,
education,
and
employment practices
and
prejudices* Some
of
the
members
of the
producing committee objected
to
this
"pro
pagandi
s t i c
platform"
and
subsequently were instrumental
in
founding
the
Howard Players
to
promote
an
"artistic approach
pi
and the
folk-drama idea,"
Rachel
was
evidently Miss Grimk&'s only attempt
at
drama,
and it is
well written, organized,
and
plausible,
if
somewhat
sentimental. Rachel Loving
and
John Strong
are the
main char-
acters.
In Act I, the
Loving family
is
introduced;
Mrs.
Loving
takes
in
sewing
to
support
her two
children, Rachel
and Tom,
who are
young playful teens. They learn that
ten
years before
their father
and
half brother
had
been lynched,
and
this
is the
beginning
of
their understanding
of
what
it
means
to
be.black
in
America.
Act I
ends with Rachel's realization that mother-
hood would only mean pain
and
fear
and an
inability
to
protect
her
children from prejudice;
it
would
be
more merciful
to
strangle them
at
birth than
let
them
be
killed
bit by bit. "And
so
this nation—this white Christian nation—has deliberately
set its
curse upon
the
most beautiful—the most holy thing
in
22.
life—motherhood
1
Why—it—makes—you doubt—Godi"
Act II and Act III
take place after
the
children have
finished school; they
are
young adults. Rachel
has
changed
com-
pletely.
Her
realization about motherhood
has
made
her, at age
21
Alain Locke, editor, Plays
of
Negro Life
(New
York,
1925),
p,
/flif.
"
^Angelina Grimke, Rachel (College Park, 1969)t
P* 28.
twenty-two,
a
nervous
and
morbid woman
who
refuses
bo
marry
and
bear children„
By the end of Act III, she
feels
she is
only
a
funny puppet
tQ a
laughing
God, and she has
promised
the
weeping children
who
appear
in her
dreams
not to
"bring
them here."
She
refuses
to
marry John Strong, thus ending
the
play
on a
note
of
final
and
unyielding pessimism.
Though overly sentimental
and
didactic,
the
play shows
great improvement technically over
the
former works
by
Negro
authors. Expository material
is
skillfully introduced;
entrances
and
exits
are
handled professionally, Only
two
cumbersome speeches
are
made
on the
plight
of the
Negro,
and
incidents
of
prejudice
are
shown rather than merely being spoken
of in
long discussions.
The
characters
are
dynamic,
and
Rachel's personality
is
systematically developed incident
by
incident
and is
therefore credible
to the
viewer.
It is a
sentimental work, preoccupied with motherhood.
"The
propa-
23
ganda depresses rather than stirs."
Rachel launched
the
American Negro playwright
on the
stage
and was the
transition between
the
pioneers
and the
Negro
Renaissance.
It
continued
the
tradition
of
"race propaganda"
established
in the
early plays
but was
written with attention
to
stage techniques»
It was the
forerunner
of the
plays
of the
twenties.
^Sterling Brown, Negro Poetry
and
Drama (Washington,
D„ C.,
1937),
P. 129.
CHAPTER
III
THE
.NEGRO RENAISSANCE
Socially, financially, spiritually,
and
especially
dramatically,
the
decade
of the
twenties constitutes
the era
of the "New
Negro"
or the
"Negro Renaissance." This renais-
sance sprang
up in
Harlem, where
the
Negro population
had con-
gregated from both Northern
and
Southern states.
Six
blocks
of
Manhattan swelled
in its
Negro population from
300 to
almost 5>000 families between
1903 and 1911
From
191 if to
1917j a
mass migration took place with over 400,000 Negroes
moving
to the
North
to
fill
the
labor needs
of the
factories
and to
escape tenant farming
and
Southern oppression. During
this period, Marcus Garvey began
a
program
of
Black Zionism
in
Harlem which spread around
the
world
and
instituted race-pride
in
American Negroes.
The
radical press
and the
theatre move-
ment grew
up in
Harlem,
the
all-black area
of New
York. Harlem
became
a
symbol
of
liberty
for the
American Negro.
The
aggregation
of the
blacks
in
Harlem prior
to the
twenties
and the
subsequent development
of a new
"race spirit"
led to a
cultural flowering which
was
especially evident
in the
Negro drama.
The
previous crude
and
isolated attempts
at
drama
by the
pioneer Negro playwrights were replaced with
a
systematic
1
Roi
Ottley
and
William Weatherby, editors,
The
Negro
in
New
York
(New
York, 196?),
p. 183. ' : "
16
17
and
organized theatre effort. Notable Negroes advocated
an
p
all-Negro drama:
W. E. B.
DuBois organized
the
Krigwa Players;
Lester Walton, drama critic
of The lew
York
Age,
managed
the
Lafayette Theatre
and
launched
the
Lafayette Players. Little
Theatre groups sprang
up
after World
War
I—the Provincetown
Players,
the
Hampton Players,
the
Gilpin Players,
the
Howard
University Players,
and the
Chicago
Art
Theatre (also called
the
Colored Folk Theatre
or
Ethiopian
Art
Theatre)•
The
Harlem Experimental Theatre
was
founded
in 1928, .and the
Negro
Art
Theatre, spearheaded
by
Adam Clayton Powell,
was
organized
in
1929• Alain Locke expressed
the
goals
of the
theatre move-
raent when
he
wrote;
Our
ideal
is a
national Negro Theater where
the
Negro
playwright, musician, actor, dancer,
and
artist
in
concert shall fashion
a
drama that will merit
the
respect
and
admiration
of
America. Such
an
institution
must come from
the
Negro himself,
as he
alone
can
truly
express
the
soul
of his
people.-5
The
groundwork
for the new,
dramatic, realistic portrayal
of the
Negro
on
stage
had
been ably laid
by
white playwrights.
Three one-act plays
by
RLdgeley Torrence
had
been produced
in
1917 by Mrs.
Emily Hapgood,
who
wanted
"to
give
a
numerous
and
somewhat neglected race
its
first real chance
in
dramatic
art.
Torrence's self-stated motive
for
using
the
Negro
as
subject
matter
was to
exploit,
"the
extraordinary dramatic richness
of
^Loften Mitchell, Black Drama
(New
York, 1967),
p. 88.
^Alain Locke,
The New
Negro
(New
York, 1969)»
p. 88.
^Edith Isaacs,
The
Negro
in the
American Theatre
(New
York, 19k7),
p. 57. ~
18
his
daily life,
for in rx
:lei*n life,
the
Negro comes face
to
5
face with many tragedian unkncvm
Is the
Anglo-Saxon.%xy Eugene
O'Neill also utilized'Negro experience successfully
in
this
period,
for he
wrote seven "Negro" plays between
1918 and
192^. His
success with Emperor Jones
led
other white play-
wrights
to
utilize Negro material,
and the
efforts
of the
'white
playwrights "enabled
the
Negro
to
come before
the
public
in
serious drama.
The
Negro play became
a
characteristic feature
of
America's
developing drama instead
of a
novelty
or
exception;
the
Negro
*'7
was in
vogue,'
and an
astounding number
of
Negroes rose
to the
opportunities. Frank Wilson, Willis Richardson, Wallace
Thurman, Garland Anderson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Jean Toomer,
John Matheus,
and
Eulalie Spence wrote plays during this golden
period. Four
of
these plays reached Broadway—The Chip Woman's
Fortune,
by
Willis Richardson,
in 1923;
Appearances,
by
Garland
Anderson,
in 1925;
Meek Hose,
by
Frank Wilson,
in 1928; and
Harlem,
by
Wallace Thurman,
in
1929®
The
plays were well
received generally
by the
Broadway audiences. Appearances
was
8
revived during
the
1929-30 season; Meek Mose
was
revived
in
^Ibid.
^Frederick Bond,
The
Negro
and the
Drama (College Park,
1969),
p. 107.
r?
'Alain Locke, editor, ELays
of
Negro Life
(New
York,
1925),
p. ^23.
O
Doris Abramson, Negro Play
Y/riffhts
in the
American Theatre
(New
York, I9F9T,"
p. 27.
19
193^ as
Brother Mose
and was
produced both
by a
Federal Unit
Theatre
and by a
Broadway company
Willis Richardson,
the
first Negro author whose works
reached Broadway,
was the
most prolific writer
of the
period;
he
wrote
six
plays which were produced.
The
Deacon's Awaken-
ing was
written
in 1920 and
performed
in St.
Paul
in 1921.
The
Chip Woman's Fortune
was
written
in 1922,
performed
by
the
Ethiopian
Art
Players
in
Chicago January
29, 1923, and
10
moved
to New
York
in
April
of
1923# Mortgaged, written
in
1923j
was
performed
in
Washington,
D. C., by the
Howard
Players
in
1924*
The
next three plays were performed
by the
Krigwa Players.
The
Broken Ban.jo, written
in
192-ff,
was per-
formed
in New
York
on
August
1, 1925;
Compromise, written
in
19251 was
performed
in New
York
in 1926; The
Flight
of the
Natives<• v/ritten
in 1926, was
performed
in
Washington,
D. C.,
on May 7, 1927.
Richardson's plays enjoyed critical success,
for The
Broken Banjo
was
awarded
the
first prize
in the
Crisis Contest
of 1925 and his
manuscript
of
Boot Black Lover received
the
same award
for 1926. His
manuscript plays include
The
Idle
Head,
a
harsh play about poverty
and
joblessness,
as
well
as
The
Victims
and The
Shell-Road Witch.
^Ibid.,
p. *f8.
^°L6cke, Plays
of
Negro Life,
p.
20
His
Broadway play,
The
Chip Woman's Fortune,
v/as
moved
to
11
the
Frazee Theatre
on May 7» 19^3* but kad
only
a
short
run.
T^e
chip woman, Aunt Nancy, goes about
the
streets picking
up
chips
of
wood
and
lumps
of
coal
and
searching trash cans
for
her
existence.
She is
boarding with Silas
and
caring
for his
wife, Liza,
who is ill.
W&en Silas learns that
his
Victro-
la—his family's greatest treasure—is
to be
repossessed,
he
asks Aunt Nancy
to pay
room
and
board.
She has
been saving
money
for her
son's return from prison
so he
might have
a "new
start,"
and she
refuses
to
give
it
away.
Her son, Jim,
arrives
and
unselfishly gives Silas
all of the
hard-saved money
for
being good
to his
mother
in his
absence.
The
play
has a
tragic
tone throughout,
and the
conflict
of the
characters
is
clearly
depicted. Thou'gh
it
ends happily,
it
leaves
a
residue
of the
feeling
of
poverty
and
financial helplessness.
Richardson believed history
was
best learned when drama-
tized,
and
thus
he
gave many
of his
plays
a
historical basis.
For
instance,
The
Flight
of the
Natives
is set in
South Carolina
in
i860
and
deals with
the
escape
of a
group
of
slaves. Slim
has
attempted escape
and
failed because
a
fellow slave, Jude,
has
betrayed
him to
Master John. Hose subsequently threatens
Jude, V/hen Master John learns this,
he
says
he
will whip Hose,
and
this pushes Mose
and his
friends
to
attempt escape. They
"take care
of"
Jude
and
leave•
The
outcome
of the
attempt
to
11
Mitchell,
p. 8if.
21
escape
is not
given.
The
play
is
realistic,
and it con-
cisely illustrates conditions
in
slavery, both physical
and
spiritual. Richardson concentrated
on
historical themes
and
"did a
commendable
job in
portraying
the
role that
the
Negro
12
has
played
in the
development
of
civilization."
One of
Richardson's successful plays which
did not
deal
with historical material
is The
Broken Banjo.
In it, Sam
loves
his
banjo
and
accidentally kills
the man who has
broken
it. His
brother-in-law sees
the
crime,
and
after arguing
with Sain over another matter, turns
him in for the
crime,
even though
he has
sworn
on the
Bible
to
keep
the
secret.
The
language
is
skillfully
and
artfully written
in
this short
one-act piece, though
the
plot
is
weak,
the
characterization
is
thin,
and
some points
are
left unresolved.
A
folk play
by
Richardson, Compromise, shows
how
Jane
Lee, a
rural Negro,
has
been forced
to
'tcompermise" with
her
white neighbor,
Ben
Carter. Years before, Carter accidentally
killed
her
oldest
son, Joe, and
gave
Jja,
Jane's husband,
$100
to
forget
the
incident.
Jim
drank himself
to
death with
the
money.
Now it is
revealed that Jane's daughter, Annie,
is "in
trouble" because
of
Carter's
son,
Jack. When Jane confronts
Carter with this,
he
agrees
to pay for the
education
of
Annie
and her
borther, Alec. Alec fights with Jack, breaking
his
arm, and
Carter cancels
his
agreement with Jane because
of it.
—
Bond,
p. 112.
22
The
play ends with Jane implying that alio will face
Ben-
Carter
1
again,
and
that tills time there will
be no
compromise,
^
Another
of the
successful playwrights
of the
period,
Garland Anderson, wrote Appearancea< which reached Broadway
in 1925. It is
sometimes said
to be the
first Negro play
to
reach Broadway,*^
but
Richardson's
was in
fact first
The
play
was
largely autobiographical
and
dealt with
an
uneducated
bellhop, Carl,
who had
great determination
and
great faith
in
God. The
play shows Carl falsely accused
of the
attempted rape
of a
white woman•
He
believes
the
truth
is
enough
for his de-
fense
; he is
exonerated,
but,
ironically,
it is
because
the
woman
is
found
to be a
"black" character—norally
and
physically.
She is
revealed
as a
blackmailing Negress
who
passes
for
white.
The
Wail Street Journal review
of
Appearances observed
the
.following:
Appearances
was
careful
to
tread
on no
dangerous
ground
in
racial relations
but it
gave
a
suggestion
of the
terrifying thought which must
be
pretty
constantly present
in the
minds
of
colored people
who
know that
in
their case accusation
is
almost
,g
equivalent
to
conviction with
the
unthinking crowd.
The
third play
by a
Negro dramatist
to
reach Broadway
during this period
was
Meek Mose
by
Frank Wilson. Otto Kahn
1 ^
-'Another play named Compromise-
was
written during
the
twenties
by C. D.
Lipscomb, also"
the
author
of a
play entitled
Frances. They were evidently neither performed
ncr
published.
^Abramson,
p. 27*
^^Mitchell,
p. 8^.•
16
Abrarason,
p. 32.
23
financed
its
production
in 1928.
'«Mle
it was not a
commercial success,
it
v;&.a
evidently
an
artistic success,
for
Lester Walton,
the
producers received "numerous congratulatory
17
letters from notable.scholars" after
its
opening, Wilson
also wrote Race Pride, Colored Americans, Confidence
, and
Sugar
Cane. Sugar Cane received
the
.first prize
for
drama from
the
magazine Opportunity
in 1926. It is set in
contemporary
'
Georgia
and
shows
the
effect
of an
illegitimate birth
in a
rural Negro home•
The
daughter, Sugar Cane, insists that
her
child does
not
belong
to her
absent
bey
friend, Howard,
but her •
family condemns Mm—a "Northern nigger"--nonetheless.
The
father refuses
to
believe
it is a
white man's baby,
and his son
says
he
"puts
too
much faith
in
dese white folks."
The son has
elements
of
race-pride
but the
father wants
to "get
along."
«
When Howard returns
and
learns
the
truth,
he
kills
the
white
offender,
and a
fire conveniently covers
his
crime.
The
father
is the
dominant character
of the
play
and
seems realistic
beside
the
other "mouthpiece" characters.
The
message
is the .
author's primary concern,
and the
ending
is
arranged with little
regard
to
realism,
as the
timely fire which destroys evidence
of
Howard's guilt
and the
subsequent "happily ever after"
end-
ing
attest.
Of the
four plays
to
reach Broadway during this period,
the
last
one,
Harlem,
by
Wallace Thurman,
had a
Mdegree
of
1?Mitchell,
p. 71,
2/f
18
realism hitherto
not
attempted,
let
alone attained." Even
soj the
play also continued
the
elements
of
Negro drama:
minstrelsy, melodrama, eretic dances,
and
stereotypes.
A
two-page story entitled ''Cordelia
the
Crude,
a
Harlem
Sketch," which appeared
in the
first
and
only issue
of
Firet
a
magazine
for
young Negro artists,
was
probably
the
seed
for
the
play Black Belt, which
was
eventually renamed Harlem;
a
Melodrama
of
Negix) Life
in
Harlem»
The
play
was
written
in
collaboration with William Sapp
(a
white)
and
deals with
a
family that
has
come
to the
North
for a
better life only
to
find jobs scarce
and
immorality rampant
in
Harlem,
the sup-
posed "Nigger Heaven." Cordelia
is the
sixteen-year-old
daughter
who is
"going
bad" in the
evil environment
of
Harlem.
The
action centers around
a
rent party,
an
affair given
the
day
before
the
rent falls
due to
help meet expenses.
The
tenant furnishes food, drink,
and
entertainment
to the
public
for a 250
charge. Harlem
was
particularly famous
for the
wild
1 Q
dance sequence that takes place
at the
rent party.
J The
underground characters
of the
Harlem
of the
twenties
are
faith-
fully depicted,
and the
play
was
generally accorded praise
for
its
realism,
if not for its
construction
and
technical skill.
Another playwright
of the
twenties, Eulalie Spence, wrote
four plays. Fool's Errand,'
a
satirical one-act comedy,
was
produced
by the
Krigwa Negro Theatre Players
in 1927 in the
1R
Abramson,
p. 27,
19
Ibid.,
p. 37.
25
National Little Theatre ^ou::*nar!uen
S«. ir,o
play competed
.in the
finals
and was
awarded
the
Samuel French prize
as one of the
best unpublished manuscript plays
in the
contest. Foreign
Mail took
the
second prize
in the 1926
Crisis Literary Contest,
and The
Hunch
won
second prize
in the 1927
Opportunity Contest.
Another
of her
plays,
The
Starter,
won
third prize
in the
latter
contest.
She
also wrote Undertow
and
Brothers
and
Sisters
of
the
Church Council.
In her
plays, "Miss Spence
is
aware
of the
serious aspects
of
Harlem
and
writes
a
fluent
and
credible
dialogue
•
The
Starter
is
more
a
sketch than.a play.
It
depicts
the
scene
in
which
an
elevator starter, Thomas Jefferson Kelly,
and
a
sewing finisher, Georgia, become engaged.
She is
dismayed
to
learn that
her new
fiance
has
little money
in the
bank;
he
is
delighted
to
learn
she has two
hundred dollars saved.
She
wants
to
marry
and
stay home;
le had not
intended
for her to
quit work.
The
subject seems universal,
but the
humor
is
weak.
The
fact that
he is a
"starter
the
outcome
of the
arrangements, though they
are not
given.
Kelly "started"
the
engagement
' and she is a
"finisher" implies
on his
terms,
but
there
is
little
doubt that Georgia,
the
"finisher," will have
the
marriage
on
her
terms.
Two
teachers became playwrights during
the
twenties, Jean
Toomer
and
John Matheus. Toomer's teaching experiences
in
20
Sterling Brown, Negro Poetry
and
Drama (Washington,
D„ C.,
937)»
p. 128.
26
Sparta, Georgia, gave
hid a
background
of
folk material that
? 1
he was to use in his
writings."
He
wrote Balo,
a
Sketch
of
Negro Life
in 1922 for the
Howard Players
to use in
their
1923
season.
The
play
is a
sketch
of
rural life
in
Georgia
and
shows
the
part religion plays
in the
daily lives
of the
rural
Negroes,
for in it
Balo finds Jesus. Also emphasized
is the
friendly relationship
of the
neighboring black
and
white
families
"who
would,
but for the
tradition
of
prejudice
and
the
coercion
of a
rural public opinion,
be on
terms
of a
frank friendship...a friendship growing
out of a
similarity
22
of
occupations
and
consequent problems."
The
Negro
is
depicted
as a
hard-working, thrifty, generous, church going
man. As the
title suggests,
the
piece
is
more
a
sketch than
a
play,
for
there
is no
plot, little action,
and
very thin
characterization.
Toomer also wrote Kabnis (1923), which
is,
according
to
Arna
Bontemps,
a
noted critic
of
Negro literature,
a
novelette
con-
structed like
a
play.2^ Kabnis,
"the
name character...is
a lan-
quishing idealist finally redeemed from cynicism.and dissipation
A I
by the
discovery
of
underlying strength
in his
people."
The
technique
of the
work
was
considered "modernistic,and
21
Locke, Plays
of
Negro Life,
p.
kOk»
22Ibid.
p, 221
2-^Jean Toomer, Cane
(New
York, 1969),
P» xii.
2ifHerbert Ilill, Anger
and
Beyond
(New
York, 1966),
p. 27.
2?
it was not
produced., boomer continued
to
vrrite,
but he
could
not
find
a
puDxioher. Today, many
of his
unpublished
manuscripts
are
available
at
i?isk University.
John Matheus,
a
language teacher
at
Florida State College
for
Negroes
and
holder
of a
Master
of
Arts degree from Columbia,
was
considered
one of the
most promising young writers
of the
26
period.,
He
wrote
*
Cruiter,
a
play about
a
Northern recruiter
going South
to get
laborers
for the
factories
in the
North
during World
War I,
Sonny
and his
wife, Sissy, leave tenant
farming
for the
work promised
in the
North
as
well
as the
dream
of
better conditions.
At the
last minute, Granny decides
she
will
not
accompany them since
she
cannot take
her dog
with
her.
The
couple promise
to
send money
to
Granny
as
soon
as
they
can,
for she is
beiflg left alone with
no
means
of
support.
The
play
has
conflict without being melodramatic,
for the
couple realize
that
if
they leave, they
can
never return.
The
play
is a
drama-
tization
of
what took place
in all
sections
of the
South, with
uneducated Negroes leaving
in
great numbers
to
gamble
on a
better future
in the
North
in
place
of
their economic bondage
in
tenant farming
in the
South.
Another Negro playwright
of the
period
was a
poet-turned
playwright, Georgia Douglas Johnson.
Her
house
in
Washington,
D. C.,
served
as a
salon every Saturday night
for
young Negro
?5
-^William Couch,
Jr., New
Black Playwrights (Baton
Rouge, 1968),
p. xv.
26Ibid.,
p.
28
poets, some
of
whom wera also playwrights: Willis Richardson,
Angelina Grimk«3, Langstoxi Hughes, Miss Johnson wrote
two
dramatic works, Blue Blood
and
Plumes.
The
latter
won
first
prize
in the
Opportunity Contest
of 1927. Set in the con-
temporary South, Plumes deals with Charity Brown's dilemma.
Her
thirteen-year-old daughter
is
critically
ill, and
Charity
has
promised herself that
her
daughter will "have
a
shore nuff
funeral, everything grand—with plumes!to make
up for the
poor funerals others
of her
family have
had. The
doctor says
an
operation
is
necessary,
but it
will take
all the
money
Charity
has
saved
for the
funeral, fifty dollars. While
Charity
is in a
dilemma over what
to do, the
child dies.
She
feels
it is
right because
her
coffee grounds
had
said this
.is
what would happen,
and she is
happy
to
have
the
money
for a
funeral with plumes.
This play seems representative
of the
plays
of the
period,
for it is a
one-act folk tragedy
and
problem play
in
dialect
with
a
contemporary setting
in the
South (plays
not set in the
South often deal with families
in the
North that have recently
moved from
the
South). Plays
of the
twenties depict scenes
of
Negro life
not
previously dramatized,
and
this
new era of
realism emerged
to
replace
the
previous decades
of
minstrelsy
and
stereotyped Negro characters.
The
Negro
was
faithfully
portrayed
by
Negro playwrights
in
most instances;
he was
shown
27Ibid.,
p. 292,
29
in his
superstitions trad poverty
as
well
as
being shown
speaking
his
dialect
and
practicing
bis
Christianity,
The
.dope smuggling} prostituting Negro
is
shown,
as
well
as the
hard working, thrifty, generous Negro,
The
stereotyped
tra-
ditions were smashed
to
make
way for
true folk drama.
The
most outstanding development
of the
twenties
was the
emergence
of the
individual creative Negro artist; this
occurred almost exclusively
in Now
York—in Harlem,2^ Ironi-
cally,
the
theatre audiences
of New
York, particularly
Broadway, were
for the
most part segregated until
the
early
29
forties,
^
thus imposing restrictions
on the
Negro drama
in
its
effect
and
success. Nonetheless,
the
Negro drama began
to
develop
and to
grow upon this broad base that
the
Negro
Renaissance
had
established,
and the
following decade
saw the
development
of
several
new
dramatic opportunities
for
Negroes,
pQ
James Johnson, Black Manhattan
(New
York, 1968),
p, 260,
29
^Abramson,
p, 21,
CHAPTER
IV
' THE
THIRTIES
The
thirties
are
synonymous with depression
in
America,
and the
general conditions
of the
Negro race .during this
•
period worsened.
