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Pioneering Black Authored Dramas: 1924-27
presented by
Addell Austin
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DateMaLl . 1986
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PIONEERING BLACK AUTHORED DRAMAS: 1924-27
By
Addell Patricia Austin
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Theatre
1986
ABSTRACT
PIONEERING BLACK AUTHORED DRAMAS: 1924-27
By
Addell Patricia Austin
From 1924-27, Opportunity and Crisis magazines of the
National Urban League and National Association for the
Advancement of Colored Peeple, respectively, sponsored
literary competitions to encourage black writers. The
contests included a playwriting division and awarded prizes
to thirty plays by fifteen black dramatists. These works
comprise much of the pioneering efforts in dramatic liter-
ature by blacks. However, since these plays were not
written for the Broadway stage, these dramas have not been
included in the scope of many important studies of the
black theatre.
This study provides a history of the literary contests
and discusses the driving forces behind them. A detailed
look at the drama category identifies the objectives of
this division and documents the contests' rules, judges,
and winning playwrights and their works. The discussion of
the award winning plays are arranged by topic: (1) race
dramas; (2) miscegnation dramas; (3) complexion plays; (4)
domestic plays; and (5) religious life plays. For each of
the nineteen extant dramas, there are a synopsis of the
story and critical comments on the drama's plot, major
characters, and other selected elements. Whenever possible,
plots and critiques are included from revised scripts,
playreader reports, and production reviews of the eleven
award winning plays without extant original scripts. The
survey of the lives of the prize winning dramatists provides
an indication of the impact that the drama contest may have
had on their playwriting careers and the development of the
black theatres. The appendix lists published and unpublished
plays by the fifteen award winning dramatists. Script
sources, productions, and selected theatre articles by
these playwrights are also noted.
This dissertation reveals that the prize winning plays
portrayed subjects familiar to their contemporary black
audience. Racial injustice, miscegnation, and lynching
were often used as topics of the plays; however, award
winners also concerned domestic issues and religious life.
The competitions also at least indirectly encouraged the
prize winning authors to write more plays and become more
involved, primarily, with black community and educational
theatres.
To my mother, Corine Austin, who
inspired my desire for knowledge
and understanding.
To my nephew, Nehemiah Austin,
who I pray will also desire to
learn and use this knowledge to
enrich the lives of others.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to the support provided by Dr. Georg
Schuttler, the Chairperson of my guidance committee. With-
out his constant encouragement, this dissertation would
never have been completed. I also appreciate the suggestions
offered by guidance committee members Drs. Farley Richmond
and Donald Treat and Professor Kathryn Williams.
James Hatch of the Hatch-Billos Collection and the
staffs of the Michigan State University Library and Howard
University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center provided
invaluable scripts, articles, and advice which greatly
facilitated this work.
May Miller, an Opportuntiy award winning playwright,
allowed me a personal interview. Her reminiscences enhanced
this study and provided information which I could not have
otherwise obtained.
I cannot adequately express my gratitude to my friends
and family. My parents--Corine and James Austin--and
sisters--Yvette, Colette, Abigail, and Jill—-were always
understanding and supportive throughout the course of this
study.
Most important, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, gave
me the strength and perserverance to finish this
iii
dissertation. Through this experience, He has revealed to
me that "all things are possible."
iv
Chapter
II
III
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .
Works Cited
THE OPPORTUNITY AND CRISIS LITERARY
CONTESTS . . .
Charles S. Johnson and Opportunity
W.E.B. Du Bois and Crisis .
The 1925 Competition
The 1926 Competition
The 1927 Competition .
Works Cited. . . . .
BLACK THEATRE PRIOR TO 1924 AND THE
OPPORTUNITY AND CRISIS PLAY CONTESTS .
Black Theatre Prior to 1924. .
The Opportunity and Crisis Play
Contests
The 1925 Competition
The 1926 Competition
The 1927 Competition
Conclusions . . .
Works Cited . .
THE AWARD WINNING PLAYS.
Race_Dramas
Frances by George Dewey Lipscomb
Sugar Cain by Frank Wilson .
Blood by Warren McDonald . .
The First One by Zora Neale Hurston.
Bleedinngearts by Randolph Edmonds.
The Purple Flower by Marita Bonner .
Miscegnatlon Dramas
The Bog Guide by May Miller. . .
For Unborn Children by Mryrle Smith
Livingston .
Blue Blood by Georgia Douglas Johnson:
Illicit Love by Randolph Edmonds
Complexion Plays
Color Struck by Zora Neale Hurston
EXit, an Illusion by Marita Bonner .
Domestic Plays
Cooped Up by Eloise Bib Thompson
Broken Banjo by Willis Richardson.
'Cruiter by John Matheus . . .
V
IV
Bootblack Lover by Willis Richardson
Peter Stith by Randolph Edmonds.
Plumes by Georgia Douglas Johnson
The Hunch by Eulalie Spence.
The Starter by Eulalie Spence
Undertow by Eulalie Spence . . .
ReI1gious Life Plays
Humble Instrument by Warren McDonald
The Church Fight by Ruth Gaines
Shelton. . . .
The Cuss'd Thing by May .Miller .
Summary. . . . . . . . .
Works Cited . . . . . .
THE PRIZE WINNING DRAMATISTS . . .
Marita Bonner (1899- 1971)
(Sheppard) Randolph Edmonds.(1900- 83):
Zora Neale Hurston (1901- 60)
William Jackson (?) .
Georgia Douglas Johnson (1886- 1966).
George Dewey Lipscomb (1898- 1957).
Myrtle Smith Livingston (1902-72).
John Matheus (1887-1983) . . .
Warren McDonald (?). . . . .
May Miller (1899- )
Willis Richardson (1889- 1977). .
Ruth Gaines Shelton (1872- ?) . .
Eulalie Spence (1894- 1981) . .
Eloise Bibb Thompson (1878-1927)
Frank Wilson (1886- 1956) . .
Summary. . . .
Works Cited.
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . .
APPENDIX .
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PLAYS AND SELECTED
ARTICLES BY OPPORTUNITY AND CRISIS
PRIZE WINNING PLAYWRIGHTS. .
BIBLIOGRAPHY .
v1
123
127
127
129
132
134
138
139
142
144
145
148
148
151
153
157
158
161
162
163
165
166
170
174
175
179
180
184
188
194
198
221
INTRODUCTION
After World War I, thousands of blacks from the South
migrated to Northern cities. Better education and employment
opportunities were opening up to blacks; however, lynching
continued, riots were initiated throughout the country, and
racial discrimination was still common in American society.
In response to the negative aspects of black life, a
Jamaican named Marcus Garvey gained a following of hundreds
of thousands of blacks who supported his call for unity,
pride, and a new black republic. Garvey and his followers
believed that one day an "AfriCa for Africans at home and
abroad"1 would be organized which would unite that continent
and be ruled by black men.
Many other blacks were not persuaded by Garvey's
preachings. Instead, organizations such as the National
Urban League and National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) sought ways to eliminate racial
prejudice and injustice through education, non-violent
protest, and judicial and legislative remedies. These
groups also encouraged the development of black economic
and cultural activities.
1"The slogan of Garvey's Universal Improvement
\
Association.
During the 19205, black cultural activities became
better known outside the black community as literature,
art, music, and theatre written, composed, and/or performed
by blacks attracted the patronage of white people. Langston
Hughes wrote of the era now known as the Harlem Renaissance:
"It was a period when every season there was at least one
hit play on Broadway acted by a Negro cast. . . It was a
period when white writers wrote about Negroes more successfully
(commercially speaking) than Negroes did about themselves.
It was the period when the Negro was in vogue" (228). The
Urban League and NAACP realized that the opportunity had
never been better to attempt to make gains in racial under-
standing and equality. According to Harlem Renaissance
scholar Nathan Huggins:
[Black intellectuals] saw art and letters as a
bridge across the chasm between the races.
Artists of both races, they thought, were more
likely to be free of superstition, prejudice,
and fear than ordinary men. . .DeSpite a history
that had divided them, art and culture would
re-form [sic] the brotherhood in a common
humanity. (5)
The house organs of the Urban League and NAACP--
Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life (Opportunity) and
The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races (Crisis)--were
subscribed to black and white readers and influenced the
racial policy of the times. The journals encouraged the
development of black writers through the publication of
their works and by sponsoring literary contests. In his
history of black cultural activities, James Weldon Johnson
identified the contests as a "decided impulse to the literay
movement" of the era (277).
Both Opportunity and Crisis announced their literary
contests in 1924. Each journal held three contests with
the winners announced in 1925, 1926, and 1927. The contests
encouraged entries in the following categories: short
story, poetry, essay, personal experience sketch, illustration,
and drama.
The drama category is the subject of this dissertation.
Black theatre scholar Fannin Belcher stated:
[Pllaywriting received its greatest impetus from
the annual play contests sponsored by the Crisis
and Opportunity magazines. Private groups had
offered prizes for plays several years earlier
but they had neither the prestige of these
magazines nor could they make competition as
tempting by promising cash awards, publication
and production of the plays. (395-96)
Although black writers, composers, and entertainers had
captivated the American stage with such musicals as A Trip
to Coontown, Bandana Land, and Shuffle Along, depictions of
black life in drama had primarily remained the work of
white writers. The literary contests brought thirty plays
to the forefront to meet a desire for drama by black play-
wrights. The following is a listing of Opportunity and
Crisis award winning plays. An asterisk denotes works with
extant original scripts.
First Prize ($60)
Second Prize ($35)
Third Prize ($15)
Honorable Mention
First Prize ($75)
Second Prize ($40)
Third Prize ($10)
First Prize ($60)
Second Prize ($35)
Third Prize ($15)
Honorable Mention
First Prize ($100)
Second Prize ($50)
Honorable Mention
1925 Opportunity Competition
Frances* by 6.0. Lipscomb
Humble Instrument by Warren McDonald
Color Struck by Zora Neale Hurston
The Bog Guide* by May Miller
Cooped Up by Eloise Bibb Thompson
Fall of the Conjurer by Willis Richardson
Spears by Zora Neale Hurston
1925 Crisis Competition
The Broken Banjo* by Willis Richardson
The Church Fight* by Ruth Gaines Shelton
For Unborn Children* by Myrtle Smith Livingston
1926 Opportunity Competition
Sugar Cain* by Frank Wilson
'Cruiter* by John Matheus
Blood by Warren McDonald
Color Struck* by Zora Neale Hurston
The First One* by Zora Neale Hurston
The Cuss'd Thing* by May Miller
Blue Blood* by Georgia Douglas Johnson
1926 Crisis Competiton
Bootblack Lover* by Willis Richardson
ForeignMail by Eulalie Spence
Illicit Love by Randolph Edmonds
Peter Stith by Randolph Edmonds
1927 Opportunity Competition
First Prize ($60) Plumes* by Georgia Douglas Johnson
Second Prize ($25) The Hunch* by Eulalie Spence
Third Prize ($15) The Starter by Eulalie Spence
Four Eleven by William Jackson
Honorable Mention Bleeding Hearts* by Randolph Edmonds
1927 Crisis Competition
First Prize ($200) The Purple Flower* by Marita Bonner
Exit, an Illusion* by Marita Bonner
Third Prize ($50) Hot Stuff by Eulalie Spence
Undertow* by Eulalie Spence
These playwrights and their works comprise much of the
pioneering efforts in dramatic literature by blacks.
However, since these plays were not written for the Broadway
stage, these dramas have not been included in the scope of
many important studies of the black theatre.2
The few
exceptions include Roseann Bell's dissertation on
Opportunity and Crisis which discusses the literary contests
and provides critiques of three prize winning plays,
For Unborn Children, The Broken Banj_, and Frances (Crisis,
2'For example, Doris Abramson's Negro Playwriting in
in the American 1925-1959 (New York: Columbia UP, 1969) does
not discuss the plays since the study is only concerned with
drama by black playwrights produced on Broadway. Loften
Mitchell's Black Drama (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc.,
1967) identifies a few of the prize winning plays but does
not discuss their plots.
172-99). John Monroe's thesis on the black theatre of New
York during the 19205 features a section entitled, "Prize
Playwrights and Prize Plays," which primarily discusses the
lives and careers of two of the fifteen award winning play-
wrights, Willis Richardson and Eulalie Spence (143-55).
Fannie Hicklin's dissertation on black playwrights only
includes one-page descriptions of nine of the prize winning
plays--§pgar Cain, Broken Banjo, The Hunch, The Starter,
Undertow, 'Cruiter, Blue Blood, Plumes, and BleedingHearts
(144-83, passim; 271). Thus there is a need for a detailed
evaluation of the drama category of the literary contests
to ascertain what contributions these playwrights and their
works have made to the black theatre.
Chapter I of this dissertation provides a history of
the literary contests and discusses the driving forces
behind them. Chapter II takes a more detailed look at the
drama category by identifying the need for this division
and documenting the contests' rules, judges, and winning
playwrights and their works. Chapter 111 provides an
analysis of the prize winning plays. For each of the
nineteen extant dramas, there are a synopsis of the story
and critical comments on the drama's plot, major characters,
and other selected elements. Whenever possible, the chapter
includes plots and critiques from revised scripts, playreader
reports, and production reviews of the eleven award winning
plays without extant original scripts. Chapter IV surveys
the lives of the prize winning dramatists as an indication
of the impact that the drama contests may have had on their
playwriting careers and the development of the black
theatre. The appendix supplements Chapter IV by listing
published and unpublished plays by the fifteen award winning
dramatists. Script sources, productions, and selected
theatre articles by these playwrights are also noted.
Three journals have been used extensively for this
work: Crisis, Opportunity, and The Messenger: The World's
3
Greatest Monthly. Issues of Crisis and Opportunity provided
information on the literary contests, scripts of some prize
winning plays, black theatre reviews, essays on black
literature and the theatre, and essays, poetry, and short
stories by award winning dramatists. In The Messenger,
Theophilus Lewis's regular dramatic column, "The Theater:
The Souls of Black Folk" (Sept. 1923-July 1927), documented
the black theatre of New York--its drama, performances,
personalities, and expectations for its future development.4
Besides issues of Crisis and Opportunity, the following
sources have been used to locate scripts of the prize
winning plays: Carolina Magazine, University of North
Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC); Dillard University Library
(New Orleans, LA); Ebony and Topaz, ed. Charles S. Johnson;
3’Edited by A. Philip Randolph, The Messenger was
published in New York, 1917-1928.
4 Theodore Kornweibel, Jr. provides an informative
discussion of the drama critic in his article, "Theophilus
Lewis and the Theater of the Harlem Renaissance," lpg
Harlem Renaissance Remembered, ed. Arna Bontemps (New York:
Dodd, 1972).
Randolph Edmonds, Six Plays for a Negro Theatre; Federal
Theatre Project Collection, George Mason University (Fairfax,
VA); Fifty More Contemporary One-Act Plays, ed. Frank Shay;
Fire!! (New York); Fisk University Library (Nashville, TN);
Hatch-Billops Collection, Inc. (New York); Anmnead-Johnson
Foundation for Theatre Research (Jamaica, NY); Library of
Congress (Washington, D.C.); May Miller personal collection
(Washington, D.C.); Moorland-Spingarn Research Center,
Howard University (Washington, D.C.); Plays of Negro Life,
eds. Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory; Pollack Theatre
Collection, Howard University (Washington, D.C.); Samuel
French, Inc. (New York); Allen Williams, Grambling University
(Grambling, LA); Yale University Library (New Haven, CT);
and Black Theatre, USA, ed. James Hatch.
For this study, the most useful information on the
personalities, cultural activities, and history of the
Harlem Renaissance was found in Arna Bontempts, The Harlem
Renaissance Remembered; Langston Hughes, The Big Sea;
Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance; and David Lewis, When
Harlem was in Vogue.
For information on the lives, careers, and productions
of award winning playwrights, I relied primarily on the
following sources: Esther Spring Arata and Nicholas John
Rotoli, Black American Playwrights, 1800 to the Present;
Esther Spring Arata, More Black American Playwrights; Black
American Fiction: A Bibliography, eds. Carol Fairbanks and
Eugene Engeldinger; Black Theatre, USA, ed. James Hatch;
Black Playwrights, 1823-1977, eds. James Hatch and OMNAii
Abdullah; Plays of Negro Life, eds. Alain Locke and Montgomery
Gregory; May Miller, personal interview; John Monroe, "A
Record of the Black Theatre in New York City: 1920-29";
James A. Page, Selected Black American Authors: An Illustrated
Bio-Bibliography; Theressa Gunnels, Carol Fairbanks Myers,
and Esther Spring Arata, Black American Writers Past and
Present; Who's Who in Colored America,- ed. G. James Fleming
and Christian E. Burkel; Who's Who in Colored America, 1933
to 1937; Allen Woll, Dictionary of Black Theatre; Genevieve
Fabre, "Afro-American Drama, 1850-1975"; and Fannie Hicklin,
"American Negro Playwrights 1920-1964."
Definitions
Black, Negro, Afro-American. An American of African descent.
Black dialect. A type of non-standard English used by
Afro-Americans.
Black drama. A non-musical play concerning the lives of
Afro-Americans.
Black musical. A musical revue or book musical composed by
or about Afro-Americans.
Black theatre. Musicals and dramas by or about Afro-Americans.
Complexion drama. A drama in which the color of one's skin
greatly affects the protagonist(s) sense of racial identity
and/or relationships with others.
Folk play. A drama concerning the lives of common people
primarily in rural areas of the United States.
Race drama. A drama concerning political, social, or
economic relations between blacks and whites.
10
Works Cited
Arata, Esther Spring, and Nocholas Rotoli. Black American
Playwrights, 1800 to the Present. Metuchen, NJ:
Scarecrow, 1976.
Arata, Esther Spring. More Black American Playwrights.
Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1978.
Belcher, Fannin S. "The Place of the Negro in the Evolution
of the American Theatre, 1767 to 1940." Diss. Yale
University, 1945.
Bell, Roseann Pope. "The Crisis and O ortunit Magazines:
Reflections of a Black Culture, IBZO-IBSO." Diss. Emory
University, 1974.
Bontemps, Arna, ed. The Harlem Renaissance Remembered.
New York: Dood, Mead, 8 Co., 1972.
Carolina Magazine (University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill)
47 (May 1927).
Fabre, Genevieve. “Afro-American Drama, 1850-1975,"
Afro-American Poetry and Drama, 1760-1975: A Guide to
Information Spurces. Detroit: Gale, 1979.
Fairbanks, Carol and Eugene A. Engeldinger, eds. Black
American Fiction: A Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ:
Scarecrow, 1978.
Fire!! 1.1, New York: (November 1926).
Fleming, G. James and Christian E. Burkel. Who's Who in
Colored America. 7th ed. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY:
Christian E. Burkel and Associates, 1950.
Hatch, James V., ed. Black Theater, U.S.A.: Forty-five Plays
bnylack Americans 184711974. New York: Free Press, 1974.
Hatch, James V. and OMANii Abdullah, eds. Black Playwrights,
1823-1977. New York: Bowker, 1977.
Hicklin, Fannie Ella. "The American Negro Playwright 1920-
1964." Diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1965.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. London: Oxford,
UP, 1971.
Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea. New York: Hill and Wang, 1940.
Johnson, Charles 5., ed. Ebony and Topaz. New York: National
Urban League, 1927.
11
Johnson, James Walden. Black Manhattan. New York: Arno Press
and The New York Times, l968.
Locke, Alain and Montgomery Gregory, eds. Plays of Negro
Life. New York: Harper, 1927.
Miller, May. Personal Interview. With Addell Austin.
Washington, D.C. 12 Sept. 1985.
Monroe, John Gilbert. "A Record of the Black Theatre in New
York City: 192--29." Diss. University of Texas at
Austin, 1980.
Page, James A. Selected Black American Authors: An Illustrated
Bio-Bibliography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1975.
Rush, Theressa Gunnels, Carol Fairbanks Myers and Esther
Spring Arata. Black American Writers Past and Present:
A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary. Metuchen,
NJ: Scarecrow, 1975.
Shay, Frank, ed. Fifty More Contemporary One-Act Plays.
New York: Appleton, 1928.
Who's Who in Colored America, 1933 to 1937. Brooklyn, NY:
Thomas Yenser, 1937.
Woll, Allen. Dictionary of the Black Theatre. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, T983.
CHAPTER I
THE OPPORTUNITY AND CRISIS LITERARY CONTESTS
In the early 19205, stories on Negro life written
primarily by whites had become quite popular; however,
blacks failed to appreciate them. Black literary critic
William Stanley Braithwaite commented:
[Allmost every one of these stories is written
in a tone of condescension...Many of these writers
live in the South or are from the South. Pre-
sumably they are well acquainted with the Negro,
but it is a remarkable fact that they almost
never tell us anything vital about him, about the
real human being in the black man's skin...Always
the Negro is interpreted in the terms of the
white man. White man psychology is applied and
it is no wonder that the result often shows the
Negro in a ludicrous light. (206-207)
Blacks believed that their own writers could portray them-
selves more realistically. What was now needed were vehicles
to promote these writers and their works. Opportunity and
Crisis were to play significant roles in the development
and promotion of black artists. Years after Charles S.
Johnson resigned as Opportunity editor, he stated:
[TJhe importance of the Crisis Magazine and
Opportunity Magazine was that of providing an
outlet for young Negro writers and scholars whose
work was not acceptable to other established
media because it could not be believed to be of
standard quality despite the superior quality of
much of it. (Giplin, 222)
Furthermore, Crisis editor W.E.B. Du Bois believed that the
12
13
magazines' literary contests "grew into" the Harlem
Renaissance (Dusk of Dawn, 270). While both Johnson and
Du Bois wanted to encourage black writers, other objectives
for the literary contests were incompatible. The Opportunity
editor wanted to use black literature to affect white
attitudes toward Afro-Americans. In contrast, the Crisis
editor seemed less concerned about influencing whites and
instead directed black literary efforts to an Afro-American
readership. Throughout the history of the literary
competitions, antagonisms between Johnson and Du Bois were
reflected in the design and execution of their respective
contests.
Since Opportunity was the first to publish an announce-
ment on its literary contest, this journal's competition is
discussed before its rival's contest. However, before
documenting the history of the literary contests, more
information is provided on the lives of the journals'
editors, Charles S. Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Charles S. Johnson and Opportunity
The son of a Baptist minister, Charles S. Johnson was
born in Bristol, Virginia in 1898. He earned an A.B. from
Virginia Union University in 1916 and a Ph.B. from the
University of Chicago in 1917.5 He was only nineteen when
appointed head of the Department of Research and Investigations
5 A Ph.B. is a Bachelor of Philosophy degree.
14
for the Chicago branch of the Urban League in 1917. After
serving a term in the military during World War I, he
returned to the University of Chicago as a graduate student
in 1919.
After the notorious Chicago race riot of 1919, the
governor appointed Johnson associate executive secretary of
an interracial commission to study the outbreak.6 His
research and assistance in the preparation of the report,
The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race
Ripp, earned him a national reputation.7
In 1921, Johnson became the Director of Research and
Investigations for the national office of the Urban League
in New York. In January 1923, he assumed the editorship of
the newly created house organ of the League, Opportunity.
The masthead of the magazine carried the League's slogan,
"Not Alms but Opportunity."
Under Johnson's guidance, the magazine included more
than the proceedings and announcements of its sponsoring
organization. Opportunity became a vehicle for articles
and essays concerning black society, economics, education,
6 The infamous Chicago riot Of 1919 began with a
clash between blacks and whites at a public beach which re-
sulted in the drowning of a black boy. A week of mob
violence left thirty-eight people dead and five hundred and
thirty-seven injured.
7 The report was not published until 1922; however,
Johnson's reputation preceded its publication and led to his
appointment with the Urban League in 1921.
15
and culture. It also published poetry, short stories, and
play and book reviews.
According to Langston Hughes, Johnson "did more to
encourage and develop Negro writers during the 1920's than
anyone else in America" (218).8 Soon after he arrived in
New York, Johnson became acquainted with many black cultural
leaders including W.E.B. Du Bois, poet and civil rights
activist James Weldon Johnson, and Howard University Professor
Montgomery Gregory. However, it was his relationship with
Howard University Professor of Philosophy Alain Locke which
became his most significant literary contact.
The first black Rhodes Scholar (1907-10), Locke also
studied at the University of Berlin. (1910-11) and received
his Ph.B. from Harvard University in 1918. In 1916, he and
Montgomery Gregory established a literary club, the Stylus
Society, at Howard University. Locke was often a frequent
guest at black poet Georgia Douglas Johnson's literary club
in Washington, D.C. Called the "Saturday Nighters," young
black writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston,
and playwright Willis Richardson read and discussed their
latest projects. Interested in the theatre, Locke was
involved with the Howard Players and wrote articles on the
black theatre for Opportunity, Crisis, and Theatre Arts.
8 However, Johnson received little notice by literary
scholars until the publication of Patrick Gilpin's essay,
"Charles S. Johnson: Entrepreneur of the Harlem Renaissance,"
The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, ed. Arna Bontemps (New
York: Dodd,lMead 8 Co., 1972).
16
Locke also knew many white publishers, writers, and patrons of
black art. He was often referred to as the "dean of the
[Harlem Renaissance] movement.“ With his background, Locke
and Johnson "made a perfect team," according to historian
David Lewis, because "both wanted the same art for the same
purposes--highly polished stuff, preferably about polished
people, but certainly untainted by racial stereotypes or
embarrassing vulgarity. Too much blackness, too much
streetgeist and folklore--nitty-gritty music, prose and
verse--were not welcome" (95).
Through Locke and other contacts, Johnson met young
black writers whom he wanted to promote beyond the black
community. To do this, Johnson realized these writers must
gain recognition and acceptance by whites. According to
historian Stephen H. Bronz:
The very existence of the Harlem Renaissance
depended upon white recognition and approval;
since the Negro book-buying public was limited,
the interest of white publishers, critics, and
readers was necessary for financial maintenance.
White approval also was necessary because a main
purpose of the Harlem Renaissance was to prove to
whites that Negroes could be cultural peers. (14)
Although Opportunity was influential, it sold fewer than
eleven thousand copies a month.9 Johnson realized he
needed another strategy to promote these writers besides
the publication of their works in his magazine.
9 According to David Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue
(New York: Knopf, 1981) 199, Opportunity's circulation peaked
at 11,000 in 1928. Forty percent of its subscribers were
white.
17
This strategy began March 21, 1924 at the Civic Club
in New York where Opportunity sponsored a "coming out"
dinner for the Writers's Guild-~a group of young black
writers whose membership included such poets and novelists
as Countee Cullen, Jessie Fauset, and Langston Hughes.
According to Johnson's biographer, Patrick Gilpin, the
purpose of the dinner was "to bring the white publishers
and black writers together" (224).1o Besides Johnson and
the young black writers, the impressive list of guests
included established black leaders and writers such as
James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, Alain Locke, and
Montgomery Gregory. Also in attendance were prominent
whites such as Horace Liveright (publisher), Albert Barnes
(art connoisseur and anuthority on primitive African art),
Frederick Allen (representing Harper Brothers), and Evans
Clark (represent Nation).
A program followed the dinner with Alain Locke as
master of ceremonies. He remarked, "They [black writers]
sense within their group--meaning the Negro group--a spiritual
wealth which if they can properly expound will be ample for
a new judgement and re-appraisal [sic] of the race" ("Debut,"
143). The program featured poetry readings and remarks by
various speakers on black art, poetry, drama, and fiction.
The "coming out" dinner successfully introduced the
10 Gilpin also noted that the dinner was the brain-
child of Johnson and Urban League official William H.
Baldwin.
18
young black writers to white publishers and patrons. To
maintain and develop this relationship, Charles S. Johnson
initiated another venture five months after the dinner. In
August 1924, Opportunity announced that it would sponsor a
literary competition for black writers.
W.E.B. Du Bois and Crisis
An acclaimed historian, sociologist, educator and
leader, W.E.B. Du Bois is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest
advocates of black rights of the twentieth century. Born
in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois received
an A.B. from Fisk University in 1888 and A.B. (cum laude)
and M.A. from Harvard University in 1890 and 1891,
respectively. He pursued graduate studies at the University
of Berlin, 1892-94. Du Bois received his Ph.D. in sociology
from Harvard in 1896. He taught economics and history at
Wilberforce University (1894-96), University of Pennsylvania
(1896-1897) and Atlanta University (1897-1910).
In 1903, the first of over thirty editions of Du Bois's
The Souls of Black Folk was published. According to historian
Lerone Bennett, this collection of essays on black life in
America "had an impact on its age not unlike the publication
fifty-one years earlier of Uncle Tom's Cabin" (331).
Although Du Bois understood the plight of the common black
person, David Lewis characterized him as an "elitist."
A Brahmin who lacked the common touch, Du Bois
had formulated while at Harvard a concept of race
leadership that was unabashedly elitist and in
striking contrast to the prevailing populist
19
ideas of his future nemesis, Alabama educator
Booker T. Washington. 'I believe in the higher
education of a Talented Tenth who through their
knowledge could guide the American Negro into a
higher civilization,‘ Du Bois explained--a
numerically insignificant class imposing itself
by education and 'character' on the masses. (7)
In 1910, Du Bois helped to organize the NAACP. In
that same year, he became the only black officer of the
organization as Director of Publicity and Research. Du Bois
was extremely proud of his accomplishments of the next
twenty years. He commented:
I think I may say without boasting that in the
period from 1910 to 1930 I was a main factor in
revolutionizing the attitude of the American Negro
toward caste. My stinging hammer blows made
Negroes aware of themselves, confident of their
possibilities and determined self-assertion.
So much so that today common slogans among the
Negro people are taken bodily from the words of
my mouth (Bennett, 331).
In November 1910, the first issue of Crisis was published.
Originally, the magazine was to serve as the house organ of
the NAACP; however, it soon was recognized as an effective
platform for the views of its editor, W.E.B. Du Bois, until
his resignation in 1934. Bennett commented that the NAACP
board eventually perceived the magazine to be "something of
a rival" of its parent organization (340-41). Nevertheless,
Crisis reached a circulation of 104,000 by 1919. Available
in the U.S. and abroad (including several African nations),
Lewis commented, "In an era of rampant illiteracy, when
hard labor left Afro-Americans little time or inclination
for reading Harvard-accented editorials, the magazine found
its way into kerosene-lit sharecroppers' cabins and cramped
20
factory workers' tenements. In middle-class families it
lay next to the Bible" (7).
Besides the views of Du Bois and NAACP news, Crisis
included articles on many aspeCts of the social, political,
and cultural life of blacks in the 0.8. and around the
world. Largely due to the efforts of literary editor
Jessie Fauset, Crisis also featured plays, short stories,
poetry, essays on literature, and theatre and book reviews
by black writers.11
Like Charles S. Johnson, Du Bois wanted to promote the
works of black writers and introduce them to white audiences.
However, unlike Johnson, Du Bois had firsthand experience
12 An ardent
with creative writing as a poet and novelist.
supporter of the arts, Du Bois attended the March 21, 1924
Opportunity dinner for the Writers' Guild. Thus, when
Crisis initiated its literary contest, it came as no sur-
prise. Announced in October 1924, the Crisis contest
differed in many significant ways from the competition
initiated by Opportunity two months earlier.
11 Fauset served as Crisis literary editor from
November 1916 to May 1926. Fauset, Charles S. Johnson, and
Alain Locke were recognized by Langston Hughes as the "three
people who midwifed the so-called New Negro [Harlem Renaissance]
literature into being." In The Big Sea, (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1940) 218.
12‘Du Bois wrote poems, for example, "The Song of the
Smoke" and "A Litany at Atlanta," in 1899 and 1906,
respectively. These poems are reprinted in Black Voices, ed.
Abraham Chapman (New York: NAL, 1968), 359-63} He also
wrote a novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (Chicago:
McClurg, 1911).
21
The 1925 Competition
Poet Arna Bontemps recalled that Charles S. Johnson
"spoke of his aim to conduct a literary contest through
Opportunity" at a party during the summer of 1924 ("The
Awakening," 20).13 In the August issue of Opportunity,
news of the contest was made public with the following
announcement:
To stimulate creative expression among Negroes
and to direct attention to the rich and unex-
ploited sources of materials for literature in
Negro life, Opportunity will offer prizes for
short stories, poetry, plays, essays, and
personal experience in the amount of FIVE HUNDRED
DOLLARS ("Opportunity Literary Contest," 228).
The cash prizes were donated by Mrs. Henry Leach, an Urban
League board member and "a long, thorough sympathizer with
the struggles of Negroes for social as well as artistic
status" (Johnson, "The Donor," 3). Her husband was the
editor of the influential Epppp magazine.
Accompanying the contest announcement was an editorial
by Johnson, "On Writing About Negroes" (227-28). Here, the
editor provided his views on black literature and its
writers. He affirmed the role of literature as the "liason
between races." He also states that blacks were dissatis-
fied with literature on black life "written by persons
other than Negroes, who have never: yet been wholly admitted
to the privacy of Negro thots [sic]." While he did not
13 Four of the writers attending the party would
receive awards from the Opportunity contests. These writers
were Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and
Eric Walrond.
22
contend that blacks should be restricted to writing about
their own race, Johnson believed that in order to treat
black themes "competently," black writers, "knowing them
best, should be the ones to do it."
At the Crisis, W.E.B. Du Bois was surprised by
Oppprtunity's contest announcement. Du Bois wrote Joe
Spingarn about the matter, since it was this influential
white NAACP board member who offered to donate the prize
money for Crisis in his wife's name (Amy). According to
Lewis, "although the Crisis prizes had been widely discussed
in Harlem circles [Du Bois stated to Spingarn that] 'neither
1 nor you had any idea that they [the Urban League] were
offering prizes until after your offer was made.'" Lewis
further contended that this "was an early example of Charles
S. Johnson's gloved ruthlessness. For the pragmatic
sociologist...the appropriation of a rival's idea was
hardly even a misdemeanor if it promoted racial progrss
through the arts (97-98).
The Crisis announced its contest in its October 1924
issue. Referred to as "The Amy Spingarn Prizes in Literature
and Art," it offered $100 more in prizes that Opportunity's
competition. Still upset over its rival's contest, Du Bois
reprinted its 1920 editorial in its November 1924 issue
(Du Bois, "To Encourage," 11). The editorial boasted of
rmwihï¬sis had sought to promote black literature "since its
founding" (thirteen years before the first issue of
Opportunity). Du Bois then provided an impressive list of
23
writers published by Crisis since 1920. The list included
such authors as Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Claude Mckay,
and Walter White. He concluded with the following paragraph
which must have been read with an underlying sense of
bitterness to those who knew of Du Bois's true feelings
about the Opportunity contest:
Today and suddenly $1,100 are offered in
prizes to Negro writers and artists. Without
either knowing the other's plans or intentions,
both The Crisis and the magazine published by the
Urban‘league, Opportunity, have offered a series
of prizes. Mrs. Spingarn's offer was made to us
in July, but Opportunity first gave publicity to
its prize offer. In order, therefore, to give
young authors every chance we have.put the date'
of our competition well on in the spring so that
there will be no unnecessary rivalry and all can
have the full benefit of this great generosity
and foresight on the part of friends. (11)
According to the Du Bois editorial, it appeared as if
the total cash prizes and deadline dates were the only
differences between the competitions. Of course, there
were similarities between the contests. The competition
had four common categories: short story, poetry, play-
14 The contests were restricted to
writing, and essay.
black writers. Contestants were to use pseudonyms, allowed
to compete in more than one division, and could submit more
than one entry per category. The contests awarded cash
prizes for first, second, and third place winners. Both
contests allotted the greatest cash awards to the short
14 The Opportunity contest also featured a personal
experience sketch category. The Crisis competition also
offered prizes for illustrations.
24
story category.15 Both publications stated they would
16 Material published
publish the prize winning entries.
before the contests were ineligible. Length of text
limitations were given for most categories. Both contests
utilized distinguished black and white editors, writers,
and publishers, for example, judges included Alain Locke,
James Weldon Johnson, William Stanley Braithwaite, novelist
Zona Gale, editor John Macy, drama critic Alexander Woollcott,
and playwright Eugene O'Neill.
Nevertheless, the contests differed in several important
ways. Unlike Opportunity, Crisis ran articles on the
writing of short stories and plays before its contest
deadlines. Opportuntty stated that the short stories.
plays, and essays "must deal with some phase of Negro
life." The personal sketch must also be related to black
life since the work had to be based on a true experience of
the writer who by contest rule must be black. Crisis only
restricted the subject of the plays to "deal with some
phase of Negro history or experience." Eighteen of the
twenty-four judges used by Opportunity were white, as
compared to the nine white and seven black judges employed
15‘Total cash awards for short story category--$150
(Opportunity) and $170 (Crisis). In the Opportunity contest,
playwriting was allotted the second highest cash awards
($110). The playwriting and illustration categories offered
the second highest cash awards ($125 each) in the Crisis
competition.
