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ABSTRACT

THE NATURE OF THE NEGRO HERO
IN SERIOUS AMERICAN DRAMA
1910-1964

by Mary R. Hardwick

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the nature
of the Nbgro male hero in serious Twentieth century American
drama. The study aims at lending new and positive insight
into the needs, desires, dreams, direction and future of
the Negro in relation not only to his society but also to
himself.

The critical method of research is employed focusing
upon textual analysis, the conditions under which the mater-
ial was written, the intended audience and reviews by other
critics. The year 1910 was chosen because it is the year
in.which The Nigger by Edward Sheldon was published. This
was the first Twentieth century play of literary merit to
have a Negro hero. The year 1964 has been selected as a
terminal date because it marks the publication of LeRoi
Jones' plays, Dutchman, The glgxg and The Toilet. It also
marks the publication of James Baldwin's §;2§§.§23 Mg.

Charley. These plays contain the most recent Negro heroes

Mary R. Hardwick

'to be created. They reveal an increased understanding of
an.internality of Negro American life that possesses its
own attractions and its own mystery.

This study of the Negro hero in dramas written by
Negroes verifies that the writers have not evaded reality.
In the plays, they have spoken with clarity of the hurt,
frustration and anger which the members of a white society
have caused the Negro race to feel. In.many of these plays,
the internalized anger which has erupted during the 1960's
can be noted as early as the 1920's, clearly indicating a
direct line of descent as each decade passes. The wound
deepens; the politeness dissolves gradually, and the
intense dissatisfaction ripens into rage until by 1964
entire dramatizations are devoted to the detailed process
of punishing whites unmercifully as a token of Negro re-
bellion and desired supremacy.

The thesis verifies the assertion that the Negroes'
desire to retaliate is not a new disposition, but only its
expression, consistently developing its intensity, its
freedom and its more highly concentrated strength.

In the beginning, when plays were first being
written by Negroes, clearly defined attempts were made to
design heroes of decidedly superior characteristics. In
these plays, the Negro was either a superior fighter or

possessed a superior morality or demonstrated a superior

Mary R. Hardwick

intelligence or integrity. The plays were interpreted by
psychologists as Negro attempts to overcome the built-in
inferiority complex. No one seemed to notice the seeds of
revolution. The study reveals that the LeRoi Jones'
themes had been the underlying dream and desire of the
Negro, so far as his serious drama suggests, for many
years.

The study also verifies that at the deepest, most
fundamental.1evel, certain psychological obsessions occur
repeatedly in Negro-written literature. They seem to be
necessary and they seem to suggest truth. At the same
time, the study suggests that the Negro dreams and desires
in the plays written by whites are not indicative of the
Negro race. The treatment of the Negro by white playwrights
reveals that American Negroes are almost consistently
misunderstood by Whites. According to Negroes, plays such
as Thg’ggggglPastures and Egggy_seem to be works created
by writers Who knew nothing about Negroes. These, however,
are the only plays in this study to show life, not in repre-

sentative phases, but in its full and rounded glory.

THE NATURE OF THE NEGRO HERO
IN SERIOUS AMERICAN DRAMA
1910-1964

By

Mary B?*fiardwick

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Speech and Theatre

1968

'45/4 75’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author desires to express her sincere gratitude
to the members of her committee: Dr. Sidney L. Berger, Dr.
David 0. Ralph and Dr. E. C. Reynolds for their invaluable
suggestions and comments regarding methodology and content.

Appreciation must also be extended to the Inter-
library Loan Department of Michigan State University for
their~helpful services.

To Lois W. Giles whose assistance made this effort

possible, will always be a debt of gratitude.

ii

       

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter
I. THE IDEAL HERO . .... . . . . . . . . . 15
II. THE TRAGIC MULATTO . . . . . . . . . . . 40
III. THE DREAMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
IV. THE BRUTE PRIMITIVE . . . . . . . . . . . 112
V . THE MABXI ST CUDGEL . . . . . . . . . . . 1 49
VI. THE PROTESTANT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
VII. THE ANTI-HERO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
VIII. THE SEXUAL GIANT . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
IX. THE SATANIC DEMAGOGUE . . . . . . . . . . 250
X. THE O-LOVELY-NEGROES . . . . . . . . . . 270
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296

iii

INTRODUCTION

Recently, critics have begun to concern themselves
with the image of the Negro in American literature. For
example, glggk,gg,flh;§g (1966)1 is a study by David Little-
John, a young scholar and critic, of what American Negroes
have written. Imag§§_9§,§h§,flgg§g_ig American Literature
(1966),2 edited by Seymour L. Gross and John Edward Hardy,
is concerned with literature about as well as by American
Negroes: Both of these books are concerned, primarily,
with the writings of Richard wright, Ralph Ellison and
James Baldwin, novelists.

The published sources of research in the area of
dramatic literature, exclusive of criticism of individual
theatrical productions, are still few. There are three major
books on the subject: Edith J. FL Isaacs' Ibfi.§é££2.l2.§h§
American Theatre (1947),3 Sterling Brown's Ngggg Poetry gag,
22222.(1937),u and Loften Mitchell's §;§9k_22§m§ (1967).5

 

1David Littlejohn, Black 2g White (New York: Grossman
Publishers, 1966).

2Seymour L. Gross, "Introduction," Images 9; th§_Negro
iglggerican Literature, ed; Seymour L; Gross and John Edward
Hardy Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,

1966);

3Edith J. B. Isaacs, Th3 Negro in the American
Theatre New York: Theatre Arts, Inc., 19577.

Sterling A. Brown, Negro Poetry ggd_Drama (washing-
ton, D: 9.: The Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1937).

Loften Mitchell, Black Drama (New York: Hawthorn
Books, Indi, 1967).

1

Sterling Brown's articles and books "constitute the fullest
exposition of the contention that 'the Negro has met with as
great an.injustice in American literature as he has in Ameri-
can life.'” This contention is echoed in the writing of
Loften.Mitchell.
In 1795, Murdock's play, The Triumph g; ngg, pre-
sented the Negro as a ridiculous, comic, cackling,
shuffling servant. This, then was a step in the
direction of raping the black American's image . . . .
Portraying them as 'clowns,‘ 'goons' or 'beasts'
was a major effort in the attempt go destroy a
proud people and a great art form.

NggEQIPoetry ggd,2;gg§ is the only published work
which treats of the Negro as a character in American drama;
however, this book is primarily a survey rather than an in
depth analysis? Despite their brevity, Brown's remarks are
cogent and useful for a brief critical appraisal of the plays
about Negroes written between 1910 and 1937.

Edith J. R. Isaacs' focus is primarily upon the his-
tory of great American Negro actors, and Loften Mitchell's
back is the story of the American Negro in the theatre.

The concern of the American people with the Negro is
reflected vividly in a spate of books published during the
1960's; Hundreds of volumes on Negroes and civil rights have
been.published since the abolition.movement, but never in the
excessive numbers seen today. In addition, there has been,

during the 1960's, a freshet of novels and short storieS'
published by and about Negroes? It could be said that books

 

61b1d1, p. 18.

dealing with "the Negro problem" now constitute, at least
numerically, one of the most important aspects of American
writing and publishing. And yet, despite this deluge, sparse
consideration has been granted to the American Negro charac-
ter in drama: Sources for research in this area are more
prevalent in unpublished materials.

However, the bulk of these studies concerns the Ameri-
can Negro's theatrical history. These historical studies
document the early appearance of the Negro in American drama.

In 1776 John Leacock's play, The Fall 23 British Tyranny, dis-

 

cussed recalcitrant slaves who promised the British that upon
attainment Of British victory they would destroy their slave-
masters. "Th; Fall 2; British Tyygnpy . . . was the first
American drama to take advantage of the turmoil that had
existed in the New World during the period when it was being
settled."7

During the Nineteenth century Negro slaves originated
the minstrel tradition in order to satirize the slave-masters.
This was copied by whites. Following the Civil war, Negroes
joined the minstrel shows professionally, imitating whites
who were imitating Negroes. Such groups as Lew Johnson's
Plantation Minstrels, Callender's Minstrels and the Georgia

Minstrels were several such companies.8 "They are considered

 

Ibid., p. 16.
Isaacs, pp. 23-27.

to be the first authentic American theatre form."9

In the middle of the Nineteenth century further
attempts were made to treat the Negro as subject matter. In
J. T: Trowbridge's dramatization of his novel, Neighbor
Jackwood (1857), a traditional attitude toward Negroes presen-
ted them.as happy~go~lucky creatures with "unclean blood.“10
However, the Nineteenth century was chiefly the period of the
minstrel tradition.

Bob Cole's A,Tg;p_§g Coontown, produced at the Third
Avenue Theatre, New York City, April A, 1898, was the first
musical-comedy to be written, directed, organized and produced
by Negroest- A,T;;p_§g Coontown was considered a break with
the minstrel tradition, since it featured the Negro in a
role other than the "Mr. Bones" type character.11

The Harlem Theatre movement (1909-1917), in 1909,
created what some have declared to be among the first Off-
Broadway theatres.12 Bert Williams, then in Ziegfeld's
Follies (the first to give a Negro actor a featured place in
a white company), was the only Negro who worked regularly in
Broadway theatres. "With the exception of Bert Williams,
Negroes were not welcomed in Broadway theatres as performers
or patrons?"13

It was not until April 5, 1917, that Negro drama

 

95b1d., p. 27;
1 Mitchell, p. at.
11Isaacs, p. 40.

12Mitchell, pp. 6u-72.
13l2idn. p. 39.

.
.
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. .. .
. r .
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M.

attracted Broadway's attention again, having caught it in
1910 with Edward Sheldon's Th2 Nigger when Ridgeley Torrence's
f_1'_hr__e_e_ M £9; a_ New Theatre opened at the Old Garden
Theatre. In 1920, Eugene O'Neill's,2hg Emperor Jones empha-

 

sized to America that the Negro was potential dramatic mater-
ial. O'Neill's All §9_d_f_§ Chillun 992 Ms (1924) further
emphasized that the Negro was highly controversial material.

The 1920's brought the Negro Renaissance.” Acting
opportunities for Negroes increased. Productions during this
period included Ernest Howard Culbertson's E2§E.All§1.(1921)9
M, M. Lizzie (1922) by Creamor and Layton, the Ethiop-
ian Art Theatre's production of Willis Richardson's Th;
Chipwoman's Fortune (1923), Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake's
revue, Thg_Chocolate Dandies (1924), Paul Green's Pulitzer
Prize-winning work, Ig,ébraham's,§g§gg (1926) and Jerome Kern's
musical play, Showboat (1927). £9;gy_(1927) by Dorothy and
Dubose Heyward and Marc Connelly's Thglggggp;Pastures (1930)
were also produced at the end of this decade.

During the early depression years, Broadway continued
to offer Negro musical shows. This era also ushered in seri-
ous plays concerned with Negroes (Langston Hughes' Mulatto,
1935, John Wexley's Th§y_§h§;;_NQ§_Qig. 1934, and Paul Peters-
Genrge Sklar's Stevedore, 1934). The prize of the 1930's was
George Gershwin's nggy,§nd,§g§§_(1935), frequently referred

to as “the first native American folk Opera."15

 

14 . _. _
Islbid.’ pp. 73 90.

Isaacs, p. 98.

 

 

,m/

The Negro Unit of the Federal Theatre, (1935-1939),
which was located at the Lafayette Theatre in New York City,

' gave Negro actors and writers an opportunity for expression.

NO part of the Federal Theatre brought more ample

returns to the project itself than did the Negro

units, and, conversely, no American theatre project

has meant more to Negro player: and other artists

than the Federal Theatre d1d.1
The most highly acclaimed production of the Negro Unit of the
Federal Theatre was the Orson Welles-John Houseman offering,
Macbeth. This production launched many Negro acting careers.
Toward the close of the decade the Negro Playwrights Company
was organized by Theodore ward, Powell Lindsey, George Norford,
Theodore Browne and Owen Dodson. The first production was
Theodore Ward's The Big White Fog (1940).17

The 1940's saw professional activity both on and off

Broadway. Richard wright's Native Son (1940) won national
acclaim.as did Lynn Root and Vernon Duke's musical play
ggbin.ip,the §ky (1938) which continued to run. In Harlem the
Rose McClendon Players, and later the American Negro Theatre,
produced several original works. The Second World war sug-
gested that the idea of military service without social re-
wards for the returning Negro soldier, needed to be dramatized.

World war Two not only shattered Negroes' illusions

about white sincerity, it destroyed their fear of

white authority as well . . . . the war drastically

altered the relations between Negroes and whites.
By 1945, a million Negroes were in uniform. Men

 

16Ib1d. p. 106.
IWEIEEheii, pp. 113-114.

 

who had been decorated for 'Outstanding courage
and resourcefulness' at Bastogne, who had built
the Lido Road in Southeast Asis or manned the
'Red Ball Express' in France or landed in the
first invasion wave at Okinawa were not likely

to be quite as afraid of white authority as their
fathers. What Negroes discovered during the

war (and what they have been rediscovering

ever since) was their power to intimidate -- not
by violence, but by their very presence.

Arnaud d'Usseau's and James Gow's Deep are the Roots (1946),

Lillian Smith's Strange Fruit (1946) and Maxine Wood's Qg

 

Whitman Avenue (1946) were presented. The Committee for the
Negro in the Arts produced William Branch's A Mgggl f9; Willie
(1951) which treated this same subject.

During the 1956—57 season Louis Peterson's Tgkg g
Eléfli Stgp won critical acclaim as did Langston Hughes-David
Martin's musical play Simply Heavenly. The latter play moved
from the Renata Theatre in Greenwich Village to Broadway and
brought Claudia McNeil to the attention of theatre—goers.

On March 11, 1959, Miss McNeil appeared with the popular
Sidney Poitier in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in thg SEQ
which won the Critics Circle Award for 1959.

By the arrival of the 1960's, the Negro's fight
against oppression began to reveal itself in the works of
James Baldwin and LeRoi Jones. Such critics as David Little-
john point to James Baldwin as "the most powerful and import-

ant essayist of the postwar period, perhaps of the

 

18Charles E. Silberman, Crisis i_n_ Black and White

(New York: Vintage Books, 1964), pp. 62-64.

 

 

century”19

Along with the history of the American Negro in the
theatre, studies have also been concerned with the image of
the Negro as it has developed from the Nineteenth to the
Twentieth century using Negro life and character as the
major themes. These studies such as Edward George Linnehan's
32.32%; Egg Mag; (1953), concerned with image discuss the
literary Negro as the "new Negro“ and relate his identity and

progress to the New Negro in society with an emphasis on the

latter.20

There have been no studies which have attempted to
isolate what the Negro wants by virtue of an analysis of the
nature of the Negro hero. Criticism of the Negro image in
literature is dominated by the claim that the Negro has not
been given fair treatment in American dramatic literature.
Given the history of the Negro in the United States,
it is hardly surprising that the concept of the
stereotype should dominate the criticism of his
image in our literature. Being from the beginning
a fligure of moral debate and historical contro-
versy, the anomaly in a democratic society from
whose accusing presence we could not flee except
through chromatic fantasies, the Negro has elways
been.more of a formula than a humanbeing.2

The critical argument contends that a true portrait of the

mind and character of the Negro is non-existent in.most plays.

 

19”Expression of the Negro Experience," Saturday
Review, g8 uary 14, 1967, p. 79".
; G. Linnehan, "We wear the Mask: The Use of
Negro Life and Character in.American Drama," (unpublished
Ph.D; diaeertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1953).
Gross, p. 10.

 

 

American fiction has "incarcerated the literary Negro in . . .

22

tightly restrictive categories," or by typecasting whites

as villains and idealizing Negroes, current fiction by and
about Negroes has frequently evaded reality. writers believe
that the image of the Negro is either a false exaggeration
constructed entirely from stereotypic notions or false ideals,
and thus, far removed from the real Negro.

White authors tend to regard the Negro as a problem
or a victim of circumstances and thus perpetuate, in
however disguised and idealized a form, some of the
familiar stereotypes. He is different, exotic, ab-
normally sensitive, aggressive to paranoic excess,
intensely emotional, highly musical. He is a pic-
turesque object of pity, victim of white man's
sadistic hatred, Obsessed on the subject of race,
ceaselessly nursing fantasies Of revenge. 2They

fail to suggest the humanity of the Negro.

The image of the Negro created by the Negro writer in order
to counteract such falsifications resulted in another form
of typification.

We fell into that old trap by which the segregated
segregated themselves by trying to turn whatever the
whites said against us into its opposite. If they
said Negroes love fried chicken (and why shouldn't
we?), we replied, 'We hate fried chicken.‘ If they
said Negroes have no normal family life, we replied,
'We have a staider, mogg refined, more puritanical
family life than you.‘

This study will testify to the fact that many Negro as well

as white authors tend to regard the Negro as a problem.or a

 

221bid3
23Char1es I. Glicksberg "Bias, Fiction, and the Negro,"
Egylon, gig: (2nd Quarter, 1952 , pp. 134-135.
lph Ellison, "A.Very Stern Discipline," Harper's
M9 March, 19679 P3” 79.

10

victim of circumstances and thus perpetuate stereotypes and

formulas.
A white reader is saddened, then burdened, then
numbed by the deadly sameness, the bleak wooden
round of ugly emotions; the same small frustrated
dreams, the same issues and charges and formulas
and events repeated over and over, in book after
book. Not many Negro authors have been artists
enough to breathe life in this sad and sodden
material.

But in a time of significant change, a period which
has contained the Negro social revolution,26 it seems appro-
priate that a study of the treatment of the Negro in dramatic
literature by both white and Negro authors should be conducted
in order to lend new and positive insight and perspective
into the needs, desires, direction, dreams and future of the
Negro not only in relation to his society but also to him—
self. Writing in the New York Times in 1935, Maxwell Ander—
son, who was once held to be the chief apostle of theatre
poetry in this country, remarked:

We shall not always be as we are -- but what we
are to become depends on what we dream and desire.
The theatre more than any other art, has the power
to weld and determine what the race dreams into
what the race will become.