The
percentage
of
unemployed Negroes
was
much higher than that
of
whites; according
to
Langston
Hughes, Negroes lost
the
jobs they never
had
had."'
Sur-
prisingly,
the
Negro theatre movement
did not
suffer propor-
tionally,
but
rather continued
its
pattern
of
growth
and
development,
for the
decade brought "excitement
and
social
2
protest
to the
theatre,"
and
Negro playwrights began
to
•Z
"get a
hearing,There were many short-lived attempts
by
individuals
and
small groups
to
establish
a
permanent Negro
theatre.
The
Federal Theatre operated
for the
last half
of
the
decade,
and
great strides were made
in
establishing
an
educational theatre
in
schools.
The
thirties
saw a
.widespread movement
for the
organiza-
tion
o.f
school dramatic programs, especially
in the
South.
High school
and
college programs
in
Negro
or
predominantly
1
Doris Abramson. Negro Playwrights
in the
American
Theatre 1923-1959 (New^orE,~T^feT,
p^?7 —•
^Loften Mitchell, Black Drama
(New
York, 1967),
p. 98.
^David Littlejohn, Black
on
White
(New
York, 1966),
p. 62.
30
31
Negro schools were organized,
and
these programs took
the
form
of an
"educational theatreTliey included
the
West Virginia
State College Tournament
for
high schools,
The
High School
Dramatic Association
in
North Carolina,
the
Negro Inter-
collegiate Dramatic Association, which involved seven colleges,
and the
Intercollegiate Dramatic Association
of
North Carolina,
involving thirteen
of the
fourteen state colleges.
"Foremost, perhaps,
in
this
new
movement
is
Randolph
Edmonds,professor
of
English
and
director
of
dramatics
at
Morgan College,
He
founded
and was
first president
of the
Negro Intercollegiate Dramatic Association, which
was to
give
a
tournament each year
of
one-act plays.
Its aim was to
encour-
age the
study
of
drama
and
furnish
a
laboratory
for
plays
of
Negro folk material, Edmonds contibuted greatly
to the
school
productions,
for in 1930 he
published Shades
and
Shadows,
"six
stories
in
fanciful vein cast
in
dramatic form,and followed
this with
Six
Plays
for a
Negro Theatre
in
193*f
and The
Land
of
Cotton
and
Other Plays
in 1
Edmonds' plays were written
for
Southern audiences,
or as
he
called them, beginning audiences. Therefore,
he
believed
"simplicity, clear conflicts, broad characterization,
and
obvious ideas" should
be the
fare
for
these audiences. Melo-
dramatic plot might
be
added
to
this list
of
features
to
give
a
general description
of
Edmonds* works.
His
longest
and
best
^Frederick Bond,
The
Negro
and the
Drama
(New
York, 1969)»
p. 123, ~ —
^Benjamin Brawley,
The
Negro Genius
(New
York, 1966),
p. 285-
32
play contains
all of
these features.
The
Land
of
Cotton
was
written
for
credit
in a
course
at
Yale University;
and
after
revision,
it won
first prize
in a
national playwrighting
con-
test.
The
author described
his
play
as
follows:
The
Land
of
Cotton
is a
long play dealing with
the
system o"f~tljnant farming
in the
South.
It' is
brutal
and
violent because
all too
often
the
system.has been marked
by
such happenings.
A
conscious effort
has
been made
to
state
the
arguments
of the
landlords
as
well
as
those
of
the
tenants;
for the
plantation owners
do
have
a
view-
point that
is all too
often overlooked."
Act I of The
Land
of
Cotton
is set on a
plantation
in the
spring.
It is
after
the
Civil
War, and the
workers
are
share-
croppers
and
tenant" farmers.
The
plantation owner announces
he
will
be
using only
day
labor
in the
future,
and
this policy
means starvation
for the
employees.
The
workers,
led by
Gurry,
decide
to
form
a
union with
the
help
of
Clay Sherman,
an "out-
sider."
Act II
takes place
at the
union meeting
at
Gurry•s
house. After
a
dance sequence
the
workers hold their meeting
and
agree
to
strike;
the
sheriff then comes
and
arrests
the
leaders.
The
interaction between
the
leaders
and the
planta-
tion owners which takes place
in the
sheriff's office comprises
Act III. In Act IV the
scene returns
to
Gurry's house.
The
Klan frames Coggin,
one of the
union leaders,
for the
attempted
rape
of a
white woman
in an
attempt
to
intimidate
all the
leaders
and
stop
the
union once
and for all.
When
the
Klan comes
to
take Coggin, Gurry decides
to
take
a
stand, however,
and
firing
breaks
out. The
white sharecroppers come
to the aid of the
6 *
Randolph Edmonds,
The
Land
of
Cotton
and
Other Plays
(Washington,
D, C.,
19^-277
P*«
v±i7~
" " .
33
Negroes,
but
Gurry, Cogfrinf
and
otha.rs
are
killed nonetheless.
Their bodies
are
left inside
the
house
to
burn,
for "it is
"better
for
them
to
stay with
the
flames than
be
dragged through
7
the
streets afterwards.'"
The
play
is a
melodramatic problem play,
for no
conclu-
sion
is
reached
at the
play's ending even though
the
Negroes
take
a
dramatic stand.
The
plot
is
well developed
and the
dialogue
is
well written.
The
rural life
of the
times
is
realistically portrayed,
and the
plantation owners
are
given
sympathetic treatment.
It is
interesting
to
note that this
is
the
only play
of
Negro authorship"
to use the
"workers unite!"
i
theme which
was
prevalent
in the
American literature
of the
decade.
The
Land
o*f
Cotton
was
published with several one-act
plays, including Gangsters Over Harlem, which
was set in the
present, Yellow Fever, which
was set in the
past,
and
High
Court
of
Historia, which
was set in the
future. C-angsters
Oyer Harlem
and
High Court
of
Historia were produced
by the
Dillard Players' Guild
in New
Orleans
on
February
16 and 17,
1939»
for
Negro History Week festivities. Yellow Death
was
produced
by the
Morgan College Dramatic Club
in
Baltimore
February
1 if, 1935 > as a
Negro History Week production.
Gangsters Over Harlem,
a
melodrama, deals with Frank King,
the
chief
of the
numbers racket,
and his
double-crossing girl-
7
Ibid.,
p. 143.
3k
friend, Trixie Tigret. fli/sn Frank learns that Trixie
is
really Bulldog5s woman
and Las
been "setting
up"
Frank
and
his
gang,
she is
given
to
Blackie,who says
he
will
"toy
around with
[her^ for
awhile like
a cat
does
a
rat"® before
killing
her. She
gets Frank's
gun, and all
three
are
killed
in a
"shoot-out."
The
play
is
entertaining; although
the.
characters
are
stereotypes,
the
action
is
fast
and the
dialogue
is
appropriate.
Yellow Death
is set in
Cuba
in 1898. It is a
propaganda
piece showing
the
valor
of the
Negro troops
in the
Spanish
American
War. The
entire
"B"
Company volunteered
for
hospital
duty,
and of its
sixty
men,
forty-two contracted yellow fever.
The
conflict
in the
play
is
between
Tom, the
officer
who has
just contracted
the
dread disease,
and Sid and
Dave,
two sol-
diers
who
intend
to
desert.
"B"
Company
is
asked
for
volun-
teers again,
for
though their hospital duty time
is
over, they
are
still needed.
As the
roll
is
called,
Sid and
Dave follow
the
example
of
their sick officer
and
volunteer; thus,
all of
Company
"B" has
volunteered again.
The
language'in
the
play
is
artificial
and the
characters merely historical spokesmen,
as
Tom1s speech
to Sid and
Dave shows:
Do you
know what will happen
to you if you
quit? Well,
I'll
tell
you. The
white world will forget
La
Guasimas
and El
Caney. They'll forget that
our
troops crossed
the
bloody
San
Juan river
and
marched
up the
hill
and
helped
capture
the
blockhouse. They'll soon forget
or
probably
8Ibid.,
p. 177.
35
will never know that
If it
hadn't been
for
some
of
our
troops,Colonel Roosevelt
and his
Rough Riders
would have been
cut to
pieces. They'll
be
anxious
enough
to say our man
were cowar
ds
^anyway, without
giving them deserters
to
prove
it#
Court
of
Historia
is
also
a
play with
a
message
whose characters
are
spokesmen-stereotypes,
but it is a
fanciful story
set in the
future
in an
"imaginary country
with everything designed
to
point
up the
unreal,An
airplane
en
route
to an
international historical meeting hits
an air
pocket
and
lands
in the
unknown country
of
Historia,
The
passengers
are
each tried before
the
king
for
their views
of
history, Saraus (Uncle
San),
Johnus (John Bull), Francus
(French Soldier), Dixianus (Southern Gentlemen),
and
Aryanus
(Hitler)
all
declare their histories
to be the
best
in the
world. Because -Afriopus (Negro college professor) does
not
teach Negro history,
he
cannot match
the
claims
of the
others.
Ho is
found guilty
and
sentenced
to
torture.
He
repents
for
not
knowing more
of the
history
of his
race, however,
and is
granted clemency
at the end.
The
caricatures
in
High Court
of
Historia
ar§
drawn with
skill,
and the
pronouncements
of
doctrine
by
each
are
exagger-
ated
in a
humorous
way. The
peculiar speech traits
of
each
are
given,
and the
residents
of
Historia
use
"thou"
and
"methinks"
and
similar words
and
phrases
to add
another
9
Ibid,,
p* 196,
10Ibid.,
p. 230,
36
dimension
to the
colorful dialogue#
The
play
is a
delightful
jjiece—gently satirical—and well suited
for a
school production.
Edmonds also published
Six
Plays
for a
Negro Theatre
during this period,
'The Bad Man, a
folk play
of
sawmill
life,
is
about
a
gang leader
who is
reformed through
the
love
of a
good woman#
He
faces
a mob to
protect
one of his
gang
and is
killed.
Old Man
Pete shows Pete
and his
wife
in
Harlem visiting their children. Realizing they
are
unwelcome,,
they leave
for
home with insufficient money
and
clothing
and
are
found
the
next morning frozen
to
death
in the
park.
Breeders
is
based
on a
familiar theme,
for a
slave
is
being
forced
to
marry against
her
will.
Her
real lover intervenes
and is
killed
by the
master.
The
slave then drinks hemlock.
Bleeding Hearts•is also
set on a
plantation before emancipa-
tion.
The New
Window deals with
the
superstitious wife
of a
msgeasswsow memtal i"»«a«Rorasv»««*•
bootlegger.
Each
of
Edmonds' plays contains
a
single plot
in
which
the
hero meets with foul play. Most
of his
works
are
melodramatic,
and
most
of
them have
a
blatant
and
undisguised message
for his
fellow Negroes.
He was a
prolific v/riter
and
dedicated organ-
izer
and
thereby stands
out as the
dominant figure
of the edu-
cational theatre movement
of the
thirties.
A
major figure
of the
twenties, Willis Richardson,
was
also very active
in the
educational theatre movement during
the
thirties.
His
preoccupation with historical themes continued
\
unabated,
for he
edited (along with
May
M;-iller) Negro History
in
Thirteen Plays
in 1935, as
well
as
editing Plays
and
Pageants
57
from
the
Life
of the
Negro»
He
wrote
a
number
of the
plays
for
these "books himself,
all of
which were
set In the
past.
Richardson included five
of his
plays
in
Negro History
in
Thirteen Plays
t
Antonio Maceo,
set in
Cuba
in 1896
during
the
revolution, deals with
the
betrayal
of
Maceo
by one of
his
officers, Zeputha, Maceo
is
shot
in the
back
by
three
as-
sassins,
and his
wife, suspecting
the
truth, kills Zeputha.
Attucks,
the
Martyr,
set in
Boston
on
March
1770,
shows
Crispus Attucks,
the
ex-slave, leading
the
colonists
in an
unarmed march against
the
British soldiers.
He is the
first
man
shot
in the
ensuing "Boston Massacre."
The
Elder Dumas
deals with Janin's caustic criticism
of
Dumas'
The
Maids
of
Cyj?.
The two men
decide
to
fight
for
their respective honors,
but
Janin's wife prevents
the
duel.
In
Menelik1s Court
is
set in
Abyssinia
in 1896 and
shows
the
unsuccessful attempt
by
the
Italians
to
kidnap
the
emperor's daughter, Zoenda. Johan,
the
Captain
of the
Guard, learns
of the
plot, captures
the
Italians involved,
and
discovers
the
identity
of the
traitor.
He is
awarded Zoenda's hand.
The
last play, Near.Calvary,
is
an
Easter play which takes place
- on the day of the
crucifixion.
Simon steps forth
to
help Jesus carry
his
cross,
and his
family
is
arrested
for
being Christian.
His
nephew discusses
the
happenings
of the day
with
a
friend:
Dan: But
Uncle Simon
is
brave
and
black;
he
never
would deny
his
leader.
38
Salas: What
has
black
got to do
with
it?
Dan:
When
men are
black
and
brave they
are
never
•
traitors.
Richardson's plays
are
obviously propaganda pieces,
and
like Edmonds1 plays, they have
a
single plot, simple story,
blatant message,
and
"broad" characters. Richardson's works
are
generally less sophisticated, however,
and
attempt
a .
nobility
of
language
and
character which
is not
always wholly
successful. Several
of his
plays deal either with martyrs
or
with other examples
of
nobility
of
character
in
Negroes
of the
past. Richardson
is
more propagandists
and
historical,
if
less artful,
in his
works than Edmonds.
The
other plays presented
in
Negro History
in
Thirteen
Plays v/ere written
by May
Miller
(the
co-editor), Georgia
Douglas Johnson, Helen Webb Harris,
and
Randolph Edmonds. They
are
also one-act historical-propaganda plays.
The
preface
of
the
book states that
"the
writers have
not
attempted
to
repro-
duce definitive history
but
have sought
to
create
the
atmosphere
of a
time past
or the
portrait
of a
memorable figure."1^ This
!
intent
was
achieved except
in the
works
of
Miss Johnson.
Georgia Douglas Johnson contributed
two
plays, William
and
Ellen Craft
and
Frederick Douglass, both giving
the
details
of
the
escape from slavery
of the
main characters.
In
William
and
Ellen Craft, Ellen dresses
as her
half-brother, young Master
Charles,
and she and
William take
the
train north disguised thus
11...
Willis Richardson, Negro History
in
Thirteen Plays
(Washington,
D, C.,
1935)/TTToT;
^2Ibid«t
p, vi•
• 39
as
master
and
slave.
In
Frederick Douglasst Douglass learns
he is to be
taken further south
the
following
day,
thus elimi-
nating
his
chance
for his
planned escape with
his
beloved.
He
borrows
a
sailor suit
and
some "free papers," papers signify-
ing the
holder
is a
free Negro
and not a
slave,
and
takes
the
train north
to
freedom.
The
facts
are
accurate,
but the "por-
trait
of a
memorable figure"
is
distorted
by the
language.'
It
is
difficult
to
imagine Frederick Douglass,
who was
literate
before
he
escaped
and
became
the
most articulate Negro
of his
time, using "darky dialect."
An
incident
as he
described
it
in his
Life Story
and as
Johnson described
it in her
play
can
be
contrasted
to
illustrate this point.
The
second week passed,
and I
again carried
him my
full
week's wages—nine dollars—and
so
well pleased
was he
that
he
gave
me*"
twenty-live cents!
and
bade
me
"make good
use of it,1' I
toT3~li£m~T"would
do so, for one of the
uses
to
which
I
intended
to put it was to pay my
fare
on the
"underground railroad,"'3
When
I
gave Marse
Tom his ten
dollars
I
worked
an',
made
fur him
this week,
he was
tickled'to death
an'
said,
"Here, Fred, take this here quarter
an1 buy
yourself
somethin1."
He
ain't
got no
idea
how
much extra money
I
picks
up
during
the
week.
You see I'm
a-workin'
for
freedom
an' you.
It is
unfortunate that
the
author's language detracts from
her
plays
so
markedly,
for her
work
is
acceptable otherwise.,
I
May
Miller offered four plays
in
this book: Harriet
Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Samory,
and
Christophe's Daughters.
i 5
-'Frederick Douglass, Life
and
Times
of
Frederick
(London, 1962),
p. 192. " ' "
1
^Richardson, Negro History
in
Thirteen Plays,
p. 11+6,
40.
Harriet 'Tubman concerns
on© of the
ex-slave's numerous trips
south
to
help other slaves escape.
She is
successful despite
the
fact that
the
whites
in the
area have posted
a
140,000
reward
for her and are
themselves looking
for her. In
Sojourner Truth, Sojourner asks
to
speak
to a
white revival
meeting
and is
refused. However, after persuading
a
gang
of
white boys
not to
burn
the
tents
for the
meeting,
she is
welcomed
as a
speaker
at the
meeting. Christophe1s Daughters
demonstrates
the
bravery
of the
daughters
of the
king
of
Haiti
during
the 1820
uprising.
The two
girls remain
in the
castle
after
all
others evacuate
and
carry their father's body
(he
had
killed himself with
a
golden bullet)
to the
citadel
so
the
rioters cannot mutilate
it.
Samory shows
the
intelligence
of the
Mohammedan leader
who
successfully fought
the
French
in
the.
Niger region
in 1881. The
French
try to
trick
him
with
a
story
of
yellow fever
in a
town
he
plans
to
invade,
but he
learns
of the
deception
and
takes
the
town.
In
keeping with
the
plays
of
Negro history, Helen Webb
Harris offered Genifrede,
a
one-act play about
the
daughter
of
General L'Ouverture.
The
general allows
no
retaliation
against whites
in the
revolt
of San
Domingo,
and
thirteen
men
who
have disobeyed this order
are to be
shot.
One of the men
is
L'Ouverture's nephew, Genifrede's fiance*,
and the
only
man
with
the
plans
for the
defense
of Cap
Francus. When
the
general learns
the
French
are
advancing toward
Cap
Francus,
he
sends
a
messenger
to
stop
the
execution;
but he
arrives
too
late.
If1
Randolph Edmonds1 play
Nat
Turner
was
also included
in
the
Richardson-Miller collection,
The
play deals with
the
slave insurrection
in
.August
of 1831
v/hich
was led by Nat
Turner.
It is
interesting
to
note that this play
won for
Edmonds
a
fellowship
to
Yale University,
and
while there
he
wrote
The
Land
of
Cotton,
his
best play.
Willis Richardson's other anthology from this period,
Plays
and
Pageants from
the
Life
of the
Negro, contains more
plays
of the
same nature. Richardson contributed three plays:
The
Black'Horseman,
set in 204 B.C., in
Numidia, Africa;
The
King's Dilemma,
set in the
future
in "the
last kingdom
of the
world;
and The
House
of
Sham,
set in the
present.
May
Miller
offered Graven Images,
set in 1^90 B.C., in
Hazeroth, Egypt,
and
Riding
the
Goat,
set in
South Baltimore
in the
early
twentieth century. Maud Cuney-Hare wrote Antar
of
Araby,
a
four-act "tale
of war, of
loveand
of
chivalry." Sacrifice
was
contributed
by
Thelma Myrtle Duncan with
a
contemporary
setting.
.
Other plays
by the
authors published
in the
anthology
include
The
Scarlet Shawl
and The
Death Dance,
by
Thelma
Duncan, Black Damp,
by
John Matheus,
The Bog
Guide, Scratches,
Stragglers
of the
Dusk, Riding
the
Goat,
and The
Cussed Thing,
by May
Miller.
Also included
in
this anthology
is Ti
Yette,
by
John
Matheus,
one of the
promising playwrights
of the
twenties.
Ti
Yette
is a
young, beautiful Creole quadroon
who
lives
a
42
protected life with
her
brother, Racine,
in New
Orleans
in
the mid
1850's.
A
white lawyer, Hhubotham, loves
her and
with
forged papers proves
her
mother
was of
Indian
and
Spanish
mixture,
not a
mulatto, thus proving
Ti
Yette white. When
this
is
done,
he
comes
for her
with
the
intent
of
marrying,
her, but
Racine, unaware
of
what
has
been transpiring,
has
made
plans
to
escape
to
Haiti. When
he
learns
his
sister loathes
the
Negro race
and
wants
to
marry
a
hypocritical white
man,
#
he
stabs
her.
Matheus
is
best know
for his
short stories,
but
his
plays
are
generally considered worthy
of
merit also.
Obviously,
the
thirties
saw
major developments
in the
Negro educational theatre;
the
professional theatre made
great strides during this decade also.
As in the
twenties,
the
activity
in
professional Negro drama
was
concentrated
in
Harlem.
Local groups were offering productions
in the
YMCA
and the
churches when Dick Campbell
and
Rose McClendon, both Negro
performers, made
the
first attempt
to
establish
a
permanent
Negro theatre
in the
form
of the
Negro People's Theatre
in
1935*
After
one
production, Miss McClendon died,
and
when
a
number
of the
group joined
the
Federal Theatre,
the
organization folded.
The
Harlem Players then reopened
the
Lafayette Theatre,
and
while this unit
was
operating,
it
drew most
of the
talent
in
Harlem.
It
later became
a
unit
of the
Federal Theatre also.
In 1938,
Langston Hughes
and
others founded
the
Harlem Suitcase
Theatre, which first performed
his
play Don't
You
Want
to Be
k5
Free?
in a
loft
on
125th Street,
All of the
members
had out-
side jobs, however,
and the
group subsequently disbanded
in
1939*
The
most successful local effort
for a
Negro theatre
was
the
organization begun
by
.Dick Campbell
and
Muriel Rahn called
The
Rose McClendon Players.
It was a
subscription organization
dedicated
to
building
a
community theatre
and
boasted
an
impres-
sive list
of
members.
The
group
was
organized
on the
belief
that Broadway would always misrepresent
and
mistreat Negroes,
and the
only alternative
for
fair treatment
and
realistic
por-
trayal
was an
independent theatre.
The
auditorium
of the
12/fth
Street library
was
used
as a
workshop,,
and the
group
had a num-
ber of
productions before disbanding
for the
duration
of
World
War II.
Unfortunately,
it was
never revived.
It is
represent-
ative
of the
Harlem theatre movement
of the
thirties,
for it was
a
group effort which attempted
to
bring "ensemble playing
to the
i 5
modern star-studded, misguided theatre!"
^
The
most important theatre during this period
was the
Negro Unit
of the
Federal Theatre'
(a
unit
of the
Works Progress
Administration), which
was in
operation from August
1935 to
June 1939»
It
offered
a
laboratory,
"a way to
gain experience
16
in the
professional theatre that
had
been previously closed"
to
Negroes.
A
symposium
was
held,
and a
group effort
of
play-
wrights resulted
in
about eighteen full-length plays
and
five
^Mitchell,
p. 110.
1
Abramson,
p. 45*
short ones, three
of
which *.vere produced.
The
productions
of
the
Federal Theatre reached
the
"culturally neglected hinter-
i 7
lands,"
1 for
admission
was
only
2.50 or the
possession
of a
Department
of
Welfare card,
and
audiences were large. Frank
Wilson's Walk Together Children
was
produced
in 1936 and
viewed
by
10,530 people;
The
Conjure
Man
Dies
was
seen
by
11,000.18
The
Federal Theatre
was
subjected
to a
Congressional
investigation;
too
many
of the
productions were considered
anti-American
or
Communistic,
and an act of
Congress subse-
quently closed
the
theatre. Loften.Mitchell,
a
Negro play-
wright
and
critic, expressed
his
displeasure
in the
following
way: By
killing
the
Federal Theatre, powerful American forces
took
the
drama away from
the
masses
and
lodged
it
firmly
in the
bosom
of
aristocratic
and
middle-class groups.
That Federal Theatre offered employment, experience
and
training
to may
present-day theatre artists
is
obvious.
That
it
offered exciting, low-cost theatre
to
large
seg-
ments
of the
population
is
undeniable. That
all of
this
was
taken away from
the
people
is one of the
great
tragedies
of
.American theatre.'"
While
the
Negro unit
of the
Federal Theatre
was in
operation,
it
offered many plays, some
of
which reached Broadway—Run,
Little Chillun (1933), Brother Hose (1934)>
The
Conjure
Man
Dies (1936), Turpentine (1936),
and The
Trial
of Dr.
Beck
(1937).
^Ibid.
l8Mitchell,
p. -102.
1°Jbid.
p. 103.
The
first production
of the
Neg.ro Unit
of the
Federal
Theatre, Walk Together Chillun,
by
Frank Wilson,
was pro-
duced
on
February
2, 1936, in the
Lafayette Theatre. There
is no
script extant
for
this three-act social drama which
deals with
the
clash
of the
Southern Negroes brought
to the
North
to
compete
for
jobs with
the
Northern Negroes
who
held
the
jobs.
The
ending shows
the two
factions joining together
to
face white hostility.