16{'Actually, the magazines would publish many, but
not all of the winning entries.
25
by Crisis.
Why would there be such a difference between the
contests in subject restrictions and racial composition of
the panel of judges? By looking at the stated purposes of
the competitions, it can be seen that Johnson had grander
objectives in mind that Du Bois. The purpose of the Crisis
contest was simply to "encourage their [black writers]
aptitude for art expression" ("Amy Spingarn," 24). However,
Johnson provided the following statement of purpose for the
Opportunity competition:
It hopes to stimulate and encourage creative
literary effort among Negroes; to locate and
orient Negro writers of ability; to stimulate
and encourage interest in the serious development
of a body of literature about Negro life, drawing
deeply upon these tremendously rich sources; to
encourage the reading of literature both by Negro
authors and about Negro life, not merely because
they are Negro authors but because what they write
is literature and because the literature is
interesting; to foster a market for Negro writers
and for literature by and about Negroes; to bring
these writers into contact with the general world
of letters to which they have been for the most
part timid and inarticulate strangers; to stimulate
and foster a type of writing by Negroes which
shakes itself free of deliberate propoganda and
protest. ("An Opportunity for Negro writers,"
258
The Opportunity editor wanted to take advantage of the
current vogue for works on black life. Therefore, Johnson
structured the contest to generate these writings. To
ensure that these works received the attention of influential
whites, he loaded the jury with many more prominent whites
than blacks. Johnson may have believed that the
competition would appear to be more legitimate with such a
26
ratio of whites to blacks on the panel of judges.
Opportunity announced the winners of its contest in
the May 1925 issue. Johnson stated that "the average
quality of the manuscripts was high in all divisions of the
contest" ("The Contest," 130). Fifteen of the seven hundred
and forty-seven entries were awarded cash prizes. The
winning authors included some names already known in New
York and Washington, D.C. black (and some white) literary
circles, such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and
17 However, the contest did elicit award
Countee Cullen.
winning works from previously unknown writers, such as
G. D. Lipscomb, G. A. Steward, and Fidelia Ripley.
Opportunity held a dinner for the contestants at the
Fifth Avenue Restaurant in New York. During a personal
interview with award winning playwright May Miller, she
stated that all contestants were invited without knowing if
they had won or not until the prizes were announced at the
dinner. Besides the contestants, the 316 attendants included
Johnson, the judges, and other distinguished guests.
Impressed by the dinner, the New York Herald-Tribune included
an editorial on the event in its May 7, 1925 edition.
Entitled, "A Negro Renaissance," the editorial provided the
following comments:
[The Opportunity dinner] was only a somewhat more
conclusive indication of a phenomenon of which
17"Beginning in 1926, Countee Cullen would serve as
the assistant editor for Opportunity.
27
there have been many symptoms--of the fact that
the American Negro is finding his artistic voice
and that we are on the edge, if not already in the
midst, of what might not improperly be called a
Negro Renaissance...These young people--and youth
was another striking thing about this gathering--
were not trying to imitate the white man nor
repeating the professional white story-teller's
dreary stencils of the 'darkey'._._. (16)
Regardless of the editorial's few patronizing remarks,
Johnson must have been elated by this publicity because the
editorial also included a statement appearing to affirm
that others had recognized the potential for racial under-
standing through the arts:
A novel sight, that dinner--white critics, whom
"everybody"knows, Negro writers, whom "nobody"
knew--meeting on common ground. The movement
behind it doubtless means something to the race
problem in general; certainly it means something
to American literature. (16)
Johnson reprinted the Herald-Tribune editorial in
Opportunity's June 1925 issue. Crisis held a similar
dinner for its contestants at the Renaissance Casino in New
York on August 14, 1925. Besides the announcement of award
winners, the program also featured a presentation of the
first place award winning play, The Broken Banjo by Willis
18
Richardson. Strangely, in its September issue, Opportunity
listed its rival's contest winners one month before Crisis
18 In June 1925, Du Bois reported that black director
Charles Burroughs would stage a masque entitled "Black Man:
A Fantasy." See Du Bois, "Krigwa," "Opinion," Crisis 30
(June 1925) 59. However, in September 1925, an Opportunity
article on the Crisis awards dinner did not mention this
performance. See "The Amy Spingarn Prizes," Opportunity
3 (Sept. 1925) 287.
28
19
(Amy, Opportunity) 287. Crisis provided a list of the
award winners and selected comments from its judges in its
October 1925 issue. Winners were to receive free membership
in the Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists (KRIGWA) and Du
Bois claimed that each contestant would receive a letter
from KRIGWA to provide advice on his or her work ("Krigwa,"
278). As in the Opportunity contest, Langston Hughes,
Countee Cullen, and G. A. Stewart, had also won awards in
20
the Crisis competition. However, the Crisis contest
seemed to award more prizes than Opportunity to previously
unknown writers, such as Marie French, Anita Scott, and
Ruth Gaines Shelton. There could be one explanation for
this occurrence. Some of the better known younger writers
did not believe Du Bois to be receptive to their works.
Poet Arna Bontemps wrote that "Du Bois had serious reser-
vations about the tone and character of the new writing and
art. He leaned toward the tidy, the well-mannered, the
Victorian-~literary works in which the Negro put his best
foot forward, so to speak" (100 Years, 229).21 Perhaps
some of the writers did not send their works to Crisis
because they realized that Du Bois would be among the panel
19 Opportunity would never, again, announce the Crisis
winners. Crisis never cited Opportunity's winners.
20 In 1928, Countee Cullen would marry Du Bois's
daughter, Yolande, in an extravagant wedding. The marriage
ended in divorce a year later.
21 Arna Bontemps would, in fact, be awarded first
place for poetry by Crisis in 1926.
29
who initially read entries to disqualify any which did not
merit a judge's review. Whatever the reason, Crisis received
six hundred and twenty nine entries (one hundred and eighteen
less than Opportunity). although its April 15 deadline gave
contestants three and a half months after Opportunity's
deadline to prepare and submit works.
The 1926 Competition
At the 1925 Opportunity dinner, it was announced that
there would be a contest for 1926. For this contest, the
cash awards were donated by Casper Holstein. The donor was
a Harlem numbers banker who shared Johnson's beliefs on the
potential role of black arts in American society. According
to Langston Hughes:
[The West Indian native] did good things with his
money, such as educating boys and girls at colleges
in the South, building decent apartment houses in
Harlem, and backing literary contests to encourage
colored writers. Mr. Holstein, no doubt, would
have been snubbed in polite Washington society,
Negro or white, but there he was doing decent and
helpful things that it hadn't occured to lots
of others to do. (214)
Due to Holstein's generosity, the prizes now totaled $1,000.
A musical composition category was added to the competition.
Furthermore, the white to black ratio of judges was lower
than it had been in the previous year, 1.5:1 (sixteen
whites/ten blacks). The 1926 Opportunity contest received
one thousand two hundred and seventy-six entries as compared
to seven hundred and thirty-two works submitted in the 1925
competition.
Again, Opportunity announced the awards at a dinner
30
with an impressive guest list. One of the guests--Leon
Whipple, a Columbia University Professor and journalist for
The Survey--called the event "a glory for the thousand or
more Negroes there, the prize winners and their loving
admirers. It was warm with good hope for the serious
friends of Negro art" (517). However, Whipple expressed
concern at the "profiteers and parasites" who were also
present at the dinner.
This sorry crew are not important in themselves.
Next year they will be flittering round the candle
of some new fad. But they may misguide the Negro
for a time unless he can steel himself in anger or
wrap himself in his own guffaws against their
flattery, false witness, and bribes. It would be
the final tragedy if after exploiting the Negro's
body for two centuries we ended by exploiting
his heart and soul. (517)
At the Crisis, Amy Spingarn again donated money for
the awards totaling $600. This year, cash prizes were only
awarded for first and second places to allow larger cash
awards for these winners. Nine blacks and six whites would
serve as judges. In a January 1926 editorial, Du Bois
provided advice for the contestants. He stated that, “We
want especially to stress the fact that while we believe in
Negro art we do not believe in any art simply for art's
sake" ("Krigwa 1926," 115). Clearly, the contestants who
read this statement would believe that his or her entry
would have a better chance of winning, if it had
31
propagandistic leanings.22
The dinner for the contestants included presentations
of the awards and plays Foreign Mail and Mandy, poetry and
short story readings, a performance by the Negro String
Quartet, and dancing. It was announced that Spingarn would
increase her donation to $1,000 for the 1927 competition
(mating the awards offered by Opportunity). Also, since
there were several repeat winners, it was ruled that those
who had won two first or second place prizes would be
ineligible for next year's contest.23l
The 1927 Competition
Casper Holstein, again, donated $1,000 for the Opportunty
literary contests. The ratio of white to black judges was
about the same as the 1926 competition (sixteen whites/nine
blacks). The January 1927 issue of Opportunity included an
editorial by Johnson citing some of the recent achievements
of short story and poetry contest winners. Their works
were now being published in magazines and anthologies
("Stories and Poetry," 5). However, the playwriting division
disappointed the Opportunity editor. Johnson stated that
the play section "seems yet farthest behind the possibilities
22‘In an October 1926 article, five months after the
May 1 contest deadline, Du Bois stated, "I do not care a damn
for any art that is not used for propaganda" ("Criteria of
Negro Art," Crisis 32 (Oct 1926) 296.
23‘Because of this rule, poet Countee Cullen and dramatist
Willis Richardson could not enter the 1927 Crisis competi—
tion.
32
of its field of all the literary division" ("On the Need,"
5). The awards were announced at a dinner described in an
article by short story award winner Eugene Gordon in
Opportunity's July 1927 issue ("The Opportunity Dinner,"
208-209).
Four months after the magazine announced its 1927
award winners, Johnson suspended the contest. He wrote:
Examination of the mass of manuscripts shows that
there has been improvement over the mass of other
years, and that in general they are not very much
worse than those of other general contests. We
have concluded, however, that with the point of
the contests known, more time for the deliberate
working of manuscripts will yield vastly more
valuable results. Most important, this extension
of time should allow for our aspiring writers a
margin for experimentation with more than one
manuscript, in the search for the most effective
chapnels of expression" (“The Opportunity Contest,"
254 .
As he had written in the January 1927 issue, he commended
the poetry and short story sections, since some of these
works were being published in "standard" literary journals
(magazines with a predominately white readership). Also,
he stated that he was displeased with the results of the
drama and essay divisions.
While Opportunity eventually sponsored other literary
contests, none matched the scale or prestige of the one
conducted from 1924-1927. Johnson left Opportunity in 1928
to become the chair of the Department of Social Sciences at
33
Fisk University.24
At the Crisis, Du Bois changed the format of the
literary contest without notifying the contestants. The
editor personally read all of the 375 entries. Clearly,
this year's number of entries represented a significant
drop from the 627 entries of 1925.
For the 1927 contest, divisions were eliminated as
writers competed against each other regardless of the form
used. Du Bois graded each entry using the following scale:
A--Excellent
B+--Good and worth publication
B--Good
C--Fair
D--Poor, but with some points to commend
E--Impossible (Du Bois, "Krigwa," 312)
Only those manuscripts with the grade "A" could be considered
for prizes.
There was no formal dinner to announce the award
winners. Instead, contest results were cited in the editorial
section of Crisis. Du Bois selected the winners in consul-
tation with (unnamed) "experts." There were only three
cash award winners: First place ($200) went to Marita
Bonner for her collection of two plays, short story, and
essay; Brenda Ray Moryck received the second place award of
$100 for three short stories; and Eulalie Spence won the
third place award of $50 for two plays.
Without warning, the literary contests were eliminated.
211Johnson became Fisk's first black president in
1947.
34
In its place, monthly honoraria of fifty dollars was awarded
to the best literary works published in Crisis. According
to Lewis, Amy Spingarn (the donor of the cash awards) "must
have been surprised to see white writers Zona Gale and
Clement Wood among the first recipients of prizes intended
for ambitious Afro-American writers" (200).
Nevertheless, despite the brief history of the
Opportunity and Crisis literary contests from 1924-1927, it
can be said that the competitions were a major factor in
the development of black literature of the period. Many of
the major writers of the Harlem Renaissance were introduced
to the general public through these contests. Furthermore,
the publishing contacts made via the competitions greatly
enhanced their fledgling careers.
Charles S. Johnson took advantage of the current vogue
for black literature. The Opportunity editor promoted
black writers and made sure that influential whites became
acquainted with their writings via the contest juries and
awards dinner. W.E.B. Du Bois appeard less concerned about
pleasing white audiences. Unlike Opportunity's contest,
the Crisis 1925 and 1926 literary competitions were nearly
an equal number of black and white judges. For the 1927
competition, Du Bois acted as the primary judge. He also
eliminated the awards dinner which was an important way for
black writers to make contacts with established writers,
editors, and publishers.
Proud of the accomplishments of the award winning
35
short story and poetry writers outside of the contest,
Johnson was dismayed by the quality and lack of similar
success by the playwrights. In contrast, Du Bois seemed to
appreciate the Crisis prize winning plays much more than
Johnson did those of the Opportunity contests. In 1927, Du
Bois chose playwrights as the first and third place winners
of the Crisis competition. The Opportunity and Crisis
playwriting divisions will be examined in greater detail in
the next chapter.
Works Cited
"The Amy Spingarn Prizes," Opportunity 3 (Sept 1925) 287-
"The Amy Spingarn Prizes in Literature and Art," Crisis 29
(Nov 1924) 24.
Bennett, Lerone, Jr. Before the Mayflower: A History of
Black America. 5th ed. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co.,
T982:
Bontemps, Arna. "The Awakening: A Memoir," The Harlem
Renaissance Remembered. Ed. Arna Bontemps. New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1972.
---. 100 Years of Negro Freedom. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1961.
Braithwaite, William Stanley. "The Negro in Literature,"
Crisis 28 (Sept 1924) 204-10.
Bronze, Stephen H. Roots of Negro Racial Consciousness.
New York: Libra Publishérs, Inc., 1964.
Chicago Commission on Race Relations. The Negro in Chicago:
A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1922.
"The Debut of the Younger School of Negro Writers,"
Opportunity 2 (May 1924) 143-44.
Du Bois, W.E.B. Dusk of Dawn. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.
---. "Krigwa," "Postscript," Crisis 34 (Nov 1927) 312.
36
---. "Krigwa, 1926,“ "Opinion," Crisis 31 (Jan 1926) 115.
---. "To Encourage Negro Art, " "Opinion," Crisis 29 (Nov
1924) 11.
Gilpin, Patrick J. "Charles S. Johnson: Entrepreneur of the
the Harlem Renaissance," The Harlem Renaissance
Remembered. Ed. Arna Bontemps. New York: Dodd, Mead,
1972.
Gordon, Eugene. "The O ortunit Dinner: An Impression,"
Opportunity 5 (July 1927) 2U8-209.
Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea. New York: Hill and Wang, 1940.
Johnson, Charles S. "The Donor of the Contest Prizes,"
"Editorials," Opportunity 3 (Jan 1925) 3.
---. "On the Need of Better Plays," "Editorials," Opportunity
5 (Jan 1927) 5-6.
---. "On Writing About Negroes," "Editorials," Opportunity
3 (August 1925) 227- 28.
---. "The O ortunit Contest," "Editorials," Opportunity
5 (Sept 4927) 254.
---. "An Opportunity for Negro Writers," "Editorials,"
Opportunity 2 (Sept 1924) 258.
---. "Opportunity Literary Contest," "Editorials,"
Opportunity 2 (August 1924) 228.
---. "Stories and Poetry of 1926," "Editorials,"
Opportunity 5 (Jan 1927) 5.
Lewis, David L. When Harlem Was In Vogue. New York: Knopf,
1981.
"A Negro Renaissance," "Editorials," New York Herald Tribune
7 May 1925: 16.
Whipple, Leon. "Letters and Life," The Survey 56 (1 Aug
1926) 517-19.
CHAPTER II
BLACK THEATRE PRIOR TO 1924 AND THE
OPPORTUNITY AND CRISIS PLAY CONTESTS
The development of English speaking drama in America
was inhibited by the puritanical mores of the colonists
and their decendants. Throughout the nineteenths and early-
twentieth centuries, American playwrights used native
themes and characters to appeal to popular tastes. However,
most critics agreed that these works lacked the polish,
sophistication, and merit associated with European drama.
According to theatre historian Bernard Hewitt, it was not
until the 19205 that "the American theatre had attained
maturity. For vitality and originality it had no superior
and perhaps no peer" (381).
While white playwrights were earning international
acclaim, few black dramatists were known beyond the Afro-
American community in the early-19205. Furthermore, the
literary merit and craftsmanship of black authored dramas
were usually inferior to those by white writers. While
American drama in general had matured, drama by black
playwrights was still in its infancy.
Both Johnson and Du Bois attempted to encourage black
dramatists through their respective literary contests;
however, only the Crisis editor recognized the early stage
37
38
of development which characterized the talents of these
fledgling black writers. Consequently, Johnson and Du Bois
held differing expectations for their play competitions
which led to contrasting opinions as to their success.
Before discussing the journals' play contests, the history
of the black theatre will first be given in order to place
the drama competitions in their proper context.
Black Theatre Prior to 1924
Black characters first appeared in American plays
in the late-eighteenth century. During the nineteenth
century, black characters were featured prominently in
several immensely popular plays, most notably, Uncle Tom's
25
Opptp. However, these roles were customarily played
by white actors well into the twentieth century.
Few black dramatic companies of the nineteenth century
have been identified. One New York group of the early
18205, the African Company, is notable for producing the
first drama by a black in the U.S., William Henry Brown's
King Shotaway. Also, the Company is believed to have
provided the great black tragedian, Ira Aldridge, with
his first dramatic role.26
25'For a discussion of black characters in drama prior
to 1909, see Fannin S. Belcher, Jr., "The Place of the Negro
in the Evolution of the American Theatre, 1767-1940," Diss.
Yale U. (1945) 1-56.
26[For a discussion of the African Company, see Jonathon
Dewberry, "The African Grove Theatre and Company," Black
Theatre Literature Forum 16 (Winter 1982) 128-31.
39
Few plays written by blacks in the nineteenth century
are known to be extant. One of these plays, William Wells
Brown's The Escape; or a Leap for Freedom (c. 1858), was
given readings by its author but not performed. From
1865 to 1920, black churches and other community organizations
raised money by "crudely present[ing] religious plays,
amateur minstrel shows, dramatic readings, mock trials,
womanless weddings, and other types of recreational dramatics"
(Edmonds, 17). During this period, would-be stage actors,
such as Henrietta Vinton Davis, Charles Burroughs, and
Richard Berry Harrison, toured the country giving dramatic
readings and recitations.27
Nevertheless, the impact of black artists on the
stage was negligible until the latter half of the nineteenth
century. According to black historian James Weldon Johnson,
"The real beginnings of the Negro in the American theatre
were made on the minstrel stage" (87). The origins of
the American minstrel show is usually credited to a performance
by a group of blackface entertainers known as the Virginia
Minstrels (featuring Dan Emmett) at the Bowery Amphitheatre
27 Charles Burroughs would, later, act as a judge
for the play division of the Crisis literary contest.
Richard Harrison was "discovered" and acclaimed by the Amer-
ican theatre of the 19305 in Marc Connelly's The Green
Pastures. For discussions on the lives and careers of
Henrietta Davis and Harrison, see Errol Hill, "Henrietta
Vinton Davis: Shakespearean Actress," Women in the American
Theatre, Eds. Helen Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins (New York:
Crown, 1981) 92-97, and Andrea Nouryeh, "When the Lord was A
Black man: A Fresh Look at the Life of Richard Berry Harrison,"
Black American Literature Forum (Winter 1982), 142-46.
40
in New York in 1843. Minstrelsy soon became one of the most
popular American entertainment forms of the era. Troupes
performed in large cities and small towns throughout the
nation. In his book entitled Blacking Up, scholar Robert
Toll contended that these white entertainers in blackface
"selectively adapted elements of Afro-American folk culture
into caricatures and stereotypes of Negroes...Minstrelsy
was the first example of the way American popular culture
would exploit and manipulate Afro-Americans and their
culture to please and benefit white Americans" (51).
Minstrelsy remained the domain of white entertainers
until black companies began to tour the country in the
18505. None of these fledgling organizations achieved
much notice until one black company, the Georgia' Minstrels,
gained recognition after their successful tour of the
Northeast, 1865-1866 (T011, 199). The dances, music,
and comedy of these black artisis influenced the develop-
ment of the American musical theatre.28
Minstrelsy was one of the major employers of black
entertainers until the development of black musical comedies
and revues. James Weldon Johnson credited the 1898 New
York production of a A Trip to Coontown as the first
black show to "completely break“ from the minstrel format (102).
28‘For a discussion of black minstrel artist contri-
butions to minstrelsy and the development of the American
musical theatre, see Chapters 7 and 8 in Robert Toll's
Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America
(New Ybrk: Oxford UP, 1974).
41
It was also the first show to be written and produced
by blacks on the New York stage. Other black shows were
to follow, but most popular were those featuring Bert
Williams and his partner, George Walker. Williams and
Walker Broadway shows included such musical comedies as
Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1903), Abyssina (1906),
and Bandana Land (1908).
However, this era of black musicals on Broadway ended
as increasing production costs and the popularity of com-
paratively inexpensive movies resulted in the closing
or conversion to movie houses of hundreds of legitimate
theatres throughout the country. According to scholar
Arthur Paris:
[P]roducers looked increasingly for shows that
would be "sure-fire" hits and would settle into
long Broadway runs in first class houses to repay
their investment. A5 a consequence, producers
exercised more caution and were less willing
to take a chance with anything which might be
peculiar, novel or different enough to make patrons
hesitate. Blacks were clearly at a disadvantage
in such a situation and the sudden deaths of key
figures among Black theatre folk dealt a fatal
blow to the development of this trend toward full
Black participation in the American theatrical
mainstream. (62)
Consequently, few black entertainers appeared on Broadway
from 1910-1920. Instead, black shows toured black theatre
circuits or were staged in Harlem. Variety acts and musical
shows were the most popular attractions for black audiences
as they were for whites. Several black theatre circuits
were established, most importantly, the Theatre Owners
42
and Booking Agency (TOBA).29 TOBA booked shows for its
theatres located in large northern cities and throughout
the South.
In Harlem, the Lincoln and Lafayette Theatres catered
to the entertainment tastes of the common people. Opened
in 1909, the Lincoln Theatre could seat over one thousand
patrons and featured variety acts, musical shows, and movies.
Until 1916, the Lincoln was also the home of the Anita
Bush Players (Kellner, 63). "High society folks" seldom
patronized this theatre which was "always crowded to capacity
from the moment it open[ed] its doors on Monday afternoon
to the last curtain calls on Sunday evening" (Walrond, 52).
Indeed, most middle class blacks probably share critic Theo-
philus Lewis's impression of this theatre:
The Lincoln Theatre is a cheap movie-vaudeville
house. Its audiences consist of the kind of
people who kick the varnish off the furniture,
plaster chewing gum on the seats and throw peanut
shells in the aisles. The imperfectly disinfected
odors of the lavatories somehow contrive to
seep out into the auditorium to mingle with
the scent of cologne and sachet powder and the
body smells of people who sweat freely and fre-
quently and bathe now and then. The air in
the place always suggests there is a hamper
of diapers somewhere about waiting for the laundry
wagon. At night a strong fleet of cruisers,
ludicrously gorgeous in war paint of vermillion
and purple, patrols the place looking out for
love-famished stevedores, and of Thursday
29‘TOBA is also referred to by performers as "Tough
on Black Acts," because of the Circuit's poor pay and working
conditions. For a discussion of the circuit, see Henry
Sampson, Blacks in Black face: A Source Book on Early Black
Musical Shows (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1980, 14-19.
43
afternoons sweet-back men without connections
are wont to resort there for the servant girl
shooting. (380)
The Lafayette Theatre enjoyed a better reputation
than the Lincoln. The two thousand seat theatre opened
in 1912. Unlike the Lincoln, wmnms initially dominated
the audience of the Lafayette; however, by 1916, the patrons
were predominately black (Kellner, 214). Formerly with
the Lincoln, the Anita Bush Players were not known as the
Lafayette Players Stock Company.30 Most of the plays
presented by the Company "were either melodramas or farces
which had run their course on the Broadway stage" (Belcher,
350). Occasionally, the Company presented black drama,
mostly one-acts, by black authors; however, these plays
were "ususally relegated to midnight performances, often
benefits" (Monroe, 129). By 1920, musical shows increasingly
were placed on the Lafayette's bill. Although plays were
sporadically offered, the Lafayette became a vaudeville
house under the management of Frank Shiffman in 1923.
Like the Lafayette Players, few dramas by black writers
were produced by black stock companies and amateur groups
which were founded throughout the country in the early-
twentieth century. One notable exception was the production
of Angelina Grimke's Rachel by the Drama Committee of the
NAACP of Washington, D.C. on March 3 and 4, 1916. The play
BQ'For a history of the Lafayette Players Stock Company,
see Sister M. Francesca Thomson, "The Lafayette Players: 1915-
1932," Diss. U. of MI, 1972.
44
was later performed at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York
and in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Gregory, "Chronology,"
413-414). It also was one of the earliest published dramas
by a black writer.31
In the 19205, black entertainers were again welcome
on Broadway due to the success of Shuffle Along. With
its book by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles and songs
by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, the musical comedy ran
for 504 performances beginning on May 23, 1921. The show
influenced contemporary music and choreography in white
shows (Kimball, 148). Its chorus featured such future
black stars as Florence Mills, Josephine Baker, and Ethel
Waters. Shuffle Along made producers eager to mount black
musicals, such as Runnin' Wild, Chocolate Dandies, and
Hot Chocolates. Writer Langston Hughes also credited the
musical with giving "the proper push--a pre-Charleston
kick-- to that Negro vogue of the 19205, that spread to
books, African sculpture, music, and dancing" (224).
Black drama also returned to Broadway four years
before Shuffle Along; however, it could not claim to have
affected the American theatre nearly as much as the musical.
In 1917, Robert Edmond Jones directed and Emily Hapgood
produced Ridgley Torrence's one-act black dramas--The Riders
31 Cornhill Company of Boston published Rachel in
1920.
45
32
of Dreams, Granny Maumee, and Simon the Cyrenian. Although
the production lasted only 18 performances, James Weldon
Johnson called it "the most important event in the entire
history of the Negro in the American theatre" (175). The
significance of this production was primarily due to the
novelty of having blacks instead of whites in blackface
portraying black characters:
[T]he Negro actor, up to this time, was a synonym
for the Negro entertainer, and his sphere of
influence in minstrel and burlesque shows, musical
comedies, revues, and on the vaudeville stage.
Oblivious to the fact that these antics usually
presented Negro life not as it was, theatre
audiences, chiefly white, could not conceive
of the Negro entertainer in any but the traditional
role of clown, and no commercial producer dared
to experiment. (Belcher, 163-64)
Throughout the 19205, black drama was produced on
Broadway. In 1923, the Chicago based Ethiopian Art Players
presented the first black drama by a black playwright,
Willis Richardson's one-act play The Chip Woman's Fortune.
The first full-length black drama by a black playwright,
Garland Anderson's Appearance, was produced in 1925. However
both plays had short runs: sixteen performances for The
Chip Woman's Fortune and twenty-three performances for
32 Robert Edmond Jones became one of the foremost
designers of the 20th century. Emily Hapgood was the wife
of Norman Hapgood, and editor and drama critic. Torrence's
three one-act plays are now collectively know as Three
Plays for a Negro Theatre.
46
33
Appearances. Furthermore, black drama receiving the
most acclaim (at least by white audiences) was written
by white playwrights, such as Eugene O'Neill, DuBose Heyward,
and Paul Green. According to Huggins:
[The writing of black drama by white playwrights]
was not so much a wave of liberalism in the
theatre's attitude toward race as it was the
development of theatrical realism in the United
States. Until about 1915, the genteel restraints
on American theatre were almost total. Respectable
drama was European or melodramatic. Realism
and naturalism entered cautiously through Euro-
peans such as Ibsen. American realism in the
theatre, however, wasaimore difficult matter.
It appears that the Negro subject permitted easier
entry for Americans into sordid and "realistic"
subjects than could any possible white counter-
part. The kind of subjects that European play-
wrights had long treated--crime, passion (lust),
human limitation--could more comfortably be given
E0 Nggro characters than to white in these years.
294
Furthermore,Huggins believed that the black, "as he was
traditionally conceived" could be more easily perceived
as a tragic character than the white. The black's "efforts
at manhood had necessarily to fall short; the tradition
offered no other possibility. So, when American dramatists
wanted to come close to reality--human limitation--the
33 The Ethiopian Art Players performed on Broadway
for sixteen performances. The Chip Woman's Fortune was
one of three works performed by the Players, but it was
replaced by another play after its first week on Broadway.
The actual number of performances for Fortune is not known.
See Willis Richardson, Interview, 5 March 1972, Audio-cassette
tape, Hatch-Billops Oral History Collection, Cohen Library,
City College of New York.
47
Negro was more readily available as a subject than whites"
(294).
Although blacks such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke
commended black drama by white playwrights, most blacks
regardless of education or income did not appreciate these
works. In an article on the black audience, Lewis satirized
the regular patrons of the black theatre:
[They are] unlettered and lewd folks, laborers
and menials and hoidens and hoodlums and persons
who are materially prosperous but spiritually
bankrupt. . . [This audience enjoys] exaggerated
buffoonery, obscene farce and sex-exciting dancing,
such curiosities as giants, midgets, acrobats,
musical seals and mathematical jackasses. ("The
Theatre," 214)
In contrast, the "educated classes" of blacks only went to
the theatre after the production was critically acclaimed.
Lewis believed:
[Wlhen the higher type of Negro goes into the
theatre he commonly ignores his own tastes as well
as the desires of the lower elements in the
audience and demands that the performance be
adjusted to a set of standards alien to both. He
insists on the Negro theatre copying the suave
manners and conventions of the comtemporary white
theatre, unaware that the white stage reflects
the racial experience of a people whose cultural
background has never resembled ours since the
beginnings of history. ("The Theatre," 214-15)
Despite the differences in class and expectations of the
theatre, blacks criticized the black drama by white play-
wrights, including what some scholars believe is one of the
best plays of the genre and period, Eugene O'Neill's IDS
Emperor Jones. When O'Neill's drama was presented at the
Lincoln Theatre:
48
[The regular patrons] didn't know what to make of
The Emperor Jones on a stage where "Shake That
Thing“ was formerly the rage. And when the
Emperor Jones started running naked through the
forest, hearing the Little Frightened Fears,
naturally they howled with laughter.
"Them ain't no ghosts, fool!“ the spectators
cried from the orchestra. "Why don't you come
out 0' that jungle-back to Harlem where you belong?"
In the manner of Stokowski hearing a cough
at the Academy of Music, Jules Bledsoe [who played
the title role] stopped dead in his tracks, ad-
vanced to the footlights, and proceeded to lecture
his audience on manners in the theatre. But the
audience wanted none of The Emperor Jones. And
their manners had been all right at all the other
shows at the Lincoln, where they took part in the
performances at will. So when Brutus continued
his flight, the audience again howled with
laughter. And that was the end of The Emperor
Jones on 135th Street. (Hughes, 258-59)
Moreover, while they applauded Charles Giplin's performance
in the title role of the premier production, "the matter of
O'Neill's script, however, was an outrage to many Harlem
critics" (Monroe, 97). When the Howard University Players
produced the drama, the patrons "wondered why the University
would stoop to allow its students to give a performance of
a play in which the leading character was a crap-shooter
and escaped convict. [A "respected" English teacher] went
so far as to say that O'Neill had no standing as a play-
wright" (Richardson, 123). Black poet and literary critic
William Stanley Braithwaite included The Emperor Jones in
his critique of black drama by white authors:
In all these plays, disregarding the artistic
quality of achievement, they are the sordid as-
pects of life and undesirable types of characters
which are dramatized. The best and highest class
of racial life has not yet been discovered for
literary treatment by white authors. (206)
49
Moreover, black critics were also dissatisfied with
the black theatre, as a whole. In 1924, Lewis stated:
What we call the Negro Theatre is an anemic sort
of thing that does not reflect Negro life, Negro
fancies or Negro ideas. It reflects the 100 per
cent American Theatre at its middling and cheapest.
This gives us the funny phenomenon of a body of
stage folks making virtually no effort at all to
represent the life and manners of their race.
Even the musical show, which pretends to present
genuine Sambo buffoonery, really does nothing
of the sort, but instead palms off the chocolate
drop banalities of the minstrel show of thirty
years ago. ("Dogday," 291)
Furthermore, many critics agreed with Montogomery Gregory's
contention that "white writers cannot descirbe the feelings
in the heart of American Negroes today" ("Why," 640).34
They believed that it would ultimately be the black play-
wright who would create realistic depictions of black life
for the American theatre. Nevertheless, in 1924 when
Kenneth MacGowan of Theatre Arts Magazine asked Gregory to
recommend an one-act black drama, he "was chagrined at not
being able to recommend a single play by a Negro author
that would meet his requirements" (Gregory, "No 'Count
Boy," 121).35
Both Charles Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois were keenly
aware ofall the call for scripts by black authors. Conse-
quently, both editors included playwriting divisions in
34 At this time, Montgomery Gregory was Professor of
English and Director of the Howard University Players.
35"Theatre Arts published white playwright Paul Green's
black drama, The No 'Count Bay.
50
their respective literary competitions.
The Opportunity and Crisis Play Contests--The 1925 Competition
For the 1925 Opportunity competition, the plays were
to "deal with some phase of Negro life, either directly or
indirectly; otherwise there were no restrictions. They may
be romantic, realistic, humorous, and [were to] be judged
upon their quality as a good play" ("Opportunity's," 277).
The play division had not length of text restrictions.
Opportunity used a distinguished panel of three whites
and one black as judges of the plays: Alexander Woollcott,
Robert Benchley, Edith Isaacs, and Montgomery Gregory.
According to Brooks Atkinson, the drama critic of the New
York Herald--Alexander Woollcott--was "the foremost critic
on Broadway until he retired in 1928" (161). Scholar
Morris Burns believed Woollcott to be "disenchanted with
the characterization of the Negro in American drama, as
well as the treatment of the Negro in the theatre" (191).
In 1922, Woollcott wrote, "And always with one shining
exception [The Emperor Jones], we have never seen a play of
Negro life and character which was not at least a little
condescending. There has always been the most painfully
. acute consciousness on the part of the playwright that he
was on a slumming party" (1).
Robert Benchley, drama critic for tits magazine, had
worked with Opportunity's parent organization, the Urban
League, even before World War I. his biographer, Norris
51
Yates contended:
[Benchley] spoke out increasingly against racism
after reading The Negro Faces American by Herbert
J. Seligman and Darkwater by W.E.B. Du Bois.
[H]e had hailed the performance of the Negro
actor Charles Gilpin in O'Neill's The Emporor
Jones as indicative that Negro performers had
Iong since been ready "for more serious work
than rolling dice in a musical comedy or limping
about with lumbago after "de young mars" Godfrey."
His use of the term "race" and his reference
to the "native genius for emotional expression"
possessed by the Negro suggests that Benchley
had not cleared quite all the stereotyped ideas
out of his mind. Be that as it may, he attacked
objectors to the miscegenation theme in All
God's Chillun Got Wings, and exploded when the
Iheatre)Guild relegated a Negro to the balcony.
71, 73
Edith Isaacs was the influential editor of Theatre
Arts Magazine. She knew many of the leading black intel-
lectuals and writers and also arranged, with Alain Locke,
a New York exhibition of primitive African art in the
early 19205. She would later write the history, The Negro
in the American Theatre, which was published in 1947
(Sicherman, 370).
At the time of the Opportunity contest announcement,
Montgomery Gregory had just assumed a position as super-
intendent of the black public schools in Atlantic City,
New Jersey. He was "influenced" by George Pierce Baker
and the 47 Workshop while studying at Harvard ("T. Montgomery
Gregory," 40). He received his B.A. from Harvard in 1910
and taught English at Harvard University until 1924 (Kellner,
144). In 1916, Gregory and Alain Locke founded the Stylus
Society, a literary club at Howard. After being involved
52
with various dramatic groups, Gregory and Locke also
initiated the Howard Players who gave their first performance
in 1921..36
Gregory served as director of the Players
which received some assistance from such white theatre
37 For
artists as Marie Moore-Forrest and Cleon Throckmorton.
the black theatre, Gregory championed the folk play as
opposed to propaganda dramas. Furthermore, he believed
that folk plays "would prove a potent agency for the ameliora-
tion of race friction and misunderstandings" ("For," 350).
Clearly, Gregory held a belief in drama's potential for
creating racial harmony that Charles Johnson had for black
authored literature, in general.