For purposes of limiting examinationcfl‘thenuixland charac-
ter of the Negro, this study will be confined to serious drama.

Comedies, farces, musical-comedies, and operettas will be ex-

 

25Littlejohn, p. 79.
2 William Brink and Louis Harris, Thg Negro Revolution
lg America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964).
Joseph Golden, Th2 Death 2: Tinker Bell (Syracuse:
University Press, 1967), p. 63.

11

eluded from consideration. Movies will also be excluded
since textual analysis is handicapped by the unavailability
of movie scenarios. Although the investigator in the field
of drama is constantly confronted with difficulty in securing
all the scripts pertinent to his study, an attempt has been
made to examine all serious plays with Negro protagonists
written.between the years 1910-1964;

The year 1910 was chosen because it is the year in
which Th2,Nigger by Edward Sheldon was published. This was
the first Twentieth century play of literary merit to have a
Negro hero. "The characters were well conceived, the action
was swift, the climaxes good, and, as melodramas go, the mot-
ives and the situations held water.“28

': . it was the Edward Sheldon play The Nigger that

brought drama about the American Negro to soaring

heights . .'. . In The Nigger Mr. Sheldon said things

the American theatre had never heard before. .Eés

play deals with a man who is ostensibly white.
Since the male protagonist of Sheldon's play is "ostensibly
white," the work is often omitted from the history of the
Negro in American.theatre: however, its theme of adjustment
and its treatment of a tragic mulatto make it appropriate for
consideration in this study.

The year 1964 has been selected as a terminal date
because it marks the publication of LeRoi‘Jones' plays,

Dutchman, The Slave and The Toilet.“ It also marks the publi-

 

28Isaacs, p. 44.
29N1tohe11, p. 39.

 

12

cation of James Baldwin's Bip§§,£93_flp; Charley. These

plays contain.the most recent Negro heroes to be created and
stand not only as a flowering of the seeds planted within the
preceding fifty years, but as harbingers of new horizons and
increased understanding of an.internality of Negro American
life that possesses its own attractions and its own.mystery.

. The term "hero" will be used simply as a synonym for
male protagonist. The term protagonist will be used to indi-
cate the sympathetic major character in a drama.

-It is almost essential that the protagonist be a

sympathetic character} The term sympathetic is

used technically in drama for a character with

whom the audience identifies itself, and the

egiiepeeaggegnbeogiven the opportunity for
Therefore, if the needs, dreams, desires, beliefs and attitudes
of a race are being transferred to a literary figure in the
drama, it is likely to be the hero, since it is this figure
with whom the audience, supposedly, identifies.

One-act plays have been included since the one-act
play was the first published form used by Negro playwrights.
.During the 1920's primarily, the magazines, Crisis and 9222;-
tunity, ran one-act play contests in order to encourage Negro
playwrights. For this reason, many of the Negro heroes created
during the 1920's exist within the one-act play.

An evaluation of original manuscripts of dramas which

 

30Kenneth T.” Rowe, Write That Play (New York: Funk
and Wagnalls Company, 1944), p. 145.

 

13

have been produced but have not been published are also in-
cluded in this study. These mansucripts are kept in the
Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History. This
Collection is a comprehensive reference and research library
devoted to Negro life and history. This library is located
at 135th Street and Broadway in New York City.

Plays by both white and Negro playwrights treating
Negro character and theme will be included in order to help
determine by contrast and comparison significant similarities
and differences being offered by representatives of both
races and their subsequent meanings and influences.

In conclusion, the following chapters are aimed toward
the purpose of analyzing the similarities and differences of
specified Negro heroes and their relationship to the dreams
and accomplishments of the Negro race. The critical method
of research will be employed focusing upon textual analysis,
the conditions under which the material was written, the in-
tended audience and reviews by other critics.

The study will attempt to reveal marked similarities
among the plays written by Negro playwrights in order to sup-
port the assertion that nearly all of them are pronouncements
of angry feelings against the envied and hated white majority.
Evan the early Twentieth century plays written by Negroes
reveal a neurosis composed of hate, hurt and desire for re-
‘venge. A depth study of these plays reveals the seeds of

social revolution and serves as a forewarning of the Negro

14

militant behavior during the 1960's which came as a surprise
to:manyt In contrast, the treatment of the Negro by white

playwrights reveals that Negro Americans are almost consis-

tently misread by whites.

CHAPTER I
THE IDEAL HERO

During the third decade of the 1900's, Negro-written
dramas began to be published. A.nmmber of magazines - Crisis,
Opportunity, Tpg Carolina Ma azine, Tpp Saturday Evenipg ngll,
and 2p; Liberator ~- became interested in providing oppor-
tunities for Negro literary eXpression. Potential Negro
playwrights responded to the magazines' solicitation of one-
act plays: and, consequently, for the first time in American
history, the Negro was writing and expressing himself by means
of the drama.1

An examination of plot and character evidences that
ethnic pride dominated most of these early Negro plays. Pro-
letarian ideology had not begun to shape and use the Negro's
social ills for its purposes. Hence, in the 1920's, many of
the plays suggest a sensitive, proud race-consciousness as if
the Negro was attempting to solicit dignity through his liter-
ature and its point of view; One of the most pronounced ways
in which this racial pride displayed itself in these fledgling
plays was in the designing of heroes with decidedly superior

parts, as if the Negro writers were consciously challenging

 

1M1tohe11; p; 68.

15

 

 

l6

2 .
their current attitudes. In answer to an apparent need for
unequivocal heroes, the Negro writers responded to the call
with a model specimen who seldom varied. Frank Wilson in his
description of Howard Hill in his one-act play, Spgar Cane
(1926), described this idealized hero as:

. . . a fine looking, well-dressed young Negro about
twenty-four years old. He speaks with a clear pure
diction. He is proud, intelligent, evidently well
educated. He is a man of decision and action and

it would seem, considerable physical prowess. He

has no fear of whi es . . . . He is determined,
efficient . . . .

This ideal prototype appeared over and over again, suggesting
that Negro writers were deliberately challenging the idea that
the Negro was neither intellectually, culturally nor morally
empty, and that he was neither a "goon" nor a "beast."4
Instead, the ideal Negro heroes seemed to proclaim: I am
more than worthy of equality.

There were several ways in which the playwrights tried
to suggest this worthiness. Often, the hero performed an
act of heroism which resulted in an actual recognition of his
admirable qualities by other characters in the plays. This
was generally accomplished by a confrontation scene between
the Negro hero and a white villain with the Negro's point of
view cast in a sympathetic light. Another device used was a

deliberate effort to suggest dignity by not allowing the hero

T

2William L. Kuhlke, "They Too Sing America: The New

Negro as Portrayed by Negro Playwrights, 1918 to 1930," (un-
published Master's thesis, Kansas University, February, 1959),

p. 50.
3Frank H. Wilson, "Sugar Cane," Plays 2; Negro Life,
ed. Alaifl Locke (New York: Harper and Bros., 1927), p. 179.
Mitchell, p.18.

 

 

 

17

to compromise or be submissive. Decisions were motivated

by high moral traits such as loyalty, courage, race pride

and honesty. Unfortunately, as a consequence of these de-
vices, an extreme emerged and these virtues became exaggerated
to the degree that the character seemed a "plaster saint.”5

G. D. Lipscomb's one-act play, Frances, which was
awarded a First Place in Opportunity Magazine's Play Contest,
May 1925, is an excellent illustration of heroism and superi-
ority being governed by the character's ability to stand up
to whites.

Frances is a "neat and intelligent girl of about
nineteen" who has been kept in virtual concubinage to Charles
Thawson, a planter, who holds a mortgage on the forty acres'
she and her uncle have been working to pay off for years. The
hero, George Mannus, a Northern Negro teacher, comes to the
area, tries to set up a school, but is finally forced to
leave. Before he goes, George confesses his love to Frances
and asks that she accompany him North to a new life of dig-
nity and freedom. She agrees, but not before telling her
uncle Abram good-bye. When the uncle arrives, he is accom-
panied by the white landlord, Thawson, who has come to spend
the night with Frances. When Frances resists Thawson's ad-

vances, he reveals that he has never recorded Abram’s property

deed and that all their work and sacrifices has been in vain.

 

5Sterling A. Brown, ”Negro Character as Seen by

White Authors," Journal p§_Negro Edppgplpp. II (1933).
pp. 179-203.

18

Abram attacks Thawson and in the struggle that follows, both
men.are killed. The play ends with Frances weeping over

the body of her dead uncle and the sound of a train whistle,
implying the hero is aboard a train.headed North.

The following scene constitutes the heroic essence
of George's ability to stand up to whites and the ensuing
consequences:

ABRAM

Jes' like I tole you -- dat niggah done broke his
own neck wid his smaht talk.

FRANCES
Professor Mannus has lost . . . ?
. ABRAM
No, he ain't 'zactly los' de school. De County
Sup'intender say he won't fiah him, but dey
refuse to give him any mo' of his back pay.
Professor George Mannus is disturbing the status quo and
"tellin' dese niggahs what dey ought an' oughten' to stan'
fur . . . ." Abram leaves his niece alone with her fears:
”My God! I was afraid of this!" Suddenly, there is a "voice
from without.” Frances Opens the door and welcomes George,
the ideal prototype described as a "tall, brown.man, well-
formed and intelligent, plainly dressed in clothes that have
been well worn." When George speaks, his language is free of
dialect as the author labors to suggest a superior man willing
‘to better himself and fight for what he believes and loves,
despite the humiliating consequences. It is learned that

George struck a white man in an unwillingness to compromise

19

his love for Frances.
FRANCES
That beast Thawson -- Mister Charley!
GEORGE

Yes . . . . He came into the classroom yesterday

and insulted me. I might have taken a personal 6

“insult, but when he mentioned you, I struck him.
In 1925 this kind of physical retaliation was unusual. Negroes,
particularly,in the South, were expected to keep their place
and were threatened with cruel punishments, including death,
if they disobeyed.7 For George to behave in the manner des-
cribed was evidently suggestive of great courage. Standing
up to whites was admirable. It was an.act that would be
repeated throughout the history of Negrc>written drama. Years
later, in.James Baldwin’s plpp§,§pp,fip, Charley (1964), the
negro's struggle for self respect was to continue to be for-
warded by an act of physical violence. In LeRoi Jones'
Dutchman,(1964), the hero was to stike a white woman and a
white man in,Tpp_§l§yg,(1964). In Jones' Tpg,Toilet.(1964),
several Negroes assist the hero in nearly pummeling a white
boy to death: Thus, it is suggested that the physical overt
retaliation of the American Negro toward the white man.was
evident in.a number of early Negro plays. Frank Wilson's
one-act, Spg§p_§§pg (1926), is a further illustration of this

jpointi

 

6G. D. Lipscomb, "Frances," Qpportunity, III, (May

1925) . pp." 148-153-
Brink and Harris, p. 34.

 

 

 

. . . .
,. . .
, ..
. .
q I
.
V
. . Y
Y
I
,
e t
I
r , .
, ‘
I
. t
v r , . ~
. . ,

20

This play concerns Sugar Cane, a young woman, who
has an illegitimate child. The members of her family believe
that Howard Hill, her sweetheart, has fathered the baby. He
is a Negro from the North who refuses to play the role that
whites demand. These standards cause Sugar Cane's father,
Paul, to disagree vehemently with Howard. Paul is willing to
deceive the whites in order not to disturb the status quo:
Howard will not tolerate this kind of dishonesty.

. Howard comes to ask Sugar Cane to marry him, only to
learn that she has been raped by Lee Drayton, a local white,
and is pregnant. unafraid, determined, efficient, Howard goes
to Drayton's house, knocks him.unconscious, and returns to
Sugar Cane willing not only to marry her but to be a father
to her child.’

The subject of the play's plot is the ideological
struggle between the older generation represented by Paul,
an old Negro farmer, and the younger generation, represented
by Howard Hill and Paul's children, with the latter depicted
as having absorbed all of Howard's ideals. The following
dialogue illustrates the conflict between tradition and race
dreams suggesting that the younger Negroes were no longer
‘willing to abide by their parents' theories and longed for a
change:

PAUL

Impatiently I ain't lookin' for no respec'.

Pause I'm.lookin' fer sumfin' dats going ter feed
me an"my family. Pause Dis house hyer whar

yo' an' Sugar was born.an' raised -- it's mine

ain't it?

21

FRED

fiéfigflgyy ‘Yes, Sir.
PAUL

It may not.be no palace, but it's mine jist de
same. Points gpp'window So is dat patch ob farm
land out dere -- all mine. How yo reckon I got it,
by fightin' dese white folks down hyer? Humph --
I guess not:

FRED
But dey thinks dey better den we are, Pop.
PAUL

lp,eygsperation Wot if dey does! It ain't goin'
ter.hurt 'em ter think, is it? Pointipg hlp pipe
g§_hlp .As long as I can fool dese white folks outer
dere money an' land, by lettin' 'em feel dat dey's
better dan.I am, dat's wot Ahm gonn' ter do.
Spits Lissen, son -- I got money an' I got
property. I could buy an' sell some 0' dese
white folks 'round hyer -- but I ain't goin'

ter let dem know it; I could fix dis shack up
and live in grand style if I wanted to -- But

do minnit I did dat dese folks would git curious,
and wanter say dat I didn't know ma place, and
dat I was tryin' ter act lak white folks -- fust
thing yo' know, I'd have a lot ob trouble on ma
hands -- an' I couldn't stay hyer, -- So I fools
'em. Ah banks ma money, keeps ma mouth shut, an'
makes believe Ahm.a poor ole nigger, and dat
dey's de cock 0' de walk? An I kin git dere
shirt. I know 'emx‘ An' I didn't learn dat

in no school neither. I ain't bin ligin' in de
Southlan! all dese years fer nothin'.

Fred, Paul's son, is not convinced that this is the way to

live. Instead. he fastens his sights on the ideals espoused

by Howard Hill: “Yer ought ter believe a li'l' mo' in yo'

owp race 7- git a li'l! mo' race pride." These idealists

 

8Wilson, pp. 171-172:

22

doubt that the sacrifice of pride and human dignity is
worth the material rewards.
Howard's way of demonstrating his refusal to compro-

mise is evidenced by his willingness to go to Drayton's house

and fight."
HOWARD
Well, I got him!
PAUL
Got who?
SUGAR

You don't mean to say you killed him, Howard, do
you? .

HOWARD

Well, I dunno. I met him just as he was coming out,
and he must have guessed I was after him. He ran
back for this. Brandishes £113 revOl'ver. But I
cornered him in the kitchen and - - -

SUGAR
ageieerurri Thank God! And what happened?
HOWARD

Dunno, exactly". I didn't shoot him -- but he's
on the kitchen-floor, and I don't expect there's
much to hi after the tussle we had. I'm done
up mysalf 2'
Following this incident, the Negro characters learn
that Drayton has met with accidental death caused by the
exploding of the kitchen stove-“i" Freed from the danger of any

interference. by. this white man, Howard proposes marriage. and

 

9;pid:. p? 182:

 

 

 

 

23

promises to care for Sugar's bastard son. It is a forced
happy ending to a play obviously designed to flatter Negro
audiences and feed race dreamsT

Ralf Coleman's Paradox best illustrates the ennobling
of its ideal hero via emphasis upon the significance and
importance of education; its merit and respectability.

Paradox is a one-act play which was featured in the April,
1930, edition of The Satw day mening Q__l_.

The hero is Daniel Patterson. Although this character
is cast in.the role of a porter, it is soon established that
he has sufficient intelligence and education to become a
teacher. His worth is presented immediately through the
character of Charlotte, an old sweetheart:

' . . this is so beneath you . . . I don't under-

stand why you, a Harvard graduate, a man of letters,

with education, opportunity, and -- youth, should be

carrying bags like a common porter . . . . Where is

your pride, your ambition? Why, the most ignorant

person in the whole world can do this! Did you go

through college to be a red cap?10
The remainder of the play is devoted to Daniel's justification
of his behavior. He works as a red nap in order to earn a
sufficient salary for his wife's extravagancies. All seems
subject to no change, when a letter arrives from Irma, Daniel's
wife? saying she has gone away with Sporty Morris, the real
father of her child. This leaves Daniel free to join.Charlotte

at- Boner- institute in Alabama. It is clear he...ri.11_.catchl

 

10Ralf. Coleman, I'Paradox," Sgtur I dgy m 9.12.111.
April, 1930, p. 10.

24

the next train and become a teacher, a salute to education.
Like so many of these early one-act plays published
in ephemeral periodicals, Paradox demonstrates no literary
significance; Obviously, the playwright was trying to show
a cleverness by attempting to write a story illustrative of
a paradox. He uses the 0. Henry technique of structuring an
unexpected if not somewhat abrupt ending, as a means of supplying
the paradoxical theme.
The social significance which the play displays is
the continued tendency by Negro playwrights to glorify the
Negro by making the hero not only a personification of goOdness,
but also associating him.with intelligence and higher learning.
This attempt is made through use of non-colloquial dialogue
as well as plot. In this particular play there is no indi-
cation that Daniel would resort to physical retaliation in
order to vindicate the injustices rendered by society. It
is one of the few plays written by Negro playwrights that
does not deal with the race war.
In the early 1930's Randolph Edmonds wrote Everypgn's
_Ia_n_d_ (one-act) and Doris I.“ Price wrote her one-act play,
Brlght Heggllion. Both piays use their heroes to forward the
notion of Negro desire for dignity and recognition.11
Edmonds sets forth his theme by causing two char-

.acters, Soul Number One and Soul Number Two, to meet in limbo.

‘They are two American soldiers who have been killed in action

 

11Brink and Harris, p. 163.

25

during World war I. There is no disturbance of status-quo
until Soul Number Two discovers that Soul Number One was a
Negro when he was alive. The consequence of such revelation
precipitates earthly prejudice. The entire matter threatens
to reach a stalemate when Mars appears and pronounces:
"Everyone who dies on the battlefield is a brother, and all
are one in the heaven of war." The Negro hero responds, "In
the darkness of night everything is the same color."12 The
play ends with Soul Number Two asking that he be forgiven.
The plot structure is flimsy: however, despite structural
weakness, Soul Number One secures a desired dignity and recog-
nition.