The
play appealed
for
Negro solidar-
ity to
replace caste
and
sectional distinctions.
The
Federal Theatre also produced Wilson»s Brother Mose,
a
revised version
of
Meek Mose, which
had
been written
in the
twenties. This three-act play
is
based
on the
conflict
of
Mose,
"an
old—fashioned Negro,"
and
Enos Greene,
for
Mose
believes that
the
"meek will inherit
the
earth," while Greene
believes "might makes right."
The
Negroes
who
live
in
Mexia,
Texas,
are
asked
to
leave their land
so a
factory
can be
built
upon
it, and in
return, they
are
offered
"the Gut," a
useless
swampland. Mose agrees
and
some follow
him to the
swampj some
stay behind with Greene
to
confront
the
v/hite power structure.
Oil is
discovered
in "the Gut," so
Mose
and his
followers fare
well
,
while Greene
is
arrested
for
selling dope.
The
play
is
interspersed with songs
and
dances
as
well
as
preachingj "Frank
Wilson
was
certainly perpetuating stereotypes"
in
this work.20
pr\
Abramson,
p. 58.
^6
Rim,
Little Chill
im, "by
Hall Johnson, also contained songs
and
preaching. This play opened
on
Broadway
on
March
1 ,
1937»
and ran for
four months.
In
this work Baptist
and
pagan reli-
gions
vie for the
soul
of Jim, the
Baptist minister's
son. Jim
goes "across
the
river"
to
visit
the
pagan religious meeting
in Act I; he is
brought back
to his
faith
in Act II at a
full-
scale Southern revival meeting complete with spirituals,
ser-
mons, prayers,
and
confession sinners.
The
author, Hall Johnson,
was
himself
the son of a
minister
of the
African Methodist
Episcopal Church
in
Georgia,
and was
therefore intimately famil-
iar
with
his
subject matter. Actually,
he had
been
a
musician
before becoming
a
playwright,
and he is
credited with saving
21
many Negro spirituals from obscurity.
The
play, replete with music,
was
evidently powerful when
staged. Kenneth Burke found
it
"deeply impressive,"
and
felt
"the two
choric scenes.
.
.restore
our
understanding
of
whatthe
2?
writer
of
'music-drama' must have intended."
~
Though
it had
"honest pleasantness
in its
dialogue,
it did
contrive
to
exploit
23
the old
minstrel show conception
of the
Negro,"
. and yet, the
"patness"
of the
ending
was
forgiven,
for
Burke found
it "jus-
tified itself completely»"2^
Run,
Little Ghillun
"was one of
21
Mitchell,
p. 97. .
pp
Kenneth Burke,
"The
Negro's Pattern
of
Life," Saturday
Review
of
Literature,
X
(July
29,
1933)»
1
2^Ibid.
2ifIbid.
k?
?5
the
major events
of the
season,"its success undoubtedly
?6
being
due in
large part
to the
revival scenes
and the
music,
"
Another popular play,
The
Con,jure
Man
Dies,
by Dr.
Rudolph
Fisher, employs
a
completely different style
and
subject;
it
is
taken from
the
novel
of the
same ::iame—a detective story.
Fisher,
a
physician,
was the
first Negro
to
publish
a
detective
story
and was
considered
by
Langston Hughes
to be the
wittiest
of the "new
Negroes
of
Harlem,"
for his
"tongue
was
flavored
27
with
the
sharpest
and
saltiest humor,"
In his
three-act
(fifteen scene) play,
Dr.
Fisher
has the
erudite
Dr.
Archer
solve
a
murder mystery.
Dr.
Archer
is
called
in to
examine
the
corpse
of the
conjure
man,
Frirabo,
who has
been killed.
While
the
search
is
underway
for the
murderer,
it is
discovered
that
the
corpse
is not
Frimbo
but his
assistant,
who has
been
killed
by
mistake. Frimbo appears
and is
then killed
by the
murderer,
the
undertaker,
who is
jealous
of
Frimbo's attentions
to his
wife, This play
was
popular with
the
audiences,
and it
went
on
tour with
the WPA
outdoor players. When
it
opened
in
Harlem
on
March
11, 1936, the
audiences were "exhilarated
and
enlivened"
by it.^
^Mitchell,
p. 97.
2C
Abramson,
p. 293.
There
is
some question about
the au-
thorship
of
this play,
for Lew
Cooper
is
sometimes listed
as
co-author, Johnson insisted, however, that
he had
v/ritten
the
original version,
and he
added that
he
alone
had
been responsi-
ble for all
revisions made during
the
rehearsal period,
2^Langston Hughes,
The Big Sea (New
York, 19^0),
p, 2^-0,
28Bond,
p. 118.
Another• murder mystery drama v/xth sociological overtones
of
this period
was The
Trial
of J>r.
Be_ok|by Hughes Allison.
It
was the
first
big
success
of the
Federal Theatre
of New
Jersey
and
subsequently opened
on
Broadway
on
August
9* 1937 >
where
it ran
four weeks.
In it, Dr.
Beck,
a
mulatto,
is on
trial
for
killing
his
wife.
He
believes
all
Negroes should marry lighter
partners
and
thus have progressively lighter children until
the
Negro race
is
eliminated.
His
wife
was
dark. This plot
may
appear implausible,
but
according
to E.
Franklin Frazier,
the
noted Negro sociologist,
the
Negro society gave preference
to
lighter Negroes,
a
carry-over from slavery days when
the mas-
ters' illegitimate children were accorded preferential treat-
ment
on the
plantations. However, after World
War I, "in
both northern
or
southern cities education
and
occupation
increasingly supplanted family background
and a
light
com-
pQ
plexion
as a
basis
for
admission
to the
social elite."
7 A
tendency toward ridicule
of the old
system developed,
and
this
could have easily been
the
social basis
for The
Trial
of Dr. i
Beck.
A few
protest plays were written during
the
decade
by
Negro playwrights,
and in 193^4
Dennis Donoghue wrote
Murder,
a
play about
the
Scottsboro Case.
In the
play, nine
Negro youths
hop a
freight train
to
Chicago
in the
hope
of
find-
ing
employment there. Their
car is
invaded
by two
white
men
E.
Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (London, 1957)>
p. 165.
• 9
and two
white women
who
order
the
boys
at
gunpoint
to
jump
out. The
boys seize
the gun and
take control,
but at the
next stop,
the
whites .falsely accuse them
of
rape
and
have
them arrested.
The
play
was
produced
and ran
seven days.-''0
The
Scottsboro Case
was
used
in
other plays, including
one
by
Langston Hughes, Scottsboro»•Limited,
In the
actual case,
seven white youths
and two
white girls boarded
the
train with
the
Negro youths,
and in an
ensuing skirmish,
six of the
seven
white boys were thrown from
the
moving train.
The
Negro boys
were accused
of
raping
the two
white girls, tried
in
three
groups
in
Scottsboro, Alabama, found guilty,
and
sentenced
to
death.
A
motion
for a new
trial
was
overruled,
and
this deci-
sion
v/as
upheld
by the
Alabama Supreme Court.
The
case
was
taken
to the
United States Supreme Court,
and the
verdict
was
remanded
on the
grounds that
the
boys
had
been denied counsel
"in any
substantial sense"
and had
been denied trial
by
their
peers,
for
Negroes
had
been systematically excluded from
the
jury.
J.
Augustus Smith
and
Peter More11 wrote Turpentine.
a
folk play with choral arrangements which
was
intended
to
"proteist conditions
in the
naval stores industry
of
Florida,
30
„ ,
,.TJohn_ Preston Davis, editor,
.The
American Negro Reference
Book
(New
York, 1966),
p. 835. ——
XI
v
Abramson,
p. 6*w
50
and to
expose
"the
tyranny
and
injustice
of the
southern labor-
camp system.
It
opened
on
Broadway
on
June
27, 1936, and
according
to one
critic, "possessed breathtaking fervor."33
There
is no
script available
for
this play,
and it is
difficult
to
determine what some Congressmen
v/ho
accused
it of
preaching
"radical ideas" could have taken exception
to.
Other plays
of the
period with "radical ideas" were
not
produced. Liberty Deferred,
by
John Silvera
and
Abram Hill,
dealt with Negro oppression through economic means,
and,
though publicized,
it was
refused production
by the
Federal
Theatre.
It is
doubtful that
the
play
was
refused
on
grounds
of
merit,
for one of the
co-authors, Abram Hill,
had no
diffi-
culty
in
getting
his
play,
On
Strivers
Row,
produced. This
play
is a
comedy which deals with
a
pretentious middle class
Negro family
and a
Harlem hipster
and has no
portion that could
be
considered offensive
or
"radical."
It is
interesting
to
note
that
a
play
by
Elmer Rice,
a
white playwright,
v/as
refused
pro-
duction also,
and it
dealt with lynchings
and
conditions
of the
sharecroppers
in the
.South.
The
Federal Theatre
had
been
criticized
for not
producing Libertty Deferredt
but
shortly
thereafter,
a
trilogy
by
Hughes Allison
met the
same fate.
The
thirties, supposedly
a
period
of
"social protest"
in the
theatre,
seems limiced
in its
scope
as far as the
Federal Theatre produc-
tions
are
concerned.
3?
"Abramson,
p. Sk*
33Ibid.
n l
Social protest
was
evidently more acceptable when.written
in a
melodramatic form,
for one of the
most successful plays
of
the
period
was
Langstdn Hughes's Mulattot which opened
on
Broad-
way
October
2if,
1935*
and ran
through December
9»
1937> thus
having
the
longest
run of any
play
by a
Negro
for
twenty years
(the
record
not
being broken until Raisin
in the
Sun)•
The
subject
of
miscegenation
had
long been used
in all
forms
of
literature
in
.America
s and the
"tragic mulatto" stereotype
was
updated
for
this work
and
placed
in a
contemporary setting,
though
the
action transpired
on a
former plantation
in
Georgia.
Hughes
had
been intrigued with
the
dilemma
of the
mulatto since
childhood,and
in the
summer
of 1926, he had
written
a
poem
entitled Mulatto, published
in the
Saturday Review
of
Litera-
ture
. He had
spent
a few
weeks with Jasper Deeter
at the
Hedgerow Theatre writing
the
play
of the
same name (evidently
in the
late 20's)and
the
play
was
staged there
to try it
out.^°
His
only work
in
drama previous
to
this
had
been
as a
teen-ager when
he had
written
The
Gold Book,
a
play
for
children
which
had
been printed
in
Brownie
*s
Book, Mulatto
was the
beginning
of
Hughes's work
in
drama which
led to "the
most
successful
and
enduring career
of any
Negro playwright•^
^Hughes,
The Big Sea/ p. 262.
3^Ibid.,
p. 3U.
-^Abramson,
p. 84.
-^William Couch,
Jr., New
Black Playwrights (Baton Rouge,
1968),
p.
xvii.
. ~
52
Mulatto,
a
two-act rr.elodraiaa, centers
on
Robert Norwood,
the
progeny
of an
illicit relationship between Colonel Norwood
•
and his
housekeeper, Cora. Colonel .Norwood
has
educated
his
four mulatto children,
and
according
to
Cora, that
is
more than
any
other white
man in the
county
has
done. Robert
has
decided
to act
like
his
white half,
not his
black half,
and has
used
the
front door
to
enter
and
exit
the
house,
His
mother cautions
him and
tells
him to act
colored "cause
you
ain't white." Robert
answers,
"And I'm not
black either,"-^ Obviously Robert
is
defying
his
accepted "role"
as a
Negro,
and
trouble
is
inevi-
table,
The
Colonel tries
to
"reason" with Robert,
and the con-
versation ends with Norwood telling Robert
to
leave
and not re-
turn, Robert defiantly starts
out the
front door,
and
Colonel
Norwood springs
at him
with
a gun,
whereupon Robert chokes
his
father
to
death.
He
runs
for the
swamp
but
says
he
will return
if he
thinks "they" will
get him
before
he
reaches
its
safety,
Robert does return
to his
father's house,
for
there
is no
chance
of
escape.
He
goes upstairs
to his
mother's
bed and
shoots
himself.
There
is a
particularly effective speech
at the end of Act
II,
scene
i, in
which Cora berates
the
Colonel's body
for not
helping Robert,
and
finally, losing sense
of
reality, curses
him for
running
her boy
through
the
fields with dogs
to
lynch
him,
Part
of the
power
of
Mulatto lies
in the
sympathetic
-^Langston Hughes', Five Plays (Bloomington, 1963),
p, 19»
• .53
treatment
of
Colonel Norwood,
and in
this speech,
it is evi-
dent that Cora
has a
great deal
of
respect
for her
children's
father*
Public reaction
to
Mulatto via-a varied;
the
play
was not
permitted
to be
shown
in
Philadelphia,^
and it was
threatened
with closure
in New
York because
of the
reactioh
of a
Georgia
senator.^ Loften Mitchell described
its
reception
as
follows:
Teeth gnashed
and
people squirmed when Langston Hughes"
Mulatto opened
on
Broadway
in
193k» Many critics
com-
plained that
the
play
was too
realistic,
too
bitter,
and
too
hostile• Nevertheless, audiences flocked
to it, and
the
play enjoyed
a
long run.*'
"Hughes stands
out as the
only Negro playwright
of
this decade
who
managed
to
write literate plays that satisfied both Broad-
way and
Harlem audiences."^ Mulatto
was
adapted
for a
musical
drama
and re
titled
The
Barrier,
and in
this form,
it
opened
at
the
Broadhurst Theatre
on
November
2, 1950,
starring Muriel Rahn
and
Lawrence Tibbe
tt•
Other plays
by
Hughes during this period include Don't
You
Want
to Be
Free?, Little
Ham,
When
the
Jack Hollers, Soul Gone
Home, Mule Bone.,
•
Scottsbo.ro
?
Limited, Troubled Island,
and
Angelo Herndon Jones, Don't
You
Want
to be
Free?
was the
first
production
of the
Harlem Suitcase Theatre
and ran
every, weekend
39,
'Bond,
p. 157.
^°Ibid.,
p. 156*
i+1
Mitchell,
p. 97.
^Abramson,
p. 83•
3k
L~'\
for two
years—135 performances,
v
This
is the
record
run
for any
play
in
Harlem,^
In the
play,
the
characters
are
generalized
and
given' such names
as a
Young
Man, a
Mulatto,
a Boy, a
life.
No
scenery
is
needed
and few
props
are
used.
The
script consists
of
poems, monologues, dialogues, music,
and
dancing—all
to the
purpose
of
showing what
it is
like
to "be
Negro
in
America.
The
play
"was a
rousing, exciting
production, played
on
what
can
only
be
described
as a
bare,
US
improvised stage."
^
In
contrast, Little
Ham is a
three-act comedy with
we 11-
de
fined characters.
Ham is a
shoe shine
boy in
Ilarlem,
and
his
stand
is a
front
for the
numbers racket. When
a
gang
war
begins,
Ham
begins writing numbers,
and
before
the
play ends,
he is
lucky with numbers, love,
and
Charleston dance contests.
Fast action
and
witity dialogue
are
maintained throughout
the
three acts,
and
various characters
and
numerous facets
of
Harlem life
are
depicted.
One
scene
is set in a
hair straight-
ening salon|
one is set in a
dance contest.
The
variety
of
scenes
and
characters
and the
artful dialogue make this play
a
delightful v/ork.
Soul Gone Home,
a
one-act play,
is a
sketch
of a
dialogue
between sixteen-year-old Ronnie
and his
mother. Ronnie
has
just died
of
tuberculosis,
and his
mother implores
his
spirit
^Ibid.,
p. 80.
^Davis,
pa
833«
^Mitchell,
p. 103,
• . • 2?
to
come back from
the
spirit world,
and
talk
to her. It
does
and
tells
her she was a
"hell
of a
mama."
The
spirit1s
•indictment
of his
mother
is a sad
sketch
of the
inescapable life
of
poverty*
Unlike these plays, which were acted
or
published
or
both,
Mule Bone never progressed beyond rehearsal# Zora Neale Hurston,
a
fiction writer
and
author
of a
series
of
dramatic folk scenes
entitled Great
Day
(1927), worked with Hughes
on the
play.
It
was a
Negro folk comedy based
on a
tale Miss Hurston
had
heard
about
a
quarrel between
two
church factions, Hughes said
of
its
authorship,
"I
plotted
out and
typed
the
play based
on her
story while
she
authenticated
and
flavored
the
dialogue
and
added highly humorous details.
We
finished
a
first draft before
she
went South again,
and
from this draft
I was to
work
out
h 6
a
final version,Miss Hurston subsequently sent
the
play
in for
production, claiming
it as
hers. When Hughes hoard
of
this
and
protested,
an
argument ensued, evidently over
one of
his
lady acquaintances,
and
Miss Hurston refused
to
sign
for
its
showing although
it was
already
in
rehearsal with
the
in 1
Gilpin Playerso'1"'
Hughes used
his
plays
as
social protest
in
specific issues.
Scottsboro.Limited,
"a
poetic mass chant done with bitter satire
and
prophecy,deals with
the
Scottsboro court case,
in
which
^Hughes,
Big Sea, p0 320.
^Ibid.,
p. 333.
^Sterling Brown, Negro Boetry
and
Drama (Washington,
D. 0.,
1937),
P. 132, . ™"" "" ™ " .
%
young Negroes
are
unfairly charged, tried,
and
convicted
be-
cause
of
white prejudices. Angelo Herndon Jones deals with
the
young Negro
of
that name
who was
sentenced
to
twenty years
on the
chain gang
for
leading
a
protest march
of
unemployed
men.
Troubled Island deals with Haiti
in
revolt
and
"carries
LQ
implications
for
modern American Negro life."
y
Trouble With
50
the
Angels 'fehows
up
segregation
and
Negro submissivensss•
Langston Hughes stands
out as the
dominant playwright
of
the
thirties,
and as
such,
his
views about Negro literature
are
important.
In a
speech
at the
American Writers' Congress
in
June
of
1939»
he
made
the
following observations:
The
market
for
Negro writers.
. . is
definitely limited
as
long
as we
write about ourselves.
And the
more truth-
fully
we
write about ourselves,
the
more limited
our
market becomes.
[in
popular works] there
is no
hunger
and no
segregation,
no
lynchings
and no
fears,
no
intimidations
and no Jim
Crow.
While
a
thoroughly realistic portrayal
of the
Negro's
position
in
America—"radical ideas"—was
not
accepted
in the
thirties, progress
was
made
in the
drama nonetheless. Play-
wrights received invaluable experience
in the
professional
theatre,
and
more attention
was
paid
to
stage business
in the
plays
of the
period with settings
and
costumes sometimes
2f9IMd.
-^Ib'id.
51
Roi
Ottley
and
William
J.
Weatherby, editors,
The
Negro
in New
York
(New
York, 1967),
p. 260. '
^2Ibid.,
p. 261.
57
described
in
detail. More sophisticated structural techniques
were employed
as
well,
and the
almost universal one-act play
.was
supplanted
by
longer
and
better constructed plays with
meaningful divisions between acts
and
scenes.
The
educational
theatre
of the
period seems
to be the
desire
of a
race
to
find
pride
in its
past—or
to
find
a
past—while
the
professional
theatre seems
to be
intent upon telling what
it
means
to be a
Negro
in the
United States
in the
thirties (within
the
limita-
tions
of the
tii.ie)«
The end of the
thirties
saw
nBroadway,
for all its
grow-
ing
liberal attitude,
.
.still entranced with
the
stereotypes
of the
exotic primitive,
the
comic stooge,
and the
tragic
53
mulatto,"
and
these stereotypes were partially perpetuated
by
Negro authors themselves. Harlem, still without
a per-
manent Negro theatre,
had yet to
attract
a
dedicated following
for
serious productions about Negro life. Nonetheless, some
serious Negro playwrights were already established
and
others
were intent upon self-improvement..
The
foundation
for
Negro
drama
had
been laid.
Brown,
p. 139<
CHAPTER
V
THE
FORTIES
In- the
forties, President Roosevelt
led
Americans
in a war .
to
free oppressed people
and
establish
for
them
a
"normal,
healthy,
and
self-sustaining existence." Negroes found
it
paradoxical
to "be
fighting
for
freedoms
for
others that they
were denied
in
America; evidently,
the
general opinion toward
Japan
in the
Negro community
was one of
neutrality,
and
this
attitude
was
caused
by the
conditions
of
discrimination
in
America."' Negroes were denied jobs
in
government service
and
in
defense plants
as
well
as in
private businesses. Discrim-
inatory practices
in the
armed forces were standard,
and
numer-
ous
outrages were committed against Negro soldiers stationed
in the
South. Senator John
D,
Bankhead
of
Alabama wrote General
George
C.
Marshall, Army Chief
of
Staff, suggesting that Negro
troops from
the
North
be
stationed
in the
North exclusively,
as it was a
"disservice
to the war
effort"
to
locate them
in
the
South
as it
might lead
to a
race
war.
Northern Negroes
continued
to be
stationed
in the
South, however,
and
numerous
race riots
and
lynchings resulted.
1 Roi
Ottley,
New
World A-Coming
(New
York, 1968),
p.
31+2..
53
59
Negroes were "Insistent that,
if
they must
die as
equals,
?
then they must
be
treated
as
equals,""
To
effect equal treat-
ment,
A,
Philip. Randolph organized
a
march
on
Washington,
D. C. f
in 1941 to
solicit
aid in
procuring equal employment
for
Negroes.
In 1947,
after
the war, the
NAACP directed
a
154-page petition
to the
United Nations regarding
the
Negro's plight,
for
"acts
of
oppression" occurred
in
America
as
well
as
Europe,
In the
midst
of
racial conflict
and war,
Negroes continued
in
their attempts
to
establish
a
permanent Negro theatre
in
Harlem,
but
were again unsuccessful.
The
Negro Playwrights
Company
was
founded
in 1940" by
Langston Hughes, George Norford,
Theodore Ward, Powell Lindsay, Owen Dodson,
and
Theodore Browne#
Their
aim was to
present plays
by
Negroes
who
wrote realistically)
truthfully,
and'
with sincerity about Negro life
and
history.
Big
White
Fog, by
Theodore Ward,
one of the
founders,
was the
first
and
only production
of
this company. After sixty-four
performances,
the
play closed
and the
theatre never offered
another production. There were
two
other Negro theatres active
during
the
forties, however—the American Negro Theatre
and the
115th
Street People's Theatre.
The
American Negro Theatre,
organized
in 1939 by
Abram Hill
and
Frederick O'Neal, began
producing plays
in 1940 in the
basement
of the
135th Street
Liorary.
The end of the
decade
saw the
closing
of
this theatre,
and
dissension
in the
People's Theatre
led to its
demise
and the
subsequent founding
of the
Harlem Showcase,
2Ibid,,
p. 312.
60
Left without
a
viable? community theatre
in
operation
in
the
late forties, Negro playwrights
and
theatre workers were
"at the
mercy
of the
downtown producers." Thus,
the
standards
of
Harlem theatre
and its
playwrights changed;
a
relevant
community theatre
was
replaced
by a
commercial theatre• Critics
began
to
judge Harlem offerings
by
commercial standards,
and
according
to
Loften Mitchell, "people came
to
Harlem,
no
longer
to
witness vital theatre,
but to
look
for
something that would
•
sell downtown."*1"
An
unusual number
of
plays about Negroes
did
"sell dovratown" during
the
forties---musicals, operas, vaude-
ville,
and
drama.
Two
plays
by
Negro playwrights were produced
on
Broadway during
the
decade
as
well.
In 19i*1 ,
Native
Son,
by
Richard Wright,
was
offered.
In 1947, Our Lan', by
Theodore
Ward,
was
produced.
Native
Son was
based
on a
novel
of the
same name
by
Wright
and
adapted
for the
stage
in
collaboration with Paul Green,
The
novel
(a
Book-of-the-Month Club selection
in 19^0) was
partially
autobiographical
and
partially based
on the
case
of
Robert Nixon,
"a
Chicago Negro
who was put to
death
in the
electric chair
in
1938 for the
murder
of a
white girl."^ Paul Green,
the
white
Pulitzer Prize winning author
of a
drama
of
Negro life,"
In
Abraham's Bosom, offered
to
adapt
the
novel
for the
stage.
Be-
fore beginning
the
adaptation, Green asked permission
to
"poke
x
-'Loften Mitchell, Black Drama
(New
York,
1967^ p. 139.
^Ibid.
t p. 135. ,
^Doris Abramson, Negro Playwrights
in the
American Theatre
1925-1939
(New
York, 196*9),
p. 1367~ "
61
6
some
fun at the
gravity
of
communism
and its
claims"
and "to
make Bigger Thomas partly rosiDOnsiblo
and
consciously
so for
7
his
'lost' condition
and the
murder
of the
white girl."