The winning plays, all one-acts, were first announced
at Opportunity's awards dinner for the contestants held in
New York on May 1, 1925. In the play division, first prize
($60) went to Geroge Dewey Lipscomb, a Professor of Languages
and Literature at Wiley College (Marshall, Texas) for his
drama, Frances. Two writers shared the second prize ($35)--
Warren McDonald for Humble Instrument and Zora Neale Hurston
for Color Struck. Little information could be found
36(The first performance of the Howard Players was
Ridgely Torrence's Simon the Cyrenian.
37'Marie Moore-Forrest was a nationally known director
of community drama and pageants. Cleon Throckmorton pro-
vided technical assistance for the Provincetown Players and
became an acclaimed set designer and theatre architect.
53
concerning McDonald except that he lived in Philadelphia.
Hurston was a protege of Charles Johnson. That year, the
Opportunity contest also awarded her with an honorable
mention for her play, Spears, and second prize and an
honorable mention for her short stories, "Spunk" and "Black
Death," respectively. May Miller, daughter of an influential
Howard University administrator, received the third prize
($15) for her play, The Bog Guide. Besides Hurston, honorable
mentions were awarded to poet and dramatist Eloise Bibb
Thompson for Cooped Up; and Willis Richardson, the author
of The Chip Woman's Fortune, for his drama, Fall of the
Conjurer. Opportunity published only one of the award
38
winning plays, Frances.
In an editorial on the contest, Johnson stated that,
"The significance of the plays may be sensed when one
considers that the plays about Negro life available in this
country may be counted on the fingers of one hand. The
contest brought to light about sixty-five, many of which
have a distinct merit and are producible" ("The Contest,"
130). Furthermore, a letter from playwrighting judge
Robert Benchley made the following claim:
[The plays were] much better than the average
submitted in Professor Baker's Harvard course,
in which I was a judge two years ago . .
The dialogue in all the plays, with the exception
38 See. G. D. Lipscomb, Frances, Opportunity 3
(May 1925), 148-53.
54
of the artificially native (African) ones,
is particularly good and far above the average
dialogue in play contests. (Walrond, 20)
Besides the publishing of six plays and theatre reviews,39
the drama division of the Opportunity literary contest was
that magazine's most significant involvement with the
theatre. In contrast, Crisis and its editor, W.E.B. Du
Bois, displayed a greater interest in promoting black
drama and its production.
Since it's inception, Crisis often featured play
reviews and essays on the black theatre. In 1917, the
magazine selected Ridgley Torrence as one of the "Men of
the Month," for his Three Plays for a Negro Theatre, because
"No white man has written of colored people more sympathet-
ically . . . No one has done as much as he in opening up to
them a new field of art, and none ever approached the
people in a more generous spirit" ("Men," 256). From 1920-
1923, the journal published three short plays by black
writers.4O
39 The six plays published by O ortunit were:
6.0. Lipscomb's Frances 3 (May 1925) 145-53; Frank Wilson's
Sugar Cain 4 (June 1926) 181-84; Georgia Douglas Johnson's
Plumes 5 (July 1927) 200-01, 217-18; Marita Bonner's The
Pot-Maker 5 (July 1927) 43-46; Doris Price's Two God'ET’A
MinarethTO (Dec 1932) 380-83, 389; and Stanley Richard's
Distric of Columbia 23 (April-June 1945) 74-77.
40“The plays published by Crisis were Joseph Cotter's
On the Fields of France 20 (June 1920) 77; Willis Richardson's
The Deacon's Awakening 21 (Nov 1920) 10-15; and Ottie
Graham's Holiday 26 (May 1923) 12-17.
55
Moreover, W.E.B. Du Bois was personally involved with
the theatre. In 1908, Horizon magazine published his
one-act play, The Christ of the Andes (1-14).41 In 1911,
Du Bois outline the script for the pagent, "The Star of
Ethiopia." Its first production was staged at the New York
Emancipation Exposition in 1913. Other performances were
held in Washington, D.C. in 1915, Philadelphia in 1916, and
Los Angeles in 1924 (Du Bois, Autobiography, 270).
In 1920, Du Bois founded a children's magazine, The
Brownies' Book, which was published through 1921. The Book
included four children's plays by fledgling black playwright
Willis Richardson. Du Bois also recommended Richardson to
the Ethiopian Art Players--the group who would perform Chip
Woman's Fortune for Broadway audiences in 1923 (Haskins, 81).
In a 1921 editorial entitled, "Negro Art," Du Bois
criticized blacks who insisted that black art only "tell
the best and highest in us . . . The more highly trained we
become the less can we laugh at Negro comedy--we will have
it all tragedy and triumph of dark Right over pale Villainy"
(55). As a consequence, he believed black writers and
artists were cautious in depicting certain seamier aspects
of black life for fear that their own race may criticize
them. Thus, without these restraints, white writers may be
freer to portray a more realistic depiction of black life.
41 Later, Du Bois wrote, "George Washington and Black
Folk: A Pageant for the Centenary, 1732-1932,“ Crisis 39
(April 1932) 121-24. -
56
Du Bois commended the black plays of white dramatists Edward
Sheldon, Ridgley Torrence, and Eugene O'Neill and called
them the "forerunners" of black playwrights who will write
about Afro-American life.42
In a 1923 article for Theatre Magazine, Du Bois primarily
defended the recent Broadway performances of the Ethiopian
Art Players. However, he also advocated the development of
black drama by Afro-American writers and actors, despite
his earlier view that black audience attitudes may hinder
realistic portraits (12, 68).
When Crisis announced its literary contest in October
1924, unlike contestants for Opportunity's competition,
readers of Du Bois's magazine had some conception of the
philosophy of black drama held by the editor. Furthermore,
Crisis provided specific advice for its prospective play-
writing entrants. According to contest rules, "Plays must
deal with some phase of Negro history or experience and
should occupy from five to seven pages of The Crisis in
length" ("Any, Crisis, 24). Unlike Opportunity, Crisis
provided contestants with an article on playwriting by
black writer Mark Seybolt ("Play-wrighting," 164-65).
Seybolt recommended playwriting books and offered writing
tips to dramatists. The plays were to be written for
â€colored folk"; however, the dramatists were encouraged
42‘Edward Sheldon wrote The Nigger which was produced
on Broadway in 1909.
57
not to "confine" themselves to themes depicting "sorrow
among black folk." Also, Seybolt urged writers to think of
stories of "sunshine and kindness and ambition and hope."
Most important, it appeared as if Crisis understood the
stage of development which characterized most of these
writers. Seybolt stated that in George Baker's playwriting
text, Dramatic Technique:
. [He] points out [that] most attempts at writing
plays fall into two classes--the well-written
but trite; the fresh and interesting but badly
written. It is the second class which interests
The Crisis. The birthborn gift is there but
only study and experience will develop it. (164)
To judge these plays written for a black audience,
Crisis assembled a panel of three--two blacks and one
white: Charles Burroughs, Lester Walton, and Eugene O'Neill.
Born in Galveston, Texas in 1875, Charles Burroughs graduated
from Wilberforce University (Ohio) in 1897. He studied for
one year at the Boston School of Expression and lectured on
Shakespeare for the New York public schools. He served as
an actor and director with black little theatre groups and
made a career out of giving readings for black churches and
civic organizations. Crisis named him one of the "Men of
the Month," in 1912, and in the following year, he staged
Du Bois's pageant "The Star of Ethiopia" in New York
58
("Men," 119).43
Born in St. Louis in 1882, Lester Walton worked as a
journalist for several of the city's newspapers before
coming to New York in 1906. From 1908-14 and 1917-19, he
served as a drama critic and managing editor for the Harlem
newspaper, New York Age. He managed the Lafayette Theatre,
1914-16 and 1919-21, and joined the staff of New York World
in 1922 (Fleming, 533).44 In the 1928 article, "Across the
Footlights," Walton criticized white writers of black life
for portraying "the race at its worst." He also stated his
belief in the American stage as an entertainer and educator
which could potentially bring about racial harmony.4§
Clearly, Walton was certainly in agreement with the beliefs
of Charles Johnson and Montgomery Gregory, but he never
served as an Opportunity judge.
The career of Eugene O'Neill, certainly, needs not to
be viewed in this text. Following the success of the
Pulitzer Prize winning Beyond the Horizon, the 1920
43 In 1928, his wife went on a trip with his two
sons (aged 6 and 9) to the Soviet Union. So that they would
be raised in what she thought was an environment free of
racism, Mrs. Burroughs left the boys in Russia. Charles
Burroughs never saw his sons again. [Charles Burroughs
Moorland Research Center, Howard University]
44 Walton served on the staff of the New York Tribune
in 1931 and was U.S. Ambassador to Liberia, 1935-46.
45 These statements are based on excerpts of the
Walton article reprinted in John Monroe, "A Record of the
Black Theatre in New York City: 1920-29," Diss. U. of Texas
at Austin (1980) 126.
59
production of The Emperor Jones established O'Neill as one
of America's promising young playwrights. Curiously,
biographies of the dramatist pay little attention to his
relationships with blacks with the exception of his feelings
46
toward Emporor Jones star, Charles Gilpin. However, this
author of two other black dramas, The Dreamy Kid and All
God's Chillum Got Wings, had contacts with the black com-
munity and was written about quite extensively in the black
press. In an article entitled, "Reflections on O'Neill's
Plays," the black actor, Paul Robeson wrote that he had
"met and talked with Mr. O'Neill. If ever there was a
broad, liberal-minded man, he is one. He has Negro friends
and appreciated them for their true worth. He would be the
last to cast any slur on the colored people" (369-70).
Eugene O'Neill wrote Montgomery Gregory concerning his
attmept to establish a National Negro Theatre with the
Howard Players. The playwright stated that he was "thoroughly
in sympathy with [this] undertaking, for I believe as
strongly as you do that the gifts of the Negro can--and
will--bring to our native drama are invaluable and to a
dramatist, they open up new and intriguing opportunities"
(Gregory, "Chronology," 417). In a letter to The Messenger,
46 These biographies include Arthur and Barbara
Gelb's O'Neill (New York: Harper, 1974); and Louis Sheaffer's
O'Neill: Son and Playwright (Boston: Little, Brown and Co.,
1968) and)O'Neill: Son and Artist (Boston: Little, Brown and
Co., 1973 .
60
O'Neill wrote:
I have read a good number of plays written by
Negroes and they were always bad p1ays--bad1y
written, conceived, constructed--without the
slightest trace of true feeling for drama--unori-
ginal--and, what revolted me the most, bad
imitations in method and thought of conventional
white plays! . . . [Instead, black writers
should] [b]e yourselves! Don't reach out for
our stuff which we call good! Make your stuff
and your good! You have within your race an
opportunity--and a shining goal!--for new forms,
new significance. Every white who has sense
ought to envy you! We look around with accustomed
eyes at somewhat jaded landscapes--at least
too familiar--while to you life ought to be
as green-~and as deep--as the sea! There ought
to be a Negro play written by a Negro that
no white could every have conceived or executed.
By this I don't mean greater--because all art
is equally great--but your, your own, an expression
of)what is deep in you, is you, by you!! (O'Neill,
17
Thus, it appeared as if O'Neill, like Du Bois, encouraged
the writing of black drama by blacks. Indeed, the Crisis
editor and playwright admired each other. According to
writer, Herbert Aptheker, "cordiality marked the long
relationship" between the two men (Du Bois, Correspondence,
294). O'Neill wrote to Du Bois that it would be an "honor"
to judge the play entries of the literary contest (Du
47
Bois, Correspondence, 295). However, one can only specu-
late on the dramatist's condition when reading these plays
sometime between May-August, 1925. His biographer, Louis
Sheaffer, claimed that beginning in April 1925, O'Neill
47 In 1931, O'Neill accepted a position on the
Advisory Board for a Crisis contest offering prizes for
the best published books written by blacks.
61
would "be more or less under the influence of drink or
suffering its aftereffects" for the rest of the year (175).
The Crisis literary contest drew only twenty plays,
48
forty-five less than Opportunity's competition. The
winners were announced at a Crisis dinner for contestants
in New York on August 14, 1925. First prize ($75) was
awared to Willis Richardson for The Broken Banjo. Already‘
familiar to Crisis and former Brownies' Magazine readers
and several black little theatre groups, Richardson had
also received an honorable mention for a play submitted
to the Opportunity competition. Opportunity reported
that Broken Banjo was performed at the Crisis dinner (“Amy,"
Opportunity, 287). Second and third prizes ($40 and $10,
respectively) went to two unknown authors. Ruth Gaines
Shelton of St. Louis received second place honors for
The Church Fight andMyrtle Smith Livingston of Greely,
Colorado earned the third prize for the drama, For Unborn
Children. While Opportunity only published one of its
48 The author can only guess why there was such a
disparity between the number of play entries received by
Opportunity and Crisis. Crisis's total cash awards for
plays exceeded its rival by $15. Perhaps the dramatists
believed Opportunity's competition to be more prestigious
than the Crisis contest, since two of its judges were
Broadway critics, another was the editor of an influential
theatre magazine, and another had headed a well-known black
theatre group. In contrast, the Crisis judges, with the
exception of Eugene O'Neill, were little recognized outside
of New York. Or, perhaps Crisis offered so much advice on
playwriting that prospective contestants believed the contest
to be too restrictive and, thus, did not bother to enter the
competition. Or, since Opportunity announced its contest be-
fore Cri is riters a have sent entries to the former ma -
a21ne-and-nngected tWeylatter. g
62
1925 prize dramas, Crisis published all three of its award
winning plays.49
The 1926 Competition
The total cash prizes for plays offered by Opportunity
remained at $110. However, this year, the play division
was judged by two blacks and two whites: Montgomery Gregory,
Paul Robeson, David Belasco, and Stark Young. Gregory
was the only judge from the 1925 jury to be a member of
the panel in 1926. Paul Robeson was still a young actor
and singer when asked to be a judge. Born in 1898 in
Philadelphia, he earned a law degree from Columbia in
1923. However, three years before graduation, he appeared
in a Players' Guild production of Ridgley Torrence's §ippp
50
the Cyrenian at the Harlem YMCA. Audience members,
Kenneth MacGowan and Robert Edmond Jones, offered Robeson
the title role in The Emperor Jones. The novice actor
declined the part, because he believed the "play portrayed
blacks as savages" (Haskins, 73). His adversity to O'Neill's
work did not last as Robeson starred in a revival of Jones
49 See Willis Richardson, The Broken Ban 0, Crisis
31 (Feb 1926) 167-71 and 31 (March 1926) 225-281; Ruth
Gaines Shelton, The Church Fight, Crisis 32 (May 1926)
17-21; and Myrtle Smith Livingston, For Unborn Children,
Crisis 32 (July 1926) 122-25.
50 Crisis play judge Chaplequprroughs and Frank
Wilson, an actor and first prize winner of the 1926 Oppor-
tunit play division, also appeared in this production.
See Monroe, 159-60.
63
while preparing for the opening of the dramatist's contro-
versial All God's Chillun Got Wings (Sheaffer, 140). In
fact, in an article defending O'Neill's plays, he appeared
to agree with Du Bois's criticism of black audiences.
We [blacks] are too self-conscious, too afraid
of showing all phases which are of greatest
dramatic value. The great mass of our group
discourage any member who has the courage to fight
these petty prejudices. (369)
David Belasco was one of America's most famous pro-
ducers and directors. Both Opportunity and Crisis published
favorable reviews of Belasco's 1926 production of the black
life drama, Lulu Belle, although the two lead characters
51
were played by whites in blackface. In fact, according
to Belasco, all of the black characters were originally to
be played by whites; however, he later changed his mind
after deciding the production would then lack validity
(Belasco, 17-18).
Stark Young served as the drama critic for the Egg
Republic and, later, joined the staff of Theatre Arts. He
directed Eugene O'Neill's Welded in 1924 and wrote some
unsuccessful plays, "as well as, admired translations of
Chekhov" (Bordman, 731). In 1926, Young accepted a position
on the play panel, although he wrote to the Opportunity
51 For the play reviews on Lulu Belle, see "White Is
Black," Opportunity 4 (April 1926) 134-35; Hubert H.
Harrison, e ignificance of Lulu Belle," Opportunity 4
(July 1926) 228-29; and "The Theatre: Lulu Belle?“ Crisis
32 (May 1926) 34.
64
editor, "I consistently refuse to read manuscripts and for
the most part books, for they distract and confuse me
except in very definite and desired instances" ("Judges,"
340). In 1927, he wrote an article entitled, "Negro Material
in the Theatre." He criticized the patronizing attitudes
of whites who, in accordance with the current "Negro vogue,"
seemed to be overzealous in their praise of black drama and
actors. Yet in the same article, Young condescendinly
stated:
Negroes are by nature a superb acting medium.
They have voices that are engaging by their
strangeness to our ears and that are theatrical
because they are moving and warm and flexible.
They have flexible bodies and perfect relaxation;
they have a quick response and a gift of rapport
and mutual interest among themselves that is
unfailing. They have, too, very often, a kind
of simple humanity and sweetness that is touching
and persuasive, a freshness and spontaneity
that is disarming, and a suggestion of power
and force, brutality and abandon that heightens
the impression of that vitality by which the
stage comes alive. (331)
The contest winners were announced at the Opportunity
dinner held on May 1, 1926 where Paul Robeson "spoke for
the plays" ("Awards," 186). First prize ($60) was awarded
to popular Harlem actor and playwright, Frank Wilson, for
Sugar Cain. Wilson's drama was the only one of the 1926
52
award winning plays published by Opportunity. Second
prize ($35) went to a Professor of Romance Languages at
52 See Frank Wilson, Sugar Cain, Opportunity 4
(June 1926) 181-84, 201-03.
65
West Virginia State College, John Matheus, for 'Cruiter.
Matheus had won first prize for his short story, "Fog," in
the 1925 Opportunity contest. The writer was also awarded
several other prizes in the 1926 Opportunity competition:
first prize for his personal experience sketch, "Sand"; and
honorable mentions for a short story and three poems.
Third prize ($15) was awarded to Warren McDonald for the
drama, Otppg. Last year, McDonald won second place honors
for another play and, in the 1926 competition, his short
story, "A Matter of Inches," received an honorable mention.
Opportunity cited two of Zora Neale Hurston's plays-~a
revised version of Color Struck and The First One--for
honorable mentions. Hurston had won awards for her plays
and short stories in the 1925 contest and, this year, she
was also awarded second prize for her short story, "Muttsy."
May Miller, last year's third place drama winner, received
an honorable mention for her play, The Cuss'd Thing. A
Washington, D.C. woman better known as a poet, Georgia
Douglas Johnson, was awarded honorable mentions for her
drama Blue Blood and two poems, "Song of the Sinner" and
"Song of Many Loves."
The Crisis editor went beyond the publications of
plays and the literary contest to promote black drama. In
66
53
1926, Du Bois founded the Krigwa Theatre Movement. In a
July 1926 article, the Crisis editor stated the principles
of the Movement.
The plays of a real Negro theatre must be:
1. About us. That is, they must have plots
which reveal Negro life as it is. 2. By us.
That is, they must be written by Negro authors
who understand from birth and continual associa-
tion just what it means to be Negro today.
3. For us. That is, the theatre must cater
primarily to negro audiences and be supported
and sustained by their entertainment and approval.
4. Near us. The theatre must be in a Negro
neighborhood near the mass of ordinary Negro
people. ("Krigwa Players," 134)
Two months before the publication of this article, Du
Bois's Harlem branch of the Krigwa Players presented three
one-act plays under the direction of Charles Burroughs.
The plays, Willis Richardson's The Broken Banjo and The
Compromise and Ruth Gaines Shelton's The Church Fight, were
written by Crisis award winning dramatists. According to
Du 8015, the Players performed to "enthusiastic" full-house
audiences "averaging 200 persons" for each show ("Krigwa
Players," 136).
Critic Theophilus Lewis objected to the name, "Krigwa,"
because it sounds like somebody with a sore throat beginning
to gargle" ("I Hate," 182).54 Nevertheless, Krigwa
53 Regina Andrews, a Harlem librarian and supporter
of black writers and artists, believed that the Krigwa
Theatre Movement was inspired by the Howard Players. See
Loften Mitchell, Voices of the Black Theatre (Clifton, NJ:
James T. White, 1975) 80.
54 Krigwa had been spelled CRIGWA. The initials
stood for the Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists.
67
branches Opened in major cities, such as Boston, New York,
Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Cleveland"
(Edmonds, 21).
Crisis increased its total cash awards to the play
division from $125 to 5150.55
Also, the cash prizes were
only awarded to the first and second place award winners.
An all-black jury now judged the plays: last year's Crisis
judges Lester Walton and Charles Burroughs; and one who had
served on the Opportunity 1925 and 1926 panels, Montgomery
Gregory.
As in 1925, Willis Richardson won first place honors
($100), this year, for his full-length drama, Bootblack
56
Lover. Second Place ($50) went to West Indian born
Eulalie Spence for her drama, Foreign Mail. A New York
school teacher, Spence had written one-act plays and acted
with Harlem little theatre groups, including the Krigwa
Players. A recent graduate of Oberlin College, Randolph
Edmonds received honorable mentions for Peter Stith and
Illicit Love. None of the 1926 award winning plays were
published by Crisis.
At the October 25, 1926 Crisis dinner for contestants,
56 Bootblack Lover was the only full-length play
which won an award during the history of the Crisis and
Opportunity contests. Obviously, the author did not adhere
to last year's rule which restricted the length of the text
to five to seven pages of Crisis. It is not known how many
other full-length plays were submitted to the Crisis and
Opportunity contests.
68
the Krigwa Players presented Eulalie Spence's Foreign Mail
and a non-award winning entry by W.J. Jefferson entitled,
Mppgy. Also, it was announced that contestants who had won
first or second place honors in the 1925 or 1926 compe-
titions were ineligible for the 1927 contest. As a conse-
quence, the rule disqualified Willis Richardson for next
year's contest.
The 1927 Competition
The Opportunity editor had been pleased with the pro-
gress of the short story and poetry contestants. He spoke
proudly of these writers' accomplishments in two editorials,
"The Contest" (291-92) and "Stories and Poetry" (5). The
plays, however, were a different matter. Charles Johnson
admitted his dissatisfaction with the efforts of the play-
wrights in a January 1927 editorial, "On the Need of Better
Plays" (5-6). Johnson blamed contemporary audiences for
influencing dramatists to write "low comedy which [had]
succeeded commercially, and a few propagandistic efforts of
a defensive character." He remained hopeful that others
shared his support for drama that would depict "more faith-
ful pictures of reality." Johnson believed that plays had
the potential for "the forceful interpretation of Negro
life itself, a service which the stage undoubtedly can
perform with as great, if not greater, directness and power
than either fiction or poetry."
Three whites and one black served on the panel for
69
the 1927 contest: Edith Isaacs, Lula Vollmer, Paul Green,
and Paul Robeson. Isaacs and Robeson had served previously
as judges in 1925 and 1926, respectively. Lula Vollmer
worked in the box office of the Theatre Guild; however, she
was best known for the writing of folk plays. Her most
successful play, Sun-Up, raised over $40,000 for the edu-
cation of Southern mountain pepple (Bordman, 694). Folk
playwright, Paul Green, was a Professor of Philosophy at
the University of North Carolina. Green received the 1926
Pulitzer Prize for the black drama, In Abraham's Bosom. He
had also published his anthology, Lonesome Road: Six Plays
for a Negro Theatre. In 1927, Montgomery Gregory stated
that this dramatist "has to his credit, with the possible
exception of Eugene O'Neill, the finest contribution of
Negro plays yet written" ("Chronology," 421).
The judges chose Georgia Douglas Johnson's Plumes as
the first place winner ($60). The drama was the only 1927
57
award winning play published by Opportunity. Last year,
Johnson had received honorable mentions for a play and
poems. The 1926 second place winner of the Crisis contest,
Eulalie Spence, now won Opportunity's second prize ($35)
for the play, The Hunch. Spence also shared the third
prize ($15) with a newcomer from New Jersey, William Jackson.
Spence wrote the Starter, while Jackson won for his play,
57 See Georgia Douglas Johnson, Plumes, Opportunity
5 (July 1927) 200-01, 271-18.
70
Four Eleven. Last year's Crisis honorable mention winner,
Randolph Edmonds, continued to receive this citation. This
time, Opportunity awarded him a honorable mention for
Bleeding Hearts. The awards were presented at the annual
Opportunity dinner for contestants.
At Crisis, Du Bois must have been proud of his little
theatre group. In January 1927, the Krigwa Players presented
three one-acts--Eulalie Spences' Foreign Mail and Her, and
W.J. Jefferson's Mandy--at the 135th Street Library in
Harlem. The group earned much greater acclaim when it
performed Eulalie Spence's Fool's Errand at the National
Little Theatre Tournament in New York on May 7, 1927. The
comedy won the $200 Samuel French Prize for the best unpub-
lished work. Unfortunately, according to Spence, the
Players soon broke up over a dispute concerning the prize
money.58 Du Bois accepted the award to pay production
expenses; however, the actors thought that they would also
get a share of the prize. When they received no compensation,
58 While Spence claimed that the Harlem Krigwa
Players did not perform after 1927, there is a record of a
Krigwa Players group performing at the National Little
Theatre Tournament of 1928. The group performed Aftermath,
a play by a Washington, D.C. teacher, Mary Burrill. Burrill
had taught at the high school during the period that Willis
Richardson was a student there. Nevertheless, it is doubtful
that these Players, who were associated with the Worker's
Drama League of Manhattan, were the same Harlem group
initiated by Du Bois. See Belcher, 395.
71
the group dissolved. This disappointed Du Bois, "because
he though he had established a permanent little theatre
group" (Spence, Interview).59
The depth of Du Bois's disappointment in the failure
of his theatre group became apparent when one reads his
editorial, "Paying for Plays" (7-8), published in November
1926, months before the Players broke up. Thus far, plays
published in Crisis were generating production interest.60
In the editorial, Du Bois asked prospective producers for
$5 for performance rights--$2.50 to Crisis and $2.50 to the
dramatist. Still, the editor conceded that blacks had
objected to this payment. Du Bois stated that this dispute
exemplified the "singular attitude of our people toward
artists and writers. Plumbers, carpenters and bricklayers
we pay without question; the workman is worthy of his hire.
But if a man writes a play, and a good play, he is lucky if
he earns first-class postage upon it" (7). Thus, while the
editor viewed Crisis plays as a way to earn revenue for the
magazine, Du Boise, also, wanted to give some financial
59 The author has no information on the longevity of
the Krigwa branches, except for the Washington, D.C. group.
According to interviews of members, Willis Richardson and
May Miller, the Washington, D.C. Krigwa Players were quite
active and performed well into the 19305.
60 Crisis had published six plays by this time.
Three were Crisis award winners. See footnotes, #35 and #45,
for the names and publication citations for these plays.
72
support to the writer. Furthermore, Du Bois revealed his
attitude toward the commercial prospects of black-authored
drama:
Of course, [the black writer] may sell it com-
mercially to some producer on Broadway; but
in that case it would not be a Negro play or
if it is a Negro play it will not be about
the kind of Negro you and I know or want to
know. If it is a Negro play that will interest
us and depict our life, experience and humor,
it cannot be sold to the ordinary theatrical
producer, but it can be produced in our churches
and lodges and halls; and if it is worth
producing there it is worth paying for. (7-8)
Indeed, these are the words of the same man who championed
Broadway black drama written by whites who was telling
writers of his race not to strive to the "Great White
Way." For Du Bois, the hope for the development of black
playwrights lay with the production of their works by
black little theatre groups. Certainly, a year later,
the demise of his own drama group must have deeply distressed
Du Bois.
For Crisis's 1927 competition, Du Bois restructured
the contest without notifying the contestants. The works
of each entrant competed against those of another regardless
of whether one submitted short stories, plays, or essays
or a combination of these genres. The editor graded all
of the entries and decided which were eligible for prizes.
With the assistance of unnamed consultants, Crisis awarded
first prize ($200--a sizable sum in 1927) to Marita Bonner.
Bonner had submitted: two plays, The Purple Flower and
Exit, an Illusion; a short story, "Drab Rambles,"; and
73
an essay, "The Young Blood Hungers." This teacher from
Washington, D.C. had also won first prize for an essay
in the 1925 Crisis contest and an honorable mention for
a short story in the 1925 Opportunity competition. The
1927 Crisis second prize ($100) went to Brenda Ray Moryck,
also of Washington, D.C., for her short stories, "Old
Days and New," "Days," and "Her Little Brother." Former
Opportunity and Crisis award winner, Eulalie Spence earned
third prize ($50) for her plays, Hot Stuff and Undertow.
Crisis also named eight writers who received honorable
mentions, but did not list their entries. Of the eight,
Randolph Edmonds and John Matheus had previously won play
awards in the Crisis and/or Opportunity contests.
The cash prizes were mailed to the contestants.
This year, Crisis held no dinner in their honor. Further-
more, with the exception of writing another pageant (see
footnote #36), Du Bois devoted less of his time to the
promotion of the theatre.
Conclusions
In a 1929 edition of Carolina Magazine devoted to
plays by black dramatists, Lewis Alexander wrote:
Nothing has done more to incite interest among
race writers, in the possibilities of the folk
play than the literary prizes offered in recent
contests by Opportunity Magazine and The Crisis
. . . The contests and prizes offered reassured
the race writers that, it was worthwhile, for
some of them . . . had been writing a decade
or more with little or not attention at all.
The new spirit of the contests reincarnated
74
the old writers and moved the aspiring young
dreamers to take up their pens and write.
(45)
Indeed, the contests brought to the forefront fifteen
black dramatists and thirty plays. Not surprisingly,
nineteen of these plays were written by authors based
in New York and Washington, D.C. However, eleven works also
earned awards from Los Angeles, Greely (Colorado), St.
Louis, Philadelphia, Marshall (Texas), Institute (W. Virginia),
Oberlin (Ohio), and Montclair (New Jersey). Three dramatists
61 Seven writers
62
received awards from both magazines.
won more than one play prize from the same magazine.
Five won play awards and also prizes for work in another
genre.63
As will be discussed more thoroughly in Chapter IV,
some of the winners personally knew or may have know Charles
Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, friends of the magazine editors,
or contest judges. Losers may have suspected the judging
in the competitions if aware of these connections and
the fact that there were so many repeat winners in the
play category and other divisions. After being prompted
61
Spence.
62 Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, Georgia
Douglas Johnson, Warren McDonald, May Miller, Willis Richard-
son, and Eulalie Spence.
63 Marita Bonner, Zora Neale Hurston, Georgia
Douglas Johnson, John Matheus, and Warren McDonald.
Randolph Edmonds, Willis Richardson, and Eulalie
75
by "several inquiries," Johnson defended the integrity
of the Opportunity contest in an August 1926 editorial
("Questions," 241). He stated that the entries were ranked
by the judges in each division. Awards were based on
a mathematical formula. Johnson also contended that "Manu-
scripts and not names are considered."
Nevertheless, the most important observation to be made
about the play contests, thus far, has to do with the
attitudes toward this division as shown by the Opportunity
and Crisis editors. Charles Johnson had thought the Oppor-
tunity competition would elicit dramas which would further
the movement for racial harmony. The plays were to be
written by black dramatists, but these works were to affect
white racial opinions. Johnson sought the approval of
influential whites and, therefore, assembled play panels
which were predominately white in 1925 and 1927. In 1926,
the drama jury included two whites and two blacks.
It is not known if or how the judges influenced John-
son's opinion of the plays. Some of the judges connected
with the Broadway stage may have been more concerned with
the commercial potential of the works rather than their
acceptance to black little theatre audiences. Of course,
one Broadway critic, Robert Benchley, had enthusiastic
praise (see p. 53) for the 1925 play entries and one wonders
if this had any affect on Johnson's attitude. Indeed,
the Opportunity editor had stated that many of the 1925
plays had a "distinct merit and are producible." In light
76
of later statements by Johnson concerning the poor quality
of play division entries, this pronouncement now appears
suspect. Other than Benchley's, statements by judges
directly commenting on the contest could not be found.
However, in a 1935 Opportunity article, "The Negro and the
Theatre," Edith Isaacs, a judge of the 1925 and 1927 compe-
titions wrote:
I am bound to say that I have never read a play
of Negro life written by a Negro--nor, for
that matter, any play written by a Negro--that
even approached first rate quality. (177)
When Johnson suspended the competition soon after
the 1927 contest, the editor was still dissatisfied with
the playwriting efforts. He suggested that the dramatists
needed more time to develop their craft ("Opportunity
Contest," 254). It now appeared as if Johnson had realized
that his expectations for the play division had been unre-
alistic; however, one wonders why it took the editor so
long to reach this conclusion. Surely, he must have been
aware that the American theatre had not been open to blacks
until recently. Many of the professional legitimate theatres
were segregated or did not sell tickets to blacks. For
example, Edith Isaacs admitted that at the historic 1917
performance of Three Plays for a Negro Theatre, the auditorium
was "solidly white except for a few Negro friends that
we had bullied the house manager into permitting us to
have as guests in our boxes" (174). In 1922, Alexander
Woollcott criticized the management of the Sam Harris
77
Theatre for restricting blacks to the balcony for the
production of Mary Wiborg's black drama, Ipppp (1). The
famous National Theatre in Washington, D.C. barred black
patrons until an Actor's Equity protest encouraged a change
of policy in the 19505 (Bordman, 499).
Even black actors who later won acclaim on the American
stage had to attend segregated classes at the renowned
American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Monroe, 163). Further-
more, it was not uncommon for whites to play black characters
in blackface throughout the 19205. Indeed, it was with
the black little theatre groups that famous black actors
such as Charles Gilpin, Paul Robeson, Frank Wilson, Rose
McClendon, and Abbie Mitchell received their initial dramatic
acting experiences. The black playwright also gained
experience by working with black theatre groups. In fact,
the first Broadway play by a black, Willis Richardson's
The Chip Woman's Fortune, was produced by a black company
from Chicago.
W.E.B. Du Bois understood these facts about the
American theatre. While he applauded the black drama
of some white writers, he did not promote the commercial
theatre for black authors. From the beginning, the Crisis
contest encouraged the writing of black plays for black
audiences. Only one white judge served on the play division
panel. Unlike Opportunity, Crisis also used the services
of a black drama critic. Furthermore, Du Bois attempted
to provide a forum for black plays. He initiated the
78
Krigwa Little Theatre Movement to promote the establishment
of drama groups that would produce these works. Therefore,
Du Bois realized that in order for the dramatist to develop
his talents, he needed not only to see his work on paper,
but more practically, the play should be refined during
rehearsals and performed before an audience.
In conclusion, the Opportunity and Crisis editors
held greatly different expectations for the plays of their
respective contests. This difference is primarily due
to the fact that Johnson was concerned with affecting
white racial attitudes, while Du Bois wanted to direct
playwriting efforts to the black community. Not surprisingly,
the two men formed different conclusions regarding the
success of their competitions. In retrospect, it appears
that Du Bois had a more realistic view than Johnson of
the early stage of deve10pment which characterized the
talents of most black dramatists at the time of the contests.
Works Cited
Alexander, Lewis. "Plays of Negro Life," Carolina Magazine
59 (April 1929) 44-46.
"The Amy Spingarn Prizes," Opportunity 3 (Sept 1925) 287-
"The Amy Spingarn Prizes in Literature and Art," Crisis
29 (Nov 1924) 24.
Atkinson, Brooks. Broadway. New York: Macmillan, 1974.
"The Awards Dinner," Opportunity 4 (June 1926) 186.
Belasco, David. "Tomorrow's Stage and the Negro," Liberty
7 Aug 1926: 17-18.
79
Belcher, Fannin 5., Jr. “The Place of the Negro in the
Evolution of the American Theatre, 1767 to 1940."
Diss. Yale U., 1945.
Bordman. Gerald. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre.
New York: Oxford UP, 1984.
Braithwaite, William Stanley. "The Negro in Literature,"
Crisis 28 (Sept 1924) 204-10.
Burns, Morris U. The Dramatic Criticism of Alexander
Woollcott. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1980.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois. New
York: International Publishers, 1968.
---. "Can the Negro Serve the Drama?," Theatre Magazine
38.1 (July 1923) 12, 68.
---. The Christ of the Andes. Horizon 4 (Nov-Dec 1908)
1-14.
---. The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois, 1877-1934.
Vol. 1. Ed. Herbert Aptheker. Amherst: U. of Massa-
chusetts P, 1973.
---. "Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre," Crisis 32
(July 1926) 134, 136.
---. "The Negro and the American Stage," "Opinion,"
Crisis 28 (June 1924) 56-57.
---. "Negro Art," "Opinion," Crisis 22 (June 1921) 55-56.
---. "Paying for Plays," "Opinion." Crisis 33 (NOV 1926)
Edmonds, Randolph. "The Negro Little Theatre Movement,"
Encore. Greensboro, NC: National Association of
Dramatic and Speech Arts, 1984.
Fleming, B. James and Christian E. Burkel, eds. Who's Who
in Colored America. 7th ed. Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY:
Christian E. Burkel and Associates, Publishers, 1950.