Bright Medallion is set in the Negro district of a
suburban town in Texas about 1919. Sammy is not described
as a Northern Negro or of splendid physical parts or educated.
The emphasis is upon his desire for recognition. In his own
mind, Sammy is a war hero: When the protagonist first appears,
he is conspicuously wearing a medal. The business of his
bravery is forwarded immediately.

SAMMY
Were'd I git it from? Hit's mine. I'se in der war.
BOYS

Den you ain no coward is yer? Soljers ain cowards.
How come yer ain't done beat Ed up befo' now if yer

 

12Randolph Edmonds, "Everyman's Land," Shades 2p;
§pplpy§, ed: Randolph Edmonds (Boston: Meador Publishing
Company: 1930). Po 85.

26
a soljer? Folks is sayin' yer yellow en cain fight.
Yer ain no coward is yer?
SAMMY

New, dis is a hero's badge. I done great deeds in
de war. I killed Germans.

These speeches indicate Sammy's desire to be recognized as
brave and significant, although there is something mysterious
about the sudden appearance of the medal. Sammy has been home
from the war a long time: yet this is the first time he's
worn the badge.

Up until this point, Miss Price promises to render a
tightly knit play about an ordinary Negro with believable
strengths and weaknesses, placing Sammy in the vast stream of
human beings with small dreams and human frailties. Instead
he becomes goodness personified.

In order to accomplish this purpose, Miss Price creates
a number of melodramatic situations. They include an unexpected
apartment fire for which there was neither preparation or
justification, a child rescue from the fire by Sammy, a death
by smoke poisoning for Sammy and full ascent into heaven
accompanied by an angel. All of these events are aimed toward
giving Sammy an opportunity to establish his superior mettle.

ANGEL ,

Hit's God. He wen Sammy to come ter Heaven. He's
a hero now. En he been too good a man fer dis filthy

13Doris Price, "Bright Medallion," Nhiyersity p; .
Michigan Plays, ed‘.” Kenneth Thorpe Rowe (Ann Arbor: George
Wahr Publisher; 1932). p. 283.

27

ole earf. Sammy!“L

The play's structure denies the central character
credibility; and, thus, weakens whatever noble intent the
playwright has to offer. Furthermore, the overuse of senti-
mentality tends to demean the play and cripples the intent.
"Pathos is everywhere one of the most common of emotional
commodities."15 It runs uncontrolled in Bright Medallion.

Unleashed pathos is also at work in Georgia Douglas

Johnson's one-act play, Blue Blood (1926). This is a play

 

that concerns itself with miscegenation. The hero is Randolph
Strong who possesses only admirable characteristics.

As the play begins, Randolph enters with a bunch of
white roses. They are for May Bush who is in the midst of
wedding preparations for her marriage to John Temple. However,
as the two mothers engage in conversation, they compete in an
effort to prove that each is the parent of the superior child.
The consequence of this argument is the revelation that both
May and.John were fathered by a Cap'n Winfield McCallister,
the white banker in town. When the mother reveals this dilemma
to May, she is crushed. The women had kept the situation
secret many years because they feared their husbands would
seek revenge and be rewarded with death for their efforts.

All seems doomed to misery, when Randolph throws open

1511318., p. 310.
John Mason Brown, "The Tragic Blueprint, " European
Theories of the Drama, ed. Barrett H. Clark (3rd ed. rev.;
New York: —Crown* Publishers, 1965), p. 520.

 

;._ ifi - _,_,_,

 

28

the door and says; ”May! Come with me now!" She hesitates,
but Randolph is forceful. When Mother Bush asks him what is
to be told to all the people, he proudly proclaims, "Mother,
Just -- just tell them the bride was stolen by Randolph
Strong?"16 He puts her coat around her, they go out the door
and the curtain falls.

There is no doubt that the playwright constructed
this final sequence in order to demonstrate a certain nobility
as being intrinsic to Negro men. However, without sufficient
insight into the character of Randolph, he becomes a mere
instrument of convenience. He starts the play and ends the
play with sacrifice to another's needs as his singular motive.
This singularity of motive and minor participation in the plot
tends to dwarf the character's potential and, hence, helps
tc»reduce him.to a mere "plaster saint" -- a character whose
intentions are admirable but whose behavior appears shallow
and underdeveloped. Thus, it can be noted, that the play,
§;g§,§;92d, as well as the other plays discussed, have in many
instances, a somewhat absurd treatment of the heroic Negro
character. However, it doesn't seem too far~fetched to note
that Georgia Douglas Johnson and the other Negro phaywrights
were trying to suggest moral integrity as intrinsic to the
nature of their heroes. Although the result is naive, it
nevertheless helps to reinforce the suggestion that all of

 

16Georgia Douglas Johnson, "Blue Blood,” Fifty More
Contemporary Que-Act Plays, ed. Frank Shay (New York: Appleton
and Company, 1928). p. 30h.

 

29

these "plaster saints" were probably designed to counteract
an inferiority doctrine which has been "an ever-present under-
current in Negro consciousness."17

Such Observations seem to suggest that Negroes were
resisting their inferior status and wrote plays to suggest
historically verifiable reasons for race pride. For example,
the one-act play, Ehé.§l§2§ Horseman (1929), by Willis Rich-
ardson and the four-act play, An§§;_g£,éga2y,(1929). by Maud
Cuney Hare both seem written simply to point out to their
intended Negro audiences that the Negro has a tradition and
a history of which he can.and should be proud. The plots of
these plays are especially tedious and the language labored,
but, again, the heroes point to a basic concern -- recognition.

The play with the most literary merit featuring an
ideal hero type is Theodore werd's three-act play, 93; Lap;
(1946). The hero is Joshuah Tain, who, unlike his prede-
cessors, is multi-dimensional and much more human. This is
made possible by the three-act play form.affording more
opportunities for character development; and by the play-
wright's use of more highly assimilated playwriting skill.

9!; Tan} is set on an island off the Georgia coast
in.1865. Before the Civil war, it had been owned by a rich
and villainous planter, but it is now inhabited by a colony

of Nbgroes, who have taken possession of it under the terms

 

17Knh1ke, p. 50.

 

30

of General Sherman's promise of forty acres and a mule for
every slave. Throughout the play, as the Negroes plant gar-
dens and build homes, there is the constant fear that the
original white owners will return to claim the land as their
own. Eventually this happens and, although the Negroes fight
for what they believe belongs to them, they are killed.

Theodore ward has portrayed Joshuah and his people
.with great warmth and understanding. This treatment:helps to
elicit sympathy for Joshuah when his simple desires, as illus-
trated in the following speech, are denied him by the cruelty
of white people.

. . . this ilun 'n.mah fawty. Well, they jes bout
sum up mah heart's desire. Ah cain't hardly wait t'
git de mill started. Ah want t' build me er house,
Delphine. Ah want t' build it yonder, mongst dem
oaks, facin de sea. Ah want t' build it 10W"n
ramblin, wid oak_logs two feet thick 'n well seasoned,
so it'll last . . . . Like de Rock of Ages. Ah
want t' build it wid er fireplace, where ah kin

sit through de long winter nights 'n watch de

logs burnin, maybe catch de sound of de sighin
winds. -- Den, for summer, Ah want t' build me

er porch, where‘Ah kin rair back, prop mah feet up,
'n look cross de wafgr t' Savannah yonder 'n watch
de twinklin lights.

This is a warm and tender dream: it never comes into being.
The Yankee soldiers acting in the planters' interest come to
the island in order to dispossess the Negro farmers. Joshuah
resists in a grand act of dignity:

. . . neither yuh nor all do rest of de planters

put together goin' ever kill de thing we's after.
we know what's what. Yuh think if we ainlt got

.——._~

‘ 18Theodore Ward, "Our Ian'," A Theatre in Your Head,
ed... Kenneth Rowe (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company,
1960), p. 336. .

 

 

31

no lam; we have t' wuk for yuh for nothin. But
yuh never git way wid it. This is ouah lan. We
done wukked 'n paid for it. Not only here, but
all ovah this cruel South. De graves ovah yonder
is mah witness. De slaves sleepin in em.declare
Ahm right fore Gawd. It was us what first did

do tillin.t' make it give up de sweet sustenances
of life, 'n.yuh kin.mark mah word: Though yuh
won't even sell now, the same sun yuh see yonder
goin yit rise 'n find dem what does de tillin
gatherin in de harvest -- Yuh kin go, Cap'n.
we'll hold ouah fiah till yuh git back t'

yore men. 9

The freedmen.take their stand but fall under the merciless
power of the Yankee soldier's cannon. It is, however, an
appealing display of human dignity. Joshuah is "revealed
in the essential character of the classical protagonist,
possessed by a single idea with an inner necessity which

admits of no compromise."20

This single idea is expressed
in Joshuah's first lines of dialogue which say:

What er ilun! What er ilun! . . . Ah no sooner

spied her, fore she commence t' seep into mah

bones, 'n Ah said t' mysef: Joshuah, look yonder;

dar's yo home --.At last, yuh 'n yore people got

or home.2
Throughout the play, Joshuah's words and actions are motivated
by this one desire -- to have a place to call his own. Thus,
the major dramatic question around which the play is structured
becomes a question of whether or not Joshuah will achieve
his heart's desire. This precipitates the conflict and the
action of the play emerges out of the process of moving

toward either fulfillment or denial of this desire. ward

 

19Ibid., p. #14.
201bid., p. 256.
Ziibidi, p. 258.

 

 

 

 

 

 

32

causes the desire to be denied, not because of some inner
weakness or failure on the part of the hero, but because he
is a Negro living in.a society that denies Negroes their
human rights. This, in essence, is the message of the play.
Our Lan' is a social problem drama with the structure built
around a thesis as the center of meaning: that denial of
human rights to Negroes is motivated more by greed than by
logic.

In order to justify this thesis, ward makes his hero
as worthy of human rights as possible to the point that
Joshuah becomes goodness personified.

Critics have long pondered the phenomenon that

well drawn and convincing evil, negative and des-

tructive characters abound in literature but con-

vincing 'good' or positive characters are rare.

We get one in Joshuah Tain, the blacksmith who

leads the farmers in Our Lan'. We have an

extraordinary impression of his goodness and

strength. . . .2
It is this extraordinary goodness that makes it difficult to
identify with Joshuah and be enriched by his willingness to
take suffering upon himself. Thus, Joshuah loses universal
appeal. Despite an impression of extraordinary goodness and
strength, there is no projection upon the stage of an internal
conflict, of the inner universe of a man with which all can
identify. The causal sequences of suffering rest within the

inherent evils of a social structure against Which Joshuah

is a helpless victim. Because of his race, he is a victim of

 

221bid., p. 258.

33

social selfishness. Joshuah is a good man ruined by the
unworthy ambitions of white man.

However, good morality does not necessarily produce
good plays. It does not

. . . guarantee them freedom from an apparent cheapness

and insincerity. Our Lan' says incontrovertible

things about Justice and dignity for the Negro, but

since it does so very much in the manner of an

1890 melodrama discussing the rewards of chastity

and the iniquity of mortgages, i§§ political

impact strikes me as negligible.
Thus, by using a melodramatic plot formula and unwarranted
victimization for his hero, ward succeeded in gaining critical
disapproval of his play.

Along with the melodramatic plot, the lack of inner
conflict helped to assist Eddie Dowling's misinterpretation
of the Broadway production which he directed.

Eddie Dowling ushered in Mr. ward's play 'Just like

children.’ The result was a commercial failure, one

that was to be pointed to again and again as evidence

that Negro drama does fail -- but no one agged that

it fails when polluted and misinterpreted.
According to ward, what Mr. Dowling failed to recognize in
Our Lan' was its revolutionary theme.25 But this theme is
easy to:miss when.dominated by a hero's overt goodness and
poetic language. It is difficult, for these reasons, to con-
sider Joshuah as a revolutionary catalyst. Yet, within the
framework of Negro history that includes submissiveness to

white dominance, ward was trying to say through Joshuah's

 

23Woolcott Gibbs, ”Our Lan'.” §§3_Yorker, XXIII
(October 4, i9h7), pp. 49-50.
itchell, p. 13“.
ZSIbid.

34

resistance that the new disposition of Negro heroes is a
willingness to fight for his rights. In ward's conception,
what made his particular hero heroic was an uncompromised
willingness to fight. A.revolutionary mood is what the
character is trying to reveal about the theme of the play.26
Nearly everyone failed to notice this point, including Eddie
Dowling "who tried to make it into Th§_§y§gp,Pastures."27
Dowling's conception of 9_ur__ __,Ia_n_' was not singular.
It was echoed by Kenneth Rowe whose major comment regarding
the play was that it "gives dignity and stature to the Negro

people."28

Dowling was known to have said during rehearsals,
"Aren't they beautiful?"29

Rowe's particular emphasis in his analysis of ward's
play is upon the inherent empressiveness and beauty of the
drama. This is primarily achieved through the skillful
creation of Negro folk speech.

Certainly, of all the playwrights discussed in this
chapter, only Theodore Hard commands poetic respect. He seems
to possess a commendable ability to use words and often suc-
ceeds, through language, in conveying the certain.meanings
he had in.mind which governed his writing. For example,
through poetic speeches ridh in rhythm and movement, Joshuah's

dream gathers beauty and depth. Although there is a lack of

 

261b1d.

271bid.

28Rowe, p. 259.
29nitohe11, p. 134.

35

inner conflict, Joshuah's speeches are not void of the inner
feelings of humiliation, joy, loneliness and love which are
part of the universal mainstream of emotions and can be shared
by all who dare to feel. In this sense, Rowe is Justified in
believing that "the play crosses all barriers of race and
culture and gives dignity to humanity."30 In this manner, a
background of feelings, other than the Negro dream, are brought
to fulfillment through poetic language. This language is not
maudlin nor colloquial nor static: it is folk speech of the

1 This cannot

calibre noted in plays by Synge and C'Casey.3
be said of the dialectal language used in other plays discussed
in this chapter. The language in these works is characterized
by static crudeness and a lack of rhythm and movement.

Yet, despite the beauty of language in,Q 3 Lap}, the
artificiality of plot which is similar to the other plays
under discussion, tends to reduce the hero's credibility
causing him to lose potential power of persuasion and believ-
ability. If the plot had been less manipulated, audiences
more conditioned to recognizing the revolutionary nature of
the play and Joshuah's conflicts internalized, perhaps Joshuah
Tain.might have seemed more universally meaningful and less
of a hero of unbelievably total goodness.

Up until this point, this kind of Negro hero seems

relegated to works written by members of his own.race. However,

 

30Rowe, p. 259.
311bid., p. 260.

 

 

 

36

this kind of unnatural goodness in the hero is not entirely
absent from the works of white authors. Beresford Gale's
The Hand ofF e(1919) contains a Negro hero who is equally
honest, generous and brave. It is also characterized by plot
manipulation, and a questionable central idea. But unlike
the other plays, there is no emphasis upon this hero's edu-
cation, or his ability to stand up to whites, or upon his
being a Northern Negro as evidenced in dramas written by
Negroes. Rather, the emphasis is upon the character's suc-
cess as achieved by "the hand of fate” which works generously
through a white friend named Harris who has dedicated his
life to saving impoverished Negroes.

HARRIS

There is a feeling on the part of those who would
really help the Negro to shelter themselves behind
the veil of public sentiment, and to hand out donations
of coin and sympathy in a subtle and underhand
manner that does not meet with my approval. I
have thrown disguises to the wind, I have done
away with public sentiment, and freed myself from
the thraldom of society, and emulating the

example of that great martyr, the noble emanci-
pator Abraham Lincoln, in the face of all, high

or low, rich or poor, bond or free, I proclaim
myself the Negro's friend.

RICHARD

That, sir, is more than I have heard in a lifetime.
Never before has white man so eXpressed himself in
my hearing. Never before has voice so true . . .
echoed o'er the hills of Farmdale Hall, and what
e'er your name, or who'er you be, from the depths
of my heart, I thank you. May the echo of your
voice resound throughout this mighty land, and may
it gladden the agarts of a thousand as it has
gladdened mine .

 

32Beresford Gale, The Hand of Fate (Nashville: a. n. E.
Sunday School union, 1919), p. 11._

 

 

37

After several similarly melodramatic episodes in which
Richard is about to lose the "old homestead," Harris turns
up with the right papers to convict the villains, free Richard,

precipitate Justice and a tidy ending.
RICHARD

I thank you, Mr. Harris. Words cannot eXpress the
gratitude I feel to you, not only for this, but for
the many acts of kindness and friendship you have
shown.me all my life.

HARRIS

Don't thank.me, man, it's nothing, nothing. What I
have done, I was in duty bound to do. In doing our
little to help your race, we are but helping our-
selves above the memories of the past; and as a
people let us forget our color and caste, and unite
in the one grand cause of making the American
people the greatest nation in the world . .'. .

RICHARD
Yes, my friend, in the wise Providence of God, he
has saved me from what must have been a terrible
fate. (To May Brooks). This deliverance, my
darling, is stranger than fiction, --
A romance of Love and Rate
A.guide to the wise, and a help to the weak;
For this is 'The Hand of Fate.'33
This is an obvious didactic playlet geared to the
prescription of righteousness' rewards. It is useful to this
study only insofar as it denotes a significant difference
between the treatment of ideal Negro types. At the heart of
:many Negro heroes created by members of the Negro race is a

quality of self-sufficiency devoid of white man's control;

 

33Ibid., p. 29.

38

whereas, Richard walker, is beholden to the white benefactor.
In contrast, there is not a single Negro-written drama in
which this kind of adoring dependence of Negro upon white
exists.

In conclusion, then, the major factor which the heroes
of this chapter have in common is purity. Each playwright has
ramoved from his central character negative characteristics
which do not comport with virtue.

Outside this central unifying factor, there are a
number of awkward structural problems. For instance, when
the emphasis is placed upon an educated hero, he speaks in a
stilted fashion which is overtly free from dialect in contrast
to the uneducated Negroes who have dialectical and colloquial
language. When the emphasis is not upon the uneducated char-
acter as in.Bright Medallion and 93;,Lgp}, the status of the
hero is enhanced by the use of folk speech.