Wrightt present
at the
"arduous sessions"
of
adaptation,
did
some revision himself
on the
ten-scene play which
was
staged
without
an
intermission. Orson Welles
was
responsible
for the
staging
of
Native
Son, and his
treatment
was "as
impressive
O
a
theatre exhibit
as has
been produced
in
years." Brooks
Atkinson
of The New
York Times considered
the
play
"the
Q
biggest American drama
of the
season,
Bigger Thomas,
the
main character,
is a
hate-filled young
Negro. "Only
an
examination
of the
play, scene
by
scene,
can
reveal
the
problems that feed
the
overwhelming frustration which
erupts into violence"^ that Bigger harbors.
He has a
"color
complex,"
his
father having been killed
in a
race riot
in
Mississippi.
He
lives
in the
Chicago South Side slum with
his
mother, brother,
and
sister. They
are on
relief;
and
Miss Emmet,
a
social worker,
is
trying
to get
Bigger
a job. She
gets
him a
job as
chauffeur
to Mr.
Dalton, owner
of the
tenement
in
which
he
lives. Jack,
one of his
friends, prophetically proclaims,
6Ibid.,
p. 138.
7Ibid.
O
Burns Mantle, editor,
The
Best Plays
of
1940-41
(New
York.
1941),
P. 29.
9Ibid.,
p. 30.
10
Abramson,
p. 139«
62
"Take more'n
a job to
cure what ails
him.'
Bigger1s
job Is
to
take care
of the
plants,
the
turnace,
and
Miss Mary,
the
college-age daughter
of Mr.
Dalton,
who is a
member
of the
"penitent rich"
and who has
communistic inclinations. Mary
confronts Bigger with
her
ideas, which intimidate
him. On
his
first night
at
work,
she
drinks
too
much,
as she
usually
does,
and she
forces
the
frightened
and
unwilling Bigger
to
take
her
upstairs
to her
room when
she
returns home.
She
passes
out, and her
blind mother enters calling
for her.
Mary awakens,
so
Bigger puts
a
pillow over
her
head,
for he
knows
he
will
be
killed
if Mrs.
Dalton discovers
him in the
bedroom.
He
inad-
vertently suffocates Mary with
the
pillow,
and
instead
of con-
fronting
the
white power structure with
the
truth,
he
carries
the
body downstairs
and
burns
it in the
furnace.
In the in-
vestigation into Mary's whereabouts
the
following morning,
Bigger
is
questioned
and
then generally ignored,
for no sus-
picion
is on him.
While
the
killing
is the
emotional high point
of the
play,
the
turning point
for
Bigger takes place when
he
'decides
to
blackmail
the
Daltons,
pre
tending Mary
has
been kidnapped.
However,
one of the
reporters
on "the
kidnapping case" guesses
the
truth,
and
Bigger goes into hiding.
He is
discovered,
and
during
the
ensuing
gun
battle,
he
holds
his
girl friend, Clara,
in
front
of him. She is
shot
and
killed.
The
following scene
11
Mantle,
p. 37.
63
is in the
courtroom
and
consists
of the
closing remarks
of the
attorneys
to the
jury, Bigger pleads guilty,
and the
defense
attorney, understanding
the
circumstances, asks that
his
life
be
spared. Speaking' eloquently,
in
Bigger's defense
in "one
of the
strongest indictments
of
white society that exists
in
12
American literature,"
the
attorney says, "There
is
guilt
in
the
rage that demands that this man's life be'stamped outl
There
is
guilt
and
responsibility
in the
hate that inflames
1 5
the mob
gathered
in the
streets below these windows."
Big-
ger is
sentenced
to
death,
and
even
Mrs.
Dalton's plea
for
clemency
is
denied
by the
governor.
He is
executed.
Despite
the
violence,
the
indictment
of
white American
society,
and the
reference
to
black-white
sex
relations, "audi-
ences supported-
the
play
as no one in the
world ever dreamed
1 1
they would,"It
was the
forerunner
of a new
type
of
play
that
was to
become common
in the
fifties
and
sixties—the
race-war play.
In
these works, Negro playwrights cease
to
be
concerned with pleasing white audiences
and
often attack
the
white American society.
When
the
play went
on
tour across
the
United States',
the
Negro members
of the
cast were subjected
to
some
of the'
social
conditions described
in the
play.
•
Discrimination
in
hotels
and
restaurants
was
constant,
as was
damage
to
advertisements showing
12
Abramson,
p. 1^0.
^Mantle,
pp.
58-59•
^^Abramson,
p, 161.
' • 6^
the
Negro cast members«
The
play
was
viewed
by a,
segregated
audience
in
most cities.
For
instance,
at the
American Theatre
.in
Saint Louis, Negroes were allowed only twelve seats,
and
these
were
in a
roped-off section
of the
balcony*
One of the men
present
on
opening night,
the
editor
of the
local Negro news-
paper, said,
"he had
never felt more vindicated sitting
in the
roped-off section
of the
balcony,
as a
living example
of
what
1 5
the
white audience
was
hearing
on the
stage."
Native
Son was
used
as the
basis
of an
unsuccessful film
in
Argentina
in 1950
with
the
aithor playing
the
leading role.
Another novel
by
Wright,
The,
Long Dream,
was
unsuccessfully
adapted
for the
Broadway stage
in
I960
by
Ketti Frings, leav-
ing
Native
Son as
Weight's best novel
and
best play.
The
second play
by a
Negro playwright
to
reach Broadway
during
the
forties,
Our Lan1, was the
work
of
Theodore Ward.
Ward
had
attended
the
University
of
Wisconsin
on a
Zona Gale
Scholarship
for two
years
and had won the
creative writing award
in
both years.
He had
written
a
play
for one of his
courses,
and
subsequently turned from short stories
and
poetry
to
drama.
After having completed
his
education,
he saw a few
"agitprop"
plays
in
Chicago which made
him mad
enough
to try to
write
16
something better;
a
one-act play, Sick
and
Tiahd,
was the re-
sult.
He.
worked
as
recreational director
for the
Abraham
1^Ibid.,
p. 162.
1
f
^Abramson,
p. 110.
65
Lincoln Center before joining
the
Federal Theatre Unit
in
Chicago, where
his
first full-length play,
Big
White
Fog, was
produced
in 1938. The
production attracted criticism
for its
conclusion,
for it
proposed revolution
as a
solution
to the
Negro problem.
It was not
attacked
by the
critics, however,
and ran ten
weeks.
It
then moved
to New
York, where
it was
seen
by
24,000 whites
and 1 ,500
Negroes. Ward continued
to
write plays while working
in
various jobs,
and in the
next
few
years,
he
completed four plays•
In 1941, he
tried unsuc-
cessfully
to get an
early version
of Our Lan'
produced
in
Chicago.
He
then offered
his
services
to the
Writers'
War
Board
in 1942, for he had an
idea
for a
play about Frederick
Douglass which would boost
the
morale
of
Negro troops,
but
his
idea
was
re'fused.
In 1945, he was
writing scripts
for
overseas broadcasts
for the
Office
of War
Information,
but
this agency soon closed.
In 1945, he
rev/rote
Our Lan1, and
the
revised play
won for him the
Negro
of the
Year award
in
1947 for his
contribution
to the
American theatre.
The
National Theatre Conference then gave
him two
grants,
and
he
wrote John Brown.
In 1952, his
plays Throwback
and
Whole
Hog or
Nothing were presented
at the
Chicago
11th
Street Theatre,
In all,
Ward wrote over twenty plays, including eight full-
length works
and the
libretti
for two
operas.^
17
'Kenneth Howe,
A
Theater
in
Your Head
(New
York. 1960).
pp.
259-260.
' • 66
Ward's first play
to be
produced,
Big
White
Fog, is a
three-act propaganda piece which deals with
a.
Negro family,
the
Masons,
in
Chicago between
1922 and
1932•
The
Masons
represent Negro development during this decade
and are
involved
in the
issues
of
that period, Victor Mason,
the
father,
is a
Garveyite,
and his
speeches defend
the
Garvey doctrine
of
Back-to-Africa. Though Victor
is
opposed
by his
family,
he
buys
1^00
shares
in the
Black -Star Line, Garvey•
s
ship line,
that
is to
carry
the
Negro
to
glory.
A
year passes,
and
Garvey
is
convicted
of
fraud. Victor
is out of
work,but
he
desperately
clings
to his
fervent hope
for a
better future
in
Africa
and
refuses
to
sell
his
stock
in
Garvey's line. When
a
friend
of
Victor's
son, a
Jewish college student, visits
the
family
and
espouses
a
banding together
of
minority groups, Victor
is
unable
to
accept
the
philosophy
of
blacks
and
whites working together.
The
family's conditions worsen,
and,
faced with eviction, Victor
in
desperation takes
a
stand with
the
"Reds"
and is
subsequently
shot
in the
back
by the
police.
.
Besides economic
and
political issues,
the
play deals with
the
social issue
of
color among Negroes.
The
Garveyite pride
in
blackness
is
represented,
for the
well-intentioned
men are
described
as
black
and the
character
who
cheats
and
steals
is
a
mulatto. When
a
family dispute arises,
the
color question
is
brought
to
bear. Victor tells
his
proud, light mother-in-law
that
she has a
dishonest attitude toward color,
for
pride
in
67
18
"the
blood
of, •
.raping ancestors
is
idiotic."
Big
White
Fog is
obviously bitter
and
blatantly propagandists•
The
author
was
disappointed
at the
reception
and was to say a de~ •
cade later that
the
Negro audience
was not
ready
for the
theatre
19
in 19^0, for "the
group needed
a
larger sense
of
understanding."
Critics,
as
well
as
audiences, found fault with
the
play.
John Mason Brown stated that Ward "struggles ineptly
to
give
dramatic statement
to
what
is he
art-breaking
in the
Negro's
20
life." Brooks Atkinson objected
to the
ending
and
found
the
work monotonous; nonetheless,
he
praised
it as the
"best
serious play
of
Negro authorship about race problems"
he had
pi
seen.~ Ralph Ellison found
the
theme dated
and the
language
unimaginative, though Loften Mitchell considered
the
work
22
"poetically inclined"
and
glowing with theatricality. Accord-
ing to
Doris Abramson,
"Big
White
Fog
remains
a
good example
of a
bold play
in the
politically conscious genre
by a
Negro
who
made
no
concessions
to the
white man's theatre tastes."2^
Ward's craftsmanship
as a
playwright- improved markedly
between
his
writing
of Big
White
Fog and his
witting
of the
final
1R
Abramson,
p. 11 if.
1^Ibid.,
p. 116.
2QIbid.,
p. 158.
21
Ibid.
22Mitchell,
p. 11 if.
2^Abramson,
p. 116.
68
version
of Our
Lau5,
for the
iutari/r* years were spent
in
studying, researching,
and
gainlrg practical experience
in
the
theatre*
The
draft
of Our Lan! won for the
author
a
Theatre Guild. Scholarship
end
membership
in a
playwrighting
seminar,
in
1Ward rewrote
the
play during
the
seminar,
and it was
presented off-Broadway
at the
Henry Street Playhouse
in 19V? for one
week.
The
play attracted
so
much attention
that Broadv/ay producers competed
for
ifc,2if
It
opened
at the
Royale Theatre
in
September with Eddie Bowling directing.
Cowling tried
to
make
the
play simple
and
childlike,2^
and
"Mr,
Ward
v/as
justifiably upset
and
angered over what
was
done
26
to his
play."
The
play
had
forty-one performances before
closing.
Critics generally acclaimed
the
work. Brooks Atkinson
called
the
play
one of the
best
of the
season with
"a
natural
and
easy narrative"
and
"warmth
of
humanity.Louis
Kronenberger. considered
the
work objective
and
humane, though
he had
reservations about
the
structure,28 which
was
episodic.
Kenneth Rove described
the
play
as
having
"an
effect that
is
heart—wrenching
but
iilled with beauty, purity
of
emotion,
and
24Powe,
p. 257.
^Mitchell,
p. 133.
26Ibld.,
p. 134.
2^Rowe,
p. 2^7.
28Ibids
69
dignity /whicfi}
has
been bui.lt seep
by
step with dramatic
truth
and
naturalness
to the
characters
and
situation,
and is '
pg
proportionate
to the
subject
and
development
of the
play.1'"7
Doris Abramson wrote that
it is "a
nearly perfect play,"
30
perhaps
"the
finest play ever written
by an
American Negro,
Our Lan1 is a
historical two-act play
in
dialect about
the
Negro dream
of and
determination
for
owning land after
the
Emancipation.
The
play opens
in a
cave
in
Georgia
in 1865
with
the
recently freed inhabitants talking.
The
rumor that
Sherman
is to
give away land
in
Savannah
the
next morning
reaches these people,
and
they leave
for the
city# They
are
given land
on an
island
off the
Georgia coast, land which
had
been part
of a
plantation
be
fore
the war, and the
remainder
of
the
play takes place there. When Saunders,
the
overseer,
con-
fronts
the
Negroes, they
re
fuse
to
leave,
and he
utters
the
prophetic "Yuh'll learn!" Joshua Tain,
an
ex-slave with
a
dream
for his
people, leads
the
group
in its
remaking
of the
deserted island into
a
productive-
and
habitable place.
The
Negroes
are
without
the
necessary tools
and
have little shelter,
but
they persevere® They harness themselves like mules
and
sing
work songs while they toil. Ollie Webster,-
a
mulatto freedman,
offers
to
lend them
a
piece
of
machinery
and
procures
a
teacher
from
the
North
for the
dedicated group.
At the
close
of Act I,
2^Rowe,
p.
1+2.5•
Abramson,
p. 135*
70
the
news that Lincoln
has
boon assassinated reaches
the
island,
Ollie's father tries
to
convince Joshua
to
give
up the
land
and try to
get.the vofce,
but
Joshua refuses, saying
the
vote
did not
benefit
the
poor whites
and it
would
not
advance
the
poor Negro,
The
undaunted Joshua
is "the
essential character
of the
classical tragic protagonist, possessed
by a
single idea
"51
with
an
inner necessity which admits
of no
compromise•
Act II
begins
on a
note
of
doom with Ollie coming
for the-
equipment
he has
loaned them. Good news comes with
the
passage
of the
Stevens Amendment
to the
Civil Rights Bill, which gives
the
freedmen
the
.right
to the
land they
are
working,
but
they
learn they cannot sell
the
cotton they have already harvested
without
a
white "agent," Then word comes that President Johnson
has
vetoed
the
fciv.il
Rights Bill,
The
army comes
to
take
the
land
for the
lawful owner,
and the
Negroes
set up a
barricade
and
fight
for the
land, knowing there
is no
chance
for
survival•
The
play
has ten
episodes, with
the
turning point (Lincoln's
death)} coming
in the
middle, This creates
two
balanced acts,
with
the
first
act
being
one of
high hope, confidence,
and
achievement,
and the
second
act
being
one of
continued hope
but
disappointing setbacks.
The
crisis occurs four-fifths
of the
way
through
the
play when
the
former plantation owner returns
to
demand
the
land
and the
army enforces
his
claim
to the
prop-
erty,
A
great deal
of
foreshadowing
is
used, which helps create
^1Rcwe,
p, 349 •
71
a
subtle undercurrent
of
tenseness throughout
the
action.
Music
and
quotes from
the
Bible
are
used
to
help
set
moods
and
provide shifts in.the play's tempo,
and the
correspond-
ing
rhythmic ?/ork
and
work song scenes give
a
feeling
of
choreographed movement® There
is a
simplicity
of
character,
action,
and
speech which
has an
especially strong dramatic
effect,
for "it is the
illusion
of
unglossed reality
in the
representation
of the
freed slaves throughout
the
play that
gives conviction
to
their heroism.'
The
play
is in
dialect
but
nonetheless achieves
a
"magnificent unstrained poetry
of
speech."
The
play also contains
a
love story. Joshua,
an
older
man,
loves Delphine,
a
lovely young brown girl.
He has
doubts
about their relationship because
of
their
age
difference,
and
hesitates
to
speak
to her
about
his
feelings.
She
loves
him
also
and
suspects
the
reason
for his
silence. Ollie,
the
mulatto
freedman, offers
to
"sponsor" Delphine
in
Savannah
and
make
"her
a
lady,
but she
refuses
him. He
seduces
her, and she
soon
realizes that
she is
going
to
have
his
child. Jo.shua speaks
to her of his
affections,
and she is
forced
to
tell
him her
situation.
He
replies
in
bitterness,
and
their relationship
seems ended. However,
in an
ensuing scene, Joshua hears members
of the
community ridiculing Delphine about
her
condition, which
-
^Rowe,
p.
if03.
33Ibid.,
p. 415.
72
has
become evident* Joshua aays that they have guessed
the
truths implying
the
child
is his, and
announces that
he and
Delphine
are to. be
mar'ried,
The way in
which
the
love story
is
integrated with
the
main story
of the
play
is
significant,
for
Joshua
and
Delphine
see
their love
as
representing
a
future home
for
them* They
ere
denied their home when Joshua
is
killed, just
as the
freedmen
are
denied their homes when
the
Civil Rights Bill
is
vetoed
and
their land seized.
The
play, carefully
and
intricately structured,remains
an
artistic landmark
in
Negro drama.
No
other playwright
of
the
forties
was so
artistically successful.
Mother playwright
of the
period, Abram Hill, co-founder
of the
American Negro Theatre
and
co-author
of the
unproduced
play Liberty Deferred, also
had a
substantial background
as
a
playwright.
1-Ie
served
as an
assistant
at the
Lincoln
University Drama Department, worked
as a
consultant
for the
Federal Theatre, studied playwrighting
at
Columbia,
and was
awarded
a
scholarship
to the
dramatic Workshop
of the New
School
for
Social Research.
On
Strivers
Roy/, a
comedy,
was
his
first play
to be
produced. Strivers
Row was a
block
of •
brick houses
in
Harlem,
in
which
the
wealthy Negroes lived,
and the
play
of
that name deals with
the
Negro middle class,
specifically,
the Van
Strivens,
who
live
on
that street.
In
Act I,
this family generally recites "black bourgeoisie striv-
ings, prejudices,
and
social cant,"^
and
denounces everything
-x>t
-
fAbramson,
p. 99*
73
that whites associate with Negroes, such
as gin
parties
and
chitterlings.
The
daughter, Cobina,
a
student
of
Radcliffe,
is
preparing
for a
debut
she
does
not
want.
Act II is the
debut itself, complete with zoot suiters, v/ild dances, quarrels,
love scenes,
and at the end, a
full scale brawl•
In Act III,
the few
guests left
at the
debut
are
conversing,
and
Ruby,
an
ex-cook
who has won the
sweepstakes
and is
trying
to
break into
"society," accuses
Mrs. Van
Striven
of
being
a
snob.
Mrs. Van
Striven admits being
a
snob
and
says snobbery
is a
"healthy form
of
self-egotism.She then tells Ruby that
an
ex-cook will
never
be
accepted
by
"society."
For
unknown reasons,
Mrs. Van
Striven does accept Ruby
at the end of the
play, however, even
inviting
her to
spend
the
night.
"The
ending
is
happy
if
weak,
resolved
for the
moment
but
left hanging
in
terms
of
both
the
play's construction
and the
various problems hinted
at but
never
really faced.
•
Louis Kronenberger observed
the
following:
This
is a
satire
on
Harlem's snobs
and
social climbers,
and
healthy, proof that Harlem
can
laugh
at
itself....
Mr.
Hill works
on two
levels: comic-strip burlesque
and
fairly harsh satire.
He
uses laughing
gas on his
uppity
folk when they strike fancy attitudes,
and on the
more
boisterous guests when they
get too
happy
or
plastered.
But he
also squirts poison
on the
crueler aspects
of
snobbery,
on an
uppe^-class psychology that
can be in-
solent
and
inhumane.-2'
-^Abramson,
p. 101.
36Ibid.
37Ibld., pp.101-102.
74
Hill also wrote Hell1
s
Half Azro, which
was not
presented
professionally. Besides writing original plays,
he
adapted
a
number
of
works
for the
stage,
His
adaptation
of
Anna Lucasta—
he
made
the
Polish family
a
Negro family—played
on
Broadway#
He
also adapted
Len
Zinberg's novel Walk Hard-Talk loud, call-
ing it
Walk Hard. After adapting
The
Power
of
Darkness, Hill
left
the
theatre
to
teach.
His
departure
is not
considered
a
great loss
to the
theatre
by
most critics,
and
Doris Abramson
found Hill
the
only Negro playwright
of the
forties
who "had
little
to say and
little will
to
discipline what talent
he
xft
possessed,
n->
Nonetheless,
On
Strivers
Row was
popular
and .
was
revived often
in
Harlem,
Another playwright
of the
forties, Theodore Brown, also
had
written
for the
Federal Theatre
in the
thirties.
He
worked
with
the
Seattle unit, writing
Go
Down Moses
as
well
as
adapting
Lysistrata.
His
Natural
Man, a
play based
on the
John Henry
legend,
had
originally been written
as an
opera
for the
Seattle
unit
and had run
there
for
nearly
a
month
in 1937. By the
time
the
play reached
New
York,
the
music
had
been
cut
considerably,
and the
play
was
described
as a
folk drama.
In
this form,
Natural
Man was the
second production
of the
American Negro
Theatre, opening
May 7, 19'f 1 , and was the
first play
by
that
theatre to"be reviewed
by the
daily press,
the
reviews being
favorable. After
the
play
had
closed
for the
summer,
the
begin-*
ning
of
World
War II
prevented
the
intended reopening.
It is
*^Ibid..
"d- 1 ^ -
• 75
considered
the
"best
and
most significant11 American Negro
Theatre production,^
In it,
John Henry symbolizes
the
Negro's
will
to
survive against impossible odds.
The
first
two
scenes
of the
play
lay the
goundwork
for the
contest
to
take place
the
following
day
between John Henry
and the
machine•
The
next
scenes
are
flashbacks
of
John Henry's life—working
on the
chain gang, escaping, asking
a
camp meeting
for
help
and
being
refused, seeing
the
Memphis underworld, seeing
the
hobo world,
going north
for
work
and
being assailed
by
whites,
and
landing
in
jail where
he is
tormented
by
whites.
He
tells
his
tormen-
tors that being Negro
is
like being
a
giant
in a
straight jacket/5"0
He
says,
"I
ain't asking
you all to
thank
me for
what
I do, I
ain't asking
you to be my
friend, Ain'twishing
to eat at the
same table with
you, . .all I ask is
that
you let me be,"^
The
last
two
scenes return
him to the
contest
and
show
his
death,
Louis Kronenberger believed John Henry suffered from
a
refusal
to
accept laws other than
his own;
John Mason Brown
basically agreed with Kronenberger
and
added that John Henry
had a
lack
of
discipline.
The
Daily Worker critic, however,
saw the
play
as
dealing with
the
relationship between cheap
labor
and the
profit system.
"All the
critics praised
the
production
as a
theatre piecethough Brooks Atkinson rightly,
observed that
the
play
was a
scenario
and not
fully developed.
-^Abramson,
p. 103.
^°Ibid.,
p. 108.
^Ibid,,
p. 103.
^Tbid.,
p. 109,
' . 76
There were some ruinor works
by
Negroes during this decade,
such
as
Harold Ilolifield's
Cow in the
Apartment, which showed
•at the 115th
Street People's Theatre,
and
Gertrude" Jeanette's
This
Day
Forward, which
was
produced
at the
Elks Community
Theatre. George Norford wrote
Joy
Exceeding Glory
and
Owen
Dodson offered
The
Garden
of
Time, Generally, however,
the
plays
by
Negroes
in the
forties*—few though they were—stand
as
notable works
of
social significance
and
artistic merit.
David LittleJohn maintains that most
of the
Negro litera-
ture before
19^0 has
commanded attention
on its
race pride
value alone—its value
for
Negro education
and
Negro self-
celebration.
^ The
forties, therefore, began
the
period
of
sophisticated Negro drama;
the
playwrights were better educated
than their predecessors
and had the
benefit
of
experience from
having worked
in the
Federal Theatre while
it had
operated.
The
plays
of the
period deal with persistent Negro problems,
thus attaining
a
timeless quality.
The
forties seem
to be
the
transitional decade from undeveloped Negro drama
to a
sophisticated modern Negro drama. According
to
Loften Mitchell,
the
forties also began
a new
movement
in
Negro theatre,
one
that continued
to
develop
in the
next
tv/o
decades. Many Negro
writers ceased being "interested
in
presenting work.
„
.pala-
table
to
white audiences."^
The new
movement
"is
evident
^David Littlejohn, Black
on
White
(New
York, 1966),
p. 67.
^Mitchell,
p. 130,
Yi
in the
writing
of
James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones, William Branch,
Alice Childress, Adrienno Kennedy,
and
many other iMegro
playwrights
who
flourished
in the
fifties
and
sixties.