Gregory, Montgomery. "A Chronology of the Negro Theatre,"
Plays of Negro Life. New York: Harper, 1927.
---. "For a Negro Theatre," New Republic 28 (16 Nov 1921)
350.
---, "The No 'Count Boy," Opportunity 3 (April 1925) 121-22.
80
---. "Why Not a Negro Drama for Negroes by Negroes?,"
Current Opinion 72 (May 1922) 639-40.
Haskins, James. Black Theater in America. New York:
Crowell, 1982.
Hewitt, Barnard. Theatre U.S.A., 1665-1957. New york:
McGraw, 1959.
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. London: Oxford
UP, 1971.
Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea. New York: Hill and Wang,
1940.
Isaacs, Edith. "The Negro and the Theatre,“ Opportunity
13 (June 1935) 174-77.
Johnson, Charles S. "The Contest," "Editorials," Opportunity
3 (Oct 1925) 291—92.
---. "On the Need of Better Plays," "Editorials,"
Opportunity 5 (Jan 1927) 5-6.
---. "The Opportunity Contest," "Editorials,"
Opportunity 5 (Sept 1927) 254.
---. "Questions About the Contests," "Editorials,"
Opportunity 4 (Aug 1926) 241.
---. "Stories and Poetry of 1926," "Editorials,â€
Opportunity 5 (Jan 1927) 5.
Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan. New York: Arno
Press and the New York Times, l968.
"Judges for the Contest," Opportunity 3 (Nov 1925) 340.
Kellner, Bruce, ed. The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical
Dictionary. Westport CT: Greenwood, 1984.
Kimball, Robert, and William Bolcom. Reminiscin with
Sissle and Blake. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
Lewis, Theophilus. "Black Magic," "Theatre," Messenger
6 (Dec 1924) 380.
---. "Dogday Blues," "Theatre," Messenger 6 (Sept 1924) 291.
---. "I Hate Myself," "The Theatre: The Souls of Black
Folks," Messenger 8 (June 1926) 182-83.
81
---. "The Theater: The Souls of Black Folk," Messenger
8 (July 1926) 214-15.
"Men of the Month," Crisis 14 (Sept 1917) 256.
"Men of the Month," Crisis 4 (July 1912) 118-20.
Monroe, John Gilbert. "A Record of the Black Theatre in
New York City: 1920-29." Diss. U of Texas at Austin,
1980.
"Music and Art," "Along the Color Line," Crisis 6 (August
1913) 166-67.
O'Neill, Eugene. “Eugene O'Neill on the Negro Actor,"
Messenger 7 (Jan 1925) 17.
"Opportunity's Literary Prize Contest Awards," Opportunity
2 (Sept 1924) 277, 179.
Paris, Arthur. "Cruse and the Crisis in Black Culture:
The Case of Theatre, 1900-1930," Journal of Ethnic
Studies 5.2 (Summer 1977) 51-68.
Richardson, Willis. "The Negro Audience," Opportunity
3 (April 1925) 123.
Seybold, Mark. "Play-writing," Crisis 29 (Feb 1925) 164-65.
Sheaffer, Louis. O'Neill: Son and Artist. Boston: Little,
Brown and Co., 1973.
Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Green, eds. Notable American
Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap P
of thd Harvard UP, 1980.
Spence, Eulalie. Interview. With Joshua Carter. Audio-
cassette tape. 22 Aug 1973. Cohen Library, City
University of New York.
"T. Montgomery Gregory Dead," New York Times. 25 Nov 1971: 40.
Toll, Robert. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth
Century American. New York: Oxford UP, 1974.
Walrond, Eric. "The Growth of the Negro Theatre," Theatre
Magazine 42.10 (Oct 1925) 20, 52.
82
Woollcott, Alexander. "Second Thoughts on First Nights,"
New York Times 19 April 1922, Sec. 8, p. 1.
Yates, Norris. Robert Benchley. New York: Twayne Pub.,
1968.
Young, Stark. "Negro Material in the Theatre," New Republic
50 (11 May 1927) 331-32.
CHAPTER III
THE AWARD WINNING PLAYS
Opportunity and Crisis awarded honors to thirty plays
by fifteen black authors. Most of the plays share similar
characteristics. Typically, the prize winners are contem-
porary realistic one-act dramas. They include black charac-
ters of various types and dispositions and often feature
whites. Most are set in the interior of a house or apartment
and require little technical expertise to produce.
The following discussion of the prize winning plays
are arranged by topic: (1) race dramas; (2) miscegnation
dramas; (3) complexion plays; (4) domestic plays; and
(5) religious life plays. For each of the nineteen plays
64
with extant original scripts, the section begins with a
synopsis of the story. All plays are one-acts and set in
the 19205 unless otherwise noted. Whenever appropriate,
64 Frances, The Bog Guide, The Broken Banjo, The
Church Fight, For Unborn Children, Sugar Cain, 'Cruiter.
Color Struck (l926laward winning version), The First One,
The Cuss'd Thin , Blue Blood, Bootblack Lover, Plumes
The Hunch, The tarter, Bleeding Hearts, The Purple Flower,
Exit, an Illusion, and Undertow.
83
84
each section cites the use of music and dance, extraordinary
technical requirements, non-realistic staging devices, and
the relevancy of the play's subject to its contemporary
audience. Also, critical comments are also provided con-
cerning selected elements of each play. This section may
include such topics as the organization and plausibility of
the plotand appropriateness of character actions and speech.
Of the remaining eleven plays with non-extant original
scripts, no other information could be found besides their
authors and awards for five plays: Hot Stuff, Spears, Four
Eleven, Foreign Mail, and Fall of the Conjurer. Nevertheless,
story synopses and critiques from revised versions, play-
reader reports, and production reviews are used for the six
65 These sources are
other non-extant original scripts.
utilized to provide some indication as to the original
plays' subjects, plots, characters, and merit. However,
since the original scripts were unavailable, no attempt was
made to critically discuss these plays by this author.
Race Dramas
Frances by G. D. Lipscomb
First Prize Opportunity--1925
Script: Opportunity 3 TMay 1925) 148-53.
The melodrama depicts a spineless black man whose
greed ultimately leads to his death. The play is set on a
farm in Mississippi. Here, a black farmer named Abram
65 Humble Instrument, Color Struck (1925 award winning
version), Cooped Up, Blood, Illicit Love, and Four Eleven.
85
lives with his neice, Frances. Frances is in love with a
black teacher, George Mannus. After Abram leaves the
house, George arrives to tell Frances that he is leaving
for Chicago. George had become a civil rights advocate
much to the displeasure of the white residents. One of
these whites, Charles Thawson, also holds the mortgage on
Abram's farm. George informs Frances that he recently hit
Thawson because he had insulted the two of them. Conse-
quently, Thawson threatened to have George lynched if he
did not leave town in twenty-four hours. George plans to
leave for the North at 9:00 PM and wants Frances to go with
him. Initially, Frances is reluctant to leave out of
loyalty to her guardian who does not like George. However,
she finally consents and plans to meet George at a friends
house at 8:50 PM.
After George leaves, Abram returns home followed soon
by Thawson. Abram encourages Frances to be hospitable to
Thawson, but she refuses. Thawson believes that she has
been influenced by George. Thawson then contends that
unless Frances becomes his mistress, Abram will never
obtain the title to the farm although he has faithfully
made many mortgage payments. Enraged, Abram fights with
Thawson not for Frances's honor, but because his payments
have not lessened his debt. At play's end, a fight between
Abram and Thawson leaves both men dead as a clock strikes
nine.
George and Frances are representative of blacks who
86
deplored the social and economic disparities between blacks
and whites in the rural South. They are young, educated,
and speak standard English. However, Afro-Americans who
opposed the status quo often faced the threat of violent
reprisals or banishment. Accordingly, George must leave
the region or face a certain death. Likewise, by resisting
the demands of the white mortgagee, Frances also places
herself and her uncle in a precarious situation.
In contrast, Abram and Thawson are supporters of the
status quo. They are uneducated, selfish, middle-aged, and
unconcerned with racial equality. They also speak in a
dialect that, at times, is difficult to understand, as the
following passage exemplifies:
Abram: I got to step down across de ditchbank
to ole man Humphrey's to speak to him 'bout
gittin' his drag. We goin' to drag back ez
fur ez de school tomorrow . . . By de way--
de County ain't gwine to fix dat road up pas'
de school like dey had 'cided. (148)
However, the play shows that those who put their faith in
this unjust system will utimately be destroyed by it. Both
Abram and Thawson are killed after the former character
realizes that the system cannot be trusted.
The play has obvious similarities to an often used
melodramatic plot of the late nineteenth-early twentieth
century. This p0pular story concerns a family who will
lose their farm unless the pretty young daughter succumbs
to the mortgagee's evil designs. However, Frances differs
from this prototype in several important ways. Usually,
87
the daughter's "true love" defeats the evil mortgagee and
thereby saves the family farm. In contrast, Frances's
lover does not return to "save the day" and it is not
apparent whether George and Frances will ever see each
other again. More importantly, the family members are
usually sympathetic characters, but in Frances, Abram is as
contemptible as the mortgagee. For example, Abram enourages
Thawson's desires for his neice. When Frances spurns the
white man's attentions, Abram says, "D'aint nothin' 't all
mattah wid huh, Cap [Charles Thawson], but lonesome. Bin
quahlin' all ev'nin' heah wid me; thought you had done
fo'gut huh. You show punished huh by not comin' roun'
dooin' 0' de pas' mont. (To Frances) You little ole big-eyed,
good-lookin' rascal, you knows you wants to be right in
Mistah Charles' ahms" (151). At the end of the play, Abram
does not fight with Thawson because the man wants Frances
as payment for the land. Instead, he is furious because
his monetary payments were made for nought. When Abram and
Thawson are both killed during their struggle, no remorse
is elicited for either character. Their deaths symbolize
the death of an unjust system--an objective which many
people were trying to make a reality.
Frances aptly dramatizes the oppressive way of life
endured by many blacks of the rural South. According to
the playwright, blacks must oppose the system or they will
inevitably be destroyed by it.
88
Sugar Cain by Frank Wilson
First Prize Opportunity--1926
Script: Opportunity 4 (June 1926) 181-84, 201-03.
The melodrama centers on Sugar Cain--a young black
woman with a child borne out of wedlock. In a Georgia
farmhouse lives the Cain family--Paul, his wife Martha, son
Fred, and daughter Sugar. Although never married, Sugar
has a two year old daughter whose father she refuses to
identify. Paul assumes that the father is Howard--a Northern
college student who had lived with the Cain family there
before the time the play is set. However, before Martha
and Fred go to church, Sugar tells her mother that Howard
did not impregnate her.
Still ignorant of the true identity of Sugar's child,
Paul threatens to kill Howard, if he ever returns. Subse-
questly, Howard does arrive to ask Sugar to marry him.
Paul attempts to shoot him, but Sugar stands in front of
Howard. She reveals that a white neighbor, Lee Drayton, is
the father of her child. Enraged, Howard runs off to kill
Lee. He soon returns saying that Lee had died during their
struggle when his head struck a rock. Afterwards, Martha
returns to tell them that the Drayton home was on fire and
Fred had gone there to save the life of Lee's mother.
Fred soon enters telling of how he carried Mrs. Drayton
to safety as a crowd cheered him on. He also says that
Lee's body was found "burned ter a crisp" inside the house.
Howard and Martha surmise Lee's fate after his head had
struck a rock during his fight with Howard:
89
Howard: I guess he was only stunned; when
he fell in the yard, he came to, saw the
fire, and rushed in to save his mother--
Martha: An wen he got in de house, God punished
fer his sins. (203)
The play ends with Martha tending to the wounds Fred
received from the fire; Paul walking "dejectedly" up [sic]
the stairs; and Howard and Sugar embracing each other.
The play is burdened with many weaknesses. The entire
play takes place in one scene with no breaks to allow for
the passage of time. All of the action, with the exception
of Paul threatening Howard with a gun, is described not
shown. This leads to some implausible situations. For
instance, within the short playing of the melodrama, the
author wants the audience to believe that Fred can argue
with his father; get dressed for church; go to church; see
a fire at the Orayton's; rescue Mrs. Drayton; and still
have time to tell the family about his heroic deed.
Several important aspects of the story are not
adequately explained. For instance, Howard is supposedly
in love with Sugar, but he has not communicated with her
for three years. When he does return to the Cain home, he
simply states, "I told you [Sugar] I'd come back after I
graduated. Three years is a long time--but I'm happy now"
(201). Did Howard come to realize that he wanted to marry
Sugar while he was away or was she just to have faith that
he would return and not expect any communication from him
for three years? Furthermore, the reason why Sugar succumbed
to Lee's desires does not appear to be plausible. She
90
states that Lee threatened "to bring the clan down" on her
family if she did not submit herself to him. However,
other Draytons besides Lee's mother, are not mentioned in
the play. Moreover, Martha quotes Mrs. Drayton as having
said, "We's all brudders and sisters in de sight ob de
Lord. We got ter live tergether in Heaven, so me mought
well git used ter it down hyer on earth" (193). Therefore,
with such an unprejudiced mother, how poignant could Lee's
threat be?
The characters are as ludricous as the story. For
instance, Paul boasts that he understands white people and
tells Fred that "if dey hadn't bin thinkin fer yo, whar
would yo be now--running round Africa half naked, an yo
wouldn't knowed B fum Bull fros" (182). Howard, who initially
believed Lee had been killed when his head struck a rock
during their fight, "quiety" states, "God almighty placed
that rock there to save me from being a murderer" (202).
Furthermore, the characters seem to be able to slip in and
our of their black dialect at weill. For example, Sugar
asserts, “Dat ain't his chile." However, a few lines later
she plainly says, "Lee Drayton is the father . . . It's the
truth, Mom" (200-01).
Sugar Cain concerns a serious subject--the rape of a
black woman by a white man. However, the gravity of the
matter is obscured by the play's story line which is too
complex for this melodrama with such a meager text. Moreover,
character actions are implausible and, at times, laughable
91
in this play which instead should be of a more realistic
and serious nature.
Blood by Warren McDonald
Third Prize Opportunity--1926
Script: Unavailable
Synopsis Source: A combination of two 1937 playreader
reports by John Rimassa and Arthur Vogel, Federal Theatre
Project Collection, George Mason University Library.
In this melodrama, Josie Gates is distraught that her
son, Eddie, has recently been attacked by the Ku Klux Klan.
Eddie's friend, Andy, believes that a white man named Gabe
Smith led the attack. Josie finds this hard to believe
since, years earlier, a blood transfusion from her husband
to Gabe had saved the life of this hemophiliac. After Andy
leaves, Gabe comes to Josie in search of aid for his
bleeding arm. After Josie dresses his wound, she discovers
his Klan costume and realizes that he was probably involved
in the attack on her son. When confronted with her
suspicions, Gabe confesses that he was responsible for her
son's injuries. He claims he did it because Eddie threatened
to reveal that he had once received a black person's
blood. Unable to feel any pity for Gabe, Josie removes the
tourniquet and allows the hemophiliac to bleed to death.
Comments--John Rimassa:
A naively conceived melodrama carried to lurid
extremes, which might be all right if the
dialogue suited the action. But the dialogue is
completely inadequate. Stock characters harangue
one another with stilted essays.
Comments--Arthur Vogel:
The author completely neglects to emphasize the
92
full background of the people in his play. Gabe
is just a villain, when one sees how clearly he
could have become the victim of the play, by his
fearof being discovered to have Negro blood in
his veins, which would ostracise him in the
southern town. The resolution is reached by a
melodramatic device.
The First One by Zora Neale Hurston
Honorable Mention Opportunity--1926
Script: Ebony and Topaz. Ed. Charles S. Johnson (New York:
National Urban League, 1927) 53-57.
The play satirizes the story concerning Noah's curse
66
on his son, Ham. The comedy is set in a valley in the
Ararats67
three years after the Great Flood. Noah and his
family provide sacrifices to the Lord to commemorate their
deliverance from the Flood. Noah drinks wine to forget the
horror of that disaster and soon becomes drunk. He goes to
his tent and Ham joins him. As he leaves the tent, Ham
laughs because his father had unknowingly stripped himself
of all of his clothes. Ham passes out from drinking too
much wine and falls behind an alter.
Ham's brothers, Shem and Japheth are convinced by
their wives that Ham had ridiculed Noah and should be
punished. The brothers cover their father's naked body and
tell him what has happened. Still drunk, Noah then denies
Ham any share in his bequest and decrees that he and his
decendants will be black. The family is horrified by the
66 See Genesis 9:20-27.
67 Located in modern-day Turkey.
93
severity of Noah's curse and attempts to change his mind
once he sobers. Noah relents and appeals to God to nullify
his decree; however, it is too late. When Ham reappears
from behind the alter, he has a dark skin. At plays's end,
Ham and his wife leave the valley implying that they will
never see the other family members again.
The humor of this play is better understood by those
familiar with its biblical counterpart and its erroneous
68 According to the Bible, all
historical interpretation.
living creatures on earth were destroyed in the Great Flood
with the exception of Noah, his family, and the animals he
collected. Finding sanctuary in an ark, the survivors
stayed on the boat for many months until it rested in the
Ararat mountains. After the Flood, God blessed Noah's
family and told them to populate the earth. Thus, it is
believed that Noah's three sons--Shem, Ham, and Japheth--
are the patriarchs of all the peoples of the earth. Ham is
said to be the father of Canaan, Cush, Put, and Mizraim.
The descendants of Canaan settled in Palestine, while those
of Cush, Put, and Mizraim prospered in Ethiopia, Egypt, and
northern Africa before populating most of the remaining
inhabitable regions of the continent.
In the biblical account of Noah's curse of Ham, Noah
only condemned Ham's son Canaan and his descendants to be a
68 See Genesis 6-10 for the biblical account.
94
"servant of servants" (Genesis 9:25). There is also no
mention of Ham or any of his immediate family becoming
black. However, this story was used by Europeans and,
later, Americans to justify the enslavement of Ham's black
African descendants from the fifteenth through the nineteenth
centuries.
With this knowledge, the first entrance of Ham in the
play would probably evoke laughter from the audience. Even
at this point in the story, Ham and his family already
exhibit many stereotypical characteristics of blacks. For
example, Ham and his family are late for the commemoration.
While his own father wears a shabby robe, Ham is costumed
in a white goat skin with a wreath about his head. A bird
is also perched on his shoulder. Moreover, his wife and
child are ornately dressed in flowers and bright colors.
He does little, if any, manual labor for he prefers to sing
and play an instrument while his wife dances. He can also
be characterized as a fun-loving person who can find humor
in any situation. The audience would certainly recognize
Ham as the embodiment of most black comedic traits.
The First One is both a witty and poignant satire. It
deftly lampoons a once common belief of the origin and fate
of blacks.
95
Bleeding Hearts by Randolph Edmonds
Honorable Mention Opportunity--1927
Script: Six Plays for a Negro Theatre. (Boston: Walter H.
White, 1934li106-271
The drama depicts the final moments in the life of a
critically ill woman. The play takes place in the South in
the dilapidated house of a field hand, Joggison Taylor.
While his wife, Miranda, lies ill in her bed, Joggison must
work in the fields for Marse Tom, a plantation owner. As
the play begins, a neighbor--Sis Jenny--comes to the Taylor
home to help Joggison's daughter, Carrie, take care of
Miranda. Her mother has become so ill that Carrie sent her
brother, Buster, to get their father from the fields;
however, Marse Tom intercepted the boy and brought him back
home.
Marse Tom tells Carrie that the family is indebted to
him, therefore, Joggison will not be allowed to leave the
fields until the day's work is completed. He also complains
that his wife now has to perform all of his family's house-
hold chores since Carrie and her mother are unavilable.
After the plantation owner leaves, a prayer band
arrives. Led by a minister, the group of church members
have come to console and pray for Miranda. After several
hymns and prayers, Miranda becomes ecstatic and suddenly
dies. Subsequently, with the exception of the minister,
the prayer band leaves.
When Joggison arrives, the preacher tells him of his
wife's death. Joggison becomes bitter and denounces God;
96
however, the minister and Carrie persuade him to repent.
Joggison then decides to avenge his wife's death, but the
minister convinces him to change his mind. The bereaved
husband finally announces that he will leave the United
States to escape its injustices.
There are some obvious weaknesses to the play. Marse
Tom is the stereotypical white plantation owner who cares
little about the well-being of his workers. Insensitive to
her worsening condition, he tells Miranda, "What in the
devil is the matter with you, Auntie? You're grunting like
a sick sow" (110). However, more important, the ending of
the play should be better developed. In only three pages
of dialogue, Joggison has three different responses to his
wife's death. Furthermore, when he finally concludes that
he must leave the country, one has no idea where he plans
to go. The minister and Carrie fail to tell Joggison that
it was Marse Tom who prevented Buster from getting him
before his wife died. As for their response to Joggison's
final assertion, the script notes that they do not speak,
but only "stare widely at him" (127). Clearly the play
required at least one more scene in which Joggison can
confront Marse Tom and more credibly decide the future
course of his family.
Nevertheless, the play can be commended for its infor-
mative view of rural Souther life. For example, a doctor
has already examined Miranda, but her care does not solely
depend on standard medical practices. Sis Jenny supplements
97
the doctor's care with home remedies. She tells Miranda:
Sis Jenny: Yuh'se got a pretty bad cold. Ah'se
greasing up yo' haid wid dis Musterole. Den
Ah'se gwine tuh make a hot poultice tuh put
tuh yo' sides, an' giv' yuh some onion syrup
an' pine-tag tea. Dat'll sweat dat cold
outen yuh in no time. (108)
Also, the play reveals that the unjust treatment of blacks
by whites is accepted by some blacks as an intrinsic part
of their life in the South. For instance, after Marse Tom
leaves, 515 Jenny tries to comfort Carrie by telling her
that his attitude was to be expected.
Sis Jenny: (Soothingly) De white folks does any-
thing dey want down heah, honey. Hit's
scandelous de way dey treat us po' cullud
folks, but we can't do nothin' but grin an'
make believe lak we lak hit. Ah'se been
grinnin' in dere face so long dat whenever I
see a white face I commence tuh grin befo' I
realize what Ah'se doin'. (112)
Nevertheless, other blacks want a better life for their
children. When Buster informs Miranda that he wants to be
a field hand like his father, she tells him to instead go
to school and emulate Booker T. Washington. Furthermore,
the drama provides a realistic depiction of the religious
practices of a prayer band that are still faithfully per-
formed today.
Although there are some weaknesses, Bleeding Hearts'
story and characters are of great interest. The drama's
strength lies in its fasciniating portrait of Southern
rural life.
98
The Purple Flower by Marita Bonner
First Prize Crisis-~1927
ScriptL Black Theater USA. Ed. James Hatch (New York: Free
Press, 1974) 202-07.
The allegory prescribes a militant solution for blacks
to overcome oppression by whites. When the play begins,
the White Devils are in "Somewhere" on the side of a hill.
The Us's [blacks] sit in "Nowhere" in a valley with their
faces toward "Somewhere." The White Devils sing a song
about not wanting the Us's to ever be on par with them.
To be equal with the White Devils, the Us's must reach
the purple "Flower-of-Life-at-Its-Fullest." However, the
White Devils will not let the Us's get to it.
Various Us's discuss strategies to reach the purple
flower. These plans include: working diligently to convince
the White Devils that they deserve the flower; telling God
to act on their problem; and trying to bribe the White
Devils with gold. After concluding that none of these
strategies have been successful in the past, the Old Man
finally provides the Us's with another option. The Old Man
makes an appeal to the living Us's and the spirits of their
ancestors. In an iron pot, he asks the Us's to put dust,
books, gold, and blood inside of it, because these ingredients
are needed to form the New Man. The elements for the
creation of this new being each has symbolic significance.
According to the Bible, God formed the first man from dust
(Genesis 2:7). The books provide knowledge and gold allows
people the means to acquire clothing and food. The blood
99
is needed to give life to the New Man.
According to the Old Man, blood will be shed when the
Us's and White Devils fight each other. Us's may die in
the struggle, but he claims there is no other way to reach
the purple flower. The play ends with the first of the
Us's to volunteer to fight the White Devils.
The author gives the audience only one view of the
White Devils. They are deceitful tyrants who exploit the
Us's and give them nothing in return. All White Devils are
alike, thus, the author cites no characteristics to distin-
guish one from the other.
[The White Devils] must be artful little things
with soft wide eyes such as you would expect
to find in an angle. Soft hair that flops
around their horns. Their horns glow red all
the time--now with blood--now with eternal
fire--now with deceit--now with unholy desire.
(202)
In contrast, the Us's "can be as white as the White
Devils, as brown as the earth, as black as the center
of a poppy. They may look as if they were something or
nothing" (202). The author gives the Us's a variety of
names to denote different types of characters, such as
Old Lady, Cornerstone, Sweet, Average, Finest Blood, and
New Comer. Each age group--young, middle-aged, and old--is
blamed for a failed strategy to reach the purple flower.
Nevertheless, the Old Man recognizes that it will take
the concerted efforts of the entire community to finally
obtain their objective. Morevover, the Old Man contends
that "God is using [each Us] for His instrument" to fight
100
the White Devils (206); thus, their mission can also be
seen as a "holy" offensive against a cruel and insensitive
opponent. The violent plan would meet with little support
if the White Devils were reasonable or showed any redeeming
qualities that would suggest the possibility of racial
harmony in the future. Therefore, the dramatist must
portray the White Devils as the personification of evil
to convince the Us's and ultimately the audience that
the Old Man's solution is justifiable.
The author is the only one of the prize winning play-
69 The script
wrights to use expressionistic techniques.
provides a description of the stage which is to be "divided
horizontally into two sections, upper and lower, by a
thin board" (202). The main action of the play is to
take place on the upper stage and the lighting of the
lower stage is "never quite clear." At times, "action
that takes place on the upper stage is duplicated on the
lower" and the actors become so violent thay they crack
boards that divide the stage (202). The script also calls
for a drummer and dancing by the Us's and White Devils.
The Purple Flower shows that its author is well adept
at using the stage for propaganda. Futhermore, it should
be noted that at the end of this script the dramatist
69 Expressionism is also utilized in the dramatist's
other prize winning play, Exit, an Illusion.
101
asked if blacks were ready for such a revolution. This
is significant because the play was written four decades
before these views were more commonly expressed by radical
blacks in the 19605. The script leaves one to wonder
how many blacks in the 19205 agreed with the plays final
solution to white dominance.
Miscegnation Drama
The BogGuide by May Miller
Third rize Opportunity--1925
Script: Typescript. May Miller personal collection.
In this drama, an African girl avenges the mistreatment
of her mulatto English father. The play takes place in
an African marsh. Here, an Englishman named Rupert Masters
is searching for his cousin, Chauncey Bayne. Rupert explains
to his English companion, Elwood Bealer, that he and his
cousin were in love with the same woman called Audrian.
When Audrian consented to marry Chauncey, Rupert revealed
a secret that ended their engagement. He disclosed that
Chauncey's mother was a mulatto. Since Chauncey's mother
married into this Caucasian family, then only her son
was "tainted" with her black blood. "Disgraced," Chauncy
left England and was recently spotted by a friend of Rupert's
on an African expedition. Remorseful due to his treatment
of Chauncey, Rupert wants to find his cousin and bring
him back to England.
While Rupert leaves his friend in order to find a
bog guide, a fourteen year old girl named Sabali meets
102
Elwood. The girl is the daughter of Chauncey and an African
dancer who have recently died of a tropical disease.
She discloses that she will soon die from the same malady.
Sabali leads Elwood away as Rupert reenters the scene.
He has heard of Chauncey's fate from a local trader and
when Sabali returns without Elwood, Rupert surmises that
she is his cousin's daughter. He tells her that he wants
to take her back to England. However, she instead avenges
her father's ill-fated life by leading Rupert to a mire
where they both sink to their death.
The play concerns miscegenation; however, unlike other
dramas employing this subject, this play uses English and
African characters instead of those of the Southern region
of the U.S. Nevertheless, the development of the English
characters is weak and their speech seems to be no different
than an American's except for the phrase, "old chap," which
is inserted several times into the dialogue.
By far, the character of Sabali is of greater interest
than the Englishman. According to the script, the young
woman is only to be partially clothed with her breasts
7O
exposed. As the following passage exemplified, she
speaks in a manner that is sensual and erotic.
Sabali: (poninting to her naked breast) I am
Sabali. I sprang from the dreams of Flotsam
and the music of the dancer. Their passionate
70Of course, this costume would have been quite
controversial if displayed before audiences of the 19205.
103
love gave me body. (7)
She tells a provocative story of how her father left "Faraway
Land [England]. where men build structures to hide their
wickedness and clothes their bodies to cover black souls--a
land inhabited by vices masquerading under fair names" (7).
Her father changed his name to Flotsam and came to the
"Island of Love" [Africa].
Sabali: [Here] [h]e saw the beautiful black body
of the dancer sway and bend as graceful as the
flames by whose light she was dancing. He
loved her beauty and they came out here a
little away from the others. But the love of
one from Faraway Land and a dancer of a tribe
has its hours of sould torture. There were
times when even a wonderful love failed, and
Flotsam suffered! T'is not so easy to forget
the structures, the clothes, and even the
masqueraders of Faraway Land. But then I
came. The dancer named me Sabali, her music,
but Flotsam called me solid land, his haven
at last. (8)
As Sabali continues, one begins to wish that the playwright
had chosen to dramatize this story rather than the one she
actually wrote.
The technical requirements for the play are more
difficult to fulfill than those for other prize winning
plays. The text described a realistic set which has a
great sensual appeal.
Scene: Back stage and to the side upstage the
narled [sic] trunks of trees twist as if to bend
over a stretch of marsh land that begins about
center stage and extends off to the left. A
rotting stump on the margin of the swamp adds to
the atmosphere of decay. The rest of the stage
is covered with vivid green moss and vines which
seem to reach out from the quagmire.
It is near the end of the day. A heavy mist
hangs over the tree tops. The wild life of the
104
forest is stilled except for an oaacsional cry
from afar. (2)
Furthermore, a trap is necessary to allow Sabali and Rupert
to seem as if they are sinking into a quagmire. The bug
setting provides a metaphor to the drama since Rupert's
former prejudice and Sabali's obsession with vengence had
"mired" their lives.
Unlike other award winning plays, The Bug Guide is not
set in the U.S. or utilize American characters. Also, the
setting is exotic and technically more complicated than
those for other prize dramas. Nevertheless, the play is
burdened with much expostion and little action. The story
Sabali tells of her father is much more interesting than
the one dramatized.
For Unborn Children by Mrytle Smith Livingston
Third Prize Crisis--1925
Script: Black Theatre USA. Ed. James Hatch (New York: Free
Press, 1974) 185-87.
The melodrama shows the consequence of a black man's
involvement with a white woman. The play takes place in a
middle class black home in the South. As the drama begins,
a young woman named Marion and her grandmother, Grandma
Carlson, wait anxiously for Marion's brother, Leroy. Leroy
is a young lawyer who has been secretly dating a white
woman. He plans to marry her and move to the North.
Marion and Grandma Carlson are vehemently opposed to Leroy's
plans. When the young man returns home, he tells them that
on the next day he and the woman will leave the South. The
105
two women try to persuade him to change his mind. They are
unsuccessful until Grandman Carlson reveals that Leroy and
Marion's mother was a white woman who "hated" them because
they were not truly of her race. Leroy's grandmother
contends that if he wants to avoid this fate for his "unborn
children," then he must not marry his white fiance.
As Leroy contemplates his dilemma, his fiance arrives
to tell him that a white mob is coming to lynch him.
However, Leroy does not try to escape. Instead, he apologizes
to his sister and grandmother for not realizing earlier
that they were right. He tells his fiance to find someone
to love of her own race and "Victoriously" walks outside to
be lynched by the waiting mob.
Clearly, the author is telling the audience that
miscegnation is bad and can only lead to misery for blacks
and whites. In the following tirade, Marion sets forth her
objections to her brother's involvement with a white woman:
iMarion: ILwouldn't go a step with you and your
white woman if I was going to be killed for
it! If you've lost your self-respect, I still
have mine! I wouldn't spit on a woman like
her! There must be something terribly wrong
with her, for white women don't marry colored
men when they can get anybody else! You poor
fool! If it's color you want, why couldn't
you stay in your own race? We have women who
are as white as any white person could be! My
Gos! What is to become of us when our own
men throw us down? Even if you do love her
can't you find your backbone to conquer it for
the sake of your race? I know they're as much
to blame as we are, but intermarriage doesn't
hurt them as much as it does us; laws would
never have been passed against it if the
states could have believed white women would
turn Negro men down, but they knew they
106
wouldn't; they can make fools out of them
too easily, and you're too much of a dupe
to see it! Well, if you marry her, may God
help me never to breathe your name again!
(186)
Through Marion and Grandma Carlson, the author depicts the
sentiments of many blacks opposed to intimate interracial
relations; however, the subsequent actions of the pro-
tagonist--Leroy--are implausible. By play's end, as the
family hears the lynch mob approaching, Grandma Carlson
"clutches her heart" and "falls on her knees and prays."
Then, “a light breaks over [Leroy's] face and his is trans-
figured; a gleam of holiness comes into his eyes; looking
heavenward." Leroy exclaims, "Thy will be done, 0 Lord!,"
apologizes to the women, and realizes his certain fate. As
this "sacrificial lamb" walks off-stage, he announces to
the waiting mob, "I'm coming, gentlemen!" (187).
Only those keenly aware of the hundreds of actual
lynchings of blacks would be moved by Leroy's "heroic,"
yet, unbelievable actions at play's end.71 However, despite
this implausible ending, the drama does deftly express the
opinions of many blacks opposed to miscegnation.
71For the reported number of lynchings of blacks
in the U.S. during the late-nineteenth and tentieth
centuries, see Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Ma flower,
5th ed. (Chicago: Johnson Pub. Co., 1982) 494, 509-24
passim, 541, 548, 551.
107
Blue Blood by Georgia Douglas Johnson
Honorable Mention Opportunity--1926
Script: Fifty More Contemporary One-Act Plays. Ed. Frank
Shay (New York: Appleton, 1928) 293:304.
In this drama, the mothers of a betrothed couple
discover that their children cannot marry. The play takes
place in Georgia at the home of Mrs. Bush and her daughter
May. As the drama begins, Mrs. Bush is busily preparing
food for the wedding of her daughter and John Temple who
both have fair complexions. Mrs. Bush would rather her
daughter marry a dark skinned local doctor named Randolph
Strong, but May prefers John. John's mother, Mrs. Temple,
arrives at the Bush home to help with the wedding prepar-
ations. During the course of the women's conversation, it
is discovered that May and John have the same father--a
rich white banker. The women inform May and Randolph of
the dilemma, but not John. Mrs. Bush believes that if they
were to tell John, the young man would murder his white
father. Randolph asks May to elope with him and she accepts.
Happily, the families now have a reason to cancel John's
and May's wedding without divulging the identity of the
children's real father.
The playwright uses the theme of miscegnation in a
trivial and incredible story. Even the solution to the
character's predicament is too ridiculous for the audience
to accept. From the beginning of the play, Mrs. Bush
appears to be much more interested in Randolph than is May.
Mrs. Bush is displeased that May had refused his marriage
108
proposal a year earlier and tells Randolph that her daughter
was "turning her back on the best fellow in this town, when
she turned you down. I knows a good man when I see one"
(299). When Randolph asks May to elope with him at the
play's end, she admits that she does not love him. However,
the author has May go with Randolph despite her feelings
for him. Why could not have May simply told John that she
had changed her mind and, consequently, could not marry
him?
Most of the dialogue of the play occurs between Mrs.
Bush and Mrs. Temple. The latter implies that she belongs
to a higher social class than the former. To exemplify
class differences, Mrs. Temple speaks standard English,
while Mrs. Bush uses a black dialect. Curiously, May also
speaks standard English apparently unaffected by her mother's
speech and social class. In fact, since Randolph Strong
also uses standard English and miscegnation is not peculiar
to the South, the audience would have little clue as to the
play's setting in Georgia.
Blue Blood is a common play. Though it employs the
serious theme of miscegnation, the drama is burdened with
an uninteresting plot and unsatisfactory ending.
Illicit Love by Randolph Edmonds
Honorable Mention Crisis--1926
Script: Unavailable
Synopsis Source: Allen Williams, "Sheppard Randolph Edmonds:
His Contributions to Black Educational Theatre." Diss.
Indiana University, 1972.
Illicit Love (in three acts) is a variation on
109
the Romeo and Juliet story. In this account
Romeo is a handsome son of a Black sharecropper,
and Juliet is the daughter of the Southern plan-
tation owner. They meet regularly at the spring
which is hidden in the woods not far from the
houses. Such love in that section is, of course,
illicit love. Despite great vows of fidelity
and plans for running away, the ending is
inevitable. Their meetings are discovered and
the father shoots the buy. (228)
Complexion Plays
Color Struck by Zora Neale Hurston
Honorable Mention O ortunit --1926
Script: Fire!! 1.1 E1926) 7-14.