Some of the earlier playwrights in this chapter used
the concept of the Northern Negro to enhance the hero's
stature. This suggests an identification with this section
of the United States as an area of potential betterment for
Ebgroes. Frank Wilson and G. D. Lipscomb were influenced by
this idea so that part of what was to be admired in their
heroes was the fact they were "Northern."

The outstanding contrast rests between treatment or
the ideal hero type by white and Negro playwrights. For the
.Negro writer, the moral fibre of the hero is determined by

his mningness to compromise with the white man's law. It

" v7!

39

is also determined by a self reliance. In contrast, the
white manis play. Th§,g§gg_g§_§§§§, depicts a Negro's rewards
and glorification dependent upon white assistance.

With the exception of Qg;_L§gf the plays of this
chapter are structurally primitive. In many instances they
are only one or two pages in length which allows insufficient
development of either plot or character. The stilted dialogue,
the child-like emphasis upon goodness, and the brevity of
these plays cause them to be unworthy of literary scholarship.

Their merit seems limited to their collective ability
to point toward revelation of Negro need for an admirable
identification. They particularly indicate that a central
feature of the admirable qualities is an ability to stand up
to the white man without compromise. As social tracts these
plays show initial indications of the break-down of Negro

fear of whites .

CHAPTER II
THE TRAGIC MULAITO

One of the categories into which Sterling Brown

believes American literature has incarcerated the Negro is

1

that of the "Tragic Mulatto." Between 1910 and 1935 four

Negro heroes were created who were characteristic of this
literary type. Three of these represent Negro character as
seen by white authors, and one a Negro character as seen by
a Negro author. In certain respects, the treatment is exactly
the same; in »other areas it is significantly different.
According to Webster, the mulattoy. in strictly the
generic sense, is the first generation offspring of a pure
Negro and a white.

But the sociologist more adequately describes the
mulatto as a cultural hybrid, as a stranded per-
sonality living in the margin of fixed status . . . .
In the brief span of one life he is faced with the
predicament of somehow resolving within.himse1f the
struggle between two cultures and two races which
over a period of three hundred years have not get
become completely compatible in American life.

The term tragic mulatto, as referred to in American
fiction and drama, denotes a light-colored, mixed-blooded

character. It is the common lot of this character to suffer

“A _

1Gross, p. 10.
2PeneIOpe Bullock, "The Mulatto in American Fiction,"
gallon, VI (ist Quarter, 19h5), p. 78.

no

41

unmercifully due to difficulties arising from his bi-racial
background, a situation which lends itself to pathos,
exaggeration and melodrama. Many stereotypes of the tragic
mulatto are bound to this position.most1y by a formula
summarized in the following lines:

My old man died in a fine big house

My ma died in a shack

I wonder where I'm gonna die

Being neither white nor b1ack?3
These direct descendents of Boucicault's‘ggg (Th2 Octoroon)
are inevitably caught in a patterned series of circumstances
that seem to spell some form of loss, defeat, or death for
them. Whether the character is introduced as a Negro or a
white who eventually is revealed to be a Negro, the develop-
mental process for these characters is downward.

The three most common thematic patterns surrounding
the tragic mulatto are the ideas of dessertion on the part
Of the white relative, envy and regret when speaking of white
possessions and violent rejection by members of both races.

An examination of Edward Sheldon's The Nigger (1910), Paul
Green's lg,ébraham's Bosom (1927), Samson Raphaelson's White

 

Mgn_(1935), and Langston Hughes' Mulatto (1928) tends to

support this observation.
Edward Sheldon's play,vThe Nigger, is the most roman-
ticized of these tragic mulatto stories. As the study will

 

3Arthur P. Davis, "The Tragic Mulatto Theme in Six
Works of Langston Hughes," Phylon, XVI (2nd Quarter, 1953).

Po 195.

42

clarify, consideration of the Negro in a romantic light
exercising freedom of fancy is characteristic of the white
author. Alain Locke, noted Negro critic, declares this to
be the result of "self-justifying dream materials of the
haunted lower layers of the public mind."4

Thg_Nigger is a three-act problem play concerning a
Southern gentleman who, having just been elected governor of
the state and standing on the verge of marrying a beautiful
Southern belle, suddenly discovers he's part Negro. Sheldon
designs this character to suggest physical and emotional
attractiveness. Philip Morrow is a tall, dark, slender young
man of about thirty-five, with well-built male figure. His
manner is full of Southern charm, his voice is usually a
musical drawl, but he shows the possibilities of fire beneath,
an image of heightened romantic power. Georgiana Byrd,
Philip's sweetheart, is quick to respond, "You.make love
so beautifully . . . Nobody else has evah done it qua'tah as
well! There's something about you -- I don't know what --
I've felt it all my life -- 0h!"5 Thus, Philip Morrow is
introduced in a scene flavored with honeysuckle, Wisteria,
huge golden.moons and an aura of mystery. It is true romance.

until a designing, self-centered cousin arrives on the scene.

This is Clif Noyes who, for the sake of preserving his liquor

“Alain Locke, ”American Literary Tradition and the
Negro,” Modern ngrterlz, III (1926), p. 215.

5Rdward gheldon, The Nigger (New York: The Macmillan
COO, 1910 g P. 5 .

43

business steals a love letter from Philip's attic which he
pockets for convenient purposes of future blackmail. The
letter was written to Philip's grandfather by his quadroon
establishing the blood background of the hero's father, which
is mixed, and, consequently, marking him.

As the course of the play's action develops, Philip
is elected governor of an unspecified Southern state. Upon
assuming office he is immediately confronted with the question
of open market liquor sales. Philip is convinced that the
liquor business should be outlawed; and as governor, he
intends to veto the "wet law" and fight for a dry state.
Since liquor is Clif's business, he is opposed to such action.
He threatens Philip by promising full exposure of his identity
unless he refuses to sign the prohibition bill. After a
violent mental struggle, Philip decides to accept his identity,
sign the bill and resign his position. The play concludes
with a sermon on the "fruits of bloody to'ment."

PHILIP
Well, heah is our Ame'can people an' they've done
a big wrong thing -- stealin' the niggahs from
Africa an' bringin' 'em ovah heah fo' theah own
selfish use -- an' a thing like that couldn't
help endin' -- as it has ended -- in bloody
to'ment! We're a sufferin' it now, but d'you
think it's goin' t' last? D'you think we're
no a-goin' t' rise up from it a strongah an'
a wisah an' a kindah people? D'you think
it's not wo'thwhile -- all this? Why, if it
weren't -- a thousand times ovah! -- what would
be the use 0' strugglin' and livin' any longah?

Why shouldn't ev'ry one get rid of it all by
takin' a headah right into the da'k? . . . An'

4h

it's just the same, on a littlah scale, with me.
My gran'fathah did somethin' wrong, an' it's
resultin' in mighty seveah pain fo' ev'ry one
conce'ned. But aftah this pain's been used --
fo' it has a use, an' a good one, too! -- why,
we'll get the fruits o' the whole eXperience,
an' I reckon they'll make up fo' ev'rythin'! . . . .
we've got t' b'lieve it whethah we want to or
not -- theah's nothin' left fo' us t' do!

The final good ~- that's what it is, the final
good! An' we gon't let anythin' keep us from
gettin' to it!

In this final speech, Sheldon turns the hero into a
nobly forgiving black. Negroes claim that such forgiveness
tends to assuage the white man's guilty conscience. As
James Baldwin has stated:

Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable
ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an
innocuous but piquant confection and to trans-
form their moral contradictions, or public
discussion of such gontradictions, into a proud
decoration . . . .

Phiflip's final speech is illustrative of this attempt
to "alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant
confection" as well as being suggestive of the "dream
materials" used by whites for self-justification. As the
Negro-written protest plays tend to verify, the Negro does
not want white America to forget all of these harsh realities;
he wants them remembered. He wants an atonement for the
brutalities inflicted upon them.

Nevertheless, despite the claim that The Nigger is

too "sugary" and too "indefinite both in spirit and aim to

 

61bid., pp. 254-255.
7James Baldwin, Notes 92.; Native Son (Boston: Beacon
Press: 1955): p0 720

45

have any value beyond that of melodrama,"8 the play must be

considered valuable because it dared to treat a highly contro-
versial subject. As a problem solving play, it offered a
solution that characterizes white thinking -- quiet acceptance
of the evils of slavery and willingness to convert such evils
into undefined ultimate good.

. . . when the white man in America looks at the

Negro he is torn by a conflict between his emotions

and his intellect. His intellect tells him that

the Negro has indeed suffered years of discrimi-

nation, directly contradicting the American creed

of equality for all.9
Sheldon's intellect tells him that the idea of discrimination
is wrong as suggested through The Nigger's dialogue, plot
and character.

In The Nigger Mr. Sheldon was sincere and angry,

and he said things the American theatre had

never heard before. . . . Throughout the play

Mr. Sheldon added comments about lynching,

discrimination and miscegenation that created

a sensation on the American stage.
In terms of purpose, Mr. Sheldon was concerned with truth of
life. He was aware of a "felt difficulty" in American society
and criticized a value system that suggested a man's accom-
plishments were meaningless if his ancestry included the
Negro race. The use of melodramatic plot devices such as
"the suspense of fear and its release"11 coupled with an

abundance of tears and pathos tend to mask the play's sincere

 

8"Drama and Music," Th2 Nation, XCI (September 22,
1910). pg 272.

Brink and Harris, p. 155.

10Mitche11, p. 39.

11Rowe, p. 138.

46

concerns and make it seem pretentious.

Mbny of the circumstances surrounding Philip are
part of the tragic mulatto stereotypic patterning such as
rejection by the white woman, Georgia, (who was to become
Philip's wife), the distrust on the part of the Negroes as
well as the whites, and the promise of isolation and lone-
liness. However, Philip's reactions to these dilemmas do
not follow a standardized pattern. The character rises to
meet the final occasion manfully and does not indicate per-
sonal failure or defeat. He is determined to meet all of
these conditions directly and hope that goodness will emerge.
Supposedly, this form of optimism was characteristic of the
playwright's personal approach to life's problems.12 At the
very end of the play, Philip ceases to be a pitied tragic
figure and solicits respect for his bravery.

Two more tragic mulattoes created by white play-
wrights are Paul Grimm in Samson Raphaelson's Whi§g_flgg
(three-act play) and Abraham McCranie in Paul Green's Lg
Abraham's ESE—9.12 (three-act play).

Paul Grimm is the central figure in Whiggwflan, As
the title suggests, Paul begins the play as did Philip in
Th; Nigger, in a position of respectibility and security
because he is conSidered to be a white man. However, unlike

Philip Morrow, Paul knows who he is.

 

12Mitchell, p. 39.

”7

I was born in Harlem. My father was white. He was

a poet. He had no money. My mother was a school

teacher. She was a Mulatto. Her mother was a

slave. She was kind to my father and he married

her. Lucy was born first, and then me1 Richard

is a Negro, too. We're all Octoroons.
Samson Raphaelson, the author of White Man (1935), is con-
cerned with the problem of the Negro Who looks white and
who is, in fact, white but for a small amount of colored
blood in his veins. However, Raphaelson's treatment of the
matter in his play does not evoke anything more than pathos.
In no way does it offer solutions to the problem. It por-
trays Paul as being an island to himself and treats only of
the mulatto's bitter resentment against his mixed background
and his failure in life, which he seems to attribute to that
background. Paul Grimm is a victim whose plight is pitiful.
Disintegration of the character is a long, tedious process.

Having attended Columbia University and secured a

degree, Paul decides to keep on "passing" as he lays the
foundation of a career as an architect and marries a white
girl of good family. However, when Mary tells him of their
forthcoming baby, Paul is compelled to confess his identity.

Listen. I'm a Negro. Mary doesn't say 2 thigg.

She stares §§,himi I'm a Negro. I don't want

you to have a child because I'm a Negro and a

baby might prove it. There i§_silence. Did you

hear what I said? Mary humbly looks g§,him.

I'm seven-eighths white and one-eighth black.

‘gg turns §2_her. She hasn't moved. For Christ's
sake, scream, yell, accuse me, tear at me with

 

13Samson Raphaelson, Accentrgg_Youth and White Man:
Two Plays (New York: Samuel French, 19355, p. 181.

 

 

 

48

your hands, but don't stand still like that.

I'm a Negro, I tell you. You don't believe it,

eh? The world's full of Negroes like me.

We look like white men, and we want 0qu4

chance. I wanted mine. I wanted you.

The baby arrives: although it appears to be white,

Mary rejects it. This is the same thematic patterning
found in The Nigger. However, unlike Philip Morrow, who had
only to eXperience one traumatic denouncement, Paul is sub-
jected to a series of them, which constitute the entire
action of the play. Following Mary's withdrawal, Paul's

father-in-law adds a note of viciousness:

I think you're filthier than -- the blackest nigger
that ever lived! If it weren't for Mary's sake,
I'd have you lynched! You dirty nigger! Paul
grows very white 2;; stands still. Nile turns 29
Mary. Get your things and get out of this house!
And do it quick, before I lose control of myself!

. . . Get out! Get out, I tell you! Nile moves
22_th§.doorw§y, stands there £2;,g.second glarigg
gglPaul, Egg answers gig look. Then deliberately,
Nile spits 2g Egg floor and goes 9gp, slamming Egg
door, leavigg Paul alone.

Rejection number three comes from Pansy -— a Harlem octoroon
who has loved Paul for many years. He asks her to mother his
child and live with him. She is willing until she discovers
he will want her to pass as white. Finally, having wandered
aimlessly around Manhattan, Paul goes back to Harlem. As he
approaches Pansy's apartment ” . . . a black man, very
respectable looking, with gold-rimmed glasses, and in his

shirt sleeves, comes out from the hall . . . . The Negro

 

1“lipid,
15Ibid., p. 202.

49

taps Paul on the shoulder:
NEGRO MAN

You says you waiting for somebody lives here?

PAUL
Yes.
MAN
Who?
PAUL
Just somebody.
MAN

This is a respectable boarding house for colored
school teachers, Mister. We don't like no white
men hanging around.

NEGRO WOMAN

Better go on along, Mister. Keep to your own part
oftmm.

MAN

You been drinking, Mister?

PAUL
No.

WOMAN
You look like a nice gentleman. I advise you not
to wait no longer. There's five school teachers
boarding here, and I takes care of them and none
Of them has no doings with no white men. We can't
afford to have no white man sittigg on our stoop,
Mister. I ask you kindly to go.1

Paul continues to insist on waiting. Stanley, a Negro,

arrives and offers to help move Paul by roushins him uP- This
.______________g

16Ibid., p. 219.

L;

 

 

50

causes the appearance of other Negroes and a fight ensues.
Paul strikes out wildly. Suddenly, sharply the group pulls
back and Paul is standing, sobbing with horror, over the
prostrate body of Stanley. The Negroes flee. Pansy comes
to her beloved Paul and suggests‘that he "Run -- run! For
God's sake, Paul, run away -- oh, my Paul --"
PAUL
Where'll I run to? It's over, Pansy, it's all over.
PANSY
Oh, Paul! Th; Policeman gag pg seen comigg. Curtain.17
Burns Mantle thought that Raphaelson was trying to do the same
thing in his play that Eugene O'Neill did in The Egperor ggggg,
which was "to show that even the near-whites revert to type
at the sound of a tom-tom."18 Frankly, if this was Raphael-
son's intent, he did little in his play to demonstrate it,
beyond engaging his hero in a neighborhood gang fight that
results in accidental death. And like any normal human caught
in a similar predicament, Paul's response is a semblance of
remorse and despair.

The only thing the play seems to suggest is Paul's
statement, "It is the destiny of the Negro race to become
white!" Raphaelson surrounds the idea with dramatic irony
by allowing this ambition to be thwarted and the hero's fate

to be "neither white nor black." Such attitudes are antitheti-

 

171bid., p. 223.
18Burns Mantle, "White Man," New York News, October

199 1936! p9 370

 

 

 

51

cal to ideology forwarded in dramas by Negro playwrights,
which have no admirable characters who voice such a philos-
Ophy. If a Negro author, such as Ralph Ellison, treats this
subject, as he did in Th; Invisible Map .(a novel), he will
show that any tendency to ”pass" stems from an inability to
resist the temptation to have equal treatment which this
method opens to them.
Most Negroes would like a greater measure of these
things they see whites enjoying every day of
Efiziioiivii'thihiigé’éaihihé.iém this 8°“ '°°
Only the White man's concept suggests that becoming white
is a desired destiny of the Negro race.

The remaining two plays, Ig,Abraham's ng gland Mulatto,
are not concerned with "passing." They deal with other matters
surrounding the tragic mulatto. IQ Abraham's Egggg by Paul
Green received the Pulitzer Award for drama in May, 1927.

The play's hero, Abraham’McCranie, (Abe), is superbly drawn

and is in every way a finely sculptured individual revealing
Paul Green's deep understanding and skill. "lg Abraham's
nggm_is one of the most beautiful and tragic of all modern
dramas."20 "Abe is a marvel of genuine characterization."21

The theme of Paul Green's play is one that he was to

use many times.

The story of Abraham McCranie is one that Green was
to retell in other forms, for the theme greatly appealed

 

$9Brink and Harris, p. 155.
0Barrett H. Clark, "Paul Green," Theatre Arts

Magazine XII (October, 1928), p. 73“.
21Julia Cline, "Rise of the American Stage Negro,"

Bremen XXI (January. 1931). p. 10.