Ibid,
CHAPIEK
VI
•
TILS FIFTIES
In the
fifties, "Negro protest
in the
form,
of
direct
action became
an
accepted part
of the
American scene.In
195^ the
Supreme Court decided
in
Brown
v.
Board
of
Educa-
cation that separate facilities were
not
equal facilities,
and"
this decision
led to
Black-White confrontations
on
school
steps
in
some states
and
began
a new
attack
on
discrimina-
tory legislation
and
practice. Black organizations sprang
up and
gained importance; some advocated total integration
and
some advocated total segregation,
but all
advocated
action.
"The
American theatre
of the
fifties
was
more
con-
scious
of
Negroes than ever before because
the
nation
as a
2
whole
was
being made more conscious
of
them." Negroes were
no
longer barred flrom
or
segregated
in
Broadway theatres.
President Eisenhower recruited
the aid of
Jack Warner
(of the
motion picutre industry)
in
eliminating
Jim
Crow from
the
theatres
of
Washington,
D. C., an
action v/hich
was
intended
•Z
to
serve
as an
example
to the
rest
of the
country. "Also,
^
Doris Abramson, Negro Playwrights
in the
American
Theatre 1925-1959 (New~Y'o.rk, 196"9)~,
p. lUS. '
2Ibid..,
p. 170o
^"Historic Decision
for
Equality" Life, XXXVI
(May 31.
19M, 10. /
73
79
Negro actors were occasionally employed
for
their talent,
not
just their color, although they continued
to
play stereotypical
roles
in
many productions,Negro playwrights continued
to
organize
in
Harlem
in an
attempt
to
make possible
the
produc-
tion
of
their plays.
Actor-writer Charles Griffin compiled figures which
showed that more Negro actors
had
worked regularly during
the
depression than during
the
early fifties,
and
this moved
the
Harlem theatre groups
to
action. Representatives
of the
four
drama groups
in
Harlem—Harlem Showcase, Committee
for
Negroes
in the
Arts, Elks Community Theatre,
and
Penthouse Players-
met and
established
the
Council
of the
Harlem Theatre.
The
Council
had
three aims:
1• To
support mutually local drama groups
by
using actors,
scenery, mailing lists
and
audiences,
?.» To
create
a
calendar that would prevent
a
conflict
in
terms
of
production scheduling,
3. To
agitate
and
press
for the
production
of
plays that
would reflect
the
Negro culture
in its
true light.
Many productions benefited from
the
work
of the
council; among
them were Gertrude Jeanette's Bolt from
the
Blue, Harold
Holi field's fantasy,
J.
Toth, Loft
en
Mitchell's
The
Cellar,
and
.Alice Childress1 Just
a
Little Simple,
an
adaptation
of
Langston Hughes' novel, Simple_ Speaks
His
Mind.
^Abramson,
p. 167,
^Loften Mitchell, Black Drama
(New
York, 1967),
p. 12f5.
80
Alice Childress,
an
actress,
had
previously written only
one
play, Florence*
It had
been written
in a
single night
"to
settle
an
argument with fellow actors."^
In it, she
under-
took
the
task
of
making
an
everyday event interesting drama-
tically. Florence,
a
one-act play, shows
a
Negro woman
and
white woman trying
to
communicate
in a
segregated .Southern
train station.
It was
produced
by the
American Negro Theatre
in 1950 and
published
in
Masses
and
Mainstream
in 1951*
*
Florence
and
Just
a
Little Simple opened at.the Club
Baron together
in
September
of 1950, and the
producers
re-
jected
an
offer
to
move
the
latter play
to
Broadway,
for the
purpose
of
staging
it
"uptown"
was to
help build
a
Negro theatre,'
Just
a
Little Simple
is a
"dramatic-musical-revue" with Jess
Simple,
the
title character, used
as a
master
of
ceremonies
in a
Harlem variety show® Sketches
by
Langston Hughes
are
skillfully woven into
the
show,-
and the"
work
had a
total audience
of
8,000 people,
"It was
obvious
to all
that Harlem
had
o
another
hit
show,11
•
"Alice Childress
has
been, from
the
beginning,
a
crusader
and a
writer
who
resists compromise.
She
tries
to
write about
Negro problems
as
honestly
as she can, and she
refuses produc-
tion
of her
plays
if the
producer wants
to
change them
in a
6
Abramson,
p, 189 •
^Mitchell,
p» 147 •
8Ibid.
81
Q
way
which distorts
her
intentions,"y
Her
first full-length
play, Trouble
in
Mindt
is a
good example
of
this.
It was pro-
duced off-Broadway
at the
Greenwich Mews Theatre
in 1955 and
was
optioned
for
Broadway.
The
producer asked
for
changes
in
the
script, which Miss Childress opposed,
and she
subsequently
withdrew
her
work.
It ran
off-Broadway
for 91
performances.
In a
speech about
the
Negro writers' position
in
America, Miss
Childress observed that "much
has
been pruned from
our
manu-
scripts before
the
public
has
been allowed
a
glimpse
of a
finished work.
It is
ironical that those
who
oppose
us are in
a
position
to
dictate
the
quality
and
quantity
of our
contri-
butions."^
Trouble
in
Mind,
a
three-act play, shows
the
interaction
between cast members during
a
four-day rehearsal period
for
a
play.
The
cast
is
mixed racially,
and the
director,
Mr.
Manner,
is
white.
The
play opens with Wiletta,
a
veteran Negro
actress, giving
a new
Negro actor advice
on
"getting along"
in
the
world
of
show business.
In
essence,
she
tells
him to act
like
the
stereotype
on
stage
and off. The
play-within-the-play,
Chaos
in
Belleville»
is
about
a
young Negro
who
votes
and is
killed
for
doing
so.
Wiletta plays
the
boy's mother,
who
sends
her son to his
death. Wiletta refuses
to do the
script
as it
^Abramson,
p. 189*
10
Loften Mitchell,
"The
Negro Writer
and His
Materials,"
in The
American Negro Writer
and His
Roots
(New
York,, 1960),
p. 59,
82
is
written,
for it is
unrealistic,
and, "she
cannot believe
what
she is
being asked
to do and say in the
play."
The
director admits that
the
public wants stereotypes,
not
truth,
and a
confrontation ensues between
him and
Wiletta,
who
demands
to be
fired.
She is, but her
comments bring
the
director
and
cast around
to her
viewpoint,
and the
play ends
on an
optimistic
note with
Mr.
Manners suggesting they
all
meet with
the
author
for
some revisions
"and try to
find
a way to
bring some splin-
.
ter of
truth
to a
prejudiced audience.2
The
play
is
obvi-
ously laced with Negro problems,
but it was
considered "fresh,
lively
and
cutting satire"
by
Brooks Atkinson.Loften Mitchell
considered Miss Childress
"a
major talent that
is
rarely
pro-
1 k
duced."'^
Two of her
plays,
A Man
Bearing
a
Pitcher
and
Wedding Band, have
not yet
been produced, though
the
latter
was
optioned
and
scheduled
to
open
on
Broadway
in the
late
sixties.
Loften Mitchell,
an
active playwright during this period,
also benefited significantly from
the
efforts
of the
Council
on the
Harlem Theatre.
Two of his
plays,
The
Cellar
and
Bancro
ft
Dynasty« were produced
at the
Harlem Showcase.
The
author describes
The
Cellar
as "a
melodrama about
a
Negro blues
singer
who
befriends
a
fugitive from Southern injustice.
The
I 1
Abramson,
p. 198.
12rold.,
p. 203.
^Ibid.,
p.
204*
1 if
Mitchell, Black .Drama,
p, 169.
83
singer's fianc<3
is a
brutal detective, anxious
to rid
Harlem
of
those elements that give
it a bad
name.
He
hounds
the
i 5
fugitive
to the
point
of
destruction®"
^ The
play
v/as
planned
to run for
three week-end showings;
it
showed from .November
of 1952 to
April
of 1953.
Mitchell's next play,
A
Land Beyond
the
River,
was a
historical piece based upon
the
struggle
of the
rural Negroes
of
Clarendon County, South Carolina,
and
their leader,
the
Reverend
Dr.
DeLaine. With
the
urging
of
Thurgood Marshall,
these people, originally petitioning
for
school busses, changed
the
petition
to one for
equal schooling.
It v/as one of the
cases that brought about
the
Brown
vs.
Board
of
Education
decision
in the
Supreme Court. After this Supreme Court
de-
cision
had
been delivered,
the
Negroes
of
Clarendon County
be-
gan to
suffer economic reprisals,
and Dr..
DeLaine fled
the
state
for his own
safety.
A
Land Beyond
the
River, scheduled
for a
ten-week
run,
opened
in
March
of 1957 and ran
throughout
the
rest
of the
year.
It v/as
also used
by the
United Automo-
bile Workers
to
raise money
to buy a
harvesting combine
for
the
Clarendon County Negroes
and it
toured several cities.
Mitchell wrote
A
Land Beyond
the
River
at the
urging
of
Ossie Davis,
an
actor-playwright
who
also benefited from
the
Council
on the
Harlem Theatre. Davis' first play, Alice
in
Wonder, opened
at the
Elks Community Theatre
in
September
of
'^Mitchell
f
Black Drama,
p. 158..
8^
1952 • In the
one-act. play, Alice's husband,
Jay, is
offered
a
television contract
by a
national network.
The
network
director asks
Jay to go to
Washington,
D. C., to
denounce
a
militant Negro singer before
an
investigating committee,
and
Jay
agrees, Alice's brother
has
been helping
the
singer,
and
Alice sees Jay's agreement
to
testify
as a
"sell-out"
and .
leaves
him.
Stanley Greene optioned
the
play,
dnd
Davis made
it
into
a
full-length piece
and
retitled
it The Big
Deal.
In
this form,
it
opened
at the New
Playwrights Theatre
In 1953
1 C
and
"enjoyed
a
good
run."
According
to the
playwright,
19
there
is no
script extant•
'
Langston Hughes continued
to
produce plays
in
this period,
and in the
1956-57 season,
he
wrote Simply Heavenly with David
a
Martin,
It is a
two-act comedy based
on
Hughes' work Simple
Takes
a
Wife, using
the
title character Harlem loved, Jess
Simple,
The
characters
are
ordinary Harlemites—hard working,
lower income people—and they
run the
gamut
of
types. Accord-
ing to the
author, "Simple
is a
Chaplinesque character."1^
Nothing goes right
for
Simple despite
his
good intentions.
He
loves Joyce,
a
virtuous lady,
but is
still married
to
Isabel
and
cannot afford
a
divorce, though they have been separated
for
five years. Zarita,
an
attractive young woman
who
loves
16-
'Ibid,,
p. 155,
i
18
1 7
Abr&rason,
p.
299*
Langston Hughes, Five Plays (Bloomington, 196.3),
p. 11J?,
85
life
and
lives freely, talks Simple into going
for a
ride.
They
are
involved
in an
accident,
and
Simple ends
up in
traction
in the
hospital. Quite naturally, Joyce
is not
pleased. Simple receives
a
letter from
his
wife telling
him
that
she is
filing
for a
divorce,
and he
must
pay
one-third
of the fee,
$133»33» Simple does
not
tell Joyce about
the
letter,
as he
wants
to
surprise
her
when
he has the
divorce.
In Act II, he is
laid
off
work,
and
Joyce takes
his
laundry
to
help
him. On
Zarita's birthday,
she
brings
her
party
to
Sirnple's room
to try to
cheer
him up, and
while
the
party
is
in
progress, Joyce comes
to
deliver
the
laundry
she has
taken.
Once again,
she is
displeased with Simple1s irresponsibility,
,
and
this time,
she
breaks
up
with
him.
Simple's friend, Boyd,
goes
to her and
tells
her the
truth about
the
party,
so she
apologizes
to
Simple.
He
refuses
to
take
her
back, hov/ever,
saying
she was
right,
and
until
he
changes,
she
must
not see
him.
They
are
apart
for
several months,
and on
Christmas
Eve,
Simple calls
her to
come over
for her
Christmas presents.
He
gives
her the
divorce decree,
a
letter
of
consent from
her
father,
and a
ring. They begin
to
make plans
for a
June
wedding.
Characteristically, Hughes includes
a
great deal
of
poetry
and,
singing
as an
integral part
of the
play. Apparently,
he
also includes'some advice
for
fellow Negroes,
for a
writer,
Boyd, tells Simple,
in the
play:
86
Aw,
sto.p feeling sorry
for
yourself just because you're
colored.
You
can't
use
race
as an
excuse forever*
All
men
have problems.
And
even
if you are
colored, you've
got to
swim beyond color,
and get to
that island that
is
you—the human
you, the man
you.'>
The
y/ork contains many humorous lines
and
scenes,
and it was
popular, especially with Harlem audiencesa
It ran
both
on and
off
Broadway.
William Branch
(who
also writes
for the
radio, filing
and
television)
v/as
another playwright
of the
period®
His
first
play,
A
Medal
for
Williet written when
he was
twenty-four,
opened October 11951#
at the
Club Baron
in
Harlem.
The
fact
that Branch
was
drafted into
the
army
the day
after
his
play
had
opened
is
interesting since
the
work
is a
seven-scene piece
about
the
posthumous awarding
of a
medal
of
honor
to
Willie
Jackson,
who
died
a
hero fighting
for his
country.
The
atti-
tudes
of a
Southern community, Midway,
are
shown,
and
both
prejudiced find objective viewpoints
are
presented.
At the
ceremony
to
award
the
medal
to
Willie's mother,
a
general gives
a
speech,
and Mrs.
Jackson
is
supposed
to
read
a
speech
the
school principal typed
out for her. She
begins
but is
unable
to
continue.
She
says Willie should have "come down here with
PC)
his
machine
gun and
shot
up
some white folks."
She
throws
the
medal
in the
faces
of the
townspeople
and
leaves.
1 9
^Hughes,
p. 1Zf7.
^Mitchell, Black Drama,
p. 1^2.
8?
According
to
Lofton
i'litchel"!,
Mr*
Branch's play didn't
21
only shock white people.
It
shocked Negroes,It
was not
only
the
ending that created controversy,
for
"pandemonium
and
paranoia" raged
in the
Negro community over
a
scene
in
which
a
Negro woman
is
having
her
hair straightened.
E,
Franklin
Frazier
has
observed that
the
repressed hostilities
of the
middle-class Negroes
are
often directed
at
themselves
in a
form
of
"self-hatred." "While pretending
to be
proud
of
being
a
Negro, they ridicule Negroid physical characteristics
and
22
seek
to
modify
or
efface them
as
much
as
possible*"
To
reveal their hair straightening
to the
white world
v/as to
reveal
to
whites
the
extent
to
which they would
go to
modify
their Negro characteristics,
as
well
as
showing their degree
of
"non~whiteness."
The
scene stayed
in the
play nonetheless.
The
play
is
realistic; "there
is not a
false note
in
what
jt he\
characters.
. .say or
do.Unfortunately,
the
play
had a
short
run and has
been revived only once
(in
Seattle,
Washington).
"As
timely
as the
subject matter continues
to
be, no
other Negro playwright
has
attempted
to
write about
the
Negro
in
wartime.
Branch composed
his
next play,
In
Splendid Error, while
he v/as in the
army.
It
opened
at the
Greenwich Mews Theatre
21
Ibid.
22
E.
Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (London, 1957),
p. 186. .
^Abramson,
p. 1?8.
2ZfIbid.,
p. 255-
88
on
October
26,
195^4#
and ran
through January, 1955®
It is a
historical three-act play which takes place
in
Frederick
Douglass' parlor
in
BciChester,
New
York,
in 1859 and
i860,
The
play contrasts
the
methods
of
Douglass
and
John Brown
in
the
abolitionist cause,
The
climax comes when Douglass refuses
to go
with Brown
to
attack Harper's Ferry, After
the
raid,
Douglass goes
to
England
to
escape prosecution
as a
collaborator.
Upon
his
return
six
months later,
he is
still uncertain about
not
having joined Brora
and
wanders
if he
indeed
did the
right
thing.
He
said, "There
are
times when
the
soul's need
to
unite
with
men in
splendid error tangles agonizingly with cold wisdom
and
judgement.
In
splendid error
he had
startled
the
sleeping
conscience
of the
nation
and
struck
a
blow
for
freedom that
proves stronger'every hour.The author stated
he saw
many
parallels between
the
events
and
climate
of the
1850's
and the
1950's.
His
play
is one of
merit,
and the
writing
is
especial-
ly
impressive, considering that
it was
only
his
second play
and
that
he was
only twenty-six
at the
time
of its
writing.
In the
late 1950's,
a
Hollywood producer wanted
to
film
the
work
as an
illustration
of the
need
for
moderation
in the
Civil Rights
cause,
but
Branch "opposed this misuse
of his
material."^
Theodore Ward, author
of Our Lan',
wrote another historical
play during
the
1950's.
His
play, John Brownt dealt with
the
^Abramson,
p. 186.
2^Ibid.,
pp.
187-8.
1
2?Ibid.,
p. 258.
89
same subject matter
as
Branch3s
In
Splendid Error,
but
Ward
showed Brown1s viewpoint instead
of
Douglass1* John Brown
•opened
on
April
28, 19^0, in a
garage leased
by a
drama group,
People's Drama. Ward
did
most
of
Iris research
for the
play
at
Dartmouth while
on a
Guggenheim fellowship.
The
play
ran
for a few
weeks
and
received little critical attention. Ward
began another play about John Brown entitled
Of
Human Grandeur,
and "he
keeps reworking what
has
grown
to be a
sprawling
his-
28
torical drama,"
a
play that
he
feels
may
become
his
"finest
achievement."
Charles Sebree,
a new
Negro playwright, wrote
a
play
entitled
Mrs.
Patterson
in
collaboration with Greer Johnson
(a
white) which
ran for 101
performances
on
Broadway
in 195^*
The
play
is
about
the
daydreams
of a
young Negro girl, Teddy
Hicks,
who
wants
to be a
wealthy white woman like
her
mother's
employer. Teddy faces reality
at the end of the
play, accept-
ing her
race
and her
future life.
The
success
of
this mediocre
play
is
generally attributed
to the
performance
of
Eartha Kitt
as
Teddy.
The
most successful plays
of the
period
are
Louis Peterson's
Take
a
Giant Step
and
Lorraine Hans berry'
s A
Raisin
in
thei
Sun.
Loften Mitchell observed that "nowhere
in the
commercially
successful drama—with
the
exception
of
Take
a
Giant Step
and
A
Raisin
in the
Sun—do
we
find
an
audience identifying
O Q
c
Abramson,
p. 2.^6,
' 90
horizontally with
a
central character
who
happens
to be a
Negroe'1^^ These
two
works achieved
a
universality
not
found
•in
other Negro dramas,.
Of the two.
Take
A
Giant Step
is the
most universal
in
theme
and
characterization.
After graduation from college, Louis Peterson attended
the
Yale School
of
Drama
for a
year.
He
later attended Clif-
ford Odets' playwriting class
and
gave Odets -credit
for
teach-
ing him how to
write
a
play.-^**
His
play, Take
a
Giant Step,
was
produced
at the
Lyceum Theatre, opening September
25,
-1953,
and
running
for
seventy-six performances. Members
of the
cast
•
and the
producers expressed regret
at
having received
so
little
XI
support from
the
Negro cummunity. Nonetheless,
it v/as a
success during
the
1953-54
and
1956-57 seasons both
on and off
.Broadway,
and in 1959,
Peterson co^authored
a
screenplay
for
the
filming
of it. The
Pittsburgh Courier credited
the
work
with beginning "another
new era in the
theatre, which, until
this time,
had
been content
to
present
the
Negro either
as a
•zp
caricature
or a
problem."
Take
a
Giant Step
is an
autobiographical play
in two
acts
(six
scenes) about Spence Scott, seventeen,
who is
expelled
^Mitchell,
"The
Negro Writer
and His
Materials,"
p, 58.
^°Louis Kronenberger, editor,
The
Best Plays
of
1953-1954
(New
York, 1954),
p. 135. ~
31
Gloria Grumpier,
"The
Negro
in the
American Theatre
and
Drama from
1.950 to
195o," unpublished master's thesis, Depart-
ment
of
Drama, Tennessee Agricultural
and
Industrial State
University, Nashville, Tennessee,
1957, P. 82. \
^2Ibid.,
p. 81,
91
from school
for
denouncing
the
history teacher's views
of the
Negro
sad the
Civil
War and for
smoking
in the
restroom.
His
white friends
do not
back
him; he is no
longer considered
one
of "the
gang,"
as the
boys
are
beginning
to
take
a
serious
.interest
in
girls,
and
having
a
Negro
in
their midst "cramps
their style." Spence runs away from home
and is
picked
up by
a
prostitute
who
takes
his
money, although
she
does nothing
to
earn
it. He
returns home,
and his
parents learn
of his
actions
at
school.
His
mother,
May,
tells
him he has no
business talking back
to a
white woman
and his
father agrees.
His
grandmother,
his
good friend, lectures
the
parents
for not
standing
by him. The
situation
is not
resolved.
As
time
passes,'Spence becomes increasingly lonely;
and
when
his
grandmother dies,
he
goes into mourning
and
lies
in his
darkened ro0m
for two
weeks,
The
newly hired maid, Christine,
strikes
up a
friendship with
him
which becomes intimate,
and
Spence's mother, suspecting
the
relationship, fires
her. Try-
ing to
help
her son, she
invites
his
friends
to
come
by for
cake
and ice
cream. Spence takes
the
opportunity,
to
tell them
that
he
needs
to
study
for
college
and
practice
his
piano
and
that
his
friends
can
help
him by not
coming
to see him.
This eases
the
situation,
for the
boys have
not
been
to see
him
before
and are
.looking
for a
graceful excuse
not to.
have
to
come again. Take
a
Giant Step portrays
a
sensitive teen-age
boy in one of his
most difficult times
and
shows
how he
takes
a
giant step toward manhood.
His
sensitivity extends
to the
92
feelings
of his
friends,
and
rather than embarrass them,
he
gives them
an
excuse
for not
associating with
him.
With
the
exception
of a few
scenes,
the
play could have been about
any
teen-age
boy, not
necessarily
a
Negro
boy, and
herein lies
the
universality
of the
play Brooks Atkinson called
the
play
a
"poignant drama,"
and
felt
the run was not
long enough.'-
The
most famous play
by a
Negro writer
to
come
out of the
1950's also stresses, like Take
a
Giant Step,
the
need
for
human compassion.
A
Raisin
in the Sun, by
Lorraine Hansberry,
takes
its
title from
a
Langston Hughes poem which opens with
the
lines:
What happens
to a
dream deferred?
Does
it dry up?
Like
a
raisin
in the
sun?
'
The
play deals with
the
dreams
of the
Younger family,
and
each,
member
of the
family
has a
different dream*
"A
Raisin
in the
Sun is set up to
demonstrate
the
clash
of
dreams,
a
clash
be-
tween generations, between
men and
women,
and
even.
• .the
clash between black
and
white,It
was
first presented
at i
the
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
on
March
11, 1959, and
gained
an
unprecedented amount
of
support.from
the
Negro community.
It
was
seen
by
thousands
of
blacks
and
whites
as a
play; later
it was
viewed
by
millions
as a
motion picture.
It is
assuredly
-^Peterson also wrote
a
play entitled Entertain
a
Ghost,
which
was
evidently
not
produced.
* ~
3/4.
•^TAbramson,
p.
21*3•
93
the
best known Negro drama
as
well
as
being
one of the
most
successful,
for it was
awarded
the New
York Drama Critics
Circle award
for the
T958-59 season.
The
plot
is
familiar
to
most people.
It is not
generally
known, however, that
the
play
is
largely auto
bio
graphical.
The
family
in the
play,
the
Youngers,
are
planning
to
move
into
an
all-white neighborhood,
as the
author's family
did
when
she was a
little girl.
The
Hansberry family•s move
precipitated Hansberry
v. Lee,
which
was
tried
by the
Supreme
Court
and
established that whites could
not bar
Negroes from
buying homes
in a
white neighborhood.
The
action
of the
play concerns
the
disposition
of a
$10,000 check
by the
matriarchal Younger family. Mama makes
a
down payment
on a
house
and
gives
the
remaining $6,500
to
her son,
Walter, thus making
him the
head
of the
house.
He
is to
bank part
of it for his
sister, Beneatha,
to
cover
her
medical school expenses. Instead,
he
foolishly invests
all
of the
money
and is
swindled. When
the
"welcoming committee"
from their
new
neighborhood offers
to buy the
house before
they move
in, at a
price which would give
the
family
a
quick
profit, Walter
at
first agrees
to
sell.
But
when
a
committee
member arrives with
the
final papers, Walter
is
unable
to
sell,
and
tells
him
that
the
Youngers will move
in and try to- be
good.,
neighbors.
The
ending
is not
exactly
a
"happy"one,
for it is
a
commitment
to
years
of
hard work
and
perhaps failure.