This drama concerns a black woman who is unable to
sustain a relationship with a black man because she despises
her own dark skin. The first of three scenes take place in
1900 in Florida. In Scene 1, blacks from Jacksonville
board a train taking them to compete in a cakewalk contest.72
The last couple to board the train is John, a "light browned
skinned" man and Emma, a dark skinned woman. John had to
coax Emma to board the train, because she though John had
been flirting with Effie, a mulatto. Effie is traveling to
72Rooted in a tradition that began in slavery days,
the cakewalk became a dance fad after it was featured in
Sam T. Jack's Creole Show in 1890. Contests were
soon held throughout the country in which well-dressed
couples promenaded about a large room or dance hall.
"The winners were those who had style, flashiness of manner,
elegance of costume, and could execute intricate figures
and strutting steps to the rousing music.1“ See Nathan
Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (London: Oxford UP, 1971)
273-74.
110
the contest alone since she had an argument with her boy-
friend and refused to compete with him.
The next two scenes take place at the dance hall. In
Scene 2, as John and Emma begin to eat from their supper-
basket, Effie offers the couple two pieces of her homemade
pie. Emma refuses, but John accepts her offering. When
the couple's names are called, Emma does not want John to
compete because she is afraid other women will be attracted
to him. John tries to convince Emma that her jealousy has
no basis, in fact, but she continues to refuse to enter the
contest. Finally, John chooses to compete with Effie.
Scene 3 depicts the competition in which John and Effie
triumphantly win the grand prize--a huge chocolate cake.
Scene 4 takes place twenty years after the competition
in a shack in Jacksonville. Here, Emma lives with her
critically ill mulatto daughter. John, who had moved to
Philadelphia and propsered, has returned to the city to
find Emma. He arrives at her home and asks her to marry
him. Shetells him that she has a daughter out-of-wedlock,
but he is no less reluctant to marry her. John tells Emma
to obtain a black doctor for her daughter, but she refuses.
Instead, she decides to obtain a white doctor who liVes
nearby. When Emma returns, she becomes furious when she
sees that John has wet his hankerchief and placed it on the
sick girl's head. When John realizes that Emma is even
jealous of her own daughter, he leaves her. Subsequently,
the girl dies and the doctor gives Emma a box of pills to
111
help her to sleep. The play ends with Emma crying in a
rocking chair alone beside her dead daughter.
At times the play can be quite humorous. For instance,
in Scene 1, a man called Dinky tries to flirt with Effie
who is sitting along on the train. While waiting for his
girlfriend-~Ada--to board, Dinky puts his arm around Effie.
Effie: Take yo' arms from 'round me, Dinky!
Gwan hug yo' Ada!
Dinky: (in mock indignation) Do you think I'd
look at Ada when Ah got a chance tuh be wid
you? Ah always wuz sweet on you, but you let
ole Mullet-head Sam cut me out.
Another Man: (with head out the window) Just
look at de darkies coming! (With head inside
the coach) Hey, Dinky! Heah come Ada wid a
great big basket [of food].
(Dinky jumps up from beside Effie and rushes to
exit right. In a moment Dinky and Ada enter
and take a seat near the entrance. Everyone in
the coach laughs.) (7)
The main focus of the play, self-hatred of ones own
skin color, is indeed an experience familiar to blacks from
slavery days through the mid-twentieth century. To many
blacks, a light skin was preferred to a dark one. Color
Struck attempted to show the effects of this belief on a
dark skinned person. However, while the playwright has
logically developed the story and provided realistic dialogue
for the first three scenes, the drama becomes incredibly
melodramatic in Scene 4.
According to the script in Scene 4, John returned to
the South to marry Emma because he "couldn't die happy is
[he] didn't" (12-13). It does not bother him that Emma had
a mulatto child out-of-wedlock. Furthermore, this liberal
112
man fails to even ask how she could have had intercourse
with a white man when Emma could not even bear for him to
look at a light skinned black woman. Emma is also able to
get a white doctor for her daughter, although this was
certainly not common during this period. The climax of the
scene would probably elicit laughter if performed. At this
point, Emma returns from the doctor's office and sees that
John is at her daughter's bed.
Emma: I knowed it! (She strikes him.) A
half white skin. (She rushes at him again.
John staggers back and catches her hands.)
John: Emma!
Emma: (struggles to free her hands) Let me
go so I can kill you. Come sneaking in
here like a pole cat!
John: (slowly, after a long pause) So this
is the woman I've been wearing over my heart
like a rose for twenty years! She so despises
her own skin that she can't believe any one
else could love it!
(Emma writhes to free herself.)
John: Twenty years! Twenty years of adoration,
of hunger, of worship! (On the verge of tears
he crosses the door and exits quietly,
closing the door after him.)
To subsequently have the daughter die adds little to this
story which fails to achieve the realism and poignancy the
dramatist attempted to include.
Nevertheless, another striking feature of the play
concerns the amount of music and dancing that it includes.
At the beginning of the play, the script notes that the
"strumming of stringed instruments" should be heard amongst
the sounds of the train and people talking. Also in Scene
1, several songs are sung and there is dancing. In Scene
3, there are only a few spoken lines for its main focus is
113
on the cakewalk competition which is to last for seven
to nine minutes.
Besides the musical needs, the text calls for elaborate
technical requirements. The drama uses three different
interiors: a train coach; dance hall; and shack. The
script cites many set and personal properties for each
setting. Moreover, the play takes place in two different
time periods. The first three scenes take place in 1900
and, of course, require sets to reflect this era. Costumes
from this period are also needed for the thirty to forty
cast members required for these scenes. In contrast,
Scene 4 takes place twenty years later with only four
characters for this period. While no special lighting
needs are cited for Scenes 1-3, Scene 4 is to begin with
moonlight seeming to be the only source of illumination
for the shack. Midway into the scene, a lamp must appear
to provide the light for the house until wind seemingly
blows it out at the end of the play.
The first three scenes of Color Struck are finely
crafted. The characters of John and Emma are interesting
and sensitively portrayed. Music and dance also complement
these scenes as the entertainments provide a lively atmosphere
in contrast to Emma's self-defeating and depressing demeanor.
In contrast, Scene 4 is incredible and unnesessary. This
final scene only further complicates production requirements.
Instead, the play could end after Scene 3 and the audience
would still conclude that Emma is destined for an unhappy
114
life without dramatizing it.
Exit, an Illusion by Marita Bonner
First Prize Crisis--1927
Script: Crisis 36 (October 1929) 335-36, 352.
This dream play concerns the relationship between
a black man and woman of contrasting complexions. The
drama takes place in a dilapidated studio apartment. The
story begins with Dot--a fair-skinned woman--sleeping on
a sofa-bed, while Buddy--a dark skinned man--lies on the
73 When they
floor underneath the woman's dangling arm.
awaken, Dot gets out of bed and begins to apply makeup
to her face to prepare for a date with Exit Mann. Buddy
becomes jealous as he is convinced that Exit is a white
man.
When Dot reveals that she has known Exit for the
greater part of her life, the banter between she and Buddy
becomes bitter. Dot tells Buddy that he can st0p Exit
from seeing her if he loves her; however, Buddy will not
admit his affections for her.
Exit mysertiously appears in the room, but his face
cannot be seen due to the lighting on him or the positioning
of his body. An overcoat and hat also conceal his
his identity. Buddy takes a pistol and fires it toward
Exit, but the bullet misses him and hits a light fixture
73 The conventions of the day prohibited the author
from placing both characters in the same bed.
115
which puts the set into darkness. Buddy strikes a match
whose light reveals Exit's face covered by a mask symbolizing
death and Dot's lifeless body.
After a blackout, the setting returns to that
found at the beginning of the script. As before, Out and
Buddy are asleep when the woman suddenly finds it difficult
to breathe. She tries to awaken Buddy but she dies before
he realizes what is happening. As in the dream, she is
dead before she can hear him declare his love for her.
The dramatist has fashioned a compelling psychological
drama based on the strength of the protrayal of two lower
class black characters. Both Dot and Buddy speak a black
urban dialect and live in a desparate environment. Yet,
the two are separated by the color of their skins. Buddy
is "blackly brown with thin high poised features that mark
a keen black man" (335). Furthermore, Buddy's "slender
body is caste for high things"--one of them being Out, a
"high yella" woman (335). Apparently, Buddy's only
attraction to Dot is her fair skin for she is sickly and
"flat where she should curve, sunken where she should be
flat" (335).
While Buddy is attracted to her color, he is also
threatened by it. He knows that she can easily pass for
white, and, thus, be seen with a white man without drawing
much attention from those unaware of her race. Understandably,
Buddy is jealous of her date with Exit and attempts to st0p
her from going; however, Dot will not heed his pleas.
116
Buddy: Where you think you're going?
Out: I got a date I tell you!
Buddy: An' I tell you you ain't going to keep it!
Dot: Aw cut that stuff! How long since you could
tell me when to go and when to come! Store
that stuff! (335)
Dot then encourages his jealousy by heavily applying white
powder to her face and suggesting that she may not actually
be black. Buddy does not believe her and only becomes
angrier. His fury leads to tragic results which is mirrored
in the fateful ending of the play.
The drama utilizes more complex technical require-
ments than those for the other prize winning plays. The
author provides meticulous details of the apartment which
includes at least one item--red kid pumps- that had a
particular significance to audiences of the early-twentieth
century. The shoes which were placedon the edge of a table
was believed to have been an omen that its owner would soon
die. Thus, from the beginning of the play, audience members
aware of this superstition would be forewarned of the
drama's fateful ending.
The lighting requirements heighten the tension of the
play. When Exit appears, he is to seem ominous as he
stands "half in shadow" (336). When Buddy confronts Exit,
"Dot's color is bright. Her eyes glow in the semi-shadow.
The lights in the room seem dimmer" (336). When Buddy
shoots out the light fixture, he strikes a match that is
to seemingly provide enough light to reveal Exit's identity
and Dot's dead body. Undoubtedly, such lighting comple-
menting this drama would produce a horrific effect.
117
While the author does not describe Buddy's costume,
she does provide details for Dot and Exit's clothing. Dot
is to wear a thin nightgown to show her unflattering body.
To prepare herself for her meeting with death later into
the scene, Dot puts on a black turban and sealskin coat.
Exit is dressed in dark colors as a symbol of his sinister
and designs. While he wears a common overcoat and hat, his
face must be covered by a mask symbolically representing
death.
As in her other award winning play--The Purple Flower--
the dramatist employs expressionistic devices in this psy-
chological drama. Exit, an Illusion features deftly drawn
characters and a shrewd use of technical elements in this
engaging and fascinating play.
Domestic Plpys
Cooped Up by Eloise Bibb Thompson
Honorable Mention Opportunity--1925
Script: Unavailable
Synopsis Source: George S. Schuyler, "Ethiopian Nights
Entertainment," Messenger 6 (Nov 1924) 342-43. In this
article, the critic reviews the 15 October 1924 performance
of Cooped Up at the Lafayette Theatre.
The play is excellent and contained the best
acting of the evening. Cleo the keeper of a
rooming house in a settlement near New Orleans
on the Mississippi River is smitten with Scipie
Johnson, a worker on the levee who has married a
simple minded girl. In order to separate the
newly-wed couple, Cleo persuades one Julius, a
local sheik, and also a roomer, to make love to
Scipio's wife, and advises the wife to return
his affections. Julius soon becomes so enamored
that he proposes flight to the big city. Torn
by conflicting emotions Cassie, the young wife,
reluctantly agrees to go. Cleo, elated at the
success of her deep laid plans, throws herself,
118
figuratively speaking, at the feet of Scipio
telling him of her love. Scipio, whom the
breaking of the levee has brought back home to
save his wife, is enraged when he learns of the
duplicity of Cleo, and spurns her. In the
meantime, Cassie returns to replace a black bag
containing all Scipio's money in its former
hiding place she having eluded Julius at the
train; and a reconciliation is effected when all
is explained and understood . . . the entire
performance was highly satisfactory in every
gay.) Here is a play well worth seeing again.
343
The Broken Banjo by Willis Richard50n
First Prize Crisis--1925
Script: Plays of Negro Life. Ed. Alain Locke and Montgomery
Gregory (New York: Harper, 1927) 302-20.
In this drama, a man's obsession with his banjo has
tragic consequences. The play takes place in a house
rented by Matt Turner and his wife, Emma. The drama begins
with Matt playing his banjo. His wife demands that he stop
playing and instead split some firewood. An argument
ensues concerning Matt's dislike of Emma's bother and
cousin, Sam and Adam. Subsequently, Matt tells his wife
that he is going to the store to buy some music; however,
she asks him to instead buy her a pair of shoes. He agrees
to purchase them, if she will not allow Sam and Adam to
ever again come to their home. She consents to this
condition, but her two relatives arrive shortly after Matt
leaves.
When Emma tells them that Matt does not want them in
his house, Sam says that if her husband does not change his
mind, he will reveal Matt's infamous secret to the police.
He then informs Emma that he had seen Matt kill a man
119
because he had broken Matt's banjo. Emma says that she
does not believe the story, but lets them remain in the
house. Subsequently, Sam and Adam play Matt's banjo and
break it. Matt returns home and becomes enraged when he
sees the broken instrument. Sam reveals to Matt that he
knows of his crime. Matt threatens Sam's and Adam's lives
to force them to swear on the Bible that they will not
divulge any knowledge of his offense. The two take the
oath and leave; however, Emma convinces Matt thay they are
not to be trusted. Matt prepares to get away, but Sam
returns with a policeman to arrest him.
The broken banjo is a symbol of the family members who
are divided by their self-serving interests and lack of
support for each other. Emma is a nagging wife who berates
her husband throughout the play. At the beginning of the
play as Matt plays his banjo, Emma's first words to her
husband are far from encouraging: "Matt, for God's sake
stop that noise! . . . Ah got a headache and Ah'm tired o'
hearin' that bum music" (303). She complains about needing
several dollars to buy a pair of secondhand shoes, although
it is later revealed that she had saved $140 which she hid
in a mattress. Moreover, she tells her husband that she
saved the money because she had little faith in his ability
to control his emotions. Emma tells Matt, "Ah been denyin'
maself things that Ah wanted and needed and savin' a little
at a time, cause Ah knowed with that temper o' yours you'd
get in trouble one time of the other" (318-19).
120
Matt is as unappealing as his wife. When Emma asks
him, "15 you got any friends at all?," Matt answers, "No,
Ah ain't got no friends. Ain't nobody likes me but you,
and you ain't crazy about me" (305). Although the script
notes that he "is not by any means a good player" (303),
Matt is more concerned with his banjo than the welfare of
his wife and relatives. For instance, although his earnings
are meager, Matt wanted to spend $5 for music without
asking is there were any necessities that first should be
purchased.
Accordingly, Sam and Adam show a lack of concern for
family unity. They are freeloaders who are ungrateful for
the meals Emma and Matt have provided them in the past.
Emma's brother, Sam, betrays Matt by divulging his infamous
secret which results in the break up of the family.
Unlike most plays, the Broken Banjo lacks sympathetic
characters. However, the playwright chose these pitiful
characters to exemplify the fate of a family whose members
are self-serving and untrustworthy.
'Cruiter by John Matheus
Second Prize Opportunity--1926
Script: Black Theatre USA. Ed. James Hatch (New York: Free
Press, 1974) 226-32.
In this drama, a young black man decides that his
family should migrate to the North to seek greater freedom
and employment opportunities. The play takes place in
rural Georgia in the cabin of Granny, her grandson Sonny,
and grandson's wife Sissy. It is the spring of 1918,
121
shortly after the U.S. has entered World War I. In the
first scene, Sonny complains about their lives. Both he
and Sissy work in the fields, but they are unable to do
little more than to obtain food and a place to live. Their
landlord has kept him out of the draft to continue working
his lands; however, Sonny sees his current circumstances as
being no better than slavery. He tells Granny that a white
man is recruiting blacks to work in a munitions factory in
the North. Sonny believes he should accept the offer and
take Sissy and Granny with him. The recruiter arrives to
tell Sonny that he will be by at 11:00 PM to take the
family to the train station. Sissy supports the move, but
Granny is reluctant to go.
In the second scene when the recruiter returns that
night, Granny refuses to leave when he tells her that the
family dog cannot make the trip. Sonny and Sissy try to
persuade her to change her mind, but she is unyielding.
Sonny gives her some money and promises to send her more
whenever he receives a paycheck. After they leave, Granny
is alone in the cabin with the dog. Twice, she thinks she
hears knocking at the door, but each time she opens it no
one is there. She finally resigns herself to this omen
which suggests her imminent death.
The playwright, who is also a linguist, uses a rural
Georgian dialect for the play. Often, as the following
excerpt exemplifies, the dialogue is difficult to understand.
However, this style of speech does add to the authenticity
122
of the play's setting.
Sonny: (taking down the washpan and dipping
water from the bucket in to the pan) Well,
us done planted a haf'n acre co'n. (washing
his face vigorously) Ah don't know whut Ah'm
goin' to do 'bout de cotton dis yeah, ef Ah
don't go tuh wah.
Sissy: (dropping down in the doorsil) Phew! Mah
back is sho' breakin'--stoopin' and stoopin',
drappin' dat co'n.
Granny: Well, yo' know yo' pappy allus use tuh
put in de cotton tuh pay Mistah Bob fo' he's
rations fum de Commissary.
Sonny: But dere warn't nary a pesky ole weevil
then neither. 'Sides Mistah Bob done tol' me
de guv'ment wanted somethin' t'eat. Say dat
de Germans ah goin' to sta've us out an' we
mus' plant co'n an' taters an' sich. He lows
too, Ah got tuh 91' 'em all us maks dis yeah,
'scusin' ouh keep, tuh he'p him fo' not sendin'
me to camp. (Matheus, 227)
The author has created Granny and Sunny as symbols of
the "old" and "new" Negroes, respectively. Granny is des-
cribed as a "typical Negro Mammy." Accordingly, she wears
a bandana and sings spirituals. Moreover, she is unwilling
to leave the South, even though aware of its hardships and
the fact that her mother and Sonny's parents have worked
hard and died there with no apparent gain to the family.
This seventy-two year old woman states, "Ah'm too puny to
leave heah now, too far gone mahself" (229).
Sonny is a progressive man who wants to seek a better
way of life for his family. At the age of twenty-three,
the young man believes the rumors that the North represents
freedom and opportunity for blacks that may never be avail-
able in the South. He asserts that in the North "we kin be
treated lak fo'ks" (228).
123
'Cruiter depicts a scene familiar to many blacks since
the late-nineteenth century. The author skillfully con-
trasts two dominant attitudes--one which is stagnate and
dying, while the other is progressive and seeking a new
life. Blacks with the former attitude are bound to the
South although aware of its exploitative practices. Those
with the latter attitude perceive the North to be a panacea
for many of their problems.
The Bootblack Lover by Willis Richardson
First Prize Crisis--1926
Script: Typescript. Hatch-Billops Collection.
In this full-length drama, a young woman has an affair
with a bootblack although it is contrary to her parents;
74 The play takes place in a rooming house operated
advice.
by the Martin family. Rachel Martin and her daughter, Dot,
perform most of the household duties. Rachel's husband,
Sam, lost his job four years earlier and has not since
worked. In Act I, both parents and the boarders voice
their disapproval of Dot's romantic relationship with a
bootblack named Hoagy Wells. However, Dot does not want to
end her affair and even allows Hoagy to meet her at home
after her parents and the boarders have gone to bed.
However, at the end of the act, a boarder named Sarah
Mosely accidently learns of the lovers rendevous.
In Act II, two weeks later, Sarah tells Rachel and Sam
74 A bootblack cleans and polishes shoes for a
living.
124
of the lovers' meeting. When the trio hear Hoagy and Dot
approaching the house, they hide to hear their conversation.
Sarah and the parents learn that Hoagy and Dot have indeed
been meeting, but on a more intimate basis than they had
thought. Dot tells Hoagy she is pregnant and wants to know
if he will marry her. When the trio come out of hiding,
Sam wants to beat Hoagy with a stick, but Rachel persuades
him to be merciful. Subsequently, Hoagy decides that he
will marry Dot.
Act III takes place a year later. The baby did not
live; however, Dot and Hoagy are happily married. Rachel
and Sam's estimation of Hoagy also changes. At dinner,
Hoagy announces that he is expanding his business. The
expansion will permit Hoagy to hire someone to continue his
shoe shining trade and another person to sell such items as
cigars and magazines. Hoagy will serve as the manager and
buyer for the business. He offers Sam the sales clerk
position and he readily accepts. At play's end, Rachel
tells Hoagy that he has "been a blessin' to this house."
Hoagy answers, "Ah think this house has been a blessin' to
me" (Ill, 21).
In contrast to the family depicted in Richardson's lpp
Broken Banjo, the playwright uses the Martin family to show
how the encouragement of each family member's abilities can
strengthen and unify the group. Dot acts as the catalyst
for her family which was once divided by self-serving
interests. In contrast to other characters who speak with
125
a black dialect, Dot uses standard English because the
author wants her to appear more intelligent and sophisti-
cated than the other characters. While Rachel constantly
berates her husband, Dot steadfastly defends her lover
against disparagement. Initially, even Hoagy belittles his
occupation, but she commends his work despite his attitude.
After she marries him, the boarders notice that Hoagy "has
improved in a year." Furthermore, according to Sarah,
Hoagy has bettered himself because "Dot's been workin' on
him. A good woman can make somethin' out of a man" (111,
14). Out has boosted Hoagy's confidence which prompted him
to expand his business. For this up-and-coming young man,
she even attempts to improve his demeanor.
Out: I want you [Hoagy] to show them a thing or
two. When you come down to eat use your best
table manners. Don't eat with your knife,
don't make a noise drinking your coffee, and
please don't lick your fingers. (III, 10)
Indeed, the change in Hoagy can be seen as nothing short of
being miraculous since only a year earlier he had told her:
Hoagy: What would be the use of me thinkin'
about gettin' married? ma a bootblack [sic]?
And besides, Ah don't believe so much in
gettin' married nohow. Ah almost believe in
free love. Ah don't believe in bein' bound,
makes trouble mostly. When people're free
there's not so much chance of trouble.
Moreover, Dot's transformation of Hoagy's character leads to
his success in business and allows him to employ Dot's
father. Consequently, with a new job, Sam finds an improved
sense of self-esteem and better relations with his wife.
However, this play does have a few problems. Very
126
little action takes place in the full length play. Pri-
marily, the characters give their opinions about each
other, but very little of this dialogue advances the action
of the play. Furthermore, the script is weakened by char-
acter behavior that is implausible or not adequately
explained. For example, Sam has not worked for four years,
yet, no reason is given to explain why he has not obtained
another position. Curiously, his family does not complain
that he had poor work habits before he lost his job.
Therefore, why was Sam so reluctant to work before Hoagy
finally offered him a position? Another peculiar character
behavior concerns Sarah Mosely. The boarder allows two
weeks to pass before she informs Rachel of the lovers'
trysts. When questioned why she waited so long to reveal
this information, Sarah unconvincingly states that, "Ah
kept puttin' it off and puttin' it off. Ah didn't know
whether you'd like it or not if Ah said anything about it;
but this evenin' Ah made up ma mind to tell you. You know
how a thing worries you when you think you ought to do it
and then again you think you oughtn't“ (II, 13).
Despite these problems, the message of Bootblack Lover
is clear. Family unity and prosperity are possible if each
member has confidence in and encourages the abilities of
one another.
127
Peter Stith by Randolph Edmonds
Honorable Mention Crisis--1926
Script: Unavailable
Revised Edition: Old Man Pete. Six Plays for a Negro
Theatre. (Boston: Walter H. Baker, T934) 38-60.
In this drama, an elderly Southern-bred couple-- Pete
Collier and his wife, Mandy--live in Harlem with their
adult off-spring. Although their children had invited them
to come to the North, they and their spouses are now
embarrassed by their parents' rustic manners. When Pete
and Mandy discover how their children perceive them, they
decide to secretly return to the South. However, on their
way to the train station, the couple get caught in a blizzard
and freeze to death.
Plumes by Georgia Douglas Johnson
FTFEi—Prize Opportunity--1927
Script: Plays oi Negro Life. Ed. Alain Locke and Montgomery
Gregory (New York: Harper, 1927) 288-99.
In this drama, a woman allows her miserly attitude and
superstition to interfere with her decision to seek medical
care for her daughter. The play takes place in the South
in a humble two-room cottage. Here, Charity Brown is
caring for her critically ill daughter, Emmerline. A
friend, Tildy, visits to inquire about the girl's condition.
Soon, the women's dialogue concerns the high cost of medical
care. To these women, spending money on a doctor is a
futile act since the patient will probably die anyways.
Moreover, they contend that the medical bills prohibit the
surviving relatives to provide an adequate funeral for the
deceased.
128
At Charity's insistence, Tildy reads the coffee grinds
in her friend's cup. Tildy says that she saw the signs of
a funeral procession and, subsequently, one passes by the
house. The doctor arrives and, after examining Emmerline,
tells Charity that an operation is imperative. He is
willing to peform it for less than the actual price ($50),
but the decision to operate must be made soon. Charity is
reluctant to permit the operation when she learns that
there is no guarantee that it will be successful. She asks
the doctor for more time to make the decision, but soon
after he leaves Charity's daughter dies.
The two female central characters would almost be
comical if the circumstances were not so serious. Charity
appears to be more concerned with funerals than the treatment
of the living.
Charity: I been thinking 'bout Zeke these last
few day5--how he was put away--
Tildy: I wouldn't worry 'bout him now. He's
out of his troubles.
Charity: 1 know. But it worries me when I think
about how he was put away . . . that ugly
pine coffin, jest one shabby old hack and
nothing else to show--to show-~what we thought
about him.
Tildy: Hush, sister! Don't you worry over him.
He's happy now, anyhow.
Charity: I can't help it! Then little Bessie.
We all jest scrooged in one hack and took her
little coffin in our alp all the way to the
graveyard. (Breaks out crying.)
Tildy: Do hust, sister Charity. You done the
best you could. Poor folks got to make the
best of it. The Lord understands--
Charity: I know that--but I made up my mind
the time Bessie went that the next one of us
what died would have a shore nuff funeral,
everything grand,--with plumes! (291-92)
129
Furthermore, when Charity must decide whether to allow the
doctor to operate, Tildy encourages he not to permit it.
Tildy: I can't see what's the use myself. He
can't save her with no operation--Coffee
grounds don't lie.
Charity: It would take all the money I got for
the operation and then what about puttin'
her away? He can't save her--don't even
promise ter. I know he can't--I feel .
I feel it . . .
Tildy: It's in the air . . . (298-99)
Both central characters use a black dialect, but their
manner of speaking is not consistent. Throughout the text,
the characters are able to go from this dialect to standard
English for no apparent reason.
In Plumes, the dramatist depicts Southern characters
who allow superstition to influence their lives. More
important, the author deftly dramatizes the fate of many
poor families who allow monetary decisions to interfere
with their decision to seek medical care.
The Hunch by Eulalie Spence
Second Prize Opportunity--1927
Script: Carolina Magazine 57 (M1y 1927) 21-30.
In this drama, a woman learns that her fiance is
already married. The story takes place in a Harlem apart-
ment rented by a young woman from Raleigh, North Carolina
named Mavis Cunningham. As the play begins, Mavis is pre-
paring to elope with a numbers agent, Bert Jackson.75 As
75 A numbers agent collects bets and distributes
money to the winners.
130
she waits for Bert to arrive, her landlady, Mrs. Reed comes
by to discuss her plans. During the course of their conver-
sation, they talk about Mavis's former suitor, Steve Collins.
Mavis says that when Steve left on a trip to Philadelphia
on the day before, he asked her to place a bet of 50 cents
on #271 with two numbers agents. She consented and place
the bet with Bert and another agent named Mitchell. Mrs.
Reed tells her that the number was indeed a winner and,
subsequently, Mitchell arrives with the winnings totaling
$250.
After Mitchell and Mrs. Reed leave, Bert enters the
scene. He claims that he remembered the numbers she
requested, but did not recall their order. Thus he placed a
bet on five different combinations including #271 at 10
cents each. Consequently, her payoff on the winning number
was only $67. Mavis accepts her fiance's explanation until
Steve arrives. Steve has brought along Bert's wife from
Philadelphia to prove to Mavis that her marriage would not
be legitimate. Furthermore, he proves that Bert did place
50 cents on #271 and was trying to cheat him out of his
winnings. After Steve threatens him with a revolver, Bert
leaves; however, Mavis claims she is still in love with
him. Steve offers to give her half his winnings and suggests
that she visit her family in Raleight. She refuses, because
she is too ashamed that her plans to marry Bert had failed.
At play's end, Steve finally convinces her to go with him
to a caberet.
131
If one remembers that the Opportunity awards were
sponsored by Harlem's most famous. numbers banker--Casper
Holstein--one can understand a few of the character choices.
The characters never question the legitimacy of the numbers
game for Mrs. Reed and Steve play it regularly and Bert and
Mitchell earn a living from it. Instead, the controversy
centers on the fairness of one of its agents. Probably out
of consideration for Holstein, the playwright provides
contrasting examples of good and crooked agents.
The drama has several major problems. The playwright
fails to adequately develop the central character, Mavis
Cunningham. The script does not reveal whether she has a
job or depends on Bert for support. If Bert supported
Mavis, then perhaps one could understand her attraction to
this man she has only known for four weeks. Furthermore,
although Mavis is from the South, her speech does not
differ from the Harlem-bred characters. This would be
understandable only if one is to believe that she had lived
in Harlem for so long that she had lost all trace of a
Southern accent.
Nevertheless, the weakest part of the play is its
ending. The drama is only ten pages in length, but the
climax occurs on the seventh page. For the rest of the
play, Steve and Mavis discuss the latter's options and,
when no consensus is reached, they decide to seek enter-
tainment. Not only is this ending tedious and implausible,
it also fails to suggest the future direction of Mavis's
132
fate.
The Hunch is a common play. It could be improved with
a more shrewdly drawn protrayal of Mavis Cunningham and a
more satisfactory ending.
The Starter by Eulalie Spence
Third Prize Opportunity--1927
Script: Plays of Negro Life. Ed. Alain Locke and Montgomery
Gregory (New York: Harper, 1927) 206-14.
More of a skit than a play, the comedy concerns the
relationship between a young New York City black man and
woman. On a curb side bench in Harlem, Thomas Jefferson
Kelly discusses the future of his relationship with his
girlfriend, Georgia. Kelly wants Georgia to marry him and
she initially seems to be receptive to the idea. However,
George then asks him about his savings account and the
quality of the ring she expects to receive. At play's end,
Kelly is so taken aback by her prying posture that when she
asks him, "Is we engaged?," he answers, "Lawd! Do we have
to go all over that? (In a kindlier tone) Keep yuh eyes on
them [street] lights, Honey an'--an' forget it" (214).
The comedy succeeds in finding humor in a common
situation. The wit of the play is exemplified in the
following excerpt.
Georgia: How much [money] yuh got saves, T.J.?
T.J. Kelly: (frowning) Ain't that a little
personal, Honey?
Georgia: Ah doan' think so--but co'se ef yuh
doan' feel like sayin'--
T.J. Kelly: I have fifty-five dollars! That's
not so bad for--
Georgia: Fer a stater! (She draws away from
him coldly) Yuh mean yuh ain't got mo'n
fifty-five dollors an' you wukin' steady?
133
T.J. Kelly: An' me dressing like a gentleman
an'paying dues in a club an' two Societies
an' a Lodge? An taking you to the theatre
twice a week--
Georgia: Movies-~an' doan' yuh ferget it!
T.J. Kelly: (angrily) So, that's how you feel
about it--is it? Don't I take you to dances?
Didn't we go to Coney last week and a cabaret
Monday night? How the devil you expect me to
have money?
Georgia: (coldly) Nobuddy asked yuh nothin'
'bout marryin'--you's the one mentioned it--
T.J. Kelly: Sure, but that don't give you no
right to ask 'bout my bank account. (211-12)
The dramatist uses broadly drawn characters for this
sketch. T. J. Kelly is not unlike other comic black male
characters on the early-twentieth century. He takes pride
in his dress and hums or whistles a popular tune several
times during the scene. He is also demonstrative in his
affections toward Georgia. For instance, he greets her
with a passionate kiss. However, unlike the stereotype,
Kelly is no slacker and is very proud of his job as an
elevator attendant.76
In contrast, Georgia exemplifies the stereotypical
overbearing black woman. She belittles Kelly's savings of
$55 and compares it to her more substantial $200 nest egg.
Although her boyfriend has a meager income, she demands
that he buy her an expensive engagement ring. While Georgia
wants Kelly to obtain a better job, she has no such ambitions
for herself.
76 As an elevator attendant, Kelly informs depart-
ment store customers which elevators are going up or down.
134
Georgia: Ef we got married yuh would'n' mind
mah stayin' home when things was slow, would
yuh, T.J. (T.J. swallows painfully) Gee,
it would be great tuh be able tuh stay in bed
mornin's. Yuh know, T.J., the thought uh
hittin' de chillies has driv' plenty into
matrimony befo' now. Gee! Tuh lie in bed on
a cole winter mornin' when de sleet an' rain
er batterin' at de winders! (213)
The Starter is a witty sketch that utilizes typical
black stereotypes of the era. Its strength lies in its
ability to find humor in a common situation.
Undertow by Eulalie Spence
Third Prize Crisis--1927
Script: Black Theater USA. Ed. James Hatch (New York:
Free Press, 1974) 193-200.
The domestic melodrama concerns a troubled married
couple and the "other woman." Set in Harlem, the play
takes place in the dining room of a boarding house owned by
Dan and his wife Hattie. As the play begins, Hattie waits
for her husband who has not yet come home for supper.
Their son, Charley, asks Hattie for $5. She refuses until
he says that he will tell her a secret about his father in
exchange for the money. She agrees to these terms and
Charley informs her that he had recently seen his father
with a woman he suspected to be a former lover.
After Charley leaves, Dan comes home to an icy reception
by Hattie. She refuses to get his supper or allow him to
prepare his own meal. Consequently, Dan leaves and Clem,
"the other woman," arrives to confront Hattie. Twenty
years earlier, Clem was a prostitute who had an affair with
Dan when Hattie was pregnant with Charley. It is not clear
135
why the affair ended, but Clem returned to her Virginia
birthplace and obtained a legitimate job. Though many
years have passed since their affair, Clem has never stopped
loving Dan. Now, back in Harlem, she rekindled their
romance and is asking Hattie to divorce Dan so they can
marry.
Hattie refuses to divorce Dan, but says that he is
free to go with her. Still, Clem insists that Hattie
divorce him, as Dan returns home. Clem confesses that she
wants to marry Dan because their previous affair produced a
daughter named Lucy. Now a grown woman, Lucy will soon
marry into a respectable family. Lucy believes that her
father died when she was a baby and Clem does not want to
reveal the truth to her daughter. Nor does she want to
cause a scandal by living with a man without the benefit of
clergy.
Unmoved by Clem's story, Hattie threatens to contact
Lucy to inform her of her illegitimate birth and mother's
scarlet past. Enraged, Dan chokes Hattie until he heeds
Clem's pleas to release her. However, when he loosens his
grip, Hattie falls and strikes her head against the base of
the mantle and dies. At play's end, Dan persuades Clem to
return to Virginia and decides that he must go to prison as
a consequence of his actions.
Unlike the Southern characters of other award winning
dramas, such as 'Cruiter and The Cuss'd Thing, Clem chose
to return to the South where she improved her status.
136
Moreover, she has been more successful in the upbringing of
her daughter than Dan and Hattie in raising their son.
According to Clem, her daughter is educated, refined, and
engaged to a "fine feller whut'll be able tuh take care uv
her" (198). In contrast, Charley is uneducated, spoiled,
unemployed, and fund of playing the "numbers.“ Thus, in
this play, it seems that it is the Southerners rather than
the Northerners who are progressive.
Nevertheless, Clem also fits the sentimental stereo-
type of the "other woman." She is kind, sympathetic,
faithful, and understands her lover even more than his
wife. Accordingly, Hattie fits the pattern of the over-
bearing wife. She belittles her husband and treats him
like a child. Although she realizes that Dan prefers to be
with Clem, Hattie refuses to give him a divorce.
Although Clem and Hattie are typical stock characters,
Dan seems to be the wrong choice for this type of melodrama.
Usually, the husband is an appealing character who loves
the "other woman," but remains in an unhappy marriage out
of a sense of loyalty to his wife and children. However,
in this play, one wonders why Hattie had married Dan and
why Clem wants him. As evidenced in the following excerpt,
Dan is a spineless man who is no match for his nagging
wife:
Dan: (dropping his coat and hat upon a chair)
Sorry, Ah'm late, Hattie. (she does not
answer) Ah ain't had no supper. Reckon
Ah'll get it an' eat in de kitchen.