 

52

to him; basically, it is a tragedy of aspiration
and defeat. The fact that the characters are
Negroes, and the locale the author's famdliar
turpentine forests and small-town slums of
North Carolina, does not detract from, but
rather strengthens, the universality of the
theme.22
The play takes place in a turpentine wood in Eastern
North Carolina during the late 19th Century. In the opening
scene, three "turpentine hands" relax and talk among them-
selves. They are critical of one of their fellow workers,
Abraham McCranie, who chooses to continue working. Like
other tragic mulattoes, Abraham is depicted from the story's
beginning, as being separated from not only white people, but
from the Negroes as well.
Early in the scene, Abraham's white father, Colonel
Mack, and white brother, Lonnie, arrive in a routine check of
workers and property. In the course of conversation, Abraham
is insulted by Lonnie and retaliates by throwing him into a
briar patch. This action angers the Colonel who beats the
Negro until the latter cries for mercy. After the white men
leave, Abraham's sweetheart, Goldie, pacifies him with
affection and concern.
The second scene of the play reveals Goldie and

Abraham married. They live in poverty and Goldie, who is
nursing their third child, is sick, emaciated and frightened.

 

22Agatha Boyd Adams, Paul Green 2; Chapel Hill (Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Library, 1951), p. 35.

53

Abraham, although disillusioned and bitter, has collected
a number of books which he studies relentlessly in an effort
to educate himself.

At the end of this scene, Abraham is visited by
Colonel Mack, who comes to tell him that Abe's dream of having
his own school in which he can educate Negroes will be given
his financial support. The response in Abraham is one of
overwhelming joy .

However, Abraham fails as a school teacher. He is
unable to control his emotions: therefore, when pupils fail
to respond to his authority, he resorts to beating them.
This angers Negroes as well as whites; and, consequently,
Abraham is relieved of his responsibilities.

But Abraham is persistence itself. The dragging
years failing to dim his hopes, he decides to try again.
Gathering his family together, the McCranies move back to
their cabin on Colonel Mack's land, and Abraham sets about
preparing himself to commence teaching again. However, when
he goes to address the school board, he is severly beaten by
a mob of whites. Nearly wild with humiliation and hurt, he
turns on Lonnie McCranie, whom he meets on his way home, and
unwittingly kills his brother. The play ends with the revenge-
seeking mob of "nigger-hating" whites shooting Abraham

mercilessly.

Much of Abraham McCranie is in keeping with the nine-

 

 

54

teenth century stereotyped mulatto.23 He is the son of a
Southern White aristocratic gentleman and one of his favorite
mistresses.

From his father he has inherited mental capacities

and physical beauty supposedly superior to that

of the white race. Yet despite such an endow-

ment, or because of it, his life is fraught

with tragedy. What privileges and opportun-

ities he may enjoy are short lived; for he is

inevitably a slave. Suffering the degrading

hardships of bondage, he becomes miserable

and bitter. The indomitable spirit of Eis

father rises up within him and rebels.2
In this respect, Green's tragic mulatto does not seem to be
essentially different from the stereotypes of other writers.
His violence, his loneliness, his divided loyalty, his frus—
tration, his maladjustment and his tendency to destroy him-
self are demonstrated throughout the play.

It is the way in which they are demonstrated that
makes Paul Green's play original.

In contrast to Philip Morrow and Paul Grimm, Abraham
is not only a victim of society, he is a victim of himself
as well. Abraham's lack of emotional control and inner
passion's are as responsible for his violence, loneliness,
frustration and maladjustment as the social conditions in
Which he dwells. There is no doubt that Green was aware of
Negro social dilemmas.

Despite the fact that in its last analysis the

play smacks of white man's interpretation, it
reveals great understanding of what the aspiring

 

23Bullock, p. 79.
2”mid.

55

Negro really faces in the South, and gs, in its
effect, a powerful plea for justice.2

But he also understood the mechanics of playwriting which
suggest that a tragic character must be endowed with inner
conflicts associated with the truth of life.27

It is this truth of life about which Green is most

concerned, and as a consequence, the play becomes a thesis

play.

Paul Green will soon perceive that it is the artist's
function to paint, to state, to Sfihibit and not to
argue,to prove, or philos0phize.

The play's thesis is that "ignorance is sin." Abraham mentions
this idea throughout the play, and it is the central idea
in the speech Abraham prepares for the school board.

Ignorance means sin, and sin means destruction,
destruction before the law and destruction in a
man's own heart. The Negro will rise when his
character is of the nature to cause him to rise ~-
for on that the future of the race depends, and
character is mostly to be built by education,
for it cannot exist in ignorance . . . . A
little over forty years ago the white man's power
covered us like the night. Through war and
destruction we was freed. But it was freedom
of the body without freedom of the mind. And
what is freedom of the body without freedom of
the mind? It means nothing. It don't exist.
What we need is thinking people, people who

cry out, education. I been accused of wanting
to make the Negro the equal of the white man.
Been run from pillar to post, living in poverty
because of that belief. But it is false. I
never preached that doctrine. I don't say that
the colored ought to be made equal to the

white in society, now. We are not ready for it

 

26J. A. Rogers, "In Abraham's Bosom," Amsterdam News,
January 5 1927.
27Bowe, p. 137.
8Clark, p. 736.

56

yet. But I do say that we have equal right to
educating free thought and living our lives.
With that all the rest will come . . . . We
must give the children of the future a better
chance than we have had. With this one school
building we can make a good start. Then we
can get more teachers later on, more equipment,
and some day a library where the boys and girls
can read about men that have done something for
the world. And before many years pass we will
be giving instruction in how to farm, how to be
carpenters, how to preach, how to teach, how to
do anything. And what will stop us in the end
from growing into a great Negro college, a
university, a light on a hill, a place the pride
of both black and white! Ain't that the truth,
. . Ain't that a speech equal to the best of
the white, ain't it?9

Green designed a plot which attempted to prove his
thesis that "ignorance means sin, and sin means destruction,
destruction before the law and destruction in a man's own
heart."

Abraham is a black Isaiah, striving through bitter
experiences to raise his people from the perils of
ignorance and superstition. He knows they sleep
physically and mentally, yet he is driven like the 30
prophets of old to lead them.out of their wilderness.
Consequently, the play suggests that unless man educates him-
self, he will remain in bondage, and that the failure of
a man to rise lies partly in his own limitations. Abraham's
ignorance of mature ways in which to control his emotions
continuously causes his downfall. An insult from his white

brother, disrespect from his pupils, rudeness from his son,

cruelty from.white co-workers repeatedly incite the Negro's

29Paul Green, "In Abraham's Bosom," Five Plays of
The South, ed. Paul Green (New York: Hill and wang, 1933),

3Cline, p. 10.

57

temper causing him to lose control of his emotions and bring
him some form of loss. Either he loses his job or his son
runs away or he kills. Abraham's lack of wisdom and insight

in these moments of passion is obvious. Some critics have
argued that Green deliberately chose a mulatto to forward his
thesis because he could justify the mixture of rational and
irrational behavioral tendencies by pointing to the character's
blood mixture.31 This seems to be an arbitrary judgement

and nothing in Green's writings specifically expresses this
intent.

To further promote the idea that "sin means destruc-
tion," Green incorporates a sequence of events that can be
interpreted as hallucinations, as ghosts of the past, or as
dramatic symbolization of the passage in Exodus that says a
child will be visited by the sins of the fathers:

The Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, 'The
Lord, the Lord, is a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but
who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers upon Ehe children, to
the third and fourth generation.3
The sequence of events illustrating this religious concept
are as follows, occuring immediately after Abraham kills his

brother.

Two forms dressed i; the fashion 2; the 1850's steal

out 2; the underbrush. One i§_g,yggpg, good-looking
negress giltwenty, the other §_dandified young white

 

31Davis, p. 196.
32Exodus 34: 6-7.

58

man, about thir rty As they move across the scene
at he rear, the man looks guiltily around him as
if i fear of being “surprised. The woman stops and

ESints to the thicket at the right. g; nods and

motions her to move on. Abe looks pp and sees them

stealipg away. He leaps pp his feet and stares pp
them in stupefaction. Who that woman and white man?
With 9 _joyous cry pp rushes forward. Mammy! Mammy!

That you! This here's Abe, your boy! Mammy! The

figures begin entering the thicket. Mammy! Mammy!
That you, Colonel Mack? Where you going? Stay

 

 

 

 

into the bushes. App stands with pip mouth open,
staring after them. What's all this? Must be
another dream -- a dream . . . . God damn 'em!
There they like hogs! Tpp fearful truth breaks
upon ppp gpg pp shrieks. Stop it! Stop that,
Mammy, Colonel Mack! Rushipg towards the bushes
again gpd stopping as if spell-bound. Stop that,
I tell you, that's me! ”That's me'

 

 

Abraham is the child of this lust. He is tortured and unful-
filled, and soon to be destroyed. Abraham must be held respon-
sible for his deeds: at the same time, this dream sequence
points to a destructive agent that lies outside of the
character prompting him to cry, "No, no, the trouble's out
there, around me, everywhere around me."34 In this respect,
not only does Green suggest that a man's failure is caused
by inner weaknesses, but also by those mysterious forces that
exercise decisions outside the control of man.

Green is pre-occupied with the metaphysical riddles
of existence and the ways of God with man,35 making the play
not a tragedy of a mulatto, but primarily a religious drama

concerned with a religious thesis. In Abraham's death speech,

 

33Ibid.. p. 259.
34Ibid., p. 260.
35Clark, p. 736.

 

59

it is not so much a Negro asking to be understood and crying
out against the injustices of society as it is an eschato-
logical pronouncement:

But they'll wake, they'll wake -- a crack of
thunder and deep divided from deep -- a light!
A light, and it will be! We got to be free,
freedom of the soul and of the mind. Ignorance
means sin and sin means destruction. Shoutipg.
Freedom! Freedom! Lifting pp his voice.

Yea, yea, it was writ, 'Man that is born of
woman is of few days and full of trouble . . . . '
Like the wind with no home. Ayh, ayh, nigger
man, nigger man -- §e_opens he door. I go
talk to 'em, I go meet 'em.3

According to the Chicago Defender, Abraham's "refusal
to stay in his place" was the "first cry on the stage of the
advent of the militant type of 'new Negro'."37 But this seems
hardly the case. It is more the story of a "would be educator
without sense or good judgement."38

The keynote to Green's interpretations lies in his
expressed belief that the enslavement of the Negro
is not entirely the result of the white man's treat-
ment of him, nor because of the economic burden
placed upon his shoulders. The over-powering
tragedy of it all is that as Green portrays him,
the Negro is beaten again and again by his own
inherent inadequacies. Abraham cannot 'bide h§§
time', working slowly toward his goal . . . .
He is also destroyed because of the ”sins of the past."
Perhaps this is why a Negro critic writes that " . . . . in

Abraham's Bosom,is not a great play. It seems to have little

 

36Ibid., p. 266.
37"In Abraham's Bosom Returns to the Stage in New York
City," The Chicago Defender, July 2, 1932.
Beatrice Fultz Westmoreland, "The Negro in American
Drama," (Unpublished Master's Thesis, University of Kansas,

1937). p 6 .
39Ibid., pp. 66-67.

60

relationship to the plight of the American Negro."}+O Paul
Green uses the Negro hero to help reinforce a thesis which
lies outside the realm of Negro issues and social concerns.
Such purpose often fails to capture Negro respect. In con-
trast, Langston Hughes in Mulatto (three-act) uses the Negro
hero to help reinforce a thesis which lies inside the realm
of Negro issues and social concerns. Mulatto which was written
in 1928 when Hughes was working with the Hedgerow Theatre
at Moylan Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, exemplifies the basic
notion that the hero's victimization is due primarily to
social and familial prejudices. Hughes tries to establish a
tragic mulatto whose violence, loneliness, social maladjust-
ments and tendencies toward self-destruction are caused by
his father's rejection of him. The son's doomed fate is due
to white prejudice and its tendency to ignore the assumption
of responsibilities which should not be ignored. Hughes
does not romanticize the protagonist, as Sheldon does in
Th9 Nigger, nor does he use him for philosophical axe-grinding,
as Paul Green does in $3 Abraham's ggggg; he tries to portray
a young man who is sensitive, intelligent, educated and
ambitious -- directly related to ideal Negro heroes who dare
to stand up to the white man.

Langston Hughes was a Negro poet of distinction.

He wrote in depth about the discrimination practiced against

 

quitchell, p. 85.

 

61

his race and resultant suffering. However, this cannot be
said about his play, Mulatto, which "translates that feeling
into the weary, familiar stuff of scolding harangues and
shrill melodrama."u1

Mulatto is set in the living room of a large mansion
on a plantation in Georgia. The play is.concerned with
Colonel Thomas Norwood, Cora Lewis, his housekeeper and mis-
tress, and their children. One of the children, William,
is a black boy, properly humble to his white masters; another,
a daughter, is safe in New York, passing for white. The two
youngest, Bert and Sallie, return to the South from schooling
in the North. It is suggested that they could pass for
"whites."

The story is chiefly of the youngest son, Bert Lewis.
A major stereotyped figure emerges from the play: the son
of a Southern White Aristocratic Gentleman and one of his
favorite slave mistresses. Bert's life is fraught with
tragedy. What privileges and opportunities he may enjoy are
short-lived. Suffering the degrading hardships of bondage
and rejection, he is miserable and bitter.42

The outward manifestations of the son's rebellion
are so gross that he seems foolhardy, exhibition-

istic and more an abstraction of defiance than a
flesh and blood, genuinely frustrated character.”3

 

ulBichard Lockridge, "The New Play,” N23,York §En,
October fig, 1935, p. 3b.
Bullock, p. 79.
3Fannie E. Frazier Hicklin, "The American Negro
Playwright" (Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of
Wisconsin, 1964), p. 248.

62

NORWOOD

. . . Cora, if you want that hardheaded yellow son
of yours to get along around here, he'd better
listen to me. He's no more than any other black
buck on this plantation -— due to work like the rest
of them. I don't take such a performance from
nobody under me -- driving off in the middle of

the day to town, after I've told him to bend his
back in that cotton. How's Talbot going to keep

the rest of those darkies working right if that boy's
allowed to set that kind of an example? Just be-
cause Bert's your son, and I've been damn fool
enough to send him off to school for five or six
years, he thinks he has a right to privileges,
acting as if he owned tBis place since he's been
back here this summer.“

Bert's defiant behavior is further described by Higgins, a
white heighbor, who emphasizes Bert's aggressiveness:
HIGGINS

. . . Norwood, that damned yellow nigger buck of
yours that drives that new Ford tried his best just
now to push my car off the road, then got in front
of me and blew dust in my face for the last mile
coming down to your gate, trying to beat me in
here -- which he did. Such a deliberate piece

of impudence I don't know if I've ever seen out

of a nigger before in all the sixty years I've
lived in this county . . . . He's not gonna be
around here long -- not the way he's acting. The
white folks in town'll see to that. Knowing he's
one of your yard niggers, Norwood, I thought

I ought to come and tell you. The white folks

at the Junction aren't intending to put up with
him.much longer. And I don't know what good the
jail would do him once he got in there. . . .
Seems like the post office can't give money

orders back -— rule against it. Your nigger
started to argue, and the girl at the window

-- Miss Gray -- got scared and yelled for some

of the mail clerks. They threw Bert out of the
office, that's all. But that's enough. Lucky no-
thing more didn't happen, Indignantlz. That Bert

 

“nLangston Hughes, Five Plays (Bloomington, Indiana
university Press, 1963), p. 7.

63

needs a damn good beating -- talking back to a white
woman -- and I'd like to give it to him myself,

the way he kicked the dust up in.my eyes all the
way down the road coming out here. He was mad,

I reckon. That's one yellow buck don't know

his place, Tom , and it's your figult he don't --
sending 'em off to be educated.

When Bert appears, he behaves in the manner described,
gaining no sympathy for Mr. Hughes' thesis and fostering
little if any respect for the hero.

Paralleling the speeches of Higgins and Norwood, the
play's exposition continues its build toward Bert's entrance
by further describing his public character through a conver-
sation transpiring between Bert's older brother, William,
and his mother; William knows his place and is critical of
Bert.

WILLIAM

Ma, you know it 'twarn't me told him. Bert's the
one been goin' all over de plantation since he come
back from Atlanta remindin' folks right out we's
Colonel Norwood's chilluns . . . . He comes down

to my shack tellin' Billy and Marybell they got

a white man for grandpa. He's gonna get my
chilluns in trouble sho' -- like he got himself

in trouble when Colonel Tom whipped him.

CORA

went runnin' up to Colonel Tom out in de horse
stables when de Colonel was showin' off his horses
-- I 'members so well -- to fine white company
from town. Lawd, that boy's always been foolish!
He went runnin' up and grabbed a-holt de Colonel
and yelled right in front 0' de white folks'
faces, '0 papa, Cora say de dinner's ready,

papa!' Ain't never called him.papa before, and

 

“51b;d., p. 9.

64

I don't know where he got it from. And Colonel
Tom knocked him.right backwards under de horse's
feet.

WILLIAM

And when.de company were gone, he beat that boy
unmerciful.

CUBA

I thought sho' he were gonna kill ma chile that day.
And he were mad at me, too, for months. Said I

was teaching you chilluns who they pappy were.

Up till then Bert had been his favorite little
colored child round here.

WILLIAM

He's sho' growed more like de Colonel all de time,
ain't he? Bert thinks he's a real white man his-
self now. Look at de first thing he did when he
come home, he ain't seen de Colonel in six years
-- and Bert sticks out his hand fo' to shake hands
with him! . . . Just like white folks! And de
Colonel turns his back and walks off. Can't blame
him. He ain't used to such doings from colored
folks. God knows what's got into Bert since he
come back. He's acting like a fool -- just like
he was a boss man round here. Won't even say 'Yes,
sir' and 'No, sir' no more to de white folks.
Talbot asked him warn't he gonna work in de field
this mornin'. Bert say 'No!' and turn.and walk
away. White man.so mad, I could see him nearly
foam at de mouth. If he warn't yo' chile, ma, he'd
been knocked in de head fo' now . . . . And you
can't talk to him. I tried to tell him.something
the other day, but he just laughed at me, and said
we's all just scared niggers on this plantation.
Says he ain't no nigger, no how. He's a Norwood.
He's half-white, and he's gonna act like it.

And this Georgia, too!