'
9k
Nonetheless,
it
shows Walter coming into manhood,
and the
family continues
in its
five-generation tradition
of
being
poor people with pride
who are not
"dead inside."
The
play stresses
the
need
for
love: Mama tells Beneatha
to
love
her
brother when
he is
down,
for
that
is
when
he
needs
it the
most.
The
family relationships
are
skillfully shown,
and the
characters
are all
finely drawn. According
to one
critic, "only Lorraine Hansberry achieves this sense
of uni-
versality which succeeds
in
transforming
the
stereotype into
the
archetype."
"It is
perhaps time
to
observe that
all the
Negro play-
wrights
of the
fifties were.
.
.professional writers."-^ Nearly
all of
them
had
college educations
and
were experienced
in the
theatre
in
ways other than playwrighting. Simple, crude tech-
niques
and
bitter subjects were
in
this decade replaced entire-
ly by
more sophisticated ones.
Not one of
their plays needs
any
apology,^'
and
with these productions Negro drama definite-
ly
moved into
the
mainstream
of
American drama.
^C. W. E.
Bigsby, Confrontation
and
Commitment (Columbia,
1967),
p.
12*}..
-^Abramson,
p. 2^3.
37Ibid.,
p. 255.
70
Note:
For
more detailed synopses
of
plays
of
this
period,
see
Abramson,
pp.
171-254.
CHAPTER
VII
THE
.SIXTIES
The
civil rights movement gained momentum
in the
sixties,
and the
Negro's position
in
America improved.
New
legislation
and
increased
law
enforcement were used
to
implement equal
op-
portunity
and to
discourage discrimination. "Black Studies"
programs were begun
on
numerous college campuses,
and
relative~
ly
unknown black authors were revived
and
reprinted. There
was an
overall movement
to
instill race pride,
and
"Black
is
Beautiful" became
a
well-known slogan. "Burn, Baby, Burn" also
became
a
familiar slogan,
and
violence erupted
in the
ghettos
of
various cities. Riots
and
looting caused billions
of
dollars
of
damage, Violence erupted
on the
stage
as
well,
and the
"revolutionary" movement
of the
sixties-was "virtually
the
first
attempt
by
major talents
to
represent
the
anger, frustration,
1
and
violence
of a
life lived
in a
basically hostile society."
A new
playwright
and "a
revolutionary," LeRoi Jones,
emerges
as the
most promising writer
in the
Negro drama
of the
period.
He
studied
at
Howard, Columbia,
and the New
School
for
Social Research,
and -he has
held Whitney
and
Guggenheim
fellowships.
He is a
poet, music critic,
and
editor,
as
well
1
-
C.W.E. Bigsby, Confrontation
and
Commitment (Missouri,
1 96$, P« 116.
Note:
'
I^iver'Son."""1941V
was the
first play
of
this genre
and is
seen"by 1soBii~"aa
the
"turning point"
of
Negro
literature.
95
96
as a
dramatist.
lis
founded
a
Black Theatre group
in
Harlera
to
stage "Revolutionary Theater,"
but it
closed after seven
months. Jones says
he
would like
to
"incite white audiences
2
to
actual violence arid black audiences
to
laughter."
He is
concerned with various themes
in his
plays—the inevitable
violence between blacks
and
whites, blacks "taking their turn"
ruling
in
America,
the
diabolical nature
of
white Christianity
for
blacks,
the
black man's "hang-ups" about white women,
and
the
difficulty
of
becoming
a man in the
American society.
His
works include Dutchman,
The
Baptism,
The
Slave,
The
Toilet,
Slav® Ship, Madheart,
The
Great Goodness
of
Life
(A
Coon Show),
Arm
Yourself
or
Harm Yourself,
The
Eighth
Dijscji, Jello,
and
Experimental Death Unit
#1 .
Dutchman, -produced
in 196^
marked
the
real beginning
of
Jones1 reputation
in the
theatre,
for it won the
Obie Award
as the
best American play
of the
1963-64 season.^
In it,
Clay,
a
twenty-year-old middle-class Negro,
is
riding
the
train
in the
subway, Lula,
a
thirty-year-old white woman, gets
on
tho.train
and
starts
a
conversation with obvious sexual over-
tones, saying Clay
is a '
"well~known type"
to her.
They plan
an
evening together—a party,
a
long walk, then
her
place
to
talk about
his
manhood
and to
make love.
She
says
it is his
manhood they have been discussing
all
along.
The
train fills,
p
"David Little John, Black
on
White
(New
York, 1966),
p., 79.
^LeSoi Jones,
The
Baptism
and the
Toilet
(New
York, 1963),
p. 1 . .
97
and
Lula begins
to
dance
and
sing
in the
aisle, When Clay
refuses
to.
join
her, she
calls
him an
Uncle
Tom. He
drags
her to her
seat
and
slaps
her,
saying
he
could kill
her,
and
that
her
murder would make
him
sane. Clay says
the
black
creative expression
is a
product
of the
"negro neurosis."
He
tells
her his
people
are "a
whole people
of
neurotics,
struggling
to
keep from being sane.
And the
only thing that
would cure
the
neurosis would
be
your murder.In response,
Lula stabs Clay
in the
chest twice,
and the
other passengers
dump
his
body
off the
train.
She
makes
a
notation
in a
small
notebook,
and
when another twenty-year-old Negro boards
the
train, Lula begins
her
ritual again. According
to
Loften
Mitchell,
"Mr.
Jones
is
charging that this
is the
pattern
of
America—seducing, tempting, insulting
the
black
man,
then
5
killing
him
when
he
objects.
Several critics have found fault with
the
characteriza-
tion,
as
Clay
is too
innocent
and
Lula
too
inscrutable
and
verbose.
The
play, called
an
allegory by'some,
is
symbolic.
C.W.E. Bigsby thinks
the
play tried
to
communicate through
£
metaphor
and
hyperbole. Jones
has
responded
to the
critics
by
saying
his
characters
are not
symbolic
and are not
intended
as
representations,
but
rather
are
.'.'real persons
in a
real
^LeRoi Jones, Dutchman
and The
Slave
(New
York, 1964),
p. 35.
^Loften Mitchell, Black Drama
(New
York, 1.967),
p. 199.
6
Bigsby, Confrontation
and
Commitment,
p. 155.
98
7
world."' He.says3 ''Dutchman
Is
about
the
difficulty
of
8
becoming
a man in
America.'1 David Little
jo hn
considers
the
play
"the
most important imaginative literary document
of the
Q
American race
v/ar
since Native Son."7
He
finds
the
dialogue
almost perfect
in the
conversational game between Lula
and
Clay, though
the
audience response presents
a
problem.
He-
has
observed
the
following:
Middle-class Negroes
in the
audience seem
to
respond
no
more honestly than whites, though
the
presence
of
mixed couples
so
disturbs other spectators that Jones
should perhaps require
it in the
stage directions.10
Two
other plays concerned with
the
difficulty
of
becoming
a man in the
American society
are The
Slave
and The
Toilet.
They were presented together at,St. Markb Playhouse
in
December
of
196*!-.
In
these plays, "what
he
said
is
that American
society
is a
foul toilet,
a
slave society.
It is as
simple
11
as
that."
The
Toilet, staged
by the
Playwrights' Unit
of
the
.Actors Studio
in 1962, was
actually.Jones' first dramatic
effort.
It is
generally viewed
as a
poor effort with loose,
even sloppy construction. "Jones1 noble
try at
pure illusion-
ism—-
the
notion that this
is, in
fact, real life
we are
watch-
ing,
unrehearsed
and
unacted, even
to his
director's
use of
7
Doris Abramson, Negro Playwrights
in the
American Theatre
19^3-1959
(New
York,
1 ^9)7
pT2757""
— —
8Ibid.
9Littlejohn,
p. 75.
^Littlejohn,
p. 78.
^Mitchell, Black Drama,
p.
20if.
99
1 ?
real amateurs onstage--is theoretically hopeless."
"" The
Toilet
takes place
in a
school fcoilot,
A
group
of
black boys
are
kidding
one
another, playfully sparring,
and
talking about
the
chase going
on
upstairs
to
capture Karolis,
a
white
boy, and
bring
him
down
to be
beaten.
He is
"delivered" with
a
broken
jaw. The
leader
of the
blacks, Foots, comes
in and
says
he
does
not
want
to
fight Karolis
in
this condition.
It is
revealed
that
a
love letter from Karolis
to
Foots
has
been found,
and
this
is the
reason
for the
fight. Karolis says
he
wants
to
fight,
and
when Foots will
not hit him, the
others beat Karolis,
They
all
leave together,
but
Foots soon returns
and
cradles
Karolis1 bloody head
in his
arms.
The
play dramatically
con-
veys
an
undercurrent
of
tension
and
hostility--a sense
of men-
ace—as v/ell
as
eliciting sympathy
for all the
characters
in
their struggles
to
hide their weakness, their lack
of
manliness.
The
Slave takes place
in the
living room
of a
white family,
the
Easleys, while
a
race
war is
raging outside. Easley,
a
university professor,
and his
wife, Grace,
are out, and
Walker
Vessels
(a
black)
is
waiting
for
their return. Walker
is
Grace's
ex-husband
and the
father
of her two
children. When Grace
and
Easley return home, Walker surprises them
and
says
he has
come
to
take
his
children.
The
play
is the
dialogue
of the
three.
Of the
revolution, Walker says
to
Grace,
"the
point
is
that
you
had
your chance, darling,
now
these other folks have theirs."^
12
Little John,
p.
1
-'Jones, Dutchman»
p. ?_5,
100
Grace contends this
is "an
ugly idea,and Walker agrees,
for he
does
not
anticipate that future conditions will ever
be
better. Easley attempts
to
take Walker's
gun and is
killed.
An
explosion brings
a
beam down
on
Grace's chest,
and
just
as she
dies, Walker tells
her
that
the
children
are
dead.
The
Slave
is "an
extension
of the
conflict
of
Dutchman
to.". .
its
logical conclusion."'^
"The
only reasonable response,
white
or
black,
is one of
embarrassed
and
annoyed detachment
1 5
which, perhaps,
is
what Jones wanted."
"
Jones
has
mocked
the
response
of
white audiences
to his
plays,
for he
intends
to
insult them,
and yet
they applaud.
He
feels
a
more honest
16
gesture would
be to
walk
out in
disgust
or sit
silently,
and
this would
be an
appropriate oneto
The
Slave.
After these
two
plays
had
been staged
at St.
Mark's
Playhouse, Jones rejected
the
downtown theaters^
and
moved
to
Harlem, where
he
started
the
Black Arts Theatre.
"He
revived
Dutchman
and
showed Jello
and
Experimental Death Unit
#1,
Jello
,
written
in
1965»
was
seen
by
more blacks than most plays because
it was
shown
"in the
streets
in
harlem
ic^ and in
other
17
streets across
the
country."
' The
play
is
about Jack Benny
18
and
Rochester
"and
what happens when Rochester digs hisself
^
/+Bigsby, Confrontation
and
Commitment,
p. 1Zf8.
'5]
16-
^Littlejohn,
p. 75
Ibid„,
p. 69.
17
LeRoi Jones, Four Black Revolutionary Plays
(New
York, 1969),
p. 89# " ' ""
l8Ibid.
101
Bobbs-Merrill censored
:.t and
deleted
it
from
a
collection
of
Jones' plays that they publishod,
so it was
scheduled
to be
'published privately. •Experimental Death Unit
#1,
written
in
196^-, showed
at the St.
Mark's Playhouse
in
March
of 1965
before showing
in
Harlem.
In it,
Duff
and
Loco (both white)
are
talking about
art and
life when
a
Negro prostitute
ap-
proaches them
and
says
she
will take them
on in the
hallway.
Loco agrees
and
goes with
her.
Buff gets impatient
and
pulls
Loco away, beats
him, and
takes
his
place. Duff
is
with
the
prostitute when
an
all-black army approaches,
and
finding
the
pair, kills them. Loco dies from Duff's beating,
and the
army
puts both
the
white heads
on
spikes
and
continues
on its way.
Jones abandoned this race-war stance
to
write about
Christianity in*The Baptism, which
was
first presented
at the
Writers' Stage Theatre
in New
York
on
March
23,
196*f. This
allegory takes place
at a
Baptist Church,
and
begins with
the
minister delivering
a
sermon
to a
homosexual.
A
fifteen-year-
old boy
comes
in to be
baptized,
and an old
woman comes
to
tell
the
minister
the boy is a
sinner,
for he
masturbates while
he
prays.
The boy
confesses,
and the
homosexual tells
the boy,
1 9
"Become
a
Christian
so you can
understand
the
symbolism',11
a
comment directed
to the
audience
as
well.
The boy has
told
the
choir
he is
related
to God, and
assuming
he is the son of
God,
they have
all
succumbed
to him in
their desire
to be
^LeRoi Jones,
The
Baptism
and The
Toilet9
p. 22,
102
"virgins
for the
Lord."
The boy
adraits having taken advan-
tage
of
them
all, and the
minister ce-.ys
ho
must
be
sacri-
ficed,
The boy
kills,the minister
and all the
girls
in the
choir.
A
messenger comes
on a
motorcycle
and
says
"the man,"
the
boy's father, feels
the boy has
failed
and
plans
to
blow
up the
place.
The boy
argues, saying
he
will s'tay
and
perish.
The
messenger hits
the boy
with
a
tire iron
and
takes
him off,
The
Baptism
is
"unimaginably bad—-presumably
an
allegory which
20
attacks
the
prurience
of
American religion
and
women."
Jones writes
of the
Black Muslim religion
as
well
as of
white Christianity,
but in
doing
so, he
returns
to his
race-
war
style
and
theme.
His
play about
the
Black Muslim religion,
Black Mass, showed
at
Proctor's' Theatre, Newark,
in May of
1966. It is
about three magicians working
in a
chemical
lab-
oratory where
one of
them, Jacoub,
is
creating
a new
organism.
Time
is an
evil
in the
world
of the
magicians,
for
there
is
no
need
for it, yet
Jacoub
has
created time
and
says
he
will
create
a
being
in
love with
it,
-When Jacoub's monster
is
born,
it is
white.
The
other magicians
say it
will kill,
and
Nasafi tells Jacoub
his
error
was "the
substitution
of
thought
21
for
feeling."
The
beast turns women into monsters
by
touch-
ing
them,
and the
beast
and his new
women-beasts turn
on the
magicians
and
kill them.
A
narrator ends
the
play
by
telling
^Edward Margolies, Native Sons
(New
York, 1968),
p. 195•
21
Jones, Four Revolutionary Flays,
p. 3k»
103
the
audience these beasts
are
still loose
in the
world,
and
calls
for a
declaration
of the
Holy
War. The
play
is
patterned
after
the
Black Muslim beliefs
of the
creation
of the
Caucasian-
race
as it was
preached
by
Malcolm
X,
though
the
theory
has
been distorted.
Jones wrote about Malcolm
X in
another play,
The
Death
of
Malcolm
X»
which shows
the
assassination.
The
play
has
a
multi-scene
set and is
staged with
a
kaleidoscopic effect.
It
opens with
an
operating room scene
in
which blacks
are
having "brain transplants," receiving white brains. There
is
a
training room
for
instruction
in
assassination,
and the
President
of the
United States
and the
Klan Dragon
are
talking
on the
telephone about "Project Sambo."
In the
play, peaceful
marches
are
ridiculed
and the
leader
of a
peaceful demonstra-
tion
is
shown
to be
part
of the
white organization.
The
trained
blacks (with white brains)
are
flown
to New
York
for
their
assignment,
and the
scene
of the
killing
of
Malcolm
X is de-
picted.
An
unnamed "grey headed Negro"
is
said
to be "in on
it." The
play
is
written with vicious irony,
and one
scene
shows
a
banker's office with trophies
on the
wall,
one of
which
is a
shrunken head resembling Patrice Lumumba.
In
this piece,
white Americans
are
shown
to be
responsible
for
black deaths
around
the
world.
Jones shows white responsibility
for
black death
on a
symbolic level
in his
play Great Goodness
of
Life
(A
Coon Show).
The
play
was
first staged
at the
Spirit House, Newark,
in
10if
November
of
196?• Court Royal,
a
black,
Is
charged with
shielding
a
murderer
but
pleads innocent.
He is not
allowed
.to
call
his
attorney,,but
has one
appointed
who has a key
in his
hsad
and
advises
he
plead guilty• Court Royal refuses,
and he is
shown pictures
of
various Negro leaders
and
asked
to
identify
the
murderer
he has
harbored. Despite
his
plea
of
innocence,
he is
found guilty
but is
told
he
will
be
spared
if he
kills
a
young Negro
boy.
Court Royal agrees
to
kill
so his
soul will
be
absolved
of
guilt
and
made "white
as
snow."
He
kills
a boy, and the boy
calls
him
Papa before
he
dies. Court Royal returns
to his
life
of
working
at the
post office, watching television,
and
bowling. This play
contains Jones' theme
of the
difficulty
of
becoming
a man in
America,
and
it,seems
to say
that black fathers,
in
their
attempts
to be
white, prevent their sons from attaining
man-
hood.
It is
obvious that Jones' plays
are an
integral part
of
the
race-war literature
of the
sixties.
In a
deliberate move
away from universality, Jones writes
of
black situations
and
black issues from
a
black viewpoint
for a
black audience.
The
victimization
of the
blacks
at the
hands
of the
white American
society
is
stated
and
restated
in his
works.
The
need
for
violence
is
also stressed,
for
Jones feels that non-violence
by
blacks simply means
a
continuation
of the
status
quo.
Louis
Phillips
has
observed
the
following about Jones:
10.5
If he is not the
best
of the
contemporary "black
playwrights,
he is at
least
the
most militant,
the"most revolutionary!
the
most explosive,
and .•
the
most controversial playwright
on the
American
scene#
He is
also frequently
the
most maligned,
especially
by
those white writers
who are
threat-
ened
and
shocked
"by
Jones' obscenities
and
outrages.1"
Only
a few
plays
by
black playwrights
in the
sixties
were
not
race-war dramas.
The
notable exception
is
Lorraine
Hansberry's
The
Sign
in
Sidney Brusteinf
s
Window (196^). This
play stresses
"the
need
for
compassion"
and
sees love
as "a
possible source
of
regeneration.The play
is an
affirma-
tion
of
human potential,
and it
"constitutes
one of the
most
complete disavowals
of
absurdist drama which
has yet
been
made,"^
It is
written
in the
conventional, realistic,
well-made play format.
The
play opened
at
Longacre Theatre
October 1196k>
to
mixed notices,
and
only
the
untiring
efforts
of
friends
to
give
and
enlist financial
aid
kept
the
play going.
The
play moved
to the
Henry Miller Theatre
December
22, 196^+ and ran
until Miss Hansberry1
s
death
on
January
12,
1965? having
had a
total
run of 101
performances.
The
Sign
in
Sidney Brustein's Window played
to
80,000 people
before
the
death
of the
author,
and
within
a
month
of its
closing,
it
opened
in a New
York suburb
to a
near sell-out
audience.
It was
subsequently booked
for a
Theatre Guild
national subscription tour.
pp
""C.W.E. Bigsby, editor, Black American Writer, Volume
II
(Baltimore, 1969),
p.
206«
. ~ '
^Bigsby, Ccnfrantation
and
Commitment,
p. 138#
?^Ibid.,
p. 167.
106
The
three-act play takes place
in
Sidney's Greenwich
Village apartment.
He has
bought
a
small newspaper, much
to the
chagrin
of
his'wife, Iris;
and a
friend, Wally,
approaches
him for
support
in an
upcoming election.
He is
urged
by
Iris
hot to get
involved.
In
answer, Sidney says
the
great disease
of the
modern bourgeois intellectual
is
ostrich-ism,
"the
great
sad
withdrawal from
the
affairs
of
25
men." ^ He
agrees
to
support Wally,
and he
hangs
a
sign
in
his
window which says "Vote Reform."
The
sign symbolizes
commitment. Alton,
A
Negro friend
of the
Brustein's,
announces
he
wants
to
marry Iris1 sister, Gloria. Alton
thinks Gloria
is a
model, when
in
reality,
she is a
high-class
prostitute. Neither Iris
nor
Sidney tells
him the
truth.
In Act II,
Alton learns
of
Gloria's occupation
and
refuses
to
marry
her.
Gloria's second sister, Mavis, admits
she is
pleased there will
be no
marriage,
for she
could
not
accept
a
Negro
in the
family. After Wally
has won the
election, Iris
and
Sidney separate,
but
before Iris moves
out, she
tells
Sidney that Wally
has
"sold
out " to the
opposition
to
ensure
his
success
in the
election, making Sidney's commitment seem
futi3~e.
In Act III,
Gloria comes
to the
apartment, learns that
Alton
now
spurns
her, and
commits suicide. This moves Sidney
to
recommit himself
and to say he
will
use his
paper
to
fight
Wally. Wally tells Sidney
the
paper will
not
last
six
months
25
"^Lorraine Hansberry,
The
Sign
in
Sidney Brustein's
Window
(New
York, 1965),
p. ZZ, • - - —
10?
if he
does
not get out of
politics. Nonetheless, .Sidney
vows
to
fight,
for
live
and let
live
is no
longer enough.
This play
has
varied characters,
and
each character
is
given individualized treatment
and
significance.
No
single
character
or
problem emerges
as
dominant, though
the
play
is 26
generally considered Sidney's "personal odyssey
of
discovery."
Through
her
characters,
the
author makes various points about
her
view
of
life.
She has
Sidney describe himself
as
follows:
. . .a
fool
who
believes that death
is
waste
and
love
is
sweet
and
that
the
earth turns
and men
change
every
day and
that rivers
run and
that people wanna
be
better than they
are and
that flowers smell good
and
that
I
hurt terribly today,
and
that hurt
is
desperation
and
desperation is—energy
and
energy
can
move things.
> 9 9 9 9
John Baine said
he was
deeply moved
and
illumined
by the
play,
and he
felt
the New
York drama critics "didn't recognize
pO
the
play's greatness." Because
of
the.universal nature
of
the
play, Lorraine Hansberry
is'
called
a top
American play-
wright
who
happened
to be
black rather than
a
black play-
wright,
and her
death
"at the age of
thirty-four.
.
.robbed
the
theatre
of the one
Negro dramatist
who has
demonstrated
29
her
ability
to
transcend parochialism
and
social bitterness."
7
PA
Hansberry, Sign,
p. ix.
27Ibid.,
p. 12*2.
28T1 . , .
Ibid.,
p. xi.
29
Bigsby, Confrontation
and
Commitment,
p. 172. •• •
Miss Hansberry's pla"y7
Lis
Blancs~,
is
being produced posthumously
on
Eroadway
in 1971
with James Earl Jones
in the
leading role.
• 108
Another non-i'ace-war playwright
to be
produced
in the
sixties
is
Langston Hughes.
His
play Tambourines
to
Glory
is
quite
a
contrast
to the
protest-revolutionary work
of the
period,
for it is
written
in the
comic, musical tradition
of
most
of his
work.
It was
written first
as a
play, then adapted
as a
novel,
and
readapted
as a
play.
The
Theatre Guild optioned
it and
produced
it at
Westport
in 1960, It
opened
on
Broadway,
at the
Little Theatre,
in
November
of 1963 to
unfavorable
reviews. This gospel comedy
is a
simple dramatization
of
good
versus evil
and is
written
as a
fable
in
folk ballad style;
much
of the
meaning
of the
play
is
found
in its
many songs.
In the
opening
of the
play, Buddy Lomax announces
to the
audience that
he is the
devil
and
that
"the old
struggle between
sanctity
and
Satan"
is
about
to
take place
"one
more time,"-^
The
action begins when Essie
and
Laura decide
to
start
a
church
on the
street corners
of
Harlem. Laura's
aim is to
make money; Essie's
aim is to
save Laura. Buddy wins
the
favors
of
Laura,
and
they become business partners
as
well
as
lovers.
He
gets
her a big
church,
the
Tambourine Temple,
and
arranges
for her to
sell, "water from
the
Jordan"
and
give
out
lucky numbers
for the
numbers racket. Laura rents
a
large
apartment
and
buys
a car and fur
coat with church money, Essie
sends
for her
sixteen-year-old daughter, Marietta,
to
come
and
live with them. Buddy tries
to
tempt Marietta
but
fails,
and
Langston Hughes, Five Plays (Bloomington, 1963)»
p. 188,
109
Laura enters-while
he is
tores fully attacking
her.
Laura
is
outraged,
and
when Buddy subsequently Mistreats
her, she
stabs
him.
Essie
is
suspected,
but
Laura confesses
to
save
her
friend. Essie pledges
to
make Tambourine Temple
a
good
church,
and
Laura confesses
her
sins
bo the
congregation.
Marietta marries
C.J., the
guitar player
of the
church,
and
evil
is
defeated once again.
The
play
is
self-consciously humorous.