Hattie: (icily) Reckon yuh'll hang dat coat an'
137
hat in de hall whar dey belongs.
Dan: (Apologetically) Sure. Dunno how Ah come
tuh ferget. (he goes out with his clothes
and returns almost immediately. He looks
timidly at Hattie, then passes on toward the
kitchen door)
Hattie: (fiercely) Keep outa dat kitchen!
Dan: But Ah'm hungry, Hattie. Ah ain't had
nuthin's tuh eat.
Hattie: Whar yuh bin, dat yur ain't had nuthin'
tuh eat? (Dan doesn't answer) Yuh kain say,
kin yuh? (194-95)
When Dan returns home and finds Clem confronting his wife,
his initial reaction is to look "fearfully from Clem to
Hattie and then back again to Clem" (197). While Clem
would rather Dan obtain a divorce, she admits that he is
"fer quittin' an' never sayin' a word tuh Hattie but jes'
goin' off, me an' him together" (197). When Dan finally
displays a sign of vitality, he choose an impetuous action
that has tragic consequences. At play's end, the story
does not elicit sympathy for Dan or the women foolish
enough to want him.
The Undertow is a common melodrama concerning infidelity.
It is burdened with the characterization of a gutless man
who is unconvincingly the object of attention by the two
women. The one noteworthy aspect of the play is that one
of the characters found success in the South, instead of
the North as it is usually protrayed in other award winning
plays.
138
Religious Life Plays
Humble Instrument by Warren McDonald
Second Prize Opportunity--1925
Script: Unavailable
Synopsis Source: A combination of two 1937 playreader
reports by john Rimassa and Arthur Vogel, Federal Theatre
Project Collection, George Mason University Library.
In this comedy, a gambler named Doug wants to buy a
player piano with his recent winnings, while his wife would
rather put the money toward their son's education. Their
minister, an ex-gambler, tries to convince Doug to quit the
sport. Doug says that he will quit if the parson can beat
him at a game of craps. The minister consents unaware that
Doug is using a pair of loaded dice. Nevertheless, despite
his trickery, Doug loses to the minister. Doug concludes
that the game must have been divinely influenced and, con-
sequently, decides to lead a better life.
Comments--John Rimassa:
Here is a simple little story that would require
sharp character delineation and clever dialogue
to carry it into the category of a play. Un-
fortunately the author merely supplied clumsy
stage directions and wordy, explanatory dialogue.
He should be encouraged to write (plays or
preferrably stories); however, he should learn
that mere notes for a story or play are so
many notes until dramatized.
Comments--Arthur Vogel
The author selects good ideas, but fails to
develop them. He schematizes his endings,
and deals with physical impossibilities. If
he had only exposed that the dice were not
loaded, but that through some mistake, Doug
thought they were, then Doug's conversion would
have some reality to it. As it is, it is wish-
fulfillment.
139
The Church Fight by Ruth Gaines Shelton
Second Prize Crisis--1925
Script: Black Theater USA. Ed. James Hatch (New York: Free
Press, 1974l 189-91.
In this comedy, church members conspire to oust their
minister. The play takes place in the home of Brother
Ananias and his wife, Sister Sapphira. The story begins
with Brother Ananias preparing to leave for work. He tells
his wife that he will not contribute any more money to the
church as long as the current minister, Parson Procrasti-
nator, remains. After he leaves, Sister Sapphira welcomes
seven church members who arrive to discuss the matter. Six
of the members--Sister Sapphira, Brother Judas, Sister
Meddler, Sister Take-It-Back, Sister Two-Face, and Sister
Instigator--want to expel the minister, while two others--
Sister Experience and Brother Investigator--argue that the
charges against him are inaccurate and not serious enough
to warrant his removal.
Parson Procrastinator arrives unexpectantly and now no
one will admit they are against him. After making sure
that the minutes reflect support for him, the minister
leaves. However, as the play closes, Brother Investigator
who seems to be a true supporter of the minister, now
speaks against him. Consequently, the other members once
again argue for the pastor's expulsion.
The comedy shows its audience the consequence of
trying to remove a minister based on information that is
inaccurate or superficial. Without evidence to support
140
their claims, the antagonists flounder when confronted by
the astute minister. Furthermore, the author reveals that
these church members will continue to be dissatisfied as
long as someone is willing to initiate ill-feelings toward
the pastor. The dramatist seems to be telling the audience
that their own church life could be more harmonious, if
they do not imitate these hypocritical characters.
Besides being didactic, the play is very entertaining.
The wit can be seen in the following excerpt as some members
attempt to agree on a chage against their minister.
Sister Meddler: I think we ought to find out
where Brother Procrastinator got his money
from to buy that $7,000 house on 6th Street.
Sister Sapphira: Oh yes! I forgot that. That
does seem funny when we poor creatures can't
hardly get a crust of bread to eat; now,
there's a charge agin him right there.
Sister Meddler: That's so, I never thought of
that. That is a good charge agin him.
Brother Investigator: What's that, Sister
Meddler?
Sister Sapphira: Why he bought a big house on
6th Street and paid a whole lot of money spot
cash for it.
Brother Investigator: Well what can you do about
it? That was his affair so long as he does
not infringe on ours.
Sister Instigator: I don't know why it ain't a
charge against him. It gives our church a
bad name to have the parson flashing money
around like he was a rich man and then agin
where did he git all that money anyway? I
know Morning Glory Baptist Church didn't give
it to him, because we only pay him $10 a week.
Sistgr Meddler: He don't deserve but $5 a week.
190
The author uses allegorical character names to reveal
personality traits. The qualities attributable to such
church members as Sister Meddler and Sister Instigator are
141
obvious; however, those of Brother Ananias and Sister
Sapphira would only be familiar to audience members who
know of their biblical counterparts.77
The behavior and lines spoken by each character are
consistent with their names except for Parson Procrasti-
nator. Unlike the trait identified in his name, the minister
does not hesitate to meet controversy head-on and deals with
the matter expeditiously. Thus, it appears that his name
is a misnomer, unless the dramatist is suggesting that the
church members wrongly attribute this quality to him.
The dramatist uses the character's costumes and personal
props to allow the audience to recognize character stereo-
types more readily. For example, Sister Two-Face wears a
hat with a veil to indicate her deceitful nature and Sister
Experience carries a pencil and book to signify her know-
ledge. Although stereotypes, the characters have recognizable
complements not only in the church, but in most organizations.
For example, how many groups have included a Brother Judas
who speaks against a person in his absence, but offers
support in his presence.
The Church Fight is a spirited comedy that deftly
77 In Jeruselem after the acension of Christ,
Christians shared their wealth with each other. Following
this practice, Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, sold some of
their property, but only offered part of the proceeds for
distribution to poorer members of the church. The couple
died after their deception was revealed. See Acts 4:32-
5:12.
142
portrays characters which are very familiar to the audience.
Not only does it entertain, but it also teaches by depicting
the fate of a group burdened with hypocrites.
The Cuss'd Thing by May Miller
Honorable Mention Opportunity--1926
Script: Typescript. May Miller personal collection.
The drama depicts a conflict between a man and his
wife concerning a performance of secular music. The play
takes place in a Harlem apartment rented by Sampson Lee and
his pregnant wife, Marthy. As the play begins, Marthy is
out shopping while Sampson is playing his mandolin with a
friend, Jim Watkins, who accompanies him on his coronet.
On Jim's recommendation, Sampson obtained a job as a musician
for the black musical, Runnin' Wild. Sampson has not yet
told his wife about the job because for religious reasons
she objects to the playing of secular music.
When Marthy comes home, she is tired and overheated
from her errand; however, Sampson wants to discuss his new
job with her since he must soon leave for rehearsal. As
expected, Marthy tries to persuade him to quit the job and
even informs him of a dream she had recently that provided
an omen that death was imminent. Sampson tries to allay
her fears and convinces his wife to go to the bedroom to
rest.
Marthy's condition becomes more serious and requires
the attentions of a neighbor who is an experienced midwife.
nevertheless, at play's end, Marthy loses her baby and,
143
consequently, Sampson decides not to play with the orchestra.
For this drama, it is important that Marthy and Sampson
were not raised in Harlem, but in the South. It was commonly
believed that Southerners were more inclined than Northerners
to be superstitious and think that it is a sin to play
secular music. In fact, superstition and negative attitudes
toward secular music can be found in many different cultures
around the world. However, the playwright must have thought
that the central characters' behavior would be more con-
vincing, if they were from the South.
Nevertheless, the author does not want the audience to
believe that Northern attitudes are preferred to Southern.
This is evident in Harlem-bred Jim Watkins reaction to
Marthy's miscarriage. He callously says to her husband,
"Com' on Sampson, we've wasted 'nough time. Aint you goin'
to rehearsal now with Marthy all right?" (19)
None ufthe characters uses standard English; however,
the playwright distinguishes the speech of the Northerners
from that of the Southerners. The differences in style can
be seen in the following passage as Jim and Sampson wait
for further information about Marthy's sickly condition.
Jim: 00 you think?
Sampson: I ain't athinkin' nuthin' now.
Jim: Oh, come on man. Don' cha know every-
thin's goin' to be all right?
Sampson: (sullenly) How I know dat?
Jim: Ain't Ma Banks the midwife the best for
blocks 'round. Gee! I wish I had dollars in
my pocket now for every one of the little
black babies she's delivered in this block.
Sampson: But maybe dere warn't no cuss'd thing
agin dem.
144
Jim: What 'cha mean now?
Sampson: Nuthin'. (17)
The Cuss'd Thing shows how religious beliefs can affect
one's participation in the secular world. This conflict
between religious and secular attitudes is not uncommon
even in today's society.
Summary
The prize winning plays depict a variety of issues,
attitudes, and life styles of Afro-Americans of the early-
twentieth century. Most of the plays utilized situations
familiar to their contemporary audience. The problems of
racial injustice, miscegnation, and lynching were pressing
issues of the day and are understandably often used as
subjects of the plays. For the most part, the South is
portrayed as a place where the exploitation of blacks by
whites and superstitious beliefs are commonplace. Never-
theless, while many of the plays criticized the status quo,
only The Purple Flower advocated its overthrow.
Award winners also dealt. with domestic issues and
religious life. Family unity and conflicting secular and
religious attitudes were popular themes. The portrayal of
caring male/female relationships in such plays as Bootblack
Lover and The Cuss'd Thipg is also significant. Before the
1921 production of Shuffle Along, these loving relationships
were uncommon in black drama.
The plays present a variety of black characters. Some
are stereotypical, such as the overbearing black woman and
145
happy-go-lucky man found in The Starter. However, other
characters are not so easily characterized. Standard
English is reserved for those who are educated and/or
middle class, while the other black characters use some
form of black dialect.
With a few exceptions, the white characters tend to
come from the same mold. They are usually white Southern
males who exploit the labor of blacks and desire to have
sexual relations with black women. They are crude, ruthless,
and seemingly subhuman.
All but two of the plays can be classified as realistic.
Both plays which were exceptions to this characteristic
were written by Marita Bonner. In The Purple Flower and
Exit, an Illusion, Bonner uses expressionistic devices
which other contemporary playwrights such as Elmer Rice and
Eugene O'Neill were also employing in some of their works.
Song, instrumental music, and dance were incorporated
into eleven of the plays. The use of these elements in
these works may have been of greater interest to contemporary
audiences accustomed to the black musical theatre.
Works Cited
Acts 4:32-5:12.
Bennett, Lerone, Jr. Before the Mayflower: A History of
Black America. 5th ed. Chicago: Johnson Pub. Co.,
1982.
Bonner, Marita. Exit, an Illusion. Crisis 36 (Oct 1929)
335-36, 352.
146
---. The Putple Flower. Black Theatre USA. Ed. James
Hatch. New York: Free Press, 1974.
Edmonds, Randolph. Bleeding Hearts. Six Plays for a Negro
Theatre. Boston: Walter H. Baker, 1934.
---. Old Man Pete. Six Plays for a Negro Theatre.
Genesis 2:7
Genesis 6-10
Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. London:
Oxford UP, 1971.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Color Struck. Fire!! 1.1 (1926)
7-14.
---. The First One. Ebony and Topaz. Ed. Charles S.
Johnson. New York: National Urban League, 1927.
Johnson, Georgia Douglas. Blue Blood. Fifty More
Contemporaty One-Act Plays. Ed. Frank Shay. New York:
Appleton, 1928.
---. Plumes. Plays of Negro Life. Ed. Alain Locke and
Montgomery Gregory. New York: Harper, 1927.
Lipscomb, George Dewey. Frances. Opportunity 3 (May 1925)
148-53.
Livingston, Myrtle Smith. For Unborn Children. Black
Theater USA.
Matheus, John. 'Cruiter. Black Theater USA.
Miller, May. The Bog Guide. Typescript. May Miller per-
sonal collection.
---. The Cuss'd Thing. Typescript. May Miller personal
collection.
Richardson, Willis. Bootblack Lover. Typescript. Hatch-
Billops Collection.
---. The Broken Banjo. Plays of Negro Life.
Rimassa, John. "Blood," Playreader Report. Federal
Theatre Project Collection. George Mason University.
20 April 1937.
147
---. "Humble Instrument." Playreader Report. Federal
Project Collection. George Mason University.
20 April 1937.
Shelton, Ruth Gaines. The Church Fight. Black Theater USA.
Spence, Eulalie. The Hunch. Carolina Magazine. 57 (May
1927) 21-30.
---. The Starter. Plays of Negro Life.
---. The Undertow. Black Theater USA.
Vogel, Arthur. "Blood." Playreader Report. Federal
Theatre Project Collection. George Mason University.
14 April 1937.
---. "Humble Instrument." Playreader Report. Federal
Theatre Project Collection. George Mason University.
14 April 1937.
Williams, Allen. "Sheppard Randolph Edmonds: His Contri-
butions to Black Education Theatre." Diss. Indiana U,
1972.
Wilson, Frank. Su ar Cain. Opportunity 4 (June 1926)
181-84, 201-09.
CHAPTER IV
THE PRIZE WINNING DRAMATISTS
Fifteen black writers contributed thirty plays which
received honors in the Opportunity and Crisis literary
contests. The average award winning dramatist was young
and had at least earned a B.A. degree. After the contests,
most retained some sort of connection with the educational,
community, or commercial theatre. However, playwriting
never served as the primary source of income for any of the
award winners.
The subsequent section provides individual biographies
of the prize winning playwrights. Each biography cites the
writer's major achievements, especially those which concern
the theatre. The appendix supplements this section by
listing each author's plays and productions of these works.
Script sources, as well as, selected theatre articles by
the dramatists are also noted. Following the biographies,
a summary cites similarities between the writers' lives and
playwriting careers. Also, conclusions are made concerning
the dramatists' contributions to the black theatre.
Playwright Biographies
Marita Bonner (1899-1971)
Bonner was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. At
Radcliff College, she studied English and comparative
148
149
literature. Active in musical clubs, she twice won the
Radcliffe song competition in 1919 and 1922 for "The Heathen
Song" and "The China Lady," respectively (Bonner. Archive
file). During her junior year at Radcliffe, she was chosen
to be one of sixteen undergraduate and graduate students to
study creative writing with the acclaimed instructor of
English, Professor Charles Townsend Cupeland (Bonner.
Intro., 63).
After receiving a B.A. from Radcliffe in 1922, Bonner
taught at the Bluefield Colored Institute in Bluefield,
Virginia from 1922-24 and Armstrong High School in Washington,
D.C. from 1924-30 (Kellner, 45). While in Washington,
D.C., she was a member of a literary club, the "Saturday
Nighters," which met at the home of a writer who also
became a prize winning playwright, Georgia Douglas Johnson
(Hughes, 216).
In 1925, Bonner won first prize in the Crisis compe-
tition for her incisive essay, "On Being young--A Woman--and
Colored." Crisis published this work and, in the same
year. Opportunity included her short story--"The Hands"--
in its August 1925 issue although it had only earned a
honorable mention citation. Opportunity was also the first
to publish a play by Bonner--The Pot Maker--in its February
1927 issue. In December of that same year, Crisis announced
that she had won first place honors for "Drab Rambles"
(short story), "The Young Blood Hungers" (essay). and
plays--The Purple Flower and Exit, an Illusion. Crisis
150
published Purple Flower and Exit in January 1928 and October
1929, respectively.
For fourteen years, Bonner suspended her work as an
educator when she married an accountant named William
Occomy in 1930. During this time, she bore three children,
worked as a secretary for Washington, D.C.‘s first settlement
house for blacks, ran a soup kitchen for children, and was
an active member of her Baptist church (Bonner. Archive
file). She also served as an advisor to the Washington,
D.C. branch of the Krigwa Players which was active from
1927-35. According to another former member of the Players
and a Crisis prize winning playwright, Willis Richardson,
the theatre group did not perform any of Bonner's plays.
In fact, in a 1974 interview of Richardson, he seemed
surprised when informed by the interviewer that Bonner had
ever written plays. In fact, despite her awards for two
dramas, Bonner was better known for her short stories.
Crisis and Opportunity published fourteen of these works
from 1925-41.
After 1941, there is no evidence of further theatrical
or creative writing activities by Bonner. The Occomy
family moved to Chicago where Bonner taught at Phillips
High School from 1944-49 and Doolittle School from 1950-63.78
78 The Doolittle School served educationally
retarded children.
151
In 1971, she died "from complications after a fire in her
Chicago apartment" (Bonner. Archive file).
(Sheppard) Randolph Edmonds (1900-83)
Born in Lawrenceville, Virginia, Edmonds wrote at least
six unpublished plays by the time of his graduation from
Oberlin College in 1926 (Williams, 378). During that same
year in which he earned a B.A. degree, he received honorable
mentions in the Crisis competition of Illicit Love and
Peter Stith. In 1927, Opportunity also granted another one
of his plays--Bleeding Hearts--a honorable mention citation.
Later, Peter Stith was revised and retitled Old Man Pete.
In 1934, Pete, Bleeding Hearts, and four other dramas were
published in a collection of Edmonds' works, Six Plays for
a Negro Theatre. Crisis and Opportunity did not publish
any of his plays; however, from 1930-39, the journals
featured seven articles by Edmonds on drama, the black
educational theatre, and higher education.
In 1930, as a drama professor at Morgan State Univer-
sity, Edmonds founded the Negro Intercollegiate Drama
Association. The organization promoted theatrical activities
at predominately black educational institutions. He earned
a M.A. from Columbia University and, subsequently, studied
at the Yale School of Drama, Dublin University, and London
152
79 In 1935, he
School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art.
established the first drama department at a predominately
black university--Dillard University in New Orleans. While
in Louisiana, he founded the High School Drama Association
and served as a theatre consultant to high schools in that
state, as well as, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas
(Flowers, 3). He also established the Southern Association
of Drama and Speech Arts (SADSA).80 Later, he served as
chair of the Theatre Arts Department at Florida A & M
University in Tallahassee for twenty-three years. On
behalf of the U.S. State Department in 1958, he and the A &
M Players toured Liberia, Sierre Leone, Ghana, Nigeria,
Uganda, Ethiopia, and Egypt (Williams, 150). In 1970, the
SADSA honored Edmonds as the "Dean of Black Academic Theatre."
According to scholar Allen Williams, "The title is fitting,
for it is doubtful that any other individual has contributed
more to the development of interest in theatre and in
dramatic organizations in Black colleges" (1).
Edmonds wrote forty-eight plays of which thirteen are
full-length and eighteen are published. Besides Six Plays,
eleven other works were published in two other collections,
Shades and Shadows in 1930 and The Land of Cotton and Other
79 See footnote in a reprinted article by Edmonds,
"The Negro Little Theatre Movement," Encore (Sept 1984) 17.
80 The SADSA is currently known as the National
Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts (NADSA).
153
Plays in 1942. Other scripts by Edmonds can also be found
in other anthologies of black drama.
In 1936, Bleeding Hearts was submitted to the Federal
Theatre Project Playreading Department; however, it was not
accepted for production. Nevertheless, many of Edmond's
plays were produced by other theatre groups across the
country. For example, one of the earliest productions of
his dramas was by the Dunbar Forum at Oberlin College in
1927. The Forum produced Silas Brown and the Crisis award
winning play, Peter Stith (Hicklin, 165). The SADSA sponsored
a playwriting competition in Edmonds'sname and held a three
day festival of his plays in 1948.81
Edmonds lectured at over thirty colleges and univer-
sities in the U.S. and abroad ("5. Randolph Edmonds," 77).
Twice married, he was also the father of two children--Henri
Edmonds, a Howard University theatre professor, and Randolph
Jr., a physician in Los Angeles (Flowers, 4).
Zora Neale Hurston (1901-60)
Born in Eatonville, Florida, Hurston supported herself
through various odd jobs after her mother died in 1904. As
a teenager, she served as a wardrobe girl for a traveling
Gilbert and Sullivan company in the South. She studied at
Morgan Academy in Baltimore from 1916-18 and Howard Prep in
Washington, D.C. from 1918-19 to prepare herself for a
81 See footnote #79 for source.
154
college education (Hemenway, 17-18).
From 1919-24, Hurston intermittently took courses at
Howard University. During this time, she attended many
ametums of Georgia Douglas Johnson's "Saturday Nighters"
and was a member of a Howard literary club, the Stylus
(Hemnway, 19). The Stylus was founded by Howard University
Professors Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory. Locke was a
close associate of Opportunity editor Charles Johnson.
Moreover, in 1925 and 1926, Gregory was an Opportunity play
judge and served on the Crisis drama panel in 1926. In May
1921, Hurston's first short story, "John Redding Goes to
Sea," was published in Stylus magazine.
"John Redding" caught the attention of Charles Johnson
and she became a protege of the Opportunity editor. In its
December 1924 issue, Opportunity published one of her short
stories entitled "Drenched in Light." In 1925 and 1926,
Hurston received awards in the Opportunity competition for
three short stories and four plays--Color Struck-1925,
Spear , The First One, and Color Struck-1926. In 1926,
Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, and other black
writers founded a short lived magazine called Fire!! which
published the revised version of Color Struck. While
Opportunity published two of her prize winning short
stories--"Muttsy" and "Spunk," the journal printed none of
her plays. However, in 1927, Charles Johnson included
The First One in a collection of short literary works and
articles entitled Ebony and Tupaz.
155
Hurston received a scholarship from Barnard College
and earned an A.B. degree in 1928. Subsequently, she
studied black folklore of the South with the assistance of
a fellowship from the Association for the Study of Negro
Life and History. Later, other research trips provided
material for articles and books on folklore and voodoo
practices which established Hurston as a noted anthropologist
(Kellner, 180-81).
Based on her folklore studies, Hurston and Langston
Hughes collaborated on a three act comedy entitled Mptp
Bppp. Unknown to Hughes, an unfinished version was sent
for review by the famed Gilpin Players in Cleveland. When
Hughes was informed of the group's intent to perform the
work, the author was outraged. The play was never produced
and was "the center of a quarrel that transformed Hughes
and Hurston from intimate friends to lifelong enemies"
(Hemenway, 136).82
In 1931, Hurston was one of fifteen authors of the
Broadway revue, Fast and Furious. She wrote three of the
show's thirty-seven sketches and acted in one of the scenes.
The show only lasted seven performances. Hurston also
wrote sketches for a revue called Jungle Scandals, but the
show failed to open (Hemenway, 175, 76).
82 For a discussion on the controversy, see "Mule
Bone" in Robert Hemenway's Zora Neale Hurston (Urbana, IL:
U of Illinois P, 1977) 136-57.
156
Again using her folklore research, Hurston staged a
show entitled The Great Day which featured folktales,
songs, and dances. In 1932, financed by a loan from one of
her patrons, the show was given one performance each at the
John Golden Theater and New School for Social Research in
New York. In 1933 and 1934, various versions of the show
were produced throughout Florida and in Chicago under the
titles of From Sun to Sun and Singing Steel, respectively
(Hemenway, 177-205 passim).83
From 1935-36, Hurston was hired as a non-relief writer
for the famed Lafayette Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre
Project. Unit Director John Houseman called her "our most
talented writer on the project" (205). Houseman considered
but decided not to produce her black version of Lysistrata
because: "It scandalized both Left and Right by its salti-
ness, which was considered injurious to the serious Negro
image they both, in their different way, desired to create"
(205).
After a folklore research trip to Haiti and Jamaica,
Hurston was hired by the North Carolina College for Negroes
to organize a drama program in 1939. During her year at
the College, she accomplished little; however, dramatist
83 Hurston believed that some of the religious
scenes from Hall Johnson's 1933 play, Run Little Chillun,
"were stloen directly from The Great Day.“ See Hemenway,
202.
157
and University of North Carolina Professor Paul Green
invited Hurston to attend his playwriting seminar at his
home. She "quickly became the 'star'" of the course and
discussed plans with Green to collaborate on a play, but
the project never materialized (Hemenway, 253).
From 1941-42, Hurston served as a writer for Paramount
Studios (Rush, 405-06). In 1944, she colloborated with
Dorothy Waring on a musical comedy entitled Polk County.
The show was never produced and marked the end of Hurston's
playwriting career (Hemenway, 298).
From 1934-48, Hurston also wrote four novels and an
autobiography. Of these books, her most famous work is
Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. After her
last novel, Hurston lived "in obscurity" in Florida for
twelve years before her death in 1960 (Kellner, 181).
William Jackson (?)
A native of Montclair, New Jersey, Jackson attended
Howard University and Lincoln College in Jefferson City,
Missouri before earning a B.A. degree at Columbia University
in 1923. In 1925, he received third place honors in the
Opportunity competition for the play, Four Eleven. The
magazine quoted him as saying:
As yet, there is nothing much of importance
in my career . . . I am interested in building:
building themes for plays, as well as building
small houses for pepple. I favor the latter
just now for material gain, and the former
as a means of expressing life as it reacts
on Te, and as I react to it. ("Contest Spotlight,"
205
158
Little else could be found about Jackson's life besides
his association with black little theatre groups from
1926-31. In 1926, he was in the cast of a program of three
plays--Sugar Cain, Flies, and Color Worshtp--by another
Opportunity award winning dramatist, Frank Wilson. The
bill was presented by the Aldridge Players of New York
(Monroe, 231). Jackson also performed with the New York
branch of the Krigwa Players in a 1927 production of Her,
Foreign Mail and Mandy. The first two plays on the bill
were written by Crisis and Opportunity award winning author,
Eulalie Spence (Monroe, 181). In 1929, Jackson founded the
New York based Negro Experimental Theatre with former
Messenger drama critic Theophilus Lewis and the former
literary editor of Opportunity, Jessie Fauset (Monroe,
235).
Only two references could be found of productions of
Jackson's plays. In 1927, the Bank Street Players of
Newark, New Jersey present Four Eleven (Monroe, 232-33).
Also, The Harlem Players produced Jackson's one act play,
Burning the Mortgage in 1931 (Hicklin, 528).
Georgia Douglas Johnson (1886-1966)
Born in Atlanta, she attended Atlanta University and
Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She taught school is Alabama
before her marriage to Henry Lincoln Johnson in 1903 (Peplow,
526). The couple moved to Washington, D.C. where two sons
were born by the Johnson's third year of marriage (Yenser,
159
288).
Johnson was already an established writer before the
competitions were initiated. According to James Weldon
Johnson, "She was the first colored woman after Frances
Harper to gain general recognition as a poet" (181). From
1916-24, Crisis published thirteen of her poems. Two
collections of her poetry, The Heart of a Woman and Bronze84
were also published in 1918 and 1922, respectively.
In the early 19205, Johnson initiated a literary salon
at her home whose members were known as the "Saturday
Nighters" (Lewis, 67). The group met to read and discuss
the latest literary efforts of its members. The club
included future prize winning dramatists Marita Bonner,
Zora Neale Hurston, May Miller, and Willis Richardson and,
at times, was visited by Alain Locke, W.E.B. Du Bois,
Langston Hughes and other famed writers and intellectuals
(Lewis, 127).
In the 1926 Opportunity competition, two of Johnson's
poems--"Song of the Sinner" and "Son of Many Loves"--and a
drama, Blue Blood, received honorable mention citations.
Editor Frank Shay included Blue Blood in the 1926 anthology,
Fifty More Contemporary One-Act Plays. Also in 1926,
Opportunity granted Johnson first place honors for her
play, Plumes. The July 1927 issue of Opportunity featured
84 W.E.B. Du Bois wrote the introduction to Bronze.
160
Plumes and Samuel French also published the play during the
same year. Furthermore, Plumes is included in at least
five anthologies, most recently, editor Judith Barlow's
Plays by American Women, 1900-1930, published in 1985.
Johnson wrote at least twenty-one other plays of which only
three have been published--A Sunday Morning in the South:
With Negro Church Background, Frederick Douglass, and
William and Ellen Craft.
Numerous little theatre groups have produced Olga
Otppg (Hicklin, 178). Plumes has also been performed by
such New York groups as the Sekondi Players (Monroe, 189)
and the Negro Experimental Theatre (Kellner, 263). Olga
Otppg and Plumes were submitted for possible production by
the Federal Theatre Project. Both received mixed reviews
from playreaders and were not produced.
Despite her playwriting efforts, Johnson still was
best known as a poet. Her last collection of poems, Opatp
My World, was published in 1962. Moreover, her works have
been included in numerous journals and poetry anthologies.
According to James Hatch, in her later years, "Mrs. Johnson
might have seemed eccentric to some, but to those who knew
her she was a loveable woman, and above all a true artist,
who continued to write and publish poetry until her death
at the age of eighty" (211).
161
George Dewey Lipscomb (1898-1957)
The native of Freeport, Illinois was the son of a man
who had spent thirteen years of his life as a slave (Lipscomb,
"The Negro's Struggle," 5). Through an oratorical contest,
Lipscomb won a scholarship to Northwestern University. As
a sophomore, he won the prestigious Kirk Prize for oratory
and was the first black to represent Northwestern at the
Northern Oratorical League Contest in 1919. In 1921 and
1932, Northwestern granted him a B.A. and M.A., respectively,
in English (Lipscomb. Archive file).
Lipscomb was a professor of language and literature at
Wiley College in Marshall, Texas when he won first place
honors in the 1925 Opportunity competition for his melodrama,
Frances. The journal featured the play in its May 1925
issue. Frances was submitted for possible production by
the Federal Theatre Project. The work was recommended for
production by playreaders although one commented that the
script was of "questionable artistry" (Rimassa). Neverthe-
less, the play was not performed by any of the Project's
producing units. There is no evidence of any other dramas
by Lipscomb with the exception of an unpublished script,
Daniel.85
85 Genevieve Fabre wrongly attributes the play,
Com romise, to Lipscomb in Afro-American Poetry and Drama,
1768-1979 (Detroit: Gale, 1979) 322. Compromise was
actually written by Willis Richardson.
162
After leaving Wiley College in 1929, he taught English,
speech, debating, and dramatics at West Virginia State
College in Institute, Virginia from 1929-31 and Howard
University from 1931-35. Beginning in 1936, he worked at a
Chicago branch of the post office. It is now known how
long he was employed there; however, in the 19405 he found
publishers for three of his works--a classic comic book
adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Tales from the Land of
Simba, and Dr. George Washingto Carver, Scientist.86
Lipscomb died in the Veterans Administration Hospital,
Bronx, New York in 1957 (Lipscomb. Archive file).
Myrtle Smith Livingston (1902-72)
Born in Holly Grove, Arkansas, she moved with her
family to Denver at the age of eight. She studied pharmacy
at Howard University from 1920-22 (Yenser, 333). In 1925,
Livingston won third place honors in the Crisis competition
for the play, For Unborn Children. Crisis published this
play in its July 1926 issue. When she received notification
of her prize, she had just recently married William Living-
ston, M.D. A year later she earned a B.A. degree at Colo-
rado State Teachers College in Greeley, Colorado (Yenser,
333).
From 1928-72, Livingston taught health and physical
86'The biography of Dr. Carver was co-authored by
W.E.B. Du Bois's second wife, Shirley Graham.
163
education at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.
According to the Lincoln University Alumni Bulletin (April
1972), she "once considered a career as a playwright
Livingston stated, 'Several of the student groups have
performed some of my plays and I have written skits and
shows for some of the sororities and fraternities to per-
form'" (Livingston. Archive file). However, none of these
scripts can now be located.
Livingston earned a M.A. at Columbia University in
1940. In 1974, she died in Hawaii where she had shared a
condominium with her sister since 1972. In Jefferson City,
a park was named in her honor (Livingston. Archive file).
John Matheus (1887-1883)
A native of Keyser, West Virginia, Matheus married
Maude Roberts in 1909. He earned a B.A. (cum laude) from
Western Reserve University in 1910. From 1911-22, he
served as Professor of Latin and Modern Foreign Languages
at Florida A & M College. He also received a M.A. from
Columbia University in 1921 and joined the Romance languages
faculty at West Virginia State College. Furthermore, he
studied at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1925 (Yenser, 367).
Crisis became one of Matheus's earliest publishers
when the journal featured his poem, "In the Night," in its
February 1920 issue. In 1926, Crisis literary judges
awarded Matheus first place honors for his short story,
"Swamp Moccasin." However, the writer received many more
164
honors from Opportunity. From 1925-27, Opportunity judges
granted awards to three of Matheus's short stories, three
poems, one personal experience sketch, and the play--
'Cruiter. Of these award winners, the journal published
"Fog" (short story), "Sand“ (personal experience sketch),
and 'Cruiter.
In 1927, Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory included
'Cruiter in the anthology, Plays of Negro Life. In their
biographical sketch of Matheus, the editors stated that he
"is one of the most promising of the writers of the 'Young
Negro' group" (405). Later, 'Cruiter was submitted for
possible production by the Federal Theatre Project. The
play received favorable reviews; however, no evidence can
be found that indicated that it was ever performed by any
of the Project's producing units.
In 1928 and 1929, Matheus wrote three other plays--
Black Damp, Tambour, and Ti Yette. Black Damp was included
in the anthOIOQY. Plays and Pageants from the Life of the
Nagtp. In 1929, he also wrote the libretto for an opera
set in Haiti entitled Ouanga. In 1949, the opera was first
performed by H.T. Burleight Music Association in South
Bend, Indiana (Kellner, 274).
After the literary contests, Matheus contributed short
stories and articles to Crisis and Opportunity until the
late 19305. However, neither magazine published any other
dramas with the exception of 'Cruiter. His short stories
and poetry have also been included in many anthologies and
165
his articles on literature have been published by such
journals as the College Language Association Journal,
Modern Lanugage Journal, and Bulletin of the Association of
American Colleges.
He remained a Professor of Romance Languages at West
Virginia State College until 1953. However, he interrupted
his teaching duties to serve as a secretary to Charles
S. Johnson on the International Commission of Inquiry
to Liberia, in 1930. He also directed a program in Haiti
to teach English in its national schools from 1945-46
(Rush, 533). In 1978, West Virginia State College awarded
him the Doctor of Letters degree. In 1983, Matheus died
in Tallahassee where he had lived for at least five or
six years (Matheus. Archive file).
Warren McDonald (?)
Very little information could be found concerning
this writer from Philadelphia. Opportunity awarded him
second place honors in 1925 for his play, Humble Instrument.
In 1926, Opportunity granted third prize to the drama,
Otppg, and a honorable mention to his short story, "A
Matter of Inches." In the journal's June 1926 issue,
McDonald stated: "As yet I have not accomplished enough
to furnish material for even a brief sketch. I am one
of those people who do not have any good excuse or reason
for scribbling--but who insist upon doing it" ("Our Prize,"
188).
166
Opportunity published "A Matter of Inches," but neither
of McDonald's award winning plays. Blood and Humble Instru-
ment were submitted to the Federal Theatre Project; however,
neither of the works was recommended for production by
the Project's playreaders.
May Miller (1899- )
Born in Washington, D.C., she is the daughter of
Kelly Miller--a renowned sociologist and professor and
dean of Howard University's College of Liberal Arts from
1907-25. Throughout her youth, the Miller home was often
visited by such artists and intellectuals as Paul Laurence
Dunbar, William Stanley Braithwaite, and W.E.B. Du Bois
(Tate, 32).
In a personal interview with May Miller in 1985,
she stated that she had a "happy" childhood and was greatly
influenced by her father. Kelly Miller encouraged his
children to enjoy the arts and often recited poetry for
their pleasure. Consequently, May Miller began writing
at an early age. Her first poem was published by lpa
School Progress for Teachers, Parents and Pupils-—a magazine
based in Philadelphia. A few years later at the age of
fifteen, Miller won the first prize award of $3 for a
story entitled "Wireless in Squirreldom." The contest
was sponsored by the Washington Post in 1914.
Theatre also excited Miller as a youth. She attended
dance classes and was "inspired by acting in the little
167
plays in grammar school" (Miller. Interview). School
Progress published her first play, Pandora's Box in two
parts in July 1914 and January 1915. She earned fifty
cents for this script. Furthermore, Miller acted, danced
and served as choreographer for school and community groups
until the early 19405.