CORA

I's scared to death for de boy, William. I don't
know what to do. De Colonel says he won't send
him.off to school no mo'. Says he's mo' sassy and
impudent now than.any nigger he ever seed. Bert
never has been like you was, and de girls, quiet
and sensible like you knowed you had to be. De
Colonel say he's gonna make Bert stay here now

and work on this plantation like de rest of his

65

niggers. He's gonna show him.what color he is.
Like that time when he beat him for callin' him
'papa.' He say he's gwine to teach him his place
and make de boy know where he belongs. Seems like
me or you can't show him. Colonel Tom has to take
him.in hand, or these white folks'1& kill him
around here and then -- oh, My God! 6

Certainly, the thematic patterning is at work so that the
business of violent rejection, loneliness, lack of identity
and loss of life are in the making. Bert isn't a Negro in
his own mind, and he isn't a white man in the minds of the
others. His blood is mixed: his place is nowhere.

Bert's described arrogance accompanies him on his
initial appearance. He walks in through the front door: this
is against the rules. The mulatto's first speech immediately
reveals the conflict between white father and rejected son:

Oh, I knew that the Colonel wasn't here. I passed
him.and old man Higgins on the road down by the
south patch. He wouldn't even look at me when I
waved at him. Half playfully. Anyhow, isn't this
my old man's house? Ain't I his son and heir?
Grand § tggtting around. Am I not Mr. Norwood,
Junior?‘

Almost immediately, Paul Green's Abraham can be heard weeping:
"I yo' son, too: you my daddy,” and then Abe's plea: "I

dunno what I am." Carved from the same stock, Bert says:

48

"I'm.no nigger, anyhow, am I, ma?" And then.as if to

convince himself of what he knows is rejected by all who

46Ibidu pp. 1u-15.
figlbid., p. 15.
Ibid.

66

surround him, he weaves a fantasy:
Nobody's gonna fix a place for me. I'm old man
Norwood's son. Nobody fixed a place for him . . . .
Look at me. I'm a 'fay boy. I got the right to
everything everybody else has . . . . I'm half-
white. The Colonel's my father -- the richest man
in the county -- and I'm not going to take a lot
of stuff from nobody if I do have to stay here,
not from the old man either. He thinks I ought
to be out there in the sun working, with Talbot
standing over me like I belonged in the chain
gang. Well, he's got another thought coming!
Stubborgly. I'm a Norwood -- not a field-hand
nigger.
The climax of Mulatto revolves around this singualr con-
viction. Berttries to make his father understand him, accept
him, love him and treat him as an equal. As was so often the
case in discussing the ideal hero type, the Negro-written
dramas made equality the central issue. Hughes does the
same thing in his play.
NORWOOD

Now, I'm going to let you talk to me, but I want you
to talk right.

BERT

Splll standingt What do you.mean; talk right?
NORWOOD

I mean talk like a nigger should to a white man.
BERT

Oh! But I'm not a nigger, Colonel Tom. I'm your
son.

NORWOOD

Testilz. You're Cora's boy.

 

“91b1d., p. 20.

6?

BERT
Women.don't have children by themselves.
NORWOOD

Nigger women don't know the fathers. You're a
bastard . . . . Bert goes toward him calml ,

.sza§2§.his.fatheris.arm.a__.twi§2_ 1t.__£il
the gund falls to the floor. The older man bends

ggckww din startled fury and pain. Don't you
dare put your . .‘.

BERT

Lagghigg. Why don't you shoot, papa? Louder.
Why don't you shoot?

NORWOOD

Gasping_g§,hg struggles, fighting back. . . .
black . . . . hands . . . on . . . you . . .

 

BERT

Hysterically, g§,hg_takes his father bylthe throat.
Why don't you shoot, papa? Norwood's hands claw the

gig helplessly. Bert chokes the struggling white“
mgn,until his bd y grows limp. _Why don't you
shoogé Lagghing. Why don't you shoot? Huh?
Why?

 

The author argues "If one finds 'melodramatic'

elements in.the play, let him.look to the racial situation

in the deep South as it is even today: it is melodramatic."51

This is not a substantial enough argument to elevate the

hero since the protagonist is not a moving or honest character.

The closest Hughes comes to establishing any true emotional

response toward Bert is during the moments of his mother's

 

5°Ibid., p. 24.
511bid., p. xi.

68

grief. But even so, structural examination reveals that
this scene is weakened because the grief is not Justified.

2 . . the picture is searing: what destroys its
effectiveness is Mr. Hughes' weak, amateurish
writing, and the unvarnished fact that the negro
protagonist is an ingrate and obnoxious as the
villainous whites believe . . . .52

Perhaps this childishness of characterization is partially
responsible for such remarks as, "mulatto merely noses
through on the potentialities of its theme, which for the
most part are amateurishly smothered in talk and naive melo-

drama."53 This criticism is echoed by Richard Lockridge who

wrote:

The story is chiefly the boy's. Unfortunately
for Mr. Hughes's thesis, he is a noisy and obnoxious
little brute, richly deserving chastisement
regardless of race. Before the mob sets after
him he has noisily insulted his white father, a
harmless man as kindly as any man of his training
might be: threatened him.and finally killed

him . . . . These attributes in a character
through whom the author obviously meant to sum

up the tragedy of the man Who is 'neither white
nor black' neatly rob the play of most of its
meaning. Mr. Hughes loads it, further, with
dialogue which is neither dramatic nor con-
vincing, and action which relies pretty gfiavily
on the baying of artificial bloodhounds.

"Many critics complained that the play was too realistic, too
bitter and too hostile. Nevertheless, audiences flocked to

it, and the play enjoyed a long run."55

523. 3.. Theatre Arts Mgnthly,(December 1935), p. 902.

53Alain Locke, "Deep River," ortunit , XIV
(January 1936). p. 9.

BbLockridge, p. 3n.

55Mitchell. p. 97.

69

It is difficult to say whether Bert is more bitter
and hostile than the tragic mulattoes created by Sheldon,
Green and Raphaelson. Certainly, Bert's overt rage is more
constant.. :Bephaps this play's popularity among Negroes
is a measurement of Negro response to demonstrations of
overt hostility and a reflection of Negro mood and growing
antipathy toward injustices inflicted upon their race by
white Americans.

Each of the playwrights previously examined concen-
trated upon various relationships relative to the mixed-
blooded character which generate difficulties or oppositions
resulting in significant conflicts.56 In the case of Hughes,
this was the common relationship.57 between mulatto and
white father. For Sheldon, the relationship existed between
fiancee and mulatto, for Raphaelson, the relationship between
mulatto and wife; and for Green, the relationship existed
between mulatto and himself, his father, brother and the
universe.

Hughes concentrated upon psychological interaction,
Sheldon focused upon a political point of view as well as
psychological interaction, Green dealt with a philosophic
concept primarily, and Raphaelson tried to depict character
and an ungrounded notion that the Negro's destiny is to

become white.

 

56John Gassner, Producing the Play (New York: The
Dryden Prgss, 1941), p. 18.
5 Bullock, p. 79.

‘éL—

 

70

Because of the uniqueness of the tragic mulatto's
situation, it is improbable that these characters are
indicative of Negro aspirations. It can only be noted that
the mulatto created by Hughes, the only Negro playwright,
is the more consistently indignant, hostile and self righteous
in comparison to the heroes created by white authors, Sheldon
and Green. Their heroes seemed periodically concerned with
something other than racial indignities. As for Raphaelson's
concept of destined whiteness for Negroes being indicative
of the Negro dream, there is nothing beyond this play's
imagination to give evidence to such thinking.

In this chapter, the literary criticism seems to

verify that Paul Green's ;Q;Abraham's Bosom merits the praise

 

given it. It demonstrates universality, individuality and
richness of association for those concerned with the poverty
wrought by ignorance. Furthermore, the play demonstrates
clarity, simplicity and a quality language style. There is
some evidence that Paul Green hoped the play would have
social significance; however, there is little evidence to
verify his ambitions toward social reform were enhanced by
his dramatic writings. Too much criticism refers to Green's
'work as folk drama which.means, for most, it is defined as
local color charm

However, despite Green's belief that he knew the

Negro, he failed to realize that before the Negro can be

71

'concerned with philosophical premises, he must first achieve

an identification. It is for this reason the Hughes' hero
in Mulatto could elicit enthusiastic audience response from
Negroes, although the literary craftsmanship of the play
was missing. ”The sense of powerlessness is particularly
destructive to Negro men, for masculinity is closely tied
to power in our society."58 Therefore, Bert's deliberate
assertion for power and identification in his own home
brought understandable responses from Negroes because they
could identify with the need. Therefore, Hughes' play is
socially significant.

As literature, Th2 Nigger is not ranked among American
literary masterpieces. As social reform it has little signif-
icance beyond its awareness of a potentially dangerous social
problem that needed confrontation instead of indifference.
The play's major importance is historical because of the
author's daring willingness to put a controversial issue on
the New York stage. Although the playwright avoided problem
solving and used romantic literary devices to forward his
ideas, nevertheless, Sheldon's concern with injustice toward
Negroes gave historical reckoning to a play that would other-
wise have left no marks.

2h§,§h;tg_g§n,has no significance. Paul Grimm's
thinking, as discussed, is inaccurate. As literature, the

play is shallow and bereft of universality and appeal.

 

58$ilberman, p. 116.

 

CHAPTER III
THE DBEAMER
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
0r fester like a sore --
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over --
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it Just sags
like a heavy load._

Or does it explode? 1
Langston Hughes

Plays with Negro heroes sometimes cast them in the
light of dreamers with deferred dreams.. In the manner of
Langston Hughes' poem, the plots and themes of these plays
treat of the inevitable consequences of deferring the dream.
Characteristically, there is a weary resignation to the
terrors and horrors of existence, or an explosion. Sometimes
the hero weaves a fantasy of his own, enabling him.to find
adventure in illusion. When this happens, he feels himself
to be unconquerable and strides with the elation and ecstasy
of his dreams.

The title character in Paul Green's one-act play,

 

1Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (New York:
Random House, 1959), p. 1.

72

73

N99923:; p2; (1922), is "a gentle portrait of a musical
dreamer who longs for the far off places . . . . "2 Paul
Green's N9_'Qggp§ p21 depicts a struggle between practicality,
as represented by Enos and an Old Negro Woman, and adventure,
as represented by Pheelie and the No 'Count Boy. The latter
character bears no other name save for being referred to as
Boy: The play does not suggest this to be a degrading label:
probably it was chosen to further convey youth and irrespon-
sibility. The hero explains he's called a No 'Count Boy,
"Gaze I don't lak to work in de fields."3

The No 'Count Boy is a slender Negro nearing the
age of twenty. He is raggedly dressed in an old pair of
overalls, shirt and torn hat. He best expresses himself on
a small mouth organ, which inevitably ends on a high shrill
note, fortified by loud Joyous laughs.

As soon as he sees Pheelie, much to Enos' displeasure,
the No 'Count Boy is attracted to her: "You're as purty as
a pink, ain't you?"u Following his compliments to Pheelie,
he asks for food, for which he will pay with music. Green's
description of the hero's preparations for performance tends
to romanticize the character. "The boy's nostrils quiver,

and he makes a sobbing sound in his throat. Tears begin to
pour down his cheeks. He winds up with a flourish."5 As

 

2Brown, p. 116.

3Paul Green, "The No 'Count Boy," Contemporary One-
Apt Plgzs, ed. Frank Shay (Cinncinnati: Stewart Kidd Co.,
1922), pa 78.

51bid., p. 79.

Ibid., p. 81.

 

74

the concert proceeds, the No 'Count Boy dramatizes the
death of a girl and her return in a coffin on a "choo-choo"
to her broken-hearted family. The consequence of the emot-
ional overture is a period of crying for both Pheelie and
the No 'Count Boy. Enos is able to say, "Lewd Jesus, dat
rascal kin blow."6 Pheelie is uxoriously charmed and quick
to protect the No 'Count Boy when Enos suggests that he
"move on." Encouraged by his rapt audience, the No 'Count
Boy tells Pheelie about his dreams and adventures, about
rivers, waterfalls, mountains and big towns. The big towns
intoxicate his thinking, especially his reflections on New
York. The No 'Count Boy suggests Pheelie come with him in
order to live the "free life."

But the adventurer cannot win. His dreams fade
away beneath the onslaught of reality. Enos, moved by
Jealousy, proceeds to attack and.beat the boy with a stick
who tries to hide behind Pheelie, pleading with her to pro-
tect him. Suddenly, the No 'Count Boy's mother appears and
tells him that his fancies are fictional.

Moments earlier the No 'Count Boy had whispered,

" . . . we'll slip down de roads at sunrise and sunset,
singing and blowing de finest chunes dey is . . . . " Now
he sobs, "Pheelie, help me, cain't you?"7 But Pheelie, in

her disgust, offers no help. The boy's mother takes him

 

6
Ibid., p. 81.
7;2;Q.. P- 95-

75

away with her in a wagon, and Pheelie is left with her
broken dreams and Enos.
The N9,‘§23gt,§gy is labeled a folk play because the

playwright is supposedly depicting the folk-life of the
Negro people as he viewed it in the 1920's.8 It is clear
that this white writer was not concerned with the business
of designing his hero for the supreme purpose of flattering
Negro audiences by making him superior. His very name dimin-
ishes this intention, for the association with the idea of
his being "no account" suggests he's lazy and a wastrel, one
of the unflattering "'time-honored stereotypes'" of the Negro.9
Nor does Green seem to reveal to whites any flattering Negro
qualities which go beyond the mere ability to laugh and sing
and make music. Instead, laughing, singing, dreaming and
making music become the character's very essence. But if
Green is caught up by stereotypic notions, he is not, in
addition, bound by artificiality. There is a sweeping sin-
cerity which is enhanced by Green's effort to imitate the
rhythm of music, so that when the No 'Count Boy expresses
his dreams, he becomes rhapsodic:

I sleeps on de warm ground. Come sun set, I stops

in a hollow and breaks down bushes and rakes up

pine straw and sleeps lak a log. And in de mawning

I wakes and sees de dew on everything and heahs de

birds singing, and I lies dere awhile and practice
on.my harp. Den I's off down de road breaving de

 

8Westmoreland, p. 130.
Gross, p. 17.

76

fine air and feeling des' as happy as I kin.lo

The No 'Count Boy's dream is universal in its scope;
it is not necessarily a race dream. The No 'Count Boy can
lift any reader or viewer from himself into the pleasures
of adventure. "There are more things in the heaven and
earth of these turbulent worldlings than are dreamt of in
the philosophies of the tamer Horatios of this planet,"11
and when.a play's adventurer begins to rhapsodize the pleas-
ures of far-off places, it tends to waken in us all a distant
chord reminiscent of something familiar, irrespective of the
individual’s race.

At the same time, the No 'Count Boy's escape into
dream, music and fantasy can serve to suggest the Negro's
need to escape the harsh realities of his existence as exem-
plified by a weak and frightened child who prefers to live in
a myth he has created than live in the existing world. In
this respect he is multi-dimensional as well as delightful,
and should that day arrive when the Negro ceases to resent

being cast as a n'er-do-well, the N9 'Count Boy may well

 

achieve a place in the American repertory. The Boy's dream
explodes, but there is every indication it will revive it-
self because the character's joy of life has been believably
constructed by the playwright.

Another treatment of the dream as something other

 

10Ibid., p. 89.
11John Mason Brown, "The Tragic Blueprint," Clark, p.
520.

77

than racially oriented can be found in Eugene O'Neill's
é;; God's Chillun Got Wipgs, a two-act play written in 1923.

This play is a white man's concept using the Negro character

to express a Nietzschean idea of "redemption through illusion."12

Jim Harris in A;;_§2g;g Chillun QQE‘K;EE§ is one of
the most tragic and penetrating portraits of what happens to
a "dream deferred." When All 92g1§_Chillun Egtpfliggg was
first performed at the Provincetown Playhouse, an undated
program note contained the following tribute from W. E. B.
DuBois, one of the outstanding Negro leaders in the Twentieth
century:

We all know what the Negro, for the most part, has
meant . . . on the American stage. He has been
a lay figure whose business it was usually to be
funny and sometimes pathetic. He has never, with
very few exceptions, been human or credible.
This, of course, cannot last . . . . First comes
the shell of what most people think the Negro
ought to be, and this makes everyone a self-
appointed and pre-ordained Judge to say without
further thought or inquiry whether this is

untrue or that is wrong. Then, secondly,

there comes the great problem of the future
relations of groups and races . . . . To some
people this seems to be a tremendous and immi-
nent problem, and, in their wild anxiety to
settle it in the only way which seems to them

the right way, they are determined to destroy
art, religion and good common sense in an effort
to make everything that is said or shown propa-
ganda for their ideas . . . . The Negro world

. . . . is tremendously sensitive. It has sore
toes, nerve filled teeth, delicate eyes and
quivering ears. And it has these because during
its whole conscious life it has been.maligned and
caricatured and lied about to an extent incon-
ceivable to those who do not know . . . . The

 

12Frederich Nietzsche, The Birth 9; Tragedy, trans.
Francis Golffing (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and
Company, 1956), p. 10.

78

result is that the Negro today fears any attempt

of the artist to paint Negroes. He is not satis-

fied unless everything is perfect and proper and

beautiful and Joyful and hopeful. He is afraid

to be painted as he is, lest his human foibles and

shortcomings be seized by his enemies for the

purposes of the ancient and hateful propaganda.

Happy is the artist that breaks through any of

these she ls . . . . Eugene O'Neill is bursting

through . 1

The title of Eugene O'Neill's play, All God's Chillun

Got Wipgs, is taken from a Negro spiritual.

I got wings

You got wings

All God's chillun got wings . . . .
There is within the song's text a presupposing of man's
equality, as well as a suggestion of man's intent upon sal-
vation. In O'Neill's play both of these desires motivate
the dreams, behavior and fate of the central character, Jim
Harris. His is a struggle for equality and a struggle to
belong to something beyond himself: a seclusion from fear
and suffering, but such redemption is brought to him only
through illusion.