In Act II,
Buddy speaks directly
to the
audience
and
gives some advice.
He
says
it is
easy
to be the
devil—just
be
yourself.
Use
money
to
tempt
men, but
"don't waste money
on a
woman.
Any
31
woman
you can buy is
already
on the
Devil's side." Besides
showing
the
triumph
of
good over evil
in a
humorous
way,
Hughes includes comments with
a
message.
For
instance,
C.J.
tells Buddy,
"You are not
Harlem. Harlem
is a
dream—the
dream black folks dream
way
down
in the
deep South.
And
then they come here
and
sometimes find
it's a
nightmare,
be-
32
cause
men
like
you
trick
and
betray them."
It is not dif- ;
ficult
to
understand
why the
play failed
to
please
the'
critics,
for the
style,
the
subject,
and
comments such
as the one
about Harlem date
the
work
and
make
it
seem awkward
on a
stage
in the
sixties.
31
Ibid.,
p. 228.
^'Hughes, Five Plays,
p.
233*
110
The
Greenwich Me.ws produced
two
more plays
by
Hughes
during this period: Jerico
Jim
Cray;,
a
"freedom song-play,"
in
196if
i and
Prodigal
'Son in May of
196,5. Prodigal
Son ran
from
May
until September before moving
to a
European showing.
Despite
the
lack
of
current stagings
of his
works,
"few
American playwrights have surpassed
the
total achievement
of
•Z-Z ' •
Langston Hughes.
He
"remains
the
most impressive, durable,
XI,
and
prolific Negro writer
in
America."-^1"
In a
style reminiscent
of
that used
by
Hughes, Ossie Davis,
an
actor-playwright, wrote
a
race-war play, Purlle Victorious.
It is a
comedy,
has a
comic religious leader,
and
mates
use of
stereotypes. Presented
at the
Cort Theatre
in 1961
with Ossie
Davis
and
Ruby
Dee in the
starring roles, Purlie Victorious
ran
throughout
the
season
and was
subsequently filmed
as
Gone
Are
the
Days. Purlie Victorious
was
ahead
of its
time, however,
and "it did not
come into
its own
until
the new
wave
of
satire,
British
and
American, caught
up
with
it."^ The
plot
is not
particularly strong,
but the
play
is
nonetheless robust
and
fast moving.
It is
rich with racial double-entendres«
and the
humor never subsides.
"It is the
first full-length race-war
^William Couch,
New
Black Playwrights (Baton Rouge, 19685,
p,
xviii.
. - .
^Littlejohn,
p. 5^.
•^Ibid0,
p„ 72*
' 111
xg
satire, conceived
in £aJ
wide-open, nothing-sacred vein,"-'
and
is
clearly intended
to
amuse blacks, though "white viewers,
too,
•zn
if
they
are
ready for,it,
can
relish
its
sanity.">f
The
three-act play
is set on a
cotton plantation
in the
Old
South
in the
recent past,
and it
opens with
the
Reverend
Pur lie
Victorious Judson bringing Lutiebelle Gu'ssie
Mae
Jenkins
into
a
sharecropper's farmhouse
in
South Georgia.
A
rich iady
had
left $500
to
Aunt Henrietta,
who is now
dead, making Cousin
Bee, her
daughter,
the
heir* Cousin
Bee is
also dead, however,
and
this makes Purlie
the
heir.
The
Captain
is
holding
the
money,
and it is
certain that
he
will never give
it to
Purlie.
Lutiebelle
is an
exact look-alike
for
Cousin
Bee, and
Purlie
plans
to
have
her
masquerade
as
Cousin
Bee to get the
inheri-
tance
.
Captain Stonewall Jackson Cotchipee owns everything
in
the
area,
and
with Lutiebelle's help, Purlie plans
to buy the
old
church, form
a
congregation,
and
challenge
the
Captain's
leadership
to
determine "who's gonna dominize this valley."
Captain
is a
direct descendent
of
Confederates,
and he
carries
a
bullwhip, which
he
once
had
used mercilessly
on
Purlie.
Captain's
son,
Charlie,
is
college educated---a white liberal
passivist
who
believes
in
integration. When Charlie gets
in
a
barroom fight over integration,
the
sheriff
and his
deputy
36iSM-
-^Ibid.
• • 11 a
come
to the
store
to
talk
to
Captain about
his
son's ideas.
Purlie
and
Lutiebelle come
in
also
and
begin
the
masquerade•
•Captain gives
the
money
to
Lutiebelle
and
asks
for a
receipt
which
she
signs with
her
name instead
of
Cousin Bee's.
The
sheriff
is
there
to
arrest Purlie
and
Lutiebelle,
but
Captain
says
he
will beat Purlie first. Purlie
and
Lutiebelle escape,
and
Charlie gets
the
blow intended
for
Purlie,
In Act II, it is
learned that Idella,
the
Captain's maid,
has
kept Purlie
out of
jail
by
threatening
to
quit
and
take
Charlie with
her
when
she
left.
The
Captain agrees
to
give
the
money
to
Purlie,
via
Lutiebelle,
but
instead
he
makes
advances
to her in the
pantry
and
pinches
her and
kisses
her.
Purlie
is so
incensed that
he
goes
off to
kill
the
Captain,
and he
comes back with
the
$500
and the
bull whip
and
tells
a
story
of his
heroics
in
obtaining both. Idella comes
in
and
tells
the
truth—that Purlie broke into
the
commissary
and
took both items.
The
Captain comes
in, and
shortly after
him,
the
sheriff. Charlie
is the
actual thief,
and he
confesses
to
taking
the
money
and
whip
and
giving
it to
Purlie
to
save
his
father's life.
It is
also revealed that
the
Captain sent
Charlie
to buy the
barn (church)
so
Purlie would
not be
able
to buy it.
Charlie bought
it, but he
entered
the
deed
in
Purlie's name. Everyone
is
surprised,
and
when Charlie asks
to be the
first white member
of the
black congregation,
the
Captain drops dead standing
up. Act III is the
epilogue,
and
1 13
in it, a
funeral
is
held
for the
Captain
at the new
church,
Big
Bethel,
and his
coffin stands upright
in
memory
of the
•way
he
died,
.Deivis makes constant
use of
parody
in his
play,
and
Negro myths
are
ridiculed. Common sayings
are
given ironic
intent,
and the
characters
are
made
to
spoof
all
types from
"Uncle Toms"
to
fervent integrationists. Laugh lines
are
common, such
as the
comment made when
it is
believed Purlie
is
running away, "What's wrong with running?
It
emancipated
38
more people than
Abe
Lincoln ever
did." The
play delighted
audiences;
it was
revived
to run
again
in New
York later
in
the
sixties,
and
early
in the
seventies
it was
still appear-
ing on New
York stages.
Another neiv playwright
of the
period
is
James Baldwin.
Baldwin, primarily
a
writer
of
novels
and
short stories, wrote
two
plays
but had
difficulty getting them produced. Amen
Corner, written
in 1953 or
195kf
was
first performed
at
Howard
University, Frank Silvera produced
the
play
in Los
Angeles
in 1964, and
with
the
help
of Mrs. Nat
"King" Cole, moved
it
to
Broadway
in
April, 1965* "Critical reaction.
» .was
reserved,",
for
although
the
work showed originality,
it
contained cliches
ZQ
of
language
and
character.
7
Amen Corner,
a
three-act play,
38
Ossie Davis, Purlie Victorious
(New
York, 1961),
p. 63.
39
.Bigsby, Black American Writer,
p. 177.
• ' 11 if
is
about Sister Margaret,
an
evangelist,
who
gives
a
sermon
in the
first
act
telling
her
congregation
to "set
thine house
•in
order."
It is
shown that
her own
house
is not in
order,
however,
and she is
forced
to
face
the
truth when
her
estranged
husband returns,
her son
rebels,
and the
opposition group
in
her
church takes
her
pulpit. Sister Margaret learns "sacri-
ficial
and
suffering love,"
and
becomes
a
better person.
Blues
for
Mister Charlie, Baldwin's second play,
is
based
on the
murder
of
Emmett Till,
a
Negro Youth,
in
Mississippi
in
1955*
In 1958,
Baldwin visited
the
Southern states
for
the
first time,
and
this experience plus
the
urging
of
Elia
Kazan made
him
consider writing
a
play.
The
murder
of
Medgar
Evers,
to
whoa
the
play
is
dedicated, prompted Baldwin
to
write
on the
subject
of
another murder
of a
Negro
in the
South.
The.
play
is the
dramatic account
of the
arrest, trial, acquit-
tal , and
subsequent confession
of the
murderer
of
Emmett Till.
Financed
by a
Si0,000 gift from
the
Rockefeller sisters,
it
ran
from April
2.5 to
August
29, \96k, at the
ANTA Theatre.
Lof ten
Mitchell felt
the
play
did not run as
long
as it,
should
have,
and
Edward Margolies observed that
"the
play
is
effective,
for the
emotions
it
arouses
are
specifically vindictive
and
personally embarrassing
to his
white audiences, which partly
explains,
no
doubt,
its
failure
on the
Broadway stage.1,1)0
^"°Margolies,
p.
121\.9
115
The
play
is set in
Plaguetown, U.S.A.
"The
plague
is
race*
the
plague
is our
concept
of
Christianity:
and
this raging
plague
has the
power
to
destroy every human relationship.
In the
play, White town ancl Blacktown
are
shown,
and
both
are
given sympathetic treatment. Richard returns home, having spent
a few
years
in New
York.
He had
left home because
he was
ashamed
of his
father, Meridian,
a
peace-loving minister
who
took
no
action when
his
wife died "accidentally." Lyle,
the
white storekeeper,
has a
scene with Richard shortly after Jiis
return home
and
seeks
him out one
night
to
demand
an
apology.
When Richard refuses
to
apologize, Lyle kills
him,
Lyle
had
killed
Old
Bill years before,
but he had
never been charged,
for it was
considered self-defense: Lyle
had
been having
an
affair with Bill's wife;
and
when
a
confrontation occurred,
Bill
was
killed, Parnell,
the
white liberal
of the
town
and
Lyle5s best friend, brings about
the
arrest
and
trial
of
Lyle
for
Richard's murder, however,
and
Lyle pleads innocent. When
the
trial takes place,
Jo,
Lyle's wife, lies
for him,
saying
Richard attacked
her, and
Parnell will
not
refute
her
word.
Lyle
is
found
not
guilty. Before leaving
the
courtroom,
Meridian approaches Lyle,
who
confesses
to the
murder, saying,
"I had to
kill
him
then.
I'm a
white
man!
Can't nobody talk
that
way to
me!When Parnell asks Juanita, Richard's
^James Baldwin, Blues
for
Mister Charlie
(New
York, 196^),
P. xv. . — —
^Baldwin,
p. 120.
116
girl-friend,
if he can
walk Tith
her out of the
courtroom,
she
utters
the
closing lines
of the
play:
Well,
we can
walk
in the
same direction, Parnell•
Coine. Don't look like thata Let's
go on on
rslc
JX
The
play
is a
complicated series
of
scenes
and
flashbacks,
and
many relationships between
the
characters
are
brought
out
or
suggested
to
fi>rm
an
intricate
set of
interrelationships
in the
community.
The
play "seemed more
a
brilliant series
of
essays than
a
play,"^r
and as a
propaganda piece based
on
fact,
a
protest drama,
it is
more concerned with effect than
dramatic technique. Nonetheless, Baldwin showed considerable
skill
in
creative stagecraft
and set
design,
Baldwin's plays show promise. Both
are
effective propa-
ganda pieces which stress character over action. Both show
an .
evangelical figure
who
gains
a
better understanding;
of
himself,
his
religion,
and the
nature
of
love. Both plays
minimize overt violence
to
emphasize inner conflict,
and
neither strives
to
achieve
the
element
of
suspense
or
surprise
but
rather focuses
on
character development.
For
Baldwin,
people
are
impo
r tan t—e spe c
ially their inner
ago
hies—and they
dominate
his
writings.
He
strives
for
objectivity
and uni-
versality,
and his
works show
his
"vital compassion.
He
did not
write
any
other plays after
the
middle
of the
decade,
however.
^Ibid.,
p. 121.
^Mitchell,
p. 201 .
45
Bigsby, Confrontation
and
Commitment,
p, 136.
n?
Four
of the new
playwrislitf?
of the
sixties were repre-
sented when their xrslays opened together
as a
quartet
on
•April
2k» 19691 at thq
Chelsea Theatre Center
of the
Brooklyn
Academy
of
Music.
The
quartet went
cn to
show
at
Tambellini1s
Gate Theatre
in New
York
in
July
of
that year
and
were subse-
quently published
as A
Black Quartet.
The
plays included
•
are
Prayer Meeting
or. The
First Militant Minister,
by Ben
C&1
dwell,
The
Warning^'-A Theme
for
Linda,
by
Ronald Milner,
The
Gentleman Caller,
by Ed
Bullins,
and
Great Goodness
of
Life,
by
LeKoi Jones.
The
plays
are
diverse, though three
of the
four
are
race«»war dramas.
Ben
Caldwell wrote several plays during
the
sixties.
His
one-act play, Prayer Meeting
or', The
First Militant Minister,
offered
as
part
of
Quartet,
is a
comic race-war drama.
In it,
a
minister returns home
and
begins praying about
the
trouble
in his
community caused
by a
white policeman's killing
of a
Negro youth.
A
burglar
is
hiding
in the
room with
the
mini-
ster,
and he
impetuously answers.-
The
minister thinks
God is
answering,
and the
burglar, realizing this, continues
the
charade,
outlining
an
activist role
for the
minister. When
the
minister
quotes
a
contradicting passage from
the
Bible,
the
burglar tells
him,
"Don't tell
me
what
I
said.
. .how do you
know
how I
feel 'bout that violence-vengeance bullshit how?
I
haven't
written anything since
the
Bible
The
surprised minister
^Ben
Caldwell
and
others,
A
Black Quartet
(New
York,
1 970), p. 32. - — —
18
is
convinced,
and. he
subsequently takes
a new
stand
in. the
community
and
decides
to
lead
a.
protest; march#
Caldwell also wrdte Family Portrait
(or Son the
Black
Nationalist)
on
this theme
of
activism#
Hie
play takes place
at a
breakfast table where
a
family discussion
is
going
on
between
Son
(Sunshine
on
Truth), Mother (Nowhere Near Truth),
and
Father (Farthest From Truth). Father "don't want
no .
trouble,11
and Son
says Father will
die
waiting
to
turn white
and be
accepted
in the
white society.
Son
leaves.
Another one-act offering
by
Caldwell,
The Kin^ of
Soul
or The
Devil
and
Otis Redding,
was
also simple
and
short.
The
Devil uses various "disguises"
in the
play, consequently taking
the
part
of
many characters.
He
offers Redding money
for the
rights
to his
voice (soul),
and
Redding accepts
so he can
help
his
family* When Redding becomes
a
papular singer,
he
tries
to
break
the
contract.
The
Devil offers
him a
private airplane,
and of
course, Redding
is
killed
in a
crash while riding
in
the
Devil's airplane.
The
play closes with
two men in a bar ,
discussing
the
accident,
and
they agree that Whitey killed
Redding
so his
record sales would
go up and to
prevent
his
forming
his own
record company. Caldwell's plays
are
obviously
anti-white,
and
they either call
for
action against
the
white
society
or
demonstrate
the
evil
of the
white society. Other
plays
by
Caldwell include Take
Out, The Job,
Mission Accom-
plished
and
Riot Sale
or
Dollar Psyche.
•s»wti«r-<Tini=ejs«wi* »«»«»
.*.
. 119
Another contributor
to The
Quartet, Ronald Milner, wrote
The
Warning—A Thome
for
LiBda, which
is the
only play
of the
four
not
dealing with race•war.
It
depicts
the
lonely
and
painful
abstinence
of
Linda,
a
virgin,.and
her
decision
to "get it
over with.
Get it
started*,
She has a
talk with Grannie
and
Mama
in
which
she
learns about
the
evil
in the men of her
family
and why the
women have
no
love left
for
them.
Her
mother tells
her
that Donald, Linda's boyfriend,
is
like
her
father once was—full
of
dreams. Linda asks Donald
to
take
her to a
motel,
yet she
says
to
herself that
she
hopes
he
will
not
take
her
unless
he can
give
as
much
of
himself
as she can
of
herself
The
play shows
the
results
of the
frustration
of men in a
society
in
which their dreams
go
unfulfilled; their
abandonment
of
responsibility forces
the
women
to
take full
responsibility
for
their families. Milner depicts
an
emotion-
ally sterile society
in
which escapism plays
a
prominent role.
Milnor also wrote "Who's
Got His Own and
Life Agony. Who's
Got His Own
played
at the
American Place Theatre
in the
fall
of 1966. It is
another "searing, unrelenting drama" without
49
humor about
an
emotionally sterile society.
It
shows
a
family's soul-searching
on the day Tim
Senior
is
buried,
and Tim
Junior realizes that nothing
has
changed
for his
race
in
America.
^Tbid.,
p. 113.
^8Ibid,,
p. m.
^Mitchell,
p. 223,
120
like
The
Warning, this play
is a
gloomy piece full
of the
hopelessness that
is
found
ii;
eo:ne segments
of the
"black
.community®
Gentleman Caller9
Ed
Bullins1 contribution
to the
Quartet,
is
somewhat enigmatic,, Stereotyped characters—The
Maid, Madame,
The
Gentleraan Caller—perform symbolic acts
throughout
the
play. Madame taunts
the
Caller
(a
black)
who
never speaks;
she
fires
and
rehires
The
Maid, whom
she
cannot
do
without. Madame tells
the
Caller that
we all
have
a
style
learned from practice
and
tradition,
and of her
life,
she
says,
"It's not all
soft.
.
.there's
a
certain rigidness
of the
spiritual fibers."^0
The
Maid kills
Mr.
Mann, Madame's
hus-
band,
and
drags
him
onto
the
stage,
and
then kills Madame.
The
Caller
is
presumably
The
Maid's
son; and she
evidently
kills
him, for a
shot
is
fired off-stage while
the
stage
is
empty,
and she
enters alone.
The
Maid
is now
Queen Mother,
and in a
telephone conversation with Father,
she
says,
"We
are
getting ready
for the
long
war
ahead
of us.
DEATH
TO THE
ENEMIES
OF THE
BLACK PEOPLE,
The
role
of the
black servant
in the
white society
is
explored
by two
other dramatists
of the
sixties, Douglas
.
Turner Ward
and Ted
Shine, though they
use an
ironic-comic
style
in
place
of the
symbolic-tragic style
of
Bullins.
Contribution
by Ted
Shine shows
the
contribution
of Mrs,
Love,
50Caldwell
f pa 1>2X.
^Ibid.,
p. 136.
121
an
Uncle
Tom
maid
in a
small Southern town,
to the
black
movement. While
her
grandson
is
participating
in a
sit-in
demonstration,
she
poisons
her
employer,
the
sheriff,
so he
cannot prevent
the
sit-in.
It is
revealed that
she
poisoned
her
last employer also,
a
prominent doctor
who had
once refused
to
treat
her
late husband.
She
tells
her
grandson
she may
take
a
trip
to
Mississippi,
for the
governor needs
a
cook.
The
play ends with
Mrs.
Love saying,
"I
wonder who'll
be
next?
I'll put me an ad in the
paper.
Who
knows,
it may be you or
you,or
you., . . ."^2
Douglas Turner Ward's play Happy Ending (1965)
is
similar
to
this,
for in it the
true motive
of two
Uncle
Tom
maids
is
revealed,
Vi and
Ellie
are
despondent because their employers,
the
Harrisons,
are
getting
a
divorce. Junie, their nephew,
reprimands them
for
crying about
it and
says
he is
humiliated
by
their actions. They explain
to him
that
the
fine food,
furniture,
and
clothing
for
them
and the
rest
of the
family
come from
the
Harrisons,
for
Ellie
is in
charge
of
household
expenses,
and she has
been tailing
a
"bonus"
for
years. When
Mr.
Harrison calls
to say he and his
wife have reconsidered,
Junie joins
Vi and
Ellie
in a
celebration with 19lf7 champagne
and
gives
the
following toast,
"To the
victors
and the van- .
quished,
the top dog and the
bottom
dog!
Sometimes
it's
hard
to
tell which
is
which.
52
Stewart Benedict, Blacklash
(New
York, 1970),
p. 319.
Couch,
p. 22.
122
Ward used this ironic— comic-farcical style
for Day of
Absence (1965), another play
in
v/hich
it is
difficult
to
tell
the top dog
from
the
bottom
dog, .''he
play
is a
"reverse
minstrel show done
in
white face" which shows
the
inter-
dependence
of the
races.
It is set in a
small Southern town
and
opens with Clem
and
Luke sitting
in
front
of The
Store*
They feel something
is not
right,
and the
realization hits.
them that they have
not
seen
a
"Nigra"
all
morning.
The
play
interlaces scenes from
the
street,
the
home
of
John
and
Mary,
and the
mayor's office
to
show
the
effect
in all
quarters
when
"the
darkies" disappear.
The
town comes
to a
virtual
standstill,
and
v/hen
a
direct appeal from
the
mayor
via
tele-
vision fails
to
bring back
the
blacks,
the
town begins riot-
ing and
looting,
and it
finally sinks
in
submission
and
defeat.
The
next
day, the
blacks
are
"Back just like they useta
be.
54
Everything's same
as
always.
. .Or is it?"
Ward's one-act
plays have been better received
by
white critics than have
those
of
other black playwrights
of the
period,
and
this
is
most assuredly because
the
plays make their point1 through
humor,
a
form more palatable
to
whites
in the
race-war drama
genre. Ward
has won
Obie Awards
for
both
his
writing
and
his
acting.
• Ed
Eullins, author
of The
Gentleman Caller, also wrote
several other plays during
the
sixties. Goin'
a
Buffalo
is
^Couch,
p. 59.
12-3
a
tragi fantasy about
the
wosj-ld
oi*
-ijpa
and
prostitution#
It
opens with Curt welcoming
Art io his
agar tcient,
for Art is
.a new
friend;
he
saved Curt frou boxing stabbed
in a
fight v/hen
they were
in
prison together«
Art is a
quiet person
who
tries
to
remain "uninvolved,"
and
Curt trusts him# Mama
Too
Tight
(a
white)
is
also welcomed
to the
apartment,
for she has
been
in
jail
for
ninety days
and has
just been released.
Her man,
Shaky, comes
and
gives
her a fix, and
Pandora, Curt1s wife,
brings marijuana
for all of
them.
In
this society,
the
worsen
become prostitutes
to
support their
men and
their habits,
and
the men are
responsible
for
keeping them
out of
jail. Pandora
is
also
a
stripper,
and the
party moves
to the
club
in
which
she
works.
The
owner
of the
club tells them
the
show
is
closed,
and
Pandora
is let off
without
her
back pay#
' A
fight starts,
and the
police
get
Shaky.
Art
stays with Curt
and
Pandora,
and
after three days elapse,
he has
Marna
Too
Tight dependent upon
him for
"stuff"
and he
also
has
Pandora' falling
for him. He
turns Curt
in, and
when
the
police pick
him up, he
tells
the I
girls
the
three
of
them
are
going
to
Buffalo together.
He
reminds Pandora
to get her box.
Another
of
Bullins1 plays,
In New
England Winter# employs
the
same detached objectivity
in
describing conditions
and
relationships
in a
lew-class group.
The
play shows Steve
in
his
dual life---stealing
to get
enough money
to go to Liz1 s
place
in New
England
for the
winter,
and
enjoying
the
cold,
quiet peace
of
snow
in New
England.
The
play
is a
series
of
1 ?Jf
scenes
and
flashbacks, showing
a
group
of
criminals planning
a
jobe
The
brutal natu.ie
of
Steve's existence
is
presented,
for
there
is
always a•man ready
to
take
liz
after
he
leaves
and
there
is
always someone after
him
among
his
"friends,"
Even
his
brother, Cliff,
is
hostile
to him, for
while Cliff
was in
jail, Steve
and his
wife
had an
affair,
and
Cliff's
wife
had
Steve's baby. When Steve learns that Cliff
has
known about
the
affair
all
along,
he
says
he
wants
to go
north.
Like GoIn'
a
Buffalo,
the
play ends
on a
note
of
continuation
of the
cycle•
The
names
or
events
may
change,
but the
pattern
is
repeated over
and
over again. Bullins1 works convey
the
same feeling
of
futility
in the
continuation
of the
hostile,
emotionally sterile, cycle that Milner's works depict.
Another group
of new
playwrights
was
represented
in a
collection
of
plays published
as New
Plays from
the
Black
Theatre.