Miller entered Howard University in 1916 where she
was taught English by Montgomery Gregory. Gregory also
directed her in a Howard Dramatic Club production of lpa
Truth by Clyde Fitch. Her play, Within the Shadow won
first prize in a Howard University drama contest. The
play was performed as one of the activities at her commence-
ment in 1920.
Miller was a member of Georgia Douglas Johnson's
"Saturday Nighters." Moreover, Johnson was her mentor
who Miller visited numerous times in addition to the club
meetings.
Although her father served on the editorial board
of Crisis and was an influential member of the NAACP,
Miller did not send any entries to the Crisis literary
contest. Instead, she sent plays to Opportunity where
her former professor, Montgomery Gregory, served as a
judge in 1925 and 1926. She was awarded third place honors
for The Bog Guide in 1925 and a honorable mention citation
for The Cuss'd Thing in 1926. Neither of these plays
were ever published; however, in 1926, The Bug Guide was
performed by the New York based Intercollegiate Association
168
at Harlem'slmperial Elks Auditorium (Monroe, 230-31).
During the years she won the Opportunity awards,
Miller studied drama under Frederick Koch at Columbia
87 In 1927, she became one
University for two summer terms.
of the members of the Krigwa Players of Washington, D.C.
which also included award winning dramatists Marita Bonner
and Willis Richardson.
Besides the works previous mentioned, Miller wrote ten
other plays. Eight of these plays have been published in
Carolina Magazine in 1929, Plays and Pageants in 1930, and
Negro History in Thirteen Plays in 1935. A comedy--Riding
the Goat--which was published in Plays and Pageants caused
quite a controversy in the black community. Some blacks
objected to Miller's use of the word "nigger" which appeared
six times in the text. In an article in the Baltimore
newspaper, The Afro-American, she defended the use of the
word as necessary to the depiction of the speech employed
by the play's characters ("Plays Written," 3). Nagtp
History was jointly edited by Miller and Richardson.
According to Miller, Carter Woodson--an acclaimed black
historian--attended one of Johnson's literary club meetings
and suggested that a group of plays be written on selected
famous blacks. Carter insisted that black male authors
write dramas about the black men, while females were
87 Frederick Koch was the director of the famed
Carolina Playmakers at the University of North Carolina.
169
delegated stories concerning the black women. Besides
Miller and Richardson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Helen Webb
Harris, and Randolph Edmonds contributed plays to the
anthology. Miller believes that these and many other plays
were performed by black little theatre and educational
institutions across the country without her permission
(Miller. Interview).
Miller married John Sullivan and taught at Frederick
Douglas High School until she retired for health reasons in
1943. She did not believe that she could again write for
the theatre since she had no access to the stage. She
contended, "One needs a platform to write plays . . . You
really learn through performance" (Miller. Interview).
Since her retirement from teaching and the theatre,
Miller has had a successful career as a poet. From 1959-83,
eight volumes of her poetry have been published, most
recently, The Ransomed Wait. Many general literature and
poetry anthologies have included her works, as well as,
such magazines and newspapers as Essence, The Nation, and
The New York Times. She has served as poet-in-residence at
Monmouth College in Indiana, the University of Wisconsin,
Bluefield West Virginia State College, Exeter Academy in
New Hampshire, and Southern University (Miller, Ransomed,
73-77 passim). O.B. Hardison--Director, Folger Shakespeare
Library--called her "a Washington institution as well as a
Washington poet--one of the three senior poets [of the
city] and . . . without question its most distinguished
170
black poet" (Miller, Ransomed, jacket cover).
As of this writing, Miller still lives in Washington,
D.C. and is quite active as a poetry reader at various
events. The National Conference on Black Theatre has
selected her as the recipient of the Second Annual Mister
Brown Award for 1986 in honor of her contributions to the
development of black drama (Hay. Letter).
Willis Richardson (1889-1977)
Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, he lived in Washing-
ton, D.C. since the age of nine until the end of his life.
In 1906, he graduated from Dunbar High School and in 1910
obtained a job as a clerk for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving
and Printing. In 1914, he married Mary Jones and within
six years the couple had three children (Yenser, 439).
According to a 1974 interview of Richardson, he saw a
production of the race propaganda play, Rachel in 1916.
The drama was written by a teacher from his former high
school and produced by the Washington, D.C. branch of the
NAACP. Unimpressed, Richardson thought he could write a
better play. From 1916-18, he took a correspondence course
in poetry and drama from a company based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
In a 1972 interview of Richardson, he stated that he
allowed a librarian at Howard University to critique his
plays. Subsequently, Richardson contacted Alain Locke and
Montgomery Gregory who directed the Howard University
171
Players. Richardson stated that Locke and Gregory "liked
my writing and they wanted to put on a play of mine, but
you see the President of Howard was a white man at that
time, and they couldn't get his consent, and they couldn't
get the consent of the head of the English Department."
Richardson then began to submit his work to Crisis
editor W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1919, Crisis published an essay
by Richardson entitled, "The Hope of a Negro Drama." The
November 1920 issue of the magazine also included his one
act play, The Deacon's Awakening. The play was staged by a
little theatre group in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1921. Also,
four of his children's plays were published in issues of a
newly created magazine for children--The Brownies' Book.
The new journal was edited by Du Bois and published from
1920-21 (Peterson, 116).
In 1922, on a recommendation by Du Bois, the Ethiopian
Art Players of Chicago decided to produce one of Richardson's
plays-~The Chip Woman's Fortune (Haskins, 81). The one act
was used as the curtain raiser on a bill which included
Oscar Wilde's Salome and an adaptation of William Shakespeare's
Comedy of Errors. In 1923, the Players performed at the
Howard and Lafayette Theatres in Washington, D.C. and New
York, respectively. On May 7 of that year, the bill was
produced at the Frazee Theatre on Broadway. Although the
production lasted only sixteen performances, Richardson's
Chip Woman's Fortune has the distinction of being the first
drama on Broadway by a black author.
172
Following his Broadway premiere, Richardson's services
were now in demand. In 1924, he wrote two articles--“Propa-
ganda in the Theatre" and "The Negro and the Stage"--for
The Messenger and Opportunity, respectively. In 1925,
Opportunity published two more of his articles, "The
Unpleasant Play" and "The Negro Audience." Furthermore,
the Howard Players were not able to produce his plays--the
first being Mortgaged in 1924. Also, the Gilpin Players of
Cleveland staged Richardson's The Compromise in February
1925 (Peterson, 119).
Therefore, his name probably came as not surprise to
Opportunity and Crisis readers who saw it listed among the
play award winners. In 1925, he received an honorable
mention for Fall of the Conjurer in the Opportunity contest;
whereas, in the Crisis competition he was awarded first
place honors for The Broken Banjo. In 1926, he again
received the first prize in the Crisis contest, this time
for the full-length drama, The Boot Black Lover. In 1926,
Crisis published The Broken Banjo and the drama also won
the Edith Schwarb Cup of the Yale University Theatre in
1928 (Rush, 629). From 1925-34, Broken Banyp was produced
by at least ten theatre groups in such cities as New York,
Atlanta, San Antonio, and Los Angeles (Hicklin, 536). The
play was also submitted to the Federal Theatre Project for
possible production. It received mixed reviews from play-
readers and, consequently, not performed by any of the
Project's producing units.
173
In Washington, D.C., Richardson was a member of Georgia
Douglas Johnson's "Saturday Nighters." He was also one of
the founders of the city's branch of the Krigwa Players.
The organization produced plays from 1927-35 including
those by Richardson and other award winning dramatists such
as John Matheus and Eulalie Spence.
As a dramatist, Richardson wrote forty-six plays of
which nineteen were published. Many general literature and
drama anthologies have included Richardson's plays, as well
as, journals such as Carolina Magazine and a newspaper
based in Hungary called Ujsag. Most of these plays are one
acts; however, he did write five full—length plays--The
Amateur Prostitute, The Visiting Lady, Joy Ride, The Broken
88
Banjo, and The Flight of the Natives. He also edited
three black drama anthologies-~Plays and Pageants in 1930,
Negro History (ed. with May Miller in 1935),89 The King's
6 9O
Dilemma and Other Plays for Children in 195
There are records of many productions of Richardson's
plays by black community and educational theatre groups
since the early 19205.
88 The Broken Banjo and The Flight of the Natives
were full-length versions of plays originally written as
one acts.
89
See discussion on this anthology on p. 168.
90 Many of the works in this volume originally
appeared in Du Bois's Brownies' Magazine.
174
[Furthermore,] the plays, at least those that
were published, were utilized many more times by
amateur groups whose activities did not attract
the press. As Richardson himself acknowledged
in a taped interview, his plays were produced
hundreds of times around the country, but since
the sponsors generally did not contact him for
permission, he could not even approximate a
total number of productions. (Monroe, 144)
With the exeption of Randolph Edmonds, Richardson was
the most published and produced playwright of the Opportunity
and Crisis award winners. However, earnings from play-
wrighting only supplemented his income which was primarily
derived from his job as a clerk with the U.S. Bureau of
Engraving and Printing.
After he retired from government service in 1954,
Richardson continued to write plays, but he also directed
his literary efforts to another genre--the short story.
According to a 1974 interview of Richardson, he planned to
publish a collection of twelve short stories. At the time
of the interview, he had written eleven of these works.
Although this collection was never published, one of the
stories--"He Holds His Head Too High"--was included in the
July 1967 issue of Crisis. Richardson died in Washington,
D.C. at the age of eighty-eight.
Ruth Gaines Shelton (1872-?)
Born in Glasgow, Missouri, she completed the normal
course at Wilberforce University (Wilberforce, Ohio) in
1895. She taught school in Montgomery, Missouri before
marrying William Shelton in 1898. The daughter of a prominent
175
Methodist minister in Chicago, Mrs. Shelton began to write
and stage plays for churches, clubs, and schools in 1906.
The titles of her works include Lord Earlington's Broken
Vow, Gena, the Lost Child, Mr. Church, Parson Dewdrop's
Bride, and Aunt Hagar's Children (Yenser, 469).
Her comedy, The Church Fight, won second place honors
in the Crisis competition of 1925. At the age of fifty-three,
Shelton was one of the oldest of the literary contestants.
At that time, she also had three children and two grandsons
(Shelton, Intro., 17).
Crisis published The Church Fight and the New York
based Krigwa Players performed it in 1926 (Du Bois, "Krigwa
Players," 136). It was also submitted to the Federal
Theatre Project Playreading Department; however, it was not
accepted for production. No other information about the
life of Shelton could be found.
Eulalie Spence (1894—1981)
Born in the West Indies, Spence immigrated to the
United States with her family in 1902. Spence completed
the normal course at the New York Training School for
Teachers. She also elected courses in English at the City
College of New York and Columbia University. At the latter
school, she studied playwrighting under dramatist Hatcher
Hughes (Locke, 406).91
91 In 1923, Hatcher Hughes won the Pulitzer Prize
for his melodrama, Hell-Bent fer Heaven.
176
Spence was a student of the National Ethiopian Art
92
Theatre School. In 1924, the School produced Spence's
Being Forty as one of three plays performed at a midnight
show in the Lafayette Theatre (Schuyler, 342-43).93 Spence
and two of her sisters became active with Du Bois's Krigwa;
Players in Harlem. The group was directed by Charles
Burroughs--a drama judge for the 1925 and 1926 Crisis
contests.
In 1926, Spence's Foreign Mail received second place
honors in the Crisis competition and this prize winning
play was also performed by the Krigwas Players at the
awards dinner for the contestants. In January 1927, the
Players produced Foreign Mail and another play by Spence
entitled Her. In May 1927, the Players entered their
production of Spence's comedy, The Fool's Errand, in the
National Little Theatre Tournament. The play won the
Samuel French Prize for original playwriting; however, the
$200 award was accepted by Du Bois to pay for production
expenses. Since neither the dramatist or actors received a
share of the prize as they had expected, the Players soon
92 The New York based School opened in March 1924
to train black teachers in dramatic arts, dancing, public
speaking, and diction. Several teachers from the American
Academy of Dramatic Arts headed its predominately white
faculty. The School provided courses for at least 450 stu-
dents and produced programs featuring dance, music, and drama
by black writers before closing in 1925. See Monroe, 163-73.
93 The bill also included a play by another award
winning dramatist--Cooped Up by Eloise Bibb Thompson.
177
broke up as a consequence of the resulting dispute (Spence.
Interview). Nevertheless, Spence's Hot Stuff and The
Undertow won third place honors in the 1927 Crisis compe-
tition. Moreover, earlier in that year, her plays--The
Hunch and The Starter--earned second and third prizes,
respectively, in the Opportunity contest.
Neither Crisis or Opportunity published any of Spence's
plays. However, in 1928, she contributed to Opportunity an
essay on black drama and a review of a production by the
Negro Art Players. The essay, entitled "A Criticism of the
Negro Drama," is of particular interest because of the
advice she offered to black authors who want to write for
Broadway.
May I advise these earnest few . . . to avoid
the drama of propaganda if they would not meet
with certain disaster? Many a serious aspirant
for dramatic honors has fallen by the wayside
because he would insist on his lynchings or his
rape. The white man is cold and unresponsive to
this subject and the Negro, himself, is hurt and
humuliated by it. We go to the theatre for
entertainment, not to have old fires and hates
rekindled. (180)
Spence applied this philosophy to the writing of her own
plays. In a 1973 interview she stated, "A play should
never be used for propaganda."
Besides the award winners, Spence wrote at least seven
other plays from 1924-32. In 1932, Spence dramatized a
novel by Roy Flannagan entitled The Whipping. She acquired
an agent from the Century Play Co. who scheduled its premier
in Bridgeport, Connecticut; however, the comedy did not
178
open. Subsequently, Spence wrote a screenplay version of
The Whipping which her agent sold to Paramount Pictures for
$5,000 in 1934. Like the stage version, the film script
was never produced (Spence. Interview).
Five of Spence's p1ays--The Episode, Fool's Errand,
The Hunch, The Starter, and The Undertow--have been pub-
94
lsihed. The Starter was submitted to the Federal Theatre
Project where playreaders have it favorable reviews as a
vaudeville sketch. It is not believed that the Project's
producing units ever performed this play; however, Spence
claims she received requests "from as far west as California
asking for permission to put it on . . . because it is a
human comedy" (Spence. Interview). Other plays by Spence
such as The Hunch and La Divina Pastor have been performed,
respectively, by the Krigwa Players of Washington, D.C.
(Program. May Miller) and the New York Association for the
Blind (Hicklin, 172).
Since the 19205, Spence taught speech and served as
the Dramatic Society coach for Brooklyn's Eastern District
High School. In the 19305, Joseph Papp was one of her
students (Spence. Interview).95 In 1937 and 1939, she
94 Many black theatre reference books list Samuel
French as the publisher of Foreign Mail; however, in a
telephone interview (8 July 1985), a company representative
denied that the work was ever published.
95 Joseph Papp is best known as the founder of the
acclaimed New York Shakespeare Festival.
179
earned a B.A. and M.A. at Teachers College in New York and
Columbia University, respectively (Hatch, 192). She died
in New York at the age of eighty-seven.
Eloise Bibb Thompson (1878-1927)
Born and raised in New Orleans, she has the distinction
of being of the few blacks to have published a collection
of poems in the nineteenth century. Entitled Ppama, she
was only seventeen when this collection first became avail-
able to the public in 1895. She attended a college
prepartory program at Oberlin Academy from 1899-1901,
before teaching in the New Orleans public school system
from 1901-03. In 1907, she earned a B.A. degree at Teachers'
College, Howard University. After working as head resident
of a black settlement house in Washington, D.C., she married
journalist Noah Thompson in 1911 (Sherman, 204).
The couple moved to Los Angeles where Noah gained
a national reputation on the editorial staff of the Evening
Express and Morning Tribune; and as a special feature
writer for the Los Angeles Tribune and Morning Sun. Eloise
bore a son and participated in many activities of the
Catholic Church including the writing of poetry and articles
for the official periodical of the Los Angeles and Monterrey
diocese (Beasley, 254).
In 1915, Mrs. Thompson wrote a scenario for a screen-
play entitled A Reply to the Clansman. According to a 1925
article, several producers, including D.W. Griffith, were
180
interested in the project. One agent for Triangle Film
Corporation paid her $500 for the scenario; however, the
story was never produced ("A Playwright," 63). From 1920-24,
three of Thompson's plays--Africannus, Cooped Up, and
Caught--were produced by little theatre groups in Los
Angeles, New York and Chicago, respectively. Like Spence,
in 1924 Thompson was a student at the National Ethiopian
Art Theatre School (Schuyler, 342).
In March 1924, Opportunity published one of Thompson's
poems, "After Reading Bryant's Lines to a Waterfowl."
Furthermore, the journals' February 1925 issue featured an
unprecedented article, entitled "A Playwright," which
promoted Thompson's playwriting career. Therefore,
Opportunity readers were probably not surprised to find
Thompson's name listed among the award winners for 1925.
Cooped Up, a play which had already been produced, earned a
honorable mention for the dramatist.
Opportunity did not publish her 1925 award winning
play; however, it did print two of her short stories--
"Mademoiselle 'Taise" in 1925 and "Masks" in 1927. Moreover,
her husband became the journals' business manager in Feburary
1927. Nevertheless, in that same, Eloise died at the age
of forty-nine.
Frank Wilson (1886-1956)
The New York native was orphaned by the age of eight.
Subsequently, he worked as a "doorboy" to support himself
181
and enrolled in a night school course to supplement his
meager education (Sisk, 5). According to Wilson:
The first deep impression made upon me in
reference to the Negro in the theatre was in
1903, when Williams and Walker appeared at the
New York Theatre in In Dahomey . . . In those
days I never heard of the Negro doing anything
in the drama in the theatre. He hanced and he
sang. If you went to a manager and told him you
were an actor he'd immediately take you into a
backroom, point at the floor and tell you 'Go
ahead. Act.‘ That was your cue to dance. (7)
Wilson organized a singing quartet--the Carolina Comedy
Four--which performed for twelve years in vaudeville for
$15 a week. However, for a more adequate income, he obtained
a job as a postman (Sisk, 5).
Despite his full-time position with the post office,
Wilson continued to perform; however, he now focused his
efforts to the dramatic stage. In 1914, he began to write
sketches for the Lincoln Theatre. Every six weeks he
staged and even acted in these plays with such titles as
Race Pride, The Frisco Kid, and Happy Southern Folks.96
According to New York World reporter Bob Sisk, "For the
part, [the sketches] were serious efforts. Comedy was
present, of course, but it was secondary" (5).
By the late 19105, Wilson was a family man with a wife
and son. From 1917-20, he studied acting in segregated
classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (Sisk,5).
96 When the acting company at the Lincoln moved to
the Lafayette Theatre in 1916, Wilson countinued to write
sketches for the group until c. 1923.
182
He continued to write plays and perform with little black
theatre groups until cast in the role of Jim Harris in All
God's Chillun Got Wingg at the Provincetown Theatre in
1924. This role led to others in The Emporer Jones (revival)
and The Dreamy Kid before being cast as the lead in Paul
Green's Pulitzer Prize winning play, In Abraham's Bosom, in
1926 (Parker, 1471).
Also in 1926, Wilson's Sugar Cain received first place
honors in the Opportunity competition. The journal published
the play in its June 1926 issue. According to scholar John
Monroe, Sugar Cain was to have been produced on Broadway,
but the project failed to materialize (134).97
After he won the Opportunity award, Wilson wrote at
least three other plays. In 1928, Wilson's Meek Mose was
only the third drama by a black to be performed on Broadway.
Produced by journalist and Crisis drama judge Lester Walton,
the premiere of the play was a much heralded event. The
New York Times reported that many influential guests were
expected to attend the opening. The guest list included
New York City Mayor Jimmie Walker and the Theatre Guild's
Otto Kahn and Rouben Mamoulian. According to the Itmat
article, "If the play is successful, the organization
producing Meek Mose will be incorporated under the name of
97 The cast would have included Abbie Mitchell,
Rose McClendon, Evelyn Ellis, Ida Anderson, and Barrington
Carter. See Monroe, 134.
183
Negro Theatre-=which would be a Negro repertory company
producing plays on Negro life" ("Mayor," 7). Nevertheless,
the play failed to interest enough people to last beyond
twenty-four performances. Six years later, a revised
version of the play, Brother Mose, toured New York area
theatres (Woll, 104-05).
In 1929, it was reported that Wilson's The Wall Between
“was being readied by [commercial theatre] producer Jack
Goldberg." However, the play did not open (Monroe, 228).
Like Zora Neale Hurston, Wilson was a playwright for the
Federal Theatre Project at the Lafayette Theatre. In 1936,
Unit Direction John Houseman chose Wilson's Walk Together
Chillun! as the unit's first major production. Houseman
selected this work because:
Wilson was one of America's best-known black
actors, the creator of Porgy. a church member
and a man whose voluble sincerity had won him
the patronizing approval of most organized
sections of the community. I chose his play for
tactical reasons, fully aware of its weaknesses
but equally aware of its advantages for our
opening show. My assignment, as head of the
project, was not, primarily, the production of
masterpieces. I had been instructed to find
suitable theatrical activity for the hundreds of
needy men and women on our payroll and to find
it quickly. Walk Together Chillun! seemed to
meet this requirement. (186-87)
Chillun opened on 5 February 1936 and ran for twenty-four
performances (W011, 175). According to Houseman, "Its
reception was cordial but not enthusiastic" (187). §pga£
Oatp was also submitted as a possible Federal Theatre
Project production. It received mixed reviews from
184
playreaders and was never produced.
Despite his playwriting efforts, Wilson is best
remembered for his acting. In 1927, he was cast in the
title role of the play, [ptgy. He appeared in over 850
performances of this Theatre Guild production on Broadway
and in London (Parker, 1471). Through 1953, he had roles
in such plays as We the People, South Pacific, Anna Lucasta,
and Take a Giant Step. He also appeared in such movies as
The Green Pastures and Watch on the Rhine and the acclaimed
television program, Studio One. He died at the age of
seventy in Jamaica, New York (Mapp. 398-99).
Summary
The biographies reveal many similarities between the
lives and playwriting careers of these authors. Eight of
the dramatists were born in the South,98 five in the North,99
and one--Spence--in the West Indies. However, at the time
of the Opportunity and Crisis competitions, only three
writers--Lipscomb, Matheus, and Shelton--were based in the
South. Four others--Bonner, Johnson, Miller, and Richard-
son--lived in Washington, D.C., three more--Hurston, Spence,
and Wilson--in New York, and the remaining five in other
98 Edmonds, Hurston, Johnson, Livingston, Matheus,
Richardson, Shelton, and Thompson.
99 Bonner, Jackson, Lipscomb, Miller, and Wilson.
McDonald lived in Philadelphia at the time of the literary
competitions; however no information could be found indenti-
fying his place of birth.
185
places across the U.S.100
The ages of the writers at the time that they first won
an Opportunity or Crisis playwriting award ranges from age
101
twenty-three to fifty-three. The average age of the
prize winners is thirty-four.
Only Richardson and Wilson did not attend college or
102
obtain teacher's training through a normal course. By
the time of the literary contests, seven of the dramatists
103 and three others--Hurston:
had at least earned a B.A.
Livingston, and Spence--were awarded the degree after the
competitions had ended. Five of the playwrights had attended
Howard University.104
Some of the playwrights were acquainted with a few of
the literary contest judges and the Crisis and Opportunity
editors. While at Howard, Hurston and Miller personally
knew Opportunity and Crisis judge Montgomery Gregory.
Spence met Du Bois and Crisis drama judge Charles Burroughs
through her association with the Harlem based Krigwa
Players. The Washington, D.C based literary club, the
100 Edmonds, Jackson, Livingston, McDonald, and
Thompson in Oberlin (Ohio), Monclair (New Jersey). Greeley
(Colorado), Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, respectively.
101 The birthdates of Jackson and McDonald are not
known.
102 No information could be found concerning McDonald's
educational background.
103 Bonner, Edmonds, Jackson, Lipscomb, Matheus,
Miller, and Thompson.
104 Hurston, Jackson, Livingston, Miller, and Thompson.
186
"Saturday Nighters," provided opportunities for Bonner,
Hurston, Johnson, Miller, and Richardson to have others
critique their works. Undoubtedly, frequent visits to
their meetings by Du Bois and Alain Locke gave these writers
an advantage not available to other playwrighting entrants.
Furthermore, Opportunity and Crisis were used to promote
the playwriting careers of Thompson and Richardson, even
before the first contest winners were announced.
The literary contests appear to have at least indirectly
encouraged these blacks to write more plays and become more
involved in the theatre. Before the competitions, only
105 and only
five of the playwrights had plays produced
one--Richardson--had a drama published. However, after the
contests, sixty-six plays by these writers were published.
If one includes published and unpublished texts, the prize
winners wrote over two hundred plays of which thirty-five
were full-length works.
There is evidence of at least one hundred and twenty
productions of works by these dramatists. However, the
actual number of productions is probably much higher since
it is believed that many theatre groups performed these
plays without obtaining permission from the authors.
With only a few exceptions, the authors wrote plays
forblack community and educational theatres. These groups
105
Wilson.
Richardson, Shelton, Spence, Thompson, and
187
welcomed works by black writers for they helped to alleviate
a need for drama which more deftly depicted the lives of
Afro-Americans. At least nine writers attempted to reach a
more general audience by submitting plays to the Federal
106
Theatre Project. However, only Wilson's Walk Together
Chillun! was produced.
Furthermore, after the competitions, nine of the
writers served in some capacity with the black community
107 108
theatre, six in educational theatre, and two--Hurston
and Wilson--in commercial theatre. However, playwriting
was never a primary source of income for any of the authors.
Instead, most served as educators at some time in their
109 One of the specialties of five of these teachers
110
lives.
concerned the theatre.
Undoubtedly, Edmonds and Richardson have had the
greatest influence on the development of the black theatre
than have the other prize winning writers combined. Nearly
half of the plays ever written by the award winners were
authored by Edmonds and Richardson. Edmonds edited three
106 Edmonds, Hurston, Johnson, Lipscomb, Matheus,
McDonald, Shelton, and Wilson.
107 Bonner, Johnson, Matheus, Miller, Richardson,
Shelton, Spence, Thompson, and Wilson.
108 Edmonds, Hurston, Lipscomb, Miller, and Spence.
109 Bonner, Edmonds, Hurston, Johnson, Lipscomb,
Livingston, Matheus, Miller, Shelton, Thompson, and Spence.
Edmonds, Hurston, Lipscomb, Miller, and Spence.
188
volumes of his plays and Richardson edited two collections
of works by black dramatists and one volume of his own
children's plays. Both men have also written articles
on the black theatre. Moreover, Edmonds greatly affected
the growth of the black educational theatre, especially
in the South.
Most of the other prize winning authors are better
known today for other pursuits. For example, Hurston
received greater acclaim for her folklore studies, as
did Wilson for acting and Miller and Johnson for poetry.
Nevertheless, these dramatists also made contributions
to the black theatre. These well-educated blacks attempted
to fulfill a desire for more plays by Afro-Americans depicting
black lifestyles, attitudes, and relationships and issues
affecting this race. Their works have been published
in journals and general literature and drama anthologies.
Moreover, these plays were produced in black community
and educational theatres across the U.S.
Works Cited
Barlow, Judith, ed. Plays By American Women, 1900-1930.
New York: Applause, 1985.
Beasley, Delilah. The Negro Trail Blazers of California.
San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1968.
Bonner, Marita. Archive file. Radcliffe College, Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
---. "The Hands." Opportunity 3 (Aug 1925) 235-37.
---. Introduction. I'On Being Young--A Woman--And Colored."
Crisis 31 (Dec 1925) 63.
189
"The Contest Spotlight." Opportunity 5 (July 1927) 204-05,
213.
Du Bois, W.E.B. "Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre."
Crisis 32 (July 1926) 134, 136.
Edmonds, Randolph. the Land of Cotton and Other Plays.
Washington, D.C.: Assodiated Publishers, 1942.
---. Shades and Shadows. Boston: Meador, 1930.
---. Six Plays for a Negro Theatre. Boston: Walter Baker,
1934.
Flowers, H.D., II. "The Prodigious Achiever." Encore
(Sept 1984) 3-4. ——————
Haskins, James. Black Theater in America. New York:
Crowell, 1982.
Hatch, James V. Black Theater, USA. New York: Free Press,
1974.
Hay, Samuel. Letter to the author. 21 Oct 1985.
Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston. Urbana: U of IL
‘rP,.1977.
Hicklin, Fannie Ella Frazier. "The American Negro Playwright
1920-1964." Diss. U of WI, 1965.
Houseman, John. Run-Througp. New York: Simon, 1972.
Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea. New York: Hill and Wang,
1940.
Hurston, Zora Neale. "Drenched in Light." Opportunity
2 (Dec 1924) 371-74.
---. "John Redding Goes to Sea." Stylus 1 (May 1921)
11-22.
---. "Muttsy." Opportunity 4 (Aug 1926) 246-50.
---. "Spunk.“ Opportunity 3 (June 1925) 171-73.
---. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1937.
Fabre, Genevieve. Afro-American Poetry and Drama, 1790-1975.
Detroit: Gale, 1979.
190
Johnson, Charles 5., ed. Ebony and Tupaz. New York:
National Urban League, 1927.
Johnson, Georgia Douglas. Bronze. Boston: B.J. Brimmer,
1922.
---. The Heart of a Woman, and other Poems. Boston:
Cornhill, T918.
--—. Share My World. Washington, D.C.: by the author,
1962.
Johnson, James Weldon, ed. The Book of American Negro
Poetry. San Diego: Harcourt, 1983.
Kellner, Bruce, ed. The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical
Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984.
Lewis, David. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Knopf,
1981.
Lipscomb, George Dewey. Archive file. Northwestern
University, Evanston, IL.
---. adapter. "A Christmas Carol." New York: Gilberton,
1948.
---. "The Negro's Struggle for Freedom." Archive file.
Northwester University, Evanston, IL.
---. Tales from the Land of Simba. New York: Beechhurst,
1946.
---, and Graham, Shirley. Dr. George Washington Carver,
Scientist.
Livingston, Myrtle Smith. Archive file. Lincoln University,
Jefferson City, MO.
Locke, Alain, and Gregory, Montgomery, eds. Plays of
Negro Life. New York: Harper, 1927.
Mapp. Edward. Directory of Blacks in the Performing Arts.
Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1978.
Matheus, John. Archive file. West Virginia State College,
Institute, WV.
---. "Fog." Opportunity 3 (May 1925) 144-47.
---. "In the Night." Crisis 19 (Feb 1920) 181.
191
---. "Sand." Opportunity 4 (July 1926) 215-16.
"Mayor to See Negro Play." New York Times. 4 Feb 1928: 7.
McDonald, Warren. "A Matter of Inches." Opportunity 6 (Feb
1928) 40-45.
Miller, May. Personal Interview. With the author. 12 Sept
1985.
---. The Ransomed Wait. Detroit: Lotus, 1983.
---. "Wireless in Squirreldom." Washington Post. Magazine
Sec. 4 Oct 1914: 7.
Monroe, John Gilbert. "A Record of the Black Theatre in
New York City: 1920-29." Diss. U of TX at Austin,
1980.
"Our Prize Winners and What They of Themselves." Opportunity
4 (June 1926) 188-89.
Parker, John, ed. Who's Who in the Theatre. 11th ed. New
York: Pittman, 1952.
Peolow, Michael, and Davis, Arthur, eds. The
New Negro Renaissance. New York: Holt, 1975.
Peterson, Bernard. "Willis Richardson: Pioneer Playwright."
The Theatre of Black Americans. v. 1. Ed. Errol Hill.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1980.
"Plays Written by Mae Miller is Termed Offensive." Afro-
American. 12 April 1930: 3.
"A Playwright." Opportunity 3 (Feb 1925) 63-64.
Program. May Miller personal collection. Washington, D.C.
Richardson, Willis. "He Holds His Head Too High: A Washington
Boyhood," Crisis 74 (July 1967) 292-300.
---. Interview. 21 July 1974. Hatch Billops Oral History
Collection. Cohen Library, City College of New York.
---. Interview. 5 March 1972. Hatch-Billops Oral History
Collection. Cohen Library, City College of New York.
---. The Kin '5 Dilemma and Other Plays. New York: Exposi-
tion, 1966.
---, ed. Plays and Pageants from the Life of the Negro.
Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1930.
192
---, and Miller, May, eds. Negro History in Thirteen Plays.
Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1935.
Rimassa, John. “Frances." Playreader Report. 16 June 1938.
Federal Theatre Project collection. George Mason
University Library.
Rush, Theressa, etmaL. Black American Writers Past and Pre-
sent. 2 vols. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1975.
"S. Randolph Edmonds." Oberlin Alumni Magazine (Summer
1983) 77.
Schuyler, George S. "Theatre," "Ethiopian Nights Entertain-
ment." Messenger 6 (Nov 1924) 342-43.
Shay, Frank, ed. Fifty More Contemporary One-Act Plays.
New York: Appleton, 1928.
Shelton, Ruth Gaines. Introduction. The Church Fight.
Crisis 32 (May 1926) 17.
Sherman, Joan. Invisible Poets: Afro-American of the Nine-
teenth Century. Urbana: U of IL P, 1974.
Sisk, Bob. "Frank Wilson, Actor Still a Postman." New York
World. Sec. M. 9 Oct 1927: 5.
Spence, Eulalie. "A Criticism of the Negro Drama."
Opportunity 6 (June 1928) 180.
---. Interview. With Joshua Carter. 22 Aug 1973. Hatch-
Billops Oral History Collection. Cohen Library. City
College of New York.
Tate, Claudia. "The Pondered Moment: May Miller's Meditative
Poetry." New Directions 12.1 (Jan 1985) 30-33.
Thompson, Eloise Bibb. "After Reading Bryant's Lines to a
Waterfowl." Opportunity 2 (March 1924) 83.
---. "Mademoiselle 'Taise." Opportunity 3 (Sept 1925)
272-76.
---. "Masks." Opportunity 5 (Oct 1927) 300-02.
---. Poems. Boston: Monthly Review P, 1895.
Williams, Allen. "Sheppard Randolph Edmonds: His Contri-
butions to Black Educational Theatre." Diss. Indiana
University, 1972.
193
Wilson, Frank. "The Theatre, Past and Present." New
York Amsterdam News. 15 June 1932: 7.
Woll, Allen. Dictionary of the Black Theatre. Westport,
CT: Greenwood, 1983.
Yenser, Thomas, ed. Who's Who in Colored America. Brooklyn:
Thomas Yenser, 1937.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
The Opportunity and Crisis literary competitions of the
late 19205 offered prizes for black dramas written by
Afro-Americans. However, the two editors of these magazines
held differing expectations for the playwriting division.
Opportunity editor Charles Johnson wanted works which
could affect the racial opinions of the day. His target
audience was not blacks, but whites. It was this latter
group whom he believed should be made aware of the problems
faced by blacks, as well as, the contributions which Afro-
Americans could make to society if given the opportunity.
In contrast, Crisis editor W.E.B. Du Bois encouraged the
writing of plays by blacks for their own race. While he
championed black drama by whites on the Broadway stage, Du
Bois did not believe that a black author could be successful
in the commercial theatre and still write a play true to
black life. The Crisis editor contended that black drama
by Afro-Americans should be written and performed by black
little theatre groups.
Undoubtedly, Du Bois's objectives for the playwriting
division were more reasonable than those held by Johnson.
The commercial theatre, where one expects whites to frequent,
194
195
was still not hospitable to blacks. Before the literary
competitions, only one of the award winning playwrights
had written a drama which was performed on Broadway.
However, this play along with two others on the bill failed
to attract enough audience members to make the production
commercially successful. Nevertheless, most of the prize
winning dramatists had experience with the black community
and educational theatre. Thus, at the time of the contests,
black authors were better able to write for black little
theatre groups than for the commercial theatre, because
they were much more familiar with the former type's plays,
structure, resources, and audience.
Accordingly, the prize winning dramatist wrote plays
of greater interest to black audiences tastes and needs
than those of whites. While some of these award winning
plays were published in anthologies and journals with a
predominately white readership, there is no evidence of the
production of any of these works by predmoniately white
theatre groups. In contrast, eleven of the award winning
plays were produced by black community and educational
orgainizations across the U.S.
The award winning plays concerned subjects ranging
from racial injustice to domestic issues which were familiar
to Afro-Americans. Most of the prize winners required
little technical expertise to produce. Furthermore, some
utilized song, music and dance which probably appealed to
the black audience of the day who were more used to the
196
conventions of the black musical theatre.
After the competitions, playwriting remained only an
avocation for the award winning dramatists. Two writers,
Edmonds and Richardson, greatly affected the development of
the black theatre. Others achieved much greater fame by
pursuing other interests. However, these award winning
authors contributed plays to black dramatic literature for
use for production by black theatre groups and study by
those who have access to these works in libraries, journals,
and general literature and drama anthologies.