A;;_God's Chillun Got Wiggs is the story of Jim

Harris, a sensitive young Negro man who, even in childhood,
desires to cross the color barrier. Symbolically, O'Neill
suggests the division between the two races by a dichotomy
of faces_living on a dichotomy of streets. "In the street

leading left, the faces are all white: in the street leading

 

13W. E. B. DuBois, "The Negro and Our Stage,"
Provincetown Plazbill.

79

right, all black."1u Jim Harris, against this background,

struggles. As a child he wants to appear as a white man.
In school, he strives to earn adequate scholastic records
that will enable him to attend law school and, thus, enter
the white man's professional status. He even.marries a white
woman, Ella. But all of his ambitions fail: his dreams re-
duce him to infancy and servility: he is torn by his outer
mode of life which conflicts intensely with his inner dreams.
His wife, Jealous of his abilities and repelled by his color,
does all that she can to undermine his potential. She can
never lose sight of the notion of her superiority, and, conse-
quently, as she encourages him with words, she simultaneously
plots his downfall.

The real tragedy is that the woman could not see

their togetherness -- the oneness of mankind. She

was hemmed in by inhibitions. Ella of the play

loved her husband, but could not love him as a

woman would a man, though she wanted to, because

of her background and her inherited racial

prejudice . . . . But the Negro question, which

it must be remembered, is not an issue in the

play, isn't the only one which can arouse

preJudice. We are divided by preJudices.

PreJudices, racial, social, religious . . .

These prejudices will ex§st until we understand

the Oneness of Mankind.1
As a final gesture eXpressing her preJudice, Ella stabs a
Congo mask belonging to Jim. Ella does this when she learns

of her husband's final failure -- to become a "full-fledged

 

”Eugene O'Neill, _A_1_i_ God's Chillun 99; M (New
York: ngi and Liveright, 1925), p. 15.
Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill (New York:. 9911
Books, 1960). pp. 312-313. “

80

Member of the Bar.“16
The two are left together at the end of the play like
two little children playing games and promising each other
to continue playing "right up to the gates of Heaven."17
In order to make Jimls vulnerability to illusion

probable, O'Neill treats him throughout the play as a man
wanting and considering himself to be something beyond reality's
prescription for him. For example, his boyhood desires of
becoming white cause him to drink chalk. And after he is
married, he says:

I got to feeling blue. Got to sneering at myself

that I wasn't any better than a quitter because I

sneaked away right after getting married, didn't

face nothing, gave up trying to become a Member of

the Bar -- and I got to suspecting Ella must feel

that wgy about me, too -- that I wasn't a 'real

man!‘
Eugene O'Neill presents Jim Harris and his quest of life
through a ritual form: "rupture, collapse, return, and
prostration,"19 by which Jim is revealed seeking his own
true being through the happiness of a woman. However,
'O'Neill's Ella is also the key to living death. Separated
from her, Jim's chance for success might have materialized
despite his color; united with Ella, despite Jimis moments

of intense happiness, his potential for success proved

impotent. Thus, this sApollonian-Dionysiac duality, ingrained

 

160'Neill, p. 6n.
17Ibid., p. 79.

18 b do: P0 55.
1 Nietzsche, p. 1h.

81

with the rupture, collapse, return, and prostration ritual
formula throughout the whole play, leads inevitably to a
final revelation of the sufferer for whom illusion is the
only possible mode of redemption.

When Jim and Ella return from France following their
honeymoon, Jim's mother says, "De white and de black shouldn't
mix dat close. Dere's one road where de white goes on alone;
dere's anudder road where de black goes on alone --." It
seems that what she's really saying is that the Apollonian
should not mix with the "Dionysiac rapture, whose closest

analogy is furnished by physical intoxication."20

Such intox-
ication nurtures Jim's sense of inferiority, which in turn
reduces him to a servile state and prostrates his dignity

as well as his manhood. Jim does not rely upon the "principium
individuationis;" 21 he relies upon Ella, and the conse—
quential Dionysiac stirrings which cause a Joy capable of his
destruction. There is no doubt O'Neill conceived Jim in the
image of the principium individuationis, thus relating Jim to
Apollo, whom Nietzsche regarded as the "marvelous divine

image of the principium individuationis."22 In O'Neill's
play, the Apollo figure is incarnated within the symbol of
black most represented by Jim; the dionysiac element is

incarcerated within Ella, the symbol of white degeneracy.

 

20Ibid., p. 22.
21Nietzsche, p. 22.
Ibid.

82

Thus as the symbols of black and white struggle to remain
separate, so the Apollonian-Dionysiac forces struggle, yield,
and precipitate a pathetic union of the Living Dead bound
only by their illusions. Therefore, the play is not pri-
marily about the struggle of the Negro race in white America:
it is about the Dionysiac stirrings which rise within a man,
leading to the destruction of his Apollonian, ego-sustaining
mechanism. Thus, as Edwin Engel rightly notes, Eugene
O'Neill's abiding theme of his plays "was the struggle
between life and death."23 However, as Tom F. Driver explains,
“The shortcoming of Mr. Edwin A. Engel's useful book, Egg

Haunted Heroes 2; Eugene O'Neill, lies in making O'Neill's

 

attitude to death almost entirely a matter of the playwright's
individual psychology."24 The use of the Dionysiac-Apollonian
interpretation of Jim and Ella's relationship is illustrative
of Driver's contention, . . . "O'Neill is but one of a much
larger company today for whom the ancient life-death battle
is the paramount reality."25 Driver goes on to say that
"O'Neill's plays declare that the meaning of life is its
inevitable progression toward death."

Eugene O'Neill was sure that A;; Egglg Chillun 923

Wiggg was one of his 'most misunderstood' plays but

someday it would come into its own. What he really

meant by its being misunderstood was that in the
last analysis, and in its full scope, the play was

 

23Edwin A. Engel, The Haunted Heroes 9; Eugene
O'Neill (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953),

p. 297. 24 .
Tom F. Driver, "On the Late Plays of Eugene O'Neill,"
O'Neill, ed. John Gassner (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice Hall, Inc., 1964), p. 121.
25Ibid.. p. 122.

F————_‘_—n _- ,4.‘

83

not a racial play or about the 'race problem' but
about two human beings and their tragic struggle
for happiness, that by the last act Jim and Ella
are mankind and its problems. He puts these sen-
timents into Jim's mouth in Act II, Scene 2:
'She's all I've got! You with your fool talk

of the black race and the white race! Where does
the human race get a chance to come in?' In
other words Ail God's Chillun was written in

the same spirit as James Baldwin's 92 Tell I; 9n
Egg Mountain, which, its author claims, is not a
'Negro' novel, despite tge fact that the principal
characters are Negroes.2

 

But even if All God's Chillun Got Wipgs is not a

 

play about race relations, it makes specific points about
the racial situation. "The obvious one is . . . that the
children, colored and white, who play happily together in
Act I, Scene 1, must, as they grow up, diverge into hostile
groups."27

The play also makes a point about atavism. " . . . its
role in §;; Egglg Chillun 923 fllpgg is a positive rather than
a negative, the idea that the African Negro had a culture of

."28 To promote this atavistic element, O'Neill

his own . .
used a large Congo mask, "a grotesque face," as a direct
reminder of Jim's African ancestry and kinship with the
black. "It is this mask, which signifies Negro creativity
and sense of beauty, that Ella fears and destesu§"29 As a

consequence, Ella is driven to destroy the mask, an outward

manifestation of removing a threat to her control and possession

 

26John Henry Raleigh, Egg Plaxs g: Eggene O'Neill
(Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1365), p. 117.
7Ibid., p. 112.
28Ib1d., p. 115.
29Ib1d., p. 116.

8h

of Jim for her own.appetites. Jim's law books are pushed
to the floor and to oblivion as Ella, filled with childish
happiness, begins to dance, a known expression of Dionysiac
rapture, announcing the death of the principium.individuationis
as she plunges the knife into the mask. Any claim Jim.might
have had toward individuality and maturity is now sharply
annihilated. The possibility Jim can assume his own indi-
viduality separate from Ella's demands and control is now
vindicated. The Dionysiac ritual is no longer threatened
and life for Jim and Ella can be an eternal playing-time:
ELLA
Eyerything'll be all right now. I'll be Just your
little girl, Jim -- and you'll be my little boy ~-
Just as we used to be, remember, when we were beaux;
and I'll put shoe blacking on.my face and pretend I'm
black and you can put chalk on your face and pretend
you're white Just as we used to do -- and we can
play marbles . . . .
JIM

Honey, honey, I'}% play right up to the gates of
Heaven with you!

The play has ended and Jim.is prostrate, having thrown him-
self down upon his knees as though before an idol. Ironically,
O'Neill suggests that out of illusion comes redemption and

Joy. But the outsider is able to note that such redemption
and Joy are meaningless possessions in the world of reality.
Only in death can they have significance: and thus, the

 

3OO'Neill, p. 79.

85

worldly dream is exploded. Jim's earthly ambitions and
desires are stripped away as O'Neill seems to point the
way toward possible existence of universal forces greater
than the singular drives of men's mind capable of not only
controlling but also of destroying a man's private dream.
All of this comes as a paradox in Aiilggglg Chillun 923 Eiggg,
because "utter defeat presents itself to Jim in the guise
of victory."31

As Engel has pointed out, O'Neill abstracted a relig-
ious experience out of the play's final scene. "Jim has not
only consummated his mysterical union with God, he has, by
implication, recognized the truth of the Gospels: 'Except
ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not
enter the kingdom of heaven.”32

Thus, like Paul Green's IQ Abraham's Bosom, another

 

white playwright is using the Negro character to execute
his vision of "the fallen world" defined by Northrop Frye
as the business of ironic drama.
Thus, the ironic drama is a vision of what in
theology is called the fallen world, of simple
humanity, man as natural man and in conflict with
both human and non-human nature.
Yet unlike the hero of much drama written by Negroes, Jim's

frustration and despair was bred from a matrix far more com-

plex than the mere pressure of a reactionary society.

 

31Eugene M. waithe, "Eugene O'Neill: An Exercise in
Uhmaskingé" Gassner, p. 35.

Engel, p. 125.
33Northrop Frye, "Specific Forms of Drama," Clark, p.

533-

86

According to Loften Mitchell, Negro audiences were
not stimulated by O'Neill's dramatization of the "ancient
life-death battle."3“ Mitchell writes:

In discusSing'A;; God's Chillun.§g§ Wipgs, I am reminded
of a conversation I overheard between my father and
Pappy Harmon. A pOpular Speaker had appeared at a
Harlem church, and he wondered why a greater number
of citizens did not appear. My father echoed the
speaker's lament. Pappy Harmon answered them both:

'Harlem ain't got Just one problem,' he said.
'It's got so many that sometimes-while it's being
attacked on one front -- it's also being attacked
on another.‘

So it was with 4;; God's Chillun 922 Wipg .
O'Neill brought to the stage a Negro intellectual
who marries a white woman who is not only outside
of his race but outside of his 'class.' The hero
of this play would have had trouble had he married
a black woman on the level of the white he married.

Whether O'Neill knew or understood that cannot
be decided here. He was, however, talking about
interracial marriage, and Negroes were fighting
to be free, to eat regularly, l§§e decently and
get white feet off their necks.

Apparently, according to Mitchell, interracial marriage is
not a Negro's primary concern.

Only three plays by Negro writers have attempted,
like O'Neill and Green, to treat deferred dreams outside
the problems of the race. They are Marita Bonner's Egghggg

Maker (1927), Eulalie Spence's Undertow (1929), and Joseph

 

S. Mitchell's The Elopement (1930). Unfortunately, these
are primitive efforts. The plots are inconsequential and

the characterizations fragmentary and artificial. In

 

3uDriver, p. 122.
35Mitchell, p. 83.

_ {I

87

Undertow and The Elgpement the stories concern themselves
with a male protagonist and his lost love. Eulalie Spence's
one-act tells of Dan Peters, a man whose dream of happiness
fails to materialize. For twenty years he has lived with
a woman he doesn't love whose only virtue seems to be her
spotless house, "from shining floor to snowy linen."36

During the course of the play, an old sweetheart,
Clem, returns to Dan's life with the promise that if Dan
would divorce his wife and marry her, Clem and Dan could
find happiness together. The play's action consists of
Clem's proposing such a plan to Hattie and requesting that ‘
she grant Dan a divorce. Hattie is not interested in pleasing
Clem and even threatens to eXpose to the world the illegiti-
macy of Dan and Clem's daughter, Lucy, a secret Clem has
struggled many long years to conceal. Angered by Hattie's
bitter threats, Dan strangles his wife, thus closing the
door to any kind of happiness. The playwright gives Dan
no alternative but to send Clem away and wait for his subse-
quent arrest.

Eulalie Spence writes credible dialogue, exemplified
by a conversation between Hattie and her son Charlie, in

which Hattie first learns of Dan's activity.

 

36Eulalie Spence, "Undertow," The Carolina Magazine,
LIX, No. 7 (April, 1929). p. 5.

88

CHARLEY
Nat said -- 'Reckon yuh Dad's met an' old gal 'er
his' -- But Ah only laughed -- Struck me kinda
funny -- that! Dad meetin' an' ole flame uh his --
Ah meant tuh ask Dad 'bout her but it went clean
outa mah head.
HATTIE
was she tall?
CHARLEY
Kinda. Plenty taller'n you.
HATTIE
Light?
CHARLEY
So -- So, -- lighter'n you.
HATTIE
Pretty?
CHARLEY
Mebbe. She warn't no chicken -- but she was good
tuh look at. Tain't no use mopin', Ma. Dad ain't
de fus' husban' tuh take dinner wid his girl friend.
Funny, ghough his never doin' it befo'. Well,
s'long! 7
In characterizing Miss Spence does the rare thing
and omits controversy with whites. When Dan's dream of
being with Clem is "tragically aborted" he becomes a "tired,
diffident, ineffectual man."38 Although his dream is

deferred, he promises Clem that he will continue to indulge

 

37Ibid., p. 7.
3 Kuhlke, pp. 247-2h8.

89

himself in his dream's promise of their togetherness during
his imprisonment.
DAN
Ah'll git twenty -- er fifteen years -- mebbe ten
CLEM
Ten years!
DAN

Ah'll spend 'em all dreamin' 'bout yuh, Clem, an'
Lucy!3

In Joseph S. Mitchell's one-act play, Th; Elopement,
the male protagonist, Rufus, finds himself in.the same pre-
dicament as Dan Peters. Like Dan, Rufus,is left alone
without the "girl of his dreams." However, Thg_Elopement
differs from Undertow in both story line and type of char-
acterization. It is possible to feel sympathy for Dan Peters
as he stands, bewildered and alone at the end of Undertow,
admitting his remorse, "ah'm sorry, Hattie! "Fore Gawd. Ah

didn' mean.tuh do it!"uO

In contrast, when a villain returns
from New York and elopes with Rufus' intended bride, Lindy,
leaving Rufus holding his suitcase full of clothes and his
banjo shouting: "Lindy, Lindy, stop! Jump off dat mule!
Don't run away from me wid Peter -- an' my money, too!"u'1 it

is difficult not to be amused.

 

R9Spence, p. 15.
OIbid.
“lboseph s. Mitchell, "The Elopement," The Saturday

Eyenipg 93111 (April, 1930). p. #6.

90

But the play is of significance because Rufus is
the only hero in a Negro-written drama who is overtly depicted
as an inferior being. In the 1920's Negro writers tended
to design heroes who were educated and clever, rather than
gullible and easily cuckolded. Perhaps, this is why Mitchell
cannot allow Rufus to sustain the hero's position throughout.-
Peter, who steals Rufus' money, Rufus' girl, and Rufus' mule
also absconds with the admirable traits. Through the eyes
of Lindy Peter is the hero, superior to Rufus in worldly
experience, appearance, musical tastes, and the power to get
what he wants.

When Rufus appears, he is described as wearing
trousers rolled up half way, showing his socks. He is said
to be awkward because of large feet, and to be the possessor
of bushy hair. In contrast, Peter enters dressed as a
sophisticated New Yorker with a white collar, patent leather
shoes and a walking stick. He is a cod-fish aristocrat,
described by Mitchell as "good looking with a heavy bass
voice."u2

Rufus plunks a banjo and sings such country tunes

I. [+3

as "Lindy, Lindy, sweeter than sugar cane, whereas Peter
charms the young lady with a gramaphone, whose ragtime music

Lindy finds intoxicating. Peter does a sophisticated "shimmy"

 

42 .
Ibid., p. 39.
43'I"b1d . ,

91

explaining this is the way people dance in New York.

Peter puts his arm around Lindy and she says, "He!
he! he! An' dey do dis in New York, Peter?" To which
Peter replies, "Yes, sweet mamma."4u Peter explains the
stylish way to "court" and Lindy's admiration for his apparent
sophistication reaches ecstatic heights, depicted by Mitchell
with a long series of "He! he! He!"'s.45 She agrees to
accompany Peter to New York. Earlier in the play Rufus'
awkward attempts to hold hands and "court" Lindy are hastily
rebuffed. At the end of the play, Rufus is the Jilted lover,
Peter having successfully stolen his girlfriend, money and
horse.

Joseph S. Mitchell has been influenced by the
realization that the propounded s0phistication of the Northern
Negro -- the Negro who has left the Southern states and gone
to live in the North -- particularly during the 1920's, had
a strong appeal for Southern Negroes. He uses this character-
istic to enhance Peter's stature in relation to Rufus. That
is to say, Peter is a rascal but a rascal with s0phisticated
manners in comparison to Rufus' awkward fumbling country
style.

The play seems to suggest that Rufus' dream explodes
because he lacks the knowledge that can be gained by living

 

1mIbld., p. #2.
451b1d.

e’

92

in the North. He does nothing in the course of the play
that warrants his being cuckolded by the Northern Negro:
therefore, it is difficult to know whether to pity Rufus
or laughi at him. Such ambiguity makes the play's meaning
vague.

It is important to note that Rufus is the only hero
created by a Negro playwright who seems influenced by the
Myth of Sambo. Perhaps, this is why Mitchell felt obligated
to usurp his role.

In one additional mediocre one-act play, Egg £95
5532;, a Negro playwright gives the central male character a
dream that goes beyond the race dream. However, in this
instance, the dream is of a religious nature. Elias Jackson
in Egg,ggt Maggi, dreams of divine purpose, considering
himself to be a man "called of God."