The
playwrights contained
in
this collection
are
Kingsley
B,
Bass,
Jr«, N, R,
Davidson,
Jr.,
Charles
H,
Fuller,
Jr.,
Sonia Sanchez, Herbert Stokes, Marvin
X,
Salimu,
and the
previously discussed playwrights, LeRoi Jones,
Ed
Bullins,
and
Ben
Caldwell,
Herbert Stokes,
a
seventeen-year-old actor-poet, worked
with LeRoi Jones
at the
Spirit House
in
Newark,
His
play
The
Man Who
Trusted
the
Devil Twice
is a
race-war offering about
the
evils
of
Whitey,
The
Uncle
Tom
principal
of the
black
school
is
told
he has
been promoted,
but he is to
continue
\
brainwashing
the
students,
for the
mayor does
not
want trouble,
" ' . 12.5
The
radical students
are to be
exterminated,
and if any mis-
takes
are
made,
the
principal will
be
killed
to
cover
for the
organization.
The
principal agrees.
His son
then shoots
the
history teacher,
and' the
principal
is
told that both
he and
his son
will
be
killed unless
he
informs
on his
son's
com-
panions.
The
principal informs
and is
killed anyway,
and the
boys
are
tried
and
scheduled
to be
executed.
• A
group
of
blacks
break into
the
courtroom
and
free their companions, thus ending
the
play
on a
victorious note.
Kingsley
B.
Bass,
Jr., a new
playwright,
was
killed
in
the
Detroit riots when
he was
twenty-four. Ironically,
his
three-act play,
We
Righteous Bombers,
has a
protagonist
his
age who is
imprisoned after
a
bombing.
In the
play,
war has
broken
out
between
the
whites
and the
blacks,
and the
country
is in a
state
of
martial
law. A
government policy
of
apartheid
has led to the
establishment
of
concentration camps
and
other
dire measures, Murray Jackson,
a
young revolutionary,
is in
jail
for
killing
the
Grand Prefect,
the
black
man
placed over
the
black community
by the
white power structure. Jackson
is
told
he
will hang
for his
offense,
and the
hangman
is a
black
who
gets time
off his
sentence
for
each
man he
executes..
In
Act II,
Jackson
is
approached
by
Smith,
the
head
of
security,
who is
actually
the
Grand Prefect,
The man
Jackson killed
was
a
decoy. Ironically,
the
first time Jackson
had an
opportunity
to
kill
the
Prefect,
he did not do it
because there were chil*
dren present.
An
ideological discussion ensues about killing
H O. f"
1 i'.O
childron
in a war, and
whether
or not the end
justifies
the
means„ Smith tolls Jackcon
he
will
be the
next hangman,
and he
must execute
1^0
criminals, beginning with
the
previous
hangman*
In Act III,
Jackson
is
functioning
as the
executioner.
In a
flashback,
he and
Bonnie,
his
girl-friend, talk
and
decide
•
there
is no
love possible
for the
"righteous bombers"
who are
"part spirits
of
beautiful blackness, part dreadful ghosts
of
destruction
and
death.Bonnie asks
if it
might
be
possible
that white
men are
directing them,
for
they take orders from
a
committee they never
see and are
ordered
to
kill only blacks.
Bonnie asks
if she can
throw
the
next bomb,
for she
wants
to
join Jackson,
Two
women contributed
to
this collection
of
plays, Sonia
Sanchez
and
Salimu. Sonia Sanchez,
a
poet, offered
a
one-act
play, Sister Son/jl. Sister Son/ji
is the
only character,
and
when
the
play opens,
she is an old
woman whose children
are all
dead.
She
changes
to a
young college girl
and
relives
the
high-
lights
of her
lifes
She is
idealistic, learns
the
teachings
of
Malcolm
X, and
marries.
The
revolution comes,
and she
sends
her
children away
to
escape
it, but her
thirteen-year-old
son
is
brought back
to
fight
and is
killed.
She
lias grown into
an
old
woman
in
Mississippi
and is
supported
by the
state.
She
asks
the
audience
if
they will "grab
the day and
make
it
stop,"^b
jP"
Bullins, editor,
Hew
Plays from
the
Black Theatre
(New
York, 1969),
p. 8?. " * ' --- . —
56Ibid.,
p. 107.
12?
Salimu's play, Growin1 Into Blackness, shows
a
discussion
of
teen-age girls about their problems
*
Lolita
has a
''natural'
•hair style,
and her
mother wants
her to
have
her
hair straight-
,
ened.
All of the
girls suffer from
a
similar problem—lack
of
understanding-—and agree
to
leave home
and
live
a new way.
Though
it is
limited
to the
black experience, this play
ap-
proaches
a
universality
in its
concentration
on the
parent-
child conflict common
to all
families.
A
historical play,
The
Rise,
by
Charles
H.
Fuller,
Jr.,
a
housing inspector
in
Philadelphia,
is
about Marcus Garvey's
rise
to
power.
The
four-act play opens
in 1916
with Garvey's
disappointment over
the
reception
he has
received while demand-
ing
equal treatment
for
blacks
in the
army.
The
play shifts
to
Retha
and
Henry Jeffers,
who are
discussing
the war, for
Henry
has
served
in
France
and
come back
a
cripple,
yet he was
never accepted
by his
white comrades. Garvey,
in an
attempt
to
further
his
movement, makes
an
agreement with Hall,
a
crooked
politician.
In 1917
Henry joins Marcus Garvey;
and in 1918
Hall
and
Marcus Garvey have
a
disagreement because Garvey
has not con-
tributed
to
Hall's political party. Retha tells Henry
she
lost
a
child while
he was at war and
subsequently nursed
her
employer1s baby3
and
Henry tells Retha that they
cut off his
arm to
save
it
from poison,
but it was
later learned that there
was no
poison,
and the man
that
did it was not
even
a
doctor.
Garvey, picked
up by the
district attorney
for
soliciting funds
without
a
license,
is
released
but is
asked
to
leave Harlem.
In
• 1 28
1919>
Henry,
the lie ad of
Gar-gey
*3
legion, leaves
for
eight
months,
and he
.learns that Kutlerige,
the
ship captain
in
.charge
of
Garvey1s fleets
id
taking
a
rake-off.
He
returns
and
shoots Garvey
and
himself. Marcus recovers,
but
while
thepeople
are
rallying behind hin,the district attorney
approaches with
a
warrant•
N. R.
Davidson,
Jr.
gives
a new
treatment
to
material
about Malcolm
X in his
play
El
Hajj Malik. Davidson,
the
holder
of an M. A,
from Stanford, served
as the
playwright
in
residence
at the
Black Theatre
in New
Orleans.
He
wrote
hie
play
in
poem recital form,
and ten
anonymous actors recite
the
biography
of
Malcolm
X in
verse. Incidents covered
are
the
death
of his
father,
the
incarceration
of his
mother
for '
mental illnessn
his
conversion
to his
religion,
his
proposal
to
sister Betty,
and his
murder.
The
play
can be
done
as
reader's theatre
or as a
full production;
it
grew
out of a
group improvisation
at
Stanford
in the
spring
of 1967. It is
effective
as an
informative piece,
but it
does
not
seem
to be
'11
drama."
Marvin
X
also wrote about Malcolm
X in his
one-act
con-
tribution
to the
anthology,
The
Black Bird.
In it, a
brother
of the
Black Muslim religion tells
two
young black girls
about
the
teachings
of
Elijah Muhammod.
He
tells
a
parable
about
a
black bird
in a
cage that will
not fly out
when
the
door
is
opened,
for it has
forgotten what freedom
is.
When
the
house catches
on
fire,
he
ntays
in the
cage until another
black bird comes
and
takes iiira
out. He.
ends
his
parable
123
with
a
prayer
to
Allah. This jxl&y could
be
used
for
chil-
dren's theatre easily,
for it is
simple
and
short.
The
fact that
The
Black Bird
and
numerous other plays
were published attests
to the new
trend
of the
sixties,
for a
wide-spread movement
in the
black community
for
theatre
.
flourished
in
this period.
No
decade since
the
thirties
has
seen such
an
array
of
plays
in
print
by
black authors,
but
unlike
the
plays
of the
thirties, those
of the
sixties were
not
primarily concerned with history.
The
sixties introduced
a
new
type
of
drama—race-war drama.
The
belief
in
inevitable
war
between blacks
and
whites
was
clearly
a
dominant theme.
The
existing conflict
of the
races
was
continuously shown.
Playwrights emerged with
new
themes, innovations
in set
designs,
and of
course,
the
"nothing sacred" philosophy which included
the use of
previously avoided words
and
phrases considered
"obscene."
The new
freedom with language caused vicious
criticism
of
many works
and
often
of the
Negro dramatic move-
ment
as a
whole. Blacks generally spurned white criticism,
however,
for the
plays
are
intended
for
black audiences,
gen-
erally being intended
to
disgust, embarrass,
and
insult white
audiences,
and
this rebellion against white audiences
is '
indicative
of the
feeling behind race-war drama itself.
CHASTER VIII
•
CONCLUSION
The
preceding chapters provide
a
historical view
of
Negro
drama from
its
beginnings
in the
work
of
William Wells Brown
around
18^8
through
its
most recent expression
in the
race-war
dramas
of the
1960's. Negro drama began
in 1858
with William
•
Wells Brown's play,
The
Escape,
a
protest drama written
for
lyceura readings. This play established
the
precedent that
would
be
followed almost exclusively
for a
century,
for the
majority
of the
Negro drama
has
been
and
continues
to be
protest drama. Negroes, unwilling
to
accept
the
conditions
of
their race,
use
'drama
to
expose
the
injustices
and to
depict
the
conditions
of the
people.
The
Negro Renaissance
of the
early twentieth century
was
especially evident
in the
field
of
Negro drama,
for the
previous crude
and
isolated attempts
at
drama were replaced
with
a
systematic
and
organized theatre effort.
The
twenties
marked
the
emergence
of the
individual Negro creative artist;
four dramas
by
Negro playwrights appeared
on
Broadway during
the
decade. Playwrights attempted
to
give
a
realistic portray-
al of
Negro life
to
repudiate
the
minstrel-musical tradition
of the
late nineteenth century.
The
plays were generally
one-
act
efforts
in
dialect with unsophisticated dramatic technique,
130
131
for
Negroes generally
had
only limited knowledge
of the
thea-
tre.
Most
of the New
York theatres were segregated,
and
Negroes
had no
opportunity
to
work
in or
observe stage
pro-
ductions.
The
development
of the
Federal Theatre Project
in the
thirties rectified this situation#
The
Negro Unit
of the •
Federal Theatre
(a
unit
of the
Works Progress Administration)
operated from August
1935 to
June 1939*
It
offered Negroes
opportunities
in the
professional theatre which they could
not
otherwise obtain.
The
Federal Theatre drew large audiences,
for it
operated during
the
depression
and
charged minimal
en-
trance fees.
It was
instrumental
in
developing
an
audience
in
Harlem
for
Negro drama. Unfortunately,
a
controversy arose
over Turpentine
and
some
of the
other productions,
and the
unit
was
subsequently closed. While
in
operation,
it had
refused
to
produce plays that might
be
considered "radical"
by
whites. Nonetheless,
a
bitter protest play, Mulatto,
by
Langston Hughes,
was the
major Negro play
of the
decade
and
ran.over
two
years
on
Broadway,
The
play made
use
of.the
"tragic mulatto" stereotype,
and
this
was
part
of the
reason
for its
success.
It is
interesting
to
note that Negro writers
themselves helped perpetuate some
of the
Negro stereotypes,
for .the use of
stereotypes acceptable
to
whites helped them
to
have their 'work produced.
The
progress
of the
professional theatre
of the
thirties
was
matched
by the
development
of an
educational theatre
132
(drama programs
for
school,"). Randolph Edmonds, foremost
in
this
new
movement, wrote
and
produced
a
number
of
plays,
The
Land
of
Cotton being
his
best-known work.
A
surprisingly
large number
of
collections
of
short, simple plays
for
school
productions
was
published, most
of
them dealing with heroic
Negroes
of
history#
The
educational theatre seemed intent
"
upon establishing
a
"race-pride" based
on the
past deeds
of
noble Negroes.
The
forties
saw the
continued attempt
of
Negro playwrights
to
organize
a
permanent theatre
in
Harlem, although
the end
of the
decade
saw the
dissolution
of the
existing local theatre
groups. Individual playwrights
did
well,
and
Theodore Ward's
Our Lin1, a
historical two-act play, received favorable criti-
cal
attention;
it has
been called
the
finest play written
by
a
Negro,
The
middle-class Negro society began
to be
examined
in
plays
of the
period,
and
several dramas
of the
forties stand
out for
their social significance
(and
artistic merit
as
well).
The
forties began
a new
movement
in
Negro theatre,
for the
play-
wrights ceased being interested
in
writing work palatable
to
whites,
The
most important Negro- play
of the
forties, Native
Son, by
Richard V/right,
was the
forerunner
of the "new
drama,"
for it
clearly contains
an
indictment
of the
white American
society.
It was the
first
of a now
flourishing group.
In the
fifties, Negro drama definitely moved into
the
mainstream
of
American drama,
and
Lorraine Hansberry»s famous
play,
A
Raisin
in the Sun
(1959)?
is
often cited
as the
begin-
ning
of
mature Negro drama. Like Miss Hansberry, Alice Childress
• . 133
and
Louis Peterson strove
for
universality
in
their works
and.
stressed
the
need
for
compassion. Other writers continued
in the
Native
Son
tradition, showing
the
shortcomings
of
white
•
American society. William Branch
and
Loften Mitchell offered
plays about
the
inequities
of
Negro life
in
America,
but
their
plays
are
mild when compared with
the
race-war plays
of the
sixties,
LeRoi Jones emerged
as the
major Negro playwright
of the
sixties,
and his
personal opinion that
war
between whites
and
blacks is'inevitable
is
evident throughout
his
works.
He
attacks white society
and
white Christianity, showing
the
evils
of
both from
a
black viewpoint.
He has
been greatly
maligned
for his
subject matter
and his use of
"obscene'1
language. Other playwrights
of the
period also exhibit
ani-
mosity
to the
white community,
and war
between blacks
and
whites
is a
recurring theme.
The
notable exceptions
to
this
type
of
drama
are
Ossie Davis1 Purlie Victorious,:which,
al-
though
it
deals with
the
animosity between
the
races, treats
the
subject humorously,
and
Lorraine Hansberry1s
The
Sign
in
Sidney Brustein's Windowwhich stresses
the
need
for
compassion
and
mutual understanding.
An
overall view
of the
Negro drama shows
it to be con-
cerned with
the
oppression, exploitation,
and
humiliation
of
Negroes,
and
violence—latent
or
overt—is almost always
expressed. Constantly repeated patterns
and
types emerge
within this frameworks
The
lives
of
sharecroppers
and
ghetto
13k
dwellers
are
explored;
and,
although
It
is.stressed
in
only
a few
plays,
the
Negro caste system
is
always evident® Religion
is
almost always shown-
as an
integral part
of the
Negro experi-
•
ence,
and in the
earlier decades
of
their drama
the
"Negro
endurance," Christian-inspired,
is
demonstrated over
and
over
again.
The
sixties introduce
new
themes
to the
theatre,
for
Negroes
are no
longer "enduring"
as
they
did
previously; instead
they
are
well-armed adversaries
of the
whites
and are
involved
in a
race
war. An
awakening nationalism
is
evident
in the
dual theme's, "Black
is
Beautiful"
and
"White
is
Evil," There
is a
corresponding lack
of
humor
in
plays
of the
sixties,
making
the
works somber, harsh,
and
full
of
frustration
and
anger.
At an
April,
1965
symposium
of
Negro playwrights,
the
observation
was
made that Negro playwrights
had
rarely been
produced, thus casting doubt
as .to
whether
or not
enough plays
had
been produced
to
determine what Negro playwrights have
actually
had to say.
This study, having explored unproduced
as
well
as
produced plays, unsuccessful
as
well
as
successful
plays, unpopular
as
well
as
popular plays, endeavors
to
give
accurately
a
historical picture
of
Negro drama since
its
inception
and to
show what
the
dramatists have been saying
from
1858 to 1970,
*Loften Mitchell, Black Drama
(New
York, 196?),
p. 216,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Abramson, Doris
E.,
Negro
i£. iAf.
^^§^£2.
1925-1959,
New
York, Columbia Universicy Press,
19o9.
The
American Negro Writer
and, His
Rootst
New
York, American
~
""Socxety
of
lifrican "Culture,
1PHT.
Baldwin James, Blues
For
Mister Charlie,
New
York, Dial Press,
19^. —• —
Benedict, Stewart
H.,
editor, Blacklash,
New
York, Popular
Library,
1970
Bennett, Lerone,
Jr.,
Before
the
Mayflower:
A
History
of
The
Negro
in
America 1&19-T9&4-« Baltimore, Penguin Books,
196 U
Bigsby,
C. W. E.,
editor,
The
Black American Writer,
Vol. II,
Baltimore,tPenguin Books,
1 9^9•
,
Confrontation
and
Commitment, Columbia,
OnTversity
'of
Missouri Press,
iW/T
Billington,
Roy
Allen, editor,
The
Journal
of
Charlotte
L.
For ten.: A
Free Negro
in the
Slave
Era, New
York, Collier
Books, 19537*
Bond, Frederick
W., The
Negro
and the
Drama, College Park,
McGrath Publishing Company
,"*1
969*
Brawley, Benjamin Griffith,
The
Negro Genius,
New
York, Biblo
and
Tannen, 1966#
Brown, Sterling
A.,
Nejgro Poetry
and
Drama, Washington,
D.C.,
The
Associates
in
Negro Folk "Education,
1 937.
Brown, William Wells,
The
Black
Man, H_is
A^^gceaen^s,
His^
Gen jus, and His
Achievements,
New
York, Johnson Reprint
Eorp.7 19SBY"
™
Clotelle:
A
Tale
of the
Southern States,
HixIa3eIpBra, AlberOaifer ,~1955."
* ,
135
^
Gregg Press, iooG.
136
M^r
Southern Home,
New
Jersey,
The
,
Narrative
of
William Wells Brown,
T^FxiKil^ITe''Slave',"'Boston71SEi-&avery Office,
Wk7.
t ^he
Negro
in the
American Rebellion,
T^"YoW^^o^son~Heprint Corp.,
19&8.
,
Sketches
of
Places
and
People Abroad:
iS3SSSS.» NewTork, Negro Univer-
sal ie s"
"tVess,
1% 9 •
Bullins,
Ed,
editor,
Kew
KLajrs From
the
Black Theatret
New
York, Bantam Books,
Caldwell,
Ben and
others,
A
Black Quartet,
New
York,
New
American Library,
Inc., 1970 •
Cotter, Joseph
S,,
Caleb,
The
Degenerate, Louisville, Bradley
and
Gilbert
Co.,
1903•
Couch, William,
New
Black Playwrights, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
State University "Press, ±9&8»
Davis, John Preston, editor,
The
American Negro Reference
•.
Book,
New
Jersey, Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1966.
Davis. Ossie, Purlie Victorious,
New
York, Samuel French,
Jf W <!».
WJ=»-VMwat'iffiK itzm MKSttil-.;
*
Inc., 1961.
Douglass, Frederick, Life
and
Times
of
Frederick Douglass,
London, Collier-Hacmillan, Ltd.', 195*2.
Edmonds, Randolph,
The
Land
of
Cotton
and
Other Plays,
Washington, D.LT7 r^clateT^Publi^ers7^nc»VT9^2.
Elkins, Stanley, Slavery, Chicago, University
of
Chicago
Press, 1959•
Ellison, Ralph, Shadow
and Act, New
York, Random House,
1953.
Franklin, John Hope
and
Isidore Starr, editors,
The
Negro
in
Twentieth Century America,
New
York, Random House,
19677"
Frazier,
E.
Franklin, Black Bourgeoisie, London, Collier-
MacMillan
Ltd.,
19577"
* \
13?
Gara, Larry, editor,
The
Narrative
of
William
W.
Brownt
A
Fugitive S3.ave, Haasachuseits,
T5s-Co;7 'IW9T
Green, Paul
and
Richard Wright, Native
Son, New
York, Harper
and
Brothers,
19^1®
Grirnke, Angelina Wild, Rachel, College Park, McGrath Publish-
ing Co., 1969.
Hansberry, Lorraine,
A
Raisin
in the Sun, New
York, Random
House,
1959 • ' "*
, The
Sign
in
Sidney Brustein's Window,
New~?o
rk
~TS^oj!i'"lTo use",*"!^^
• ~
Hill, Herbert, Anger,
and
Beyond,
New
York, Harper
and Row,
1966.
Hughes, Langs
ton, The Big Sea, New
York, Alfred
A,
Knopf,
19^0. . "" .. ...
. > ,
FJ.ve Plays, Bloomington, Indiana University
''I'TJKX'
— —
JL «Lt Vi* K& kuJ ^ JU ^ # *
Isaacs, Edith,
The
Negro
in the
American Theatre,
New
York,
Theatre Arts,
IW/7 "" ~~~
Johnson, James Weldon, Black Manhattan,
New
York, Arno Press
and New
York TimesTT9ffi".~~—
Jones.
Le Roi, The
Baptism
and the
Toilet,
New
York, Grove
Press,
1963.
,
Dutchman
and The
Slave,
New
York, William
Horrow
and" Co.,
U-JG'iT*
~~
,
Four Black Revolutionary Plays,
New'
York,'
Bobbs-Merrxil,
1969 »* - - - .
Krcnenberger, Louis, editor,
The
Best Plays
of
195j5-195*f
New
York, Dodd, Mead and"Co., X95W
t
LittleJohn, David, Black
on
White,
New
York, Grossman
Pub-
lishers
,
3.966.
—
Locke, Main, editor,
The New
Negro:
An
Interpretation,
New
York, Arno Press a'ncl*
Hew
York "Time's'', I960T
"""
of
Negro Life,
New
York, Harper
and
Brothers, l9<«i>.
138
Loggiris, Vernon,
The
Negro Author,
Now
York, Columbia
University Press™1931•
"
Mantle, Burns, editor,
The
Best Plays
of
19^-0-19^1
s New
York, Dodd, Mead and~CoT7"l94i»
Margolies, Edward, Native Sons,
New
Jersey,
J. B.
Lippincott
Co., 1968.
Mitchell, Loften, Black Drama,
New
York, Hawthorn Books,
Inc.,
1967. ~~ '
, A
Land Beyond
the
River, Cody, Pioneer
Drama ServTce7 1955*
~ ~
Nettleton, George
H. and
Arthur
E.
Case, editors, British
Dramatists from Dryden
to
Sheridan, Boston, I-lougWon
•
rxmi^rco.7T9*39r—
~~
Ottley,
Roi, New
World A-Coming,
New
York, Arno Press
and
New
York Times,
19^8.
Ottley,
Roi and
William
J.
Weatherby, editors,
The
Negro
in
New
York,
New
York, Oceana Publishers,
Inc.,
Richardson, Willis
and May
Miller, editors, Negro History
in
Thirteen Plays, Washington,
D.C.,
Associated "Publishers,
W5T.
Richardson, Willis, Plays
and
Pageants from
the
Life
of the
Negro, Washington, C.'C., AssociateHH^blishers, 1930V
'
Robinson, Armstead
L., and
others, editors, Black Studies
in
the
University:
A
Symposium,
New
Haven, Yale University
Press, 195"9»
.
Rowe, Kenneth,
A
Theater
in
Your Head,
New
York, Funk
and
.
Wagnalls
Co.,
19U0•
•
Shay, Frank, Fifty More_ Contemporary One-Act Plays,
New
York,
f D.
Apple
ton ahB. "Co.,
1928T"
Toomer, Jean, Cane,
New
York, Harper
and Row,
1969*
Wittke, Carl, Tambo
and
Bones, North Carolina, Duke University
Press, 1930*
139
ill' L jl ^ o
V !-V>
JW'v-is
HT^ <?y r\ 1 c? p.rj f0
IJ.'?<3
« "
SatViXv;AsCf Re,V'tGi.l'i
Burke, Kennetn,
> i? • /, """— *• ~~
of
L.ltorature
, X,
(Juj.y
2-9, •>
miUwiftor,
s. P.,
"Jean Toomer: Lost Generation,
or
Nogro
Renaissance?*1 U^ibby
9
-"r-3*
"Historic Decision
for
Equality,n -vXAVI
(May 3-<->
1?^^°*
Hughes, Langston, "American
Art or
Negro Art?" Nation, CXXIII
"
(August
8,
1962),
151.
Reddin^* .Saunders,
"The
Problems
of the
K'egro Writer^®
"Massachusetts Review,
VI
(Autumn-Winter 1964-63;»
Unpublished Materials
Cruller, Gloria Thomas,
The
Negro
in the
America* Theatre
"end
Drama from 1930-1956, "unpublished fester
s
thesis,
"0ePaFbment"~oT™Drama", Tennessee Agricultural
and
Indus-
trial State University, Nashville, Tennessee,
1953 •