Opportunity and Crisis published seven of the prize
winning plays and probably encouraged these dramatists to
write more plays and become more involved in the theatre.
The journals' awards were certainly not taken lightly by
the prize winning writers. Most of these authors' biographies
mention the Opportunity and Crisis awards even among other
achievements which may seem far more noteworthy.
This research has revealed areas for further publica-
tion and study. Only four of the plays are in anthologies
111
currently in print. Another anthology should be compiled
and published which includes other prize winners and selected
111 Plays in texts currently in print: The Church
'Cruiter, and The Purple Flower in James Hatch, ed.,
act Theater USA (New York: Free Press, 1974) and Plumes
in Judith Barlow, ed. Plays by American Women, 1900-1930
(New York: Applause, 1985).
197
non-award winning works by these authors. This collection
would make these plays more accessible to the general
public.
Furthermore, histories of the black theatre have
focused primarily on New York theatrical activities.
However, this dissertation has shown that only three of the
fifteen playwrights were based in New York. The other
dramatists lived in other cities across the U.S., most
importantly, Washington, D.C. which appears to be more
influential in the development of early black drama than
New York. Future studies should more fully investigate
theatrical activities of blacks in major metropolitan areas
outside of New York and test the latter claim of Washington,
D.C.‘s affect on black drama of the period. This research
may better reveal the extent to which the works of the
prize winning authors were utilized throughout the U.S. It
may also make known other black wirters who, within their
own regions of the country, had a greater impact on black
drama than the award winning playwrights.
These are just a few examples of areas still worthy of
investigation. Black theatre scholarship has many other
gaps which should be eliminated before a more accurate and
complete history of this theatre can be written. Ultimately,
this information can be mainstreamed into American theatre
history texts to reveal black theatre's affect on and con-
tributions to the American theatre, in general.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PLAYS AND SELECTED ARTICLES BY OPPORTUNITY
AND CRISIS PRIZE WINNING PLAYWRIGHTS
The bibliography includes a list of published and
unpublished plays by the fifteen award winning dramatists.
Script sources and selected theatre articles by the play-
wrights are noted, as well as, productions cited by various
reference books and journals discovered during the course
of research for this dissertation. An asterisk denotes
full-length works, otherwise, all other plays are one acts.
The following is a key to abbreviations and books cited in
this section.
Key
Barlow, Judith, ed. Plays By American Women, 1900-1930.
New York: Applause, 1985.
Belcher, Fannin S., Jr. "The Place of the Negro in the
Evolution of the American Theatre, 1767 to 1940." Diss.
Yale U., 1945.
Barksdale, Richard, and Kinnamon, Kenneth, eds. Black
Writers of America. New York: Macmillan, 1972.
Brown, Sterling A., et al., eds. The Negro Caravan. New
York: Dryden, 1941.
Calverton, V.F., ed. Anthology of American Negro Literature.
New York: Modern Library, 1929.
Cromwell, Otelia, et a1. Readings from Negro Authors. New
York: Harcourt, 1931.
"Dramatis Personae." Crisis 34 (March 1927) 11-12.
198
199
Dreer, Herman, ed. American Literature by Negro Authors.
New York: Macmillan, 1950.
Du Bois, W.E.B. "Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre."
Crisis 32 (July 1926) 134, 136.
Edmonds, Randolph. The Land of Cotton and Other Plays.
Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1942.
---. Shades and Shadows. Boston: Meador, 1930.
---. Six Plays for a Negro Theatre. Boston: Walter Baker,
1934.
FTP. Federal Theatre Project Collection. George Mason
University, Fairfax, VA.
HAT-BIL. Hatch-Billops Collection, Inc. New York.
Hatch, James. Black Theater, USA. New York: Free Press,
1974.
Robert. Zora Neale Hurston. Urbana: U of IL P,
Hemenway
7
19 i.
Hicklin, Fannie Ella Frazier. "The American Negro Playwright
1920-1964.“ Diss. U of WI, 1965.
Houseman, John. Run-Through. New York: Simon, 1972.
HURST COL. Hurston Collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts.
U of Florida Library, Gainesville, FL.
JAMES. James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of American
Literature. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Yale University, New Haven, CT.
Johnson, Charles S., ed. Ebony and Topaz. New York:
National Urban League, 1927.
Johnson, Georgia Douglas. Plumes. New York: Samuel French,
1927.
Kellner, Bruce, ed. the Harlem Renaissance: A Historical
Dictionary. Westoport, CT: Greenwood: 1984.
"Krigwa." Crisis 32 (Dec 1926) 70-71.
Livingston, Myrtle Smith. Archive file. Lincoln University,
Jefferson City, MO.
Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum, 1969.
200
---, and Gregory, Montgomery, eds. Plays of Negro Life.
New York: Harper, 1927.
Matheus, John. Ouanga. Institute, WV: West Virginia State
College Press, 1932.
MAY. May Miller personal collection. Washington, D.C.
Miller, Ruth. Black American Literature. Beverly Hills,
CA: Glencoe P, 1971.
Monroe, John. "A Record of the Black Theatre in New York
City: 1920-29." Diss. U of TX at Austin, 1980.
MOOR. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
Library, Washington, D.C.
"Morgan Players in Three Plays on Campus." Afro-American.
12 April 1930
ngy. no year given.
PAL. Performing Arts Library. New York Public Library.
Lincoln Center, New York.
Patterson, Lindsay, ed. Anthology of the American Negro in
the Theatre. New York: Publishers Co., 1967.
Peplow, Michael, and Davis, Arthur, eds. the New Negro
Renaissance. New York: Holt, 1975.
Peterson, Bernard. "Willis Richardson: Pioneer Playwright."
the Theater of Black Americans. Ed. Errol Hill.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1980.
"A Playwright." Opportunity 3 (Feb 1925) 63-64.
Richardson, Willis. The King's Dilemma and Other Plays.
New York: Exposition, 1 56.
---, ed. Plays and Pageants from the Life of the Negro.
Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1930.
---, and Miller, May, eds. Negro History in Thirteen Plays.
Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1935.
SCHOM. Schomborg Center for Research in Black Culture.
New York Public Library. New York.
Schuyler, George S. "Theatre," "Ethiopian Nights Enter-
tainment." Messenger 6 (Nov 1924) 342-43.
201
Serna, Julio Gomez de la, ed. Constelacion Negra, antolgia
de la literatura Negra Americanan. Barcelona:
Edinociones Ayma, 1942.
Shay, Frank, ed. Fifty More Contemporary One-Act Plays.
New York: Appleton, 1928.
Sisk, Bob. "Frank Wilson, Actor Still a Postman." New York
World. Sec. M. 9 Oct 1927: 5.
Spence, Eulalie. Fool's Errand. New york: Samuel French,
1927.
Williams, Allen. "Sheppard Randolph Edmonds: His Contribu-
tions to Black Educational Theatre." Diss. Indiana U,
1972.
Woll, Allen. Dictionary of the Black Theatre. Westport,
CT: Greenwood, l983.
Playwright Bibliography
Marita Bonner
Plays:
Exit, an Illusion (1927)
Award:
1927 Crisis contest--First Prize
Script Source:
Crisis 36 (Oct 1929) 335-36, 352.
The Pot Maker (1927)
SEript Source:
Opportunity 2 (Feb 1927) 43-46.
The Purple Flower (1927)
Award:
1927 Crisis contest--First Prize
Script Source:
Crisis 35 (Jan 1928) 9-11, 28, 30.
Hatch.
Randolph Edmonds
Plays:
Bad Man (1932)
Script Source:
Brown.
Edmonds, Six Plays.
Hatch.
Production:
Morgan Players of Baltimore in tournament of the Negro
Intercollegiate Dramatic Association, 1932 (Hicklin, 518).
Bleeding Hearts (1927)
Award:
1927 Opportunity contest--Honorable Mention
202
Script Source:
Edmonds, Six Plays.
Production:
Draga festival, Columbus, Ohio--April 1935 (Hicklin,
518 .
The Call of Jubah (1935)
Career of College (1956)
Christmas Gift (1923)
Climbing Jacob's Ladder (1967)
Denmark Vesey (1929)
The Devil's Price* (1930)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Shades and Shadows.
Doom (1924)
Down in the Everglades (1964)
EAMU's Objective IV
Earth and Stars (1946; rev. in 1963 as a full-length play)
Prdduction:
"In the years since its first production at Dillard
[University in New Orleans], Earth and Stars has been
staged more widely in Afro-American southern educational
and community theatres than any other play by an
Afro-American" (Turner, 378).
Earth and Stars* (1963; rev. version of one-act play of
the same title)
Script Source:
Turner.
Everyman's Land
Script Source:
Edmonds, Shades and Shadows.
For Fatherlands (1934)
G. I. Rhapsody* (with Wilbur Strickland; 1943)
Production:
Special Service Division, Fort Huachuca, Arizona--1943
(Hatch, 82).
Gangsters Over Harlem (1939)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Land of Cotton.
Production:
Dillard University Player's Guild, New Orleans, 1939
(Hicklin, 519).
* Full-length play
203
Hewers of Wood (1930)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Shades and Shadows.
The High Court of Historia (1939)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Land of Cotton.
Production:
Dillard University Player's Guild, New Orleans, 1939
(Gicklin, 519).
The Highwayman (1925)
Illicit Love* (1926)
Award?
1926 Crisis contest--Honorable Mention
Job Hunting (1922)
The Land of Cotton* (1941)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Land of Cotton.
Production:
People's Community Theatre of New Orleans, Longshoreman's
Hall, 20-21 March 1941 (Hicklin, 519).
The Man of God* (1931)
A Merchant in Dixie (1923)
Nat Turner (1934)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Six Plays.
Richardson, Negro History.
Production:
Morgan Players of Baltimore in tournament of the Negro
Intercollegiate Dramatic Association, Petersburg, VA
(Hicklin, 519).
Drama festival in Columbus, Ohio--April 1935 (Hicklin,
519 .
The New Window (1934)
SEript Source:
Edmonds, Six Plays.
Old Man Pete (1934; a rev. version of Peter Stith)
Script Source:
Dreer.
Edmonds, Six Plays.
One Side of Harlem* (1928)
The Outer Room (1935)
Peter Stith (1926; rev. as Old Man Pete)
Award}
1926 Crisis contest--Honorable Mention
Production:
Dunbar Forum, Oberlin College, 1927 (Hicklin, 520).
204
The Phantom Treasure (1930)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Shades and Shadows.
Prometheus and the Atom* (1955)
Production:
Florida A&M University Players, Tallahassee, 1955
(Hatch, 80).
Rocky Roads* (1926)
Shades and Shadows (1930)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Shades and Shadows.
The Shadow Across the Path (1943)
The Shape of Wars to Come (1943)
Sharecroppers (1937)
Production:
Civic Theatre Guild of the Spring Street YMCA, Ogden
Theatre, Columbus, Ohio--29 May 1937 (Hicklin, 520).
Silas Brown (1927)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Land of Cotton.
Production:
Dunbar Forum, Oberlin College, 5 March 1927 (Hicklin, 520).
Simon in Cyrene* (1939)
Production:
Dillard University Players, New Orleans, 1943 (Hatch, 81).
Sirlock Bones (1928)
Production:
Morgan Players of Baltimore, Apollo Theatre, New York,
1928 (Hatch, 81).
Stock Exchange* (1927)
Takazee: A Pageant of Ethiopia* (1929)
Production:
Division of Recreation, Baltimore, 1934 (Hatch, 81).
The Trial and Banishment of Uncle Tom (1945)
Production:
Dillard University Players, New Orleans, 1945 (Hatch, 81).
The Tribal Chief (1930)
Script Source:
Edmonds, Shades and Shadows.
A Virginia Politician (1927)
Whatever the Battle Be* (1947)
Production:
Florida A&M University Players and Music Department,
Tallahassee, 1947 (Hatch, 82).
205
Wives and Blues* (1938)
Yellow Death
Script Source:
Edmonds, Land of Cotton.
Production:
Morgan College Dramatic Club, Douglass High School
Auditorium, Baltimore, 14 Feb 1935 (Hicklin, 520).
Articles:
"Black Drama in the American Theatre, 1700-1900."
The American Theatre: A Sum of its Parts. New York:
Samuel French, 1971. Also rpt. under the title of
Pan African Journal. Part 1: 7 (Spring 1974) 13-28 and
Part 2:7 (Winter 1974) 297-322.
"The Negro Little Theatre Movement." Negro Histopy
Bulletin. 12 (Jan 1949) 82-86. 92-94. Also rpt. in
Encore (Sept 1984) 17-24.
"Some Reflections on the Negro in American Drama."
Opportunity 8 (Oct 1930) 303-05.
"Some Whys and Wherefores of College Dramatics." Crisis
37 (March 1930) 92, 105-06.
"What Good are College Dramatics." Crisis 41 (Aug 1934)
232-34.
Zora Neale Hurston
Plays:
Color Struck (1925; rev. in 1926--same title)
Award?
1925 Opportunity contest--Second Prize
Color Struck (rev. version; 1926)
Script Source:
Fire!! 1.1 (1926) 7-14.
Award:
1926 Opportunity contest--Honorable Mention
Fast and Furious* (1931; one of fifteen authors)
Production:
Opened 15 Sept 1931 on Broadway at the New Yorker
Theatre (Woll, 62).
The Fiery Chariot (1933)
Script Source:
Typescript. HURST COL.
The First One (1926)
Award:
1926 Opportunity contest--Honorable Mention
Script Source:
Johnson, Charles.
206
From Sun to Sun* (1933; a rev. version of Great Day)
Production:
Staged by Hurston, the show toured Florida in 1933
(Hemenway, 184-85).
TheG{gat Day* (1932; rev. as From Sun to Sun and Singing
Stee
Production:
Staged by Hurston at the John Golden Theater, New York,
10 Jan 1932 (Hemenway, 182).
Staged by Hurston at the New School for Social Research,
29 March 1932 (Hemenway, 184).
Mule Bone* (with Langston Hughes: 1930)
Script Source:
Mimeographed copy. MOOR.
Act 3 only. Drama Critique. (Spring 1964) 103-07.
Polk County* (with Dorothy Waring; 1944)
Script Source:
Typescript. JAMES.
Typescript. PAL.
Singing Steel* (1934; rev. version of Great Day)
Production:
Staged by Hurston at the Chicago South Parkway YMCA,
23-24 Nov 1934 (Hemenway, 204-05).
5 ears (1925)
Award:
1925 Opportunity contest--Honorable Mention
William Jackson
Plays:
Four Eleven (1927)
Award:
1927 Opportunity contest--Third Prize
Production:
Bank Street Players at the Robert Treat School in Newark,
NJ--29 April 1927 (Monroe, 232-33).
Burning the Mortgage (1931)
Production:
Harlem Players, New York--2, 6, 9 Feb 1931 (Hicklin,
528).
Georgia Douglas Johnson
Plays:
And Still They Passed
A Bill to Be Passed
Blue Blood (1926)
Award:
1926 Opportunity contest--Honorable Mention
Script Source:
Shay.
207
Production:
Krigwa Players, Harlem--20, 25, 27 April 1927 (Hicklin,
528 .
Sekondi Players, Triangle Theatre, Greenwich Village,
New York--10, 17, and 24 May 1927 (Monroe, 189).
Krigwa Players, Armstrong Auditorium, Washington, D.C.--
11 FEb 1928 (Program. MAY).
Students' Literary Guild, Central YMCA, Brooklyn--
28 Feb 1928 (Hicklin, 528).
Krigwa Players, Douglass High School Auditorium,
Baltimore--2 May 1930 (Williams, 132).
Blue Eyed Black Boy
Camel Legs
Frederick Douglas (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro Histopy.
Heritage
Jungle Love
Little Blue Pigeon
Midnight and Dawn
Miss Bliss
Money Wagon
The New Day
One Cross Enough
Plumes (1927)
Award:
1927 Opportunity contest--First Prize
Script Source:
Barlow.
Calverton.
Johnson, Georgia.
Locke, Plays.
Opportunity 5 (July 1927) 200-01, 217-18.
Peolow.
Serna.
Productions:
Negro Experimental Theatre, Inc. of Harlem at the
Cubbe Theatre, Chicago, 1928 (Hicklin, 529).
Negro Experimental Theatre, Harlem, 1929 (Kellner, 263).
Popoplikahu (with Bruce Negent; 1926)
Red Shoes
Safe
Script Source:
Typescript. FTP.
208
Scapegoat
The Startipg Point
Script Source:
Typescript. JAMES.
Sue Bailey
A Sunday Morning in the South: With Negro Church Background
(1925)
Script Source:
Hatch.
A Sunday Morning in the South: With White Church Background
Well-Diggers
William and Ellen Craft (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
George Dewey Lipscomb
Plays:
Frances (1925)
Award:
1925 Opportunity contest--First Prize
Script Source:
Opportunity 3 (May 1925) 148-53.
Daniel
Script Source:
Typescript. SCHOM.
Myrtle Smith Livingston
Plays:
For Unborn Children (1925)
Award:
1925 Crisis Contest--Third Prize
Script Source:
Crisis 32 (July 1926) 122-25.
Hatch.
John Matheus
Plays:
Black Damp (1929)
Script Source:
Carolina Magazine 59 (April 1929) 26-34.
'Cruiter (1926)
Award:
1926 Opportunity contest--Second Prize
Script Sources:
Calverton.
Cromwell.
Hatch.
Locke, Playt,
'Miller, Ruth.
209
Ouanga* (Libretto; music by Clarence Cameron; 1932)
Script Source:
Matheus.
Production: ,
H.T. Burleigh Music Association, Central High School,
South Bend. IN--10-11 June 1949 (Kellner, 274).
Ora-Mu (a black opera companY). Academy of Music,
Philadelphia, 1950 (Kellner, 274).
Tambour (1929)
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
Production:
Allied Art Players, Boston, Oct 1929 (Hatch, 159).
Ti Yette (1928)
Script Source:
Richardson, Plays and Pageants.
Production:
Krigwa Players, Garnet-Patterson Aud., Washington, D.C.--
11 Jan 1928 (Program. MAY).
Articles:
"Lady Windemere's Fan," "Dramatic Personae." Crisis
34 (Marcy 1927) 11-12.
Warren McDonald
Plays:
Blood (1926)
Award:
1926 Opportunity contest--Third Prize
Humble Instrument (1925)
Award:
1925 Opportunity contest--Second Prize
May Miller
Plays:
The Bog Guide (1925)
Award:
1925 Opportunity contest--Third Prize
Script Source:
Typescript. MAY.
Christophe's Daughters (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
The Cuss'd Thing (1926)
Award:
1926 Opportunity contest--Honorable Mention
Freedom's Children on the March (1943)
Production:
Students at Frederick Douglass High School, Commencement,
Baltimore, June 1943 (Hatch, 163).
210
Graven Images (1930)
Sdript Source:
Hatch.
Richardson, Plays and Pageants.
Harriet Tubman (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
Production:
Dillard University Players, New Orleans--1935-36 season
(Program. MAY).
Nails and Thorns (1933)
Award:
1933 Southern University Contest--Third Prize
Script Source:
Typescript. MAY.
Pandora's Box (1914)
Script Source:
Act I. School Progress for Teachers, Parents and Pupils.
July 1914.
Act 11. School Progress for Teachers, Parents and Pupils.
January 1915.
Riding the Goat (1928)
Script Source:
Richardson, Plays and Pageants.
Productions:
St. Augustine College Players of Raleigh, North Carolina
at the Eighth Annual Festival of the Carolian Dramatic
Association, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill--
28 March 1928 (Program. MAY).
St. Augustine College Players, Commencement, St. Augustine
College, Raleigh, NC--25 May 1931 (Program. MAY).
Krigwa Players, Albert Aud., Baltimore--16 Feb 1932
(Program. MAY).
Samory (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
Scratches (1929)
Script Source:
Carolina Magazine 59 (April 1929) 36-44.
Sojourner Truth (1035)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
Stragglers in the Dust
Script Source:
Typescript. MAY.
211
Within the Shadow (1920)
Award:
1920 Howard University Drama Award--First Prize
Production:
Students at Howard University, Commencement, Washington,
D.C., 1920 (Hatch, 164).
Willis Richardson
Plays:
The Amateur Prostitute*
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
Antonio Maceo (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
Attucks the Martyr (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
The Black Horseman (1930)
Script Source:
Richardson, Plays and Pageants.
Production:
Shaw Jr. High School, 6 June 1931 (Hicklin, 536).
Playground Athletic League, Baltimore, 12 Oct 1931
(Hicklin, 536).
Bold Lover
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
The Bootblack Lover* (1926)
Award:
1926 Crisis contest--First Prize
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
The Broken Banjo (1925; rev. in 1965 as a full-length play)
Award:
1925 Crisis contest--First Prize
Script Source:
Barksdale.
Cromwell.
Locke, Pla 5.
Part 1. risis 31 (Feb 1926) 167-71.
Part 2. Crisis 31 (March 1926) 225-28.
Production:
Krigwa Players, 135th Street Library, Harlem--3, 10, 17
May 1926 (Du Bois, 136).
Krigwa Players, Garnet-Patterson Aud., Washington, D.C.--
11 Jan 1928 (Program. MAY).
Krigwa Players, Hampton Institute, Hampton, VA--24 March
1930 (Hicklin, 536).
Dixwell House Players, Yale University Theatre--27 March
1928 (Hicklin, 536).
212
Clark University, Atlanta--1O April 1930 (Hicklin, 536).
Shaw University Players, Raleigh, NC--12 Oct 1931
(Hicklin, 536).
Bishop College, Marshall, TX--14 Jan 1932 (Hicklin, 536).
Dramatic Club, Los Angeles--8 March 1933 (Hicklin, 536).
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee--27 March 1933
(Hicklin, 536).
St. Phillip's Jr. College, San Antonio--16 March 1934
(Hicklin, 536).
Atlanta University, Summer 1934 (Hicklin, 155).
The Broken Banjo* (1965; rev. version of one act play of
the same title)
Scrip Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL..
The Brown Bay
Script Source:
Typescript. SCHOM.-
Chasm (with E.C. Williams)
Production:
Krigwa Players, Dunbar High School, Washington, D.C.--
15 Feb nyg. (Program. MAY).
The Chip Woman's Fortune (1923; rev. in the same year as
a full-length play)
Script Source:
Patterson.
Shay.
Turner.
Production:
Ethgopian Art Players, Chicago--29 Jan 1923 (Hicklin,
536 .
Ethiopian Art Players, Washington, D.C.--23 April 1923
(Hicklin, 536).
Ethiopian Art Players, Frazee Theatre on Broadway--
opened 7 May 1923 (Hicklin, 536).
Dixwell House Players, New Haven, 1927 (Hicklin, 536).
Morgan Players, Morgan College, Baltimore-~18 April 1930
("Morgan")
The Chip Woman's Fortune* (1923; rev. version of one act
play of the same title.
The Compromise
Script Source:
Locke, New Negro.
U'sa (Vasarnap, Hungary) 5 April 1931.
Pro uc ion:
Gilpin Players, Cleveland--25 Feb 1925 (Hatch, 191).
Krigwa Players, 135th Street Library, Harlem--3, 10, and
17 May 1926 (Du Bois, 136).
Krigwa Players, Washington, D.C.--27 Jan 1932 (Hicklen,
536 .
Howard University Players, Washington, D.C.--8 April 1936
(Hicklin, 536).
213
Krigwa Players, Washington, D.C.--15 Feb nyg. (Program.
MAY).
The Curse of the Shell Road Witch
Script Source:
Typescript. SCHOM.-
The Dark Haven
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
The Deacon's Awakening (1920)
Script Source:
Crisis 21 (Nov 1920) 10-15.
Production:
St. Paul Players, St. Paul, MN, 1921 (Hatch, 192).
The Dragon's Tooth (1956)
Script Source:
Richardson, King's Dilemma.
The Elder Duman (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
Fall of the Conjurer (1925)
Award:
1925 Opportunity contest--Honorable Mention.
Famity Discord*
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL..
The Flight of the Natives (1927; rev. in 1963 as a full-
length play)
Script Source:
Hatch.
Locke, Plays.
Production:
Krigwa Players, Washington, D.C.--7 May 1927 (Peterson,
122 .
Krigwa Players, Armstrong Aud., Washington, D.C.--
11 Feb 1928 (Program. MAY).
Krigwa Players, Douglass High School Auditorium,
Baltimore--2 May 1930 (Williams, 132).
The Flight of the Natives* (1963; rev. version of one act
play of the same title)
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL..
The Gypsy's Finger Ring (1956)
Script Source:
Richardson, King's Dilemma.
Hope of the Lowly*
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
214
The House of Sham (1930)
Script Source:
Dreer.
Richardson, Plays and Pageants.
Production:
Performed by "many high schools during the thirties"
(Hicklin, 537).
The Idle Head (1929)
Script Source:
Carolina Magazine 59 (April 1929) 16-25.
Hatch:
Imp of the Devil
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
In Menelik's Court (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, Negro History.
The Jail Bird
Script Source:
Typescript. SCHOM.
Joy Rider*
Script Source:
Typescript. SCHOM..
The King's Dilemma (1926)
Award:
Public School Prize Plan, Washington, D.C.--21 May 1926
(Hicklin, 537).
Script Source:
Richardson, Plays and Pageants.
The Man of Magic (1956)
Script Source:
Richardson's, King's Dilemma.
The Man Who Married A Young Wife
Script Source:
Typescript. SCHOM.
Miss of Mrs. (1941)
SCript Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.,
Production:
Bureau of Engraving Dramatic Club, Washington, D.C.--
5 May 1941 (Hicklin, 537).
215
Mortgaged (1923)
Script Source:
Cromwell.
Peplow.
Production:
Howard University Players, Washington, D.C.--29 March
1924 (Hicklin, 537).
Dunbar Dramatic Club, drama tournament, Plainfield, NJ,
May 1925 (Hicklin, 537).
Krigwa Players, Armstrong Aud., Washington, D.C.--
7 May 1927 (Program. MAY)1.
Morgan Players, Morgan College, Baltimore--8 April 1930
("Morgan")
Bishop College, Marshall, TX--14 Jan 1932 (Hicklin, 537).
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee--27 April 1933
(Hicklin, 537).
Douglass High School Players, Baltimore--9 Feb 1934
(Hicklin, 537).
Near Calvary (1935)
Script Source:
Richardson, King's Dilemma.
---, Negro History.
The New Lodgers (c. 1926)
The New Santa Claus (1956)
Script Source:
Richardson, King's Dilemma.
The Nude Siren
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
The Peacock's Feathers (1928)
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
Typescript. SCHOM..
Production:
Krigwa Players, Garnet-Patterson Aud., Washington, D.C.--
11 Jan 1928 (Program. MAY).
A Pillar of the Church
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
Rooms for Rent (1926)
Script Source:
Typescript. SCHOM.
Production:
Negro Art Players, Harlem, Dec 1926 (Peterson, 121).
A Stranger from Beyond
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
216
Victims
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
The Visiting Lady? (1967)
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
The Wine Sellers*
Script Source:
Typescript. HAT-BIL.
Articles:
"Characters." Opportunity 3 (June 1925) 183.
"The Hope of Negro Drama." Crisis 19 (Nov 1919) 338-39.
"The Negro and Stage." Opportunity 2 (Oct 1924) 310.
"The Negro Audience." Opportunity 3 (April) 123.
"Propaganda in the Theatre." Messenger 6 (Nov 1924) 342-43.
"The Unpleasant Play." Opportunity 3 (Sept 1925) 282.
Ruth Gaines Shelton
Plays:
Aunt Hagar's Children
The Church thht (1925)
Award:
1925 Crisis contest--Second Prize
Script Source:
Crisis 32 (May 1926) 17-21.
Hatch.
Production:
Krigwa Players, 135th Street Library, Harlem--3, 10
and 17 May 1926 (Du Bois, 136).
Black Literature Program--"A Celebration of Black Women
Writers." Performed by students at Michigan State
University, East Lansing, MI--11-13 Feb 1985.
The Church Mouse
Gena, the Lost Child
Lord Earlington's Broken Vow
Mr. Church
Parson Dewdrop's Bride
Eulalie Spence
Plays:
Being Forty (1924)
Production:
National Ethiopian Art Players, Lafayette Theatre,
Harlem--15 Oct 1924 (Monroe, 222).
217
Bank Street Players of the Robert Treat School, Newark,
NJ--29 April 1927 (Monroe, 232-33).
Brothers and Sisters of the Church Council (c. 1920)
La Divina Pastora (1929)
Produciion:
Lighthouse Players, New York Association for the Blind,
Booth Theatre, New York, March 1929 (Hicklin, 172).
The Episode (1928)
Script Source:
The Archive 40.7 (1928) 3-8, 35-36, 38, 40.
Fool's Errand (1927)
Award:
Samuel French Prize for original playwriting, National
Little Theatre Tournament, New York, 1927.
Script Source:
Spence.
Production:
Krigwa Players, National Little Theatre Tournament,
New York--7 May 1927 (Monroe, 226).
Foreign Mail (1926)
Award:
1926 Crisis contest--Second Prize
Production:
Krigwa Players, International House, Crisis Literary
Awards Dinner, New York--25 Oct 1926 ("Krigwa," 71).
Krigwa Players, 135th Street Library, Harlem--17, 19 and
24 Jan 1927 ("Dramatis," 12).
Krigwa Players, Armstrong Aud., Washington, D.C.--
7 May 1927 (Program. MAY).
Help Wanted (1929)
Script Source:
Saturday Evening Quill (April 1929).
fler (1927)
Production:
Krigwa Players, 135th Street Library, Harlem--17, 19,
and 24 Jan 1927 ("Dramatis," 12).
Hot Stuff (1927)
Ahard:
1927 Crisis contest--Third Prize
The Hunch (1927)
Award:
1927 Opportunitu contest--Second Prize
Script Source:
Carolina Magazine 57 (May 1927) 21-30.
Proddction:
Krigwa Players, Armstrong Aud., Washington, D.C.--
11 Feb 1928 (Program. MAY).
218
The Starter (1927)
Award:
1927 Opportunity contest--Third Prize
Script Source:
Locke, Plays
The Undertow (1927)
Script Source:
Carolina Magazine 59 (April 1929) 5-15.
The Whipping* (1932)
Articles:
"A Criticism of the Negro Drama." Opportunity 6 (June
1928) 180.
"Negro Art Players in Harlem." Opportunity 6 (Dec 1928)
381.
Eloise Bibb Thompson
Plays:
Africannus (1922)
Production:
Frank Egan Dramatic School, Grand Theatre, Los Angeles,
1922 ("Playwright," 63).
Caught (1920)
Production:
The Playcrafters, Gamut Club, Los Angeles, 1920
("Playwright," 63).
Cooped Op (1924)
Award:
1925 Opportunity Contest--Honorable Mention
Production:
National Ethiopian Art Players, Lafayette Theatre,
Harlem--15 Oct 1924 (Schuyler, 342).
Ethiopian Art Theatre, Chicago, 1925 (Hicklin, 196).
Intercollegiate Association, Imperial Elks Aud., Harlem--
5 May 1926 (Monroe, 230-31).
New Negro Art Theatre, Lincoln Theatre, Harlem, Nov
1928 (Monroe, 192-93).
A Friend of Democracy (1920)
Frank Wilson
Plays:
Back Home Again (c. 1914-23)
Production:
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres,
c. 1914-23 (Sisk, 5).
219
Brother Mose* (rev. version of Meek Mose; 1934)
Script Source:
Typescript. FTP.
Production:
Toured New york area theathres beginning 25 July 1934
(Belcher, 229).
Color Worship (1926)
Production:
Aldridge Players, 135th Street Library, Harlem--
12 July 1926 (Monroe, 231).
Colored Americans (c. 1914-23)
Production:
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres, c.
1914-23 (Sisk, 5).
Confidence (1920)
Production:
Players' Guild, YMCA, Harlem--3 Jan 1920 (Monroe, 158).
Lafayette Theatre, Harlem--22 Nov 1920 (Monroe, 220).
Acme Players, Lafayette Theatre, Harlem--12 May 1922
(Monroe, 161).
The Flash (c. 1914-23)
Production:
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres, c. 1914-
23 (Sisk, 5).
Flies (1926)
Production:
Aldridge Players, 135th Street Library, Harlem—-12 July
1926 (Monroe, 231).
The Frisco Kid (c. 1914-23)
Production:
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres, c. 1914-
23 (Sisk, 5).
The Good Sister Jones (c. 1914-23)
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres, c. 1914-
23 (Sisk, 5).
Happy Southern Folks (c. 1914-23)
Production:
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres, c. 1914-
23 (Sisk, 5).
The Heartbreaker (1921)
Production:
Lafayette Theatre, Harlem--1O Jan 1921 (Monroe, 220).
Acme Players, YMCA, Harlem--25 May 1923 (Monroe, 163-64).
Meek Mose* (1928; rev. in 1934 as Brother Mose)
Production:
Princess Theatre on Broadway, opened 6 Feb 1928 (W011,
104).
220
Pa Williams' Gal (1923)
Production:
Lafayette Theatre, Harlem--1O Sept 1923 (Monroe, 222).
The Prison Life (c. 1914-23)
Production:
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres, c. 1914-
23 (Sisk, 5).
Race Pride (c. 1914-23)
Production:
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres, c. 1914-
23 (Sisk, 5).
Roxanna (c. 1914-23)
Production:
Performed at the Lincoln or Lafayette Theatres, c. 1914-
23 (Sisk. 5).
Sugar Cain (1926; rev. in 1927 as Sugar Cane)
Awardif
1926 Opportunity contest--First Prize
Script Source:
Opportunity 4 (June 1926) 181-84, 201-03.
Proddciion:
Aldridge Players, 135th Street Library, Harlem--12 July
1926 (Monroe, 231).
Sugar Cane (rev. version of Sugar Cain; 1927)
Script Source:
Locke, Plays.
A Train North (1923)
Production:
Acme Players, YMCA, Harlem--25 May 1923 (Monroe, 163-64).
Walk Together Chillun!* (1936)
Script Source:
Typescript. FTP.
Typescript. PAL.
Production:
Federal Theatre Project, Lafayette Theatre, Harlem--
opened 5 Feb 1936 (Houseman, 187).
The Wall Between* (c. 1929)
Articles:
The Theatre Past and Present." New York Amsterdam News.
15 June 1932: 7.
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Hurston, Zora Neale. Color Struck Fire!! 1.1 (1926) 7-14.
---. The First One. Ebony and Topaz. Ed. Charles S.
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Johnson, George Douglas. Blue Blood. Fifty More
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1 .
231
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1974.
Matheus, John. 'Cruiter. Black Theater USA. Ed. James
Hatch. New York: Free Press, 1974.
Miller, May. The Bog Guide. Typescript. May Miller
personal collection.
---. The Cuss'd Thing. Typescript. May Miller personal
collection.
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1932) 380-83, 389.
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Richards, Stanley. District of Columbia. Opportunity
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Wilson, Frank. Su ar Cain. Opportunity 4 (June 1926)
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Miscellaneous
Belcher, Fannin S., Jr. "The Place of the Negro in the
Evaluation of the American Theatre, 1767 to 1940."
0155. Yale University, 1945.
Bell, Roseann Pope. "The Crisis and O ortunit Magazines:
Reflections of a Black Culture, 1920-1930 H Diss.
Emory University, 1974.
232
Bonner, Marita. Archive file. Radcliffe College, Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
---. Introduction. "On Being Young--A Woman--And Colored,"
Crisis 31 (Dec 1925) 63-65.
Burroughs, Charles. Archive file. Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C.
Hay, Samuel. Letter to the author. 21 Oct 1985.
Hicklin, Fannie Ella. "The American Negro Playwright 1920-
1964." Diss. University of Wisconsin, 1965.
Lipscomb, George Dewey. Archive file. Northwestern
University, Evanston, Illinois.
---. "The Negro's Struggle for Freedom." Archive file.
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
Livingston, Myrtle Smith. Archive file. Lincoln University.
Jefferson City, Missouri.
Matheus, John. Archive file. West Virginia State College.
Institute, West Virginia.
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Richardson, Willis. Interview. 5 March 1972. Hatch-Billops
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---. "The Humble Instrument." Playreader Report. Federal
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233
Spence, Eulalie. Interview. With Joshua Carter. 22 Aug'
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Thompson, Sister M. Francesca. "The Lafayette Players,
1917-1932." Diss. University of Michigan, 1972.
Vogel, Arthur. "Blood." Playreader Report. Federal
Theatre Project Collection. George Mason University
Library. 14 April 1937.
---. "The Humble Instrument." Playreader Report. Federal
Theatre Project Collection. George Mason University
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Williams, Allen. "Sheppard Randolph Edmonds: His Contri-
butions to Black Educational Theatre." Diss. Indiana
University, 1972.