‘ng ng_flgkgg_by Marita Bonner, labeled "a play to
be read”6 in one act was published in February, 1927, issue
of Qpportunity Magazine. Miss Bonner seems to be apparently
influenced by the writings of Maurice Maeterlinck, who
endeavored to reveal through his plays an awareness of
cosmic mystery, pointing toward a "secret and unknown reality

outside the plane of earthly existence."47 For example,

 

uéMarita Bonner, "The Pot Maker," ortunit ,
(Februarz 1927), p. 43.
7Haske11 M. Block and Robert G. Shedd, "Maurice
.Maeterlinck," Masters of Modern Drama, ed. Haskell M. Block

and Robert G. Shedd (New.York: Random House, 196M), p. 157.

93

she writes:

You know there is a garden because if you listen
carefully you can hear a tapping of bushes against
the window and a gentle rustling of leaves and
grass. The wind comes up against the house so
much as wash -- like waves against the side of a
boat -- that you know, too, that there must be

a large garden, a large space around the house.”8

Within this environment, Miss Bonner finds that

It is hard to describe Elias. He is ruggedly
ugly but he is not repulsive. Indeed, you want
to stretch out first one hand and then the other
to him. Give both hands to him. You want to give
both hands to him and he is ruggedly ugly. That
is enough. When you see Elias he is about to
rehearse his first sermon. He has recently been
called from the cornfields by God. Called to go
immediately and preach and not to dally in any
theological school. God summoned him on Monday.
This is Wednesday. He 12 going to preach at the
meeting-house on Sunday. 9

Elias believes himself to be chosen by God, and he dreams
of saving souls for God's Kingdom of Heaven. However, his
wife, Lucinda, is not in sympathy with her husband's
illusions. She accuses him of being lazy and neglectful of
her needs:

Stand there and stare at me like some pop-eyed owl.
You ain't got sense enough to do anything else . . .
Ain't even got sense enough to keep a job! Get a
Job paying good money! Keep it two weeks and Jes'
when I'm hoping you'll get a little money ahead
so's I could live decent like other women --

in my house -- You had to go and get called of

God and quit to preach! . . . Yas God chose you.

He ain't chose you for no preachin! He chose

you for some kinder fool! That's what you are—-
some kinder fool! Fools can't preach . . . .

If you was any kind of man you'd get a decent

job and hold it and hold your mouth shut and

 

”8Bonner, p. #3.
“91b1d.

 

9#

move me into:my own house. Ain't no woman so in
love with her man's mother she wants to live five
years under the same roof with her like I done.

Elias may hggg thopght 9;]; dozen replies. Hg
. makes none.

 

Dissatisfied with her husband's point of view, Lucinda
indulges in an illicit relationship with Lew Fox, described
by the playwright as "Lucinda's Lover." At the end of the
play, Lew comes for Lucinda only to accidentally fall down

a well instead. Screaming hysterically, Lucinda rushes
outside to rescue him and falls in the well, too. Throughout
this sequence, Miss Bonner laboriously describes the external
sounds of nature as if trying to suggest their part in the
episode. Finally, Elias goes out to save them, but also
falls down the well.

Immediately following Elias' death, the playwright
writes a descriptive elegy for her central character. She
describes him as a "pot who has spilled over on the ground."51
It is an inordinately cryptic idea.

If Miss Bonner was attempting to develop a "Black
Christ figure," certainly the attempt can be marked as a
failure. There is little given over to the development of
form or character, since two-thirds of the play consists of
extensive monologue defining a pot maker, his different kinds

of pots, and their relationship to people. Probably, the

 

501b1d., p. as.
511bid., p. 46.

95

pot maker was Miss Bonner's, as well as Elias', concept
of God, the Creator.

As a consequence, the characters are poorly defined
and more mouthpieces for the author's naive parable. Unlike
Undertow, the dialogue is static and seldom credible.

Once there was a man what made pots. He lived in

a little house with two rooms and all that was in

those rooms was pots. Just pots. Pots all made of

earthenware. Earthenware. Each one of them had

a bottom and a handle just alike. All of them

Jes' alike.52
The repetition of words in the style of an echo helps to
increase the artificiality in contrast to a natural mode of
speech. It is these artificialities which prevent a Christ
figure from being credible as well as appealing, making it
impossible to identify with the hero. Too much preaching
coupled with cliches, poor pitting and too little character
revelation Joined with the mystical confusion that is added

by Marita Bonner's labored descriptive passages leave much
to be desired, even with a play designated only to be read.
Rufus, Dan Peters and Elias are little men, quite
helpless against the demands of other people. They are not
made of decidedly superior parts. They have romantic
ambitions that they are unable to satisfactorily fulfill
because of something they do -- not because of something

society does to them. This is an unique treatment of the

 

521bid,, p. #4.

96

male protagonist in Negro-written drama who is usually, as
in the case of Lorraine Hansberry's hero in Raisin ;g_§gg
§g§ (1959), a lost and angry male possessed with "certain
psychological obsessions, certain fixations, certain recurring
myths that loom very large in Negro literature."53
Thglggt,ggggg, Egg Elopement and Undertow, again,
are representative of the inferior type of literature that
was being published in the magazines concerned with giving
the Negro an opportunity to have his plays published. As
in the case of previously discussed one-act plays of this
nature, these plays have no literary value.
As social tracts lending insight into the heart and
mind of the Negro people, these plays probably have less
to offer than any other plays by Negroes being considered in
this study. The complete lack of clarity in Marita Bonner's
play makes it impossible to understand: therefore it has
neither social, religious nor literary value. The major
figures in.2hg Elopement never emerge much beyond the level
of caricature making it difficult to believe that these
people are representative of human beings. It is difficult
to consider this play with any degree of seriousness because
of shallow plot, characterization and theme. In contrast,
Undertow shows evidences of a potential writing ability on the

part of its creator. The play reveals a genuine effort

 

53Littlejohn, p. 162.

 

(M

97

toward credible dialogue and characterization. It is
besmirched with sentimentalism, particularly at the conclusion,
nevertheless, if Miss Spence had been given proper direction,
there is every indication that her perception of human
frailties and strengths might have developed into an ability
to structure well made plays, as was the case of Lorraine
Hansberry. Miss Hansberry has succeeded in her attempt to
create realistic Negro characters living in a realistic
situation. This includes the dreams, foibles, quarrels
and other elements of living, representative of a Negro
family. Since there are elements of protest -- "doses of
African nationalism, assimilationist propaganda, Uncle Tomism,
wage slavery, white residential prejudice, and other common
elements of the Negro experience,"5u the play has, at times,
been labeled a protest play. However, the play does not
seem aimed toward pricking the white conscience as much as
it seems directed toward revelation of a Negro hero's dream
and the way of his subsequent climb to maturity and manhood.

The work may be too straightforward, in the end,

too loving and simple and direct to wound

iiieifii‘éiliée‘s‘fifi‘éihoitNi‘ZZotii‘é’E 33......“ °f

Harold Clurman was also of the opinion that Lorraine

Hansberry was not writing propaganda or protest literature

appealing to the conscience of the whites.

 

5“It d., p. 71.
55.1.1211;

3/

98

A Raisin _i_p thg _S_u_1_1_ is authentic: it is a portrait
of the aspirations, anxieties, ambitions and
contradictory pressures affecting humble Negro
folk in the American big city -- in this instance
Chicago. It is not intended as an appeal to
whites or as a preachment for Negroes. It is

an honestly felt response to a situation that

has been lived through, clearly understood and
therefore simply and impressively stated. Most
important of all: having been written from a
definite point of view (that of a participant)
with no eye toward meretricious possibilities

in Showmanship and public relations, the play
throws light on aspects of American life out-
side the area of race. 6

To successfully teach us something of the "inner
pressure of Negro life," it must include, as Raisin lg fine
Sun does, the Negro's "small, unsatisfied dreams:"

MAMA

. . . Lord, child, you should know all the dreams

I had 'bout buying that house and fixing it up

and making me a little garden in the back.

And didn't none of it happen . . . . Seem like

God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing

but dreams -- but He did give us children to make

them dreams seem worthwhile. Rememberigg her

husband . . . a fine man -~ Just couldn't never

catch up with his dreams, that's all.57
But the dreams differ even inside the framework of one Negro
family. The mother figure dreams of simple domestic pleasures
such as garden, home and peace with her children while the
son, Walter Younger, has an explosive dream of manhood,
identification, status, money and rights. James Baldwin

came close to summarizing welter's nature when he wrote:

 

56Harold Clurman, "Theatre," The Nation, April a,

1959. PP. 301-302.
57Hansberry, pp. 29-30.

 

99

"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious
is to be in a rage almost all the time."58
Walter Younger, hero of Raisin ;p the Sun, is

featured throughout the play as trying to "catch up" with
his ambitions. He has a volcanic approach to aILthat he
thinks and does. walter doesn't rise out of bed in the morning:
he explodes. He doesn't eat his eggs in the morning; he
erupts over them:

That's it. There you are. Man say to his woman:

I got me a dream. His woman.say: Eat your eggs.

Sadly but gainipg power. Man say: I got to take

hold of this here world, baby! And a woman will

say: Eat your eggs and go to work. Man say: I

got to change my life. I'm choking to death,

baby! And his woman say -- Ip utter anguish pp pp

bripgs his fists down pp his thighs -— Your eggs

is getting cold . . . . 59
This is the way the day begins for the Younger family.
The alarm clock rings, summoning the family, who love one
another deeply, to get up and start fighting. It is
obvious they have a struggle to make ends meet. On this
particular morning, they are waiting for the postman to
bring an insurance check in the amount of $10,000, which
Walter wants to invest in a liquor store. The check is
the endowment left by Mrs. Younger's deceased husband.

Miss Hansberry knows her people and manages to

capture the ordinary events that occur in the familial day-

 

58511berman, p. 36.
59Ibid., p. 15.

100

to-day living. When walter tells his mother about his
plans for investing the money, she opposes the project
in favor of a dream of her own. Being ignored by his mother
tends to infuriate Walter. When she questions him as to why
he talks so much about money, he explodes:
WALTER
Eipp_immense passion. Because it is life, Mama!
MAMA
Spietly. Oh. My Quietly. So now it's life.
ggniyfis-liizé igngemgpg;ogotime freedom used to

In Act II, Mrs. Younger, despite her son's doubts,
is aware of his needs, and after putting one-third of the
insurance down as a house payment for a home in a white
neighborhood, gives the balance to her son as a demonstration
of her faith and confidence in his potential manhood, stipu-
lating that part of the balance must go for his sister's
education.

Impulsively, walter gives $6,500 to a friend who
proves to be disloyal and leaves town with the money. All
seems hopeless except for the prospect of the little house
out in the white neighborhood. This prospect is threatened
when the Youngers are visited by a representative of the
Clybourne Park Improvement Association, who tries to buy

back the house in order to preserve the neighborhbod and

an ~

6oIbid., p. 61.

101

property values. When walter learns his liquor store project
is a vanished dream, he decides to accept the Clybourne
Park Improvement Association's offer. He sends for Lindner,
the Association's representative, who arrives after Walter's
mother has succeeded in shaming him for his willingness to
compromise their integrity and submit to the Association's
offer. Consequently, by the time Lindner arrives, walter
has made up his mind not to sell out to the whites. His only
offer to Lindner is that they will try to be "good neighbors."
Whlter's decision not to betray his mother's faith in him
results in the promise of Mrs. Younger's vision's being
realized. The play ends as the family goes out to claim her
dream.

Miss Hansberry openly states that "Raisin is a play

61 She goes on to say that Walter has an

about dreams;"
"almost neurotic craving to wheel and deal in the white man's
world."62 It is by depicting welter's frustrations that
Miss Hansberry is able to include her "doses" of protest.
In Walter's agonies over his economic status and jdb in-
feriority, Miss Hansberry is teaching whites the pain of
wage slavery.

I been.married eleven years and I got a boy who

sleeps in the living room -- and all I got to

give 21m is stories about how rich white people
live. 3

 

61Nan Robertson, "Dramatist Against Odds," Ngw York
Tippéé March 8, 1959, Sec. 2, p. 3.

lb; .
63Hansberry, p. 15.

 

102

For Halter to go on being a chauffeur seems hideous to

the young man: he pounds the table and screams at his

wife; "I got to change my life, I'm choking to death, baby!"
To which his wife replies, "So you would rather be Mr.

Arnold than be his chauffeur."64 This is not to say that
Miss Hansberry is peddling the idea noted in Raphaelson's
Eggp§_ggp, that every Negro's destiny is to become white.

It is to say that young Negro men like Whlter feel themselves
to be frustrated when denied the white man's jobs that lead
to the white man's material gain.

Unfortunately, walter has assimilated some of the
white man's more unflattering approaches to economy and
investment, which enables Miss Hansberry's play, through
welter's frustrations, to endorse assimilationist propaganda;
For example, when George comes to visit Whlter's sister,
Beneatha, Walter, in his usual explosive manner, expostu—
lates his assimilated attitudes toward Big Business:

WALTER
Listen, man, I got some plans that could turn this
city upside down.‘ I mean, I think . . . big.
Invest big; gamble big, hell, lose big if you have
to, you know what I mean. It's hard to find a man
on this whole Southside who understands my kind of
thinking -- you.dig? . . . Me and you ought to

sit down.and talk sometimes, man. Man, I got me
some ideas . . . .

GEORGE

You're all wacked up with bitterness, man.

 

6"Ibid.

103

WALTER

And you -- ain't you bitter, man? Ain't you just

about had it yet? Don't you see no stars gleaming

that you can't reach out and grab? You happy?

3%“ °°§ti§teddi$n'§§;%"§%tin? it: “5??? n .65

ou go ma e , a 0 ca 0

Since George is the son of wealthy colored parents, Hansberry
uses him to give the scene an ironic twist and a touch of
humor by having George close the interview with the suggestion
to welter, "Why don't you all . . . go into the banking
business . . . ?"66 The protest is then further softened by
welter's soap opera answer: "Why? 'Cause we all tied up
in a race of people that don't know how to do nothing but
moan, pray and have babies!"67 Dialogue of this nature
betrays ideas that differ markedly from the type of ethno-
centric pride illustrated in Negro-written dramas of an
earlier vintage. Perhaps this is why it is said that Miss
Hansberry exhibits great skill in depicting the inner life
and feelings of the Negro, for assuredly these feelings
belonging to walter are indicative of racial shame. But
such shame is only prerequisite for change. It is the
playwright's intent that her hero learn racial pride,
through love, faith and forgiveness, during the series of
events that constitute the play's story. His shame is

necessary for the effectiveness of the dose of "Uncle Tomism"

 

65Ibid., p. 76.
65Ibid., p. 78.
67Ib1d., p. 134.

104

and the manner in which its intrinsic hypocrisy is exposed

in one of Raisin ip pp; Spp's climactic scenes. welter,

having lost his share of the inheritance is about to prostrate

himself before the Clybourne Park Improvement Association.
WALTER

I'm going to look that son-of-a—bitch in the eyes
and say -- Hg falters. -- and say, "All right,
Mr. Lindner —- Hg falters even more. -- that's
your neighborhood out there. You got the right
to keep it like you want. You got the right to
have it like you want. Just write the check and
-- the house is yours." And, and I am going to
say -- Hip voice almost breaks. And you -- you
people just put the money in my hand and you won't
have to live next to this bunch of stinking
niggers! . . . Hg straightens pp gpg moves awa
from pig mother, walkipg around ppp room.

Maybe —- maybe I'll just get down on my black

 

 

 

 

watch him in frozen horror. Captain, Mistuh,

Bossman Hg starts cryipg. A—hee-hee-hee!
wripgipg pip hands ip profoundly anguished
imitation. Yassssssuh! Great White Father,
just gi' ussen de money, fo' God's sake, and
we's ain't gwine come out deh and dirty up yo'
white folk neighborhood . . . Hg breaks down

completely, then gets pp and goes into the
bedroom.

 

BENEATHA

That is not a man. That is nothing but a toothless
rat.

MAMA

Yes -- death done come in this here house. §pp lg
nodding, slowly, reflectively. Done come walking
in my house. On the lips of my children. You
what supposed to be my beginning again. You --
what supposed to be my harvest. 7

 

67Ibid. , p. 134.

(«I

105

However, walter's attempt at mock Uncle Tomism betrays

an intrinsic pride that makes undignified submissiveness
to whites a degrading experience. Even though walter be-
littles his race, his very nature makes it painful for him
to betray it.

Threat of betrayal of race is the play's major
issue, which is resolved through the mother character. It
is Mrs. Younger who steps into the situation and makes the
play predominantly a dramatization of the healing strength
and power of love.

MAMA
22 Beneatha. You -- you mourning your brother?
BENEATHA
He's no brother of mine.
MAMA
What you say?
BENEATHA

I said that that individual in that room is no
brother of mine.

MAMA

That's what I thought you said. You feeling like you
better than he is today? Beneatha does pp; answer.
Yes? What you tell him a minute ago? That he

wasn't a man? Yes? You give him up for me? You
done wrote his epitaph too -- like the rest of the
world? Well, who give you the privilege?

BENEATHA

Be on my side for once! You saw what he just did,
Mama! You saw him -- down on his knees -- Wasn't

it you who taught me -- to despise any man who would
do that. Do what he's going to do.

106

MAMA

Yes -- I taught you that. Me and your daddy. But

I thought I taught you something else, too --— I

thought I taught you to love him.

BENEATHA
Love him? There is nothing left to love.
MAMA

There is always something left to love. And if you

ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.

Lookipg pp her. Have you cried for that boy

today? I don't mean for yourself and for the

family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for

him; what he been through and what it done

to him. Child, when do you think is the time

to love somebody the most; when they done good

and made things easy for everybody? 8

Motivated by the strength of this kind of forgiving

love, Mrs. Younger, strong in her convictions that her son
will neither betray himself nor his family nor his race,
confronts him with the proposition that she is "waiting to
hear" how he will be his "father's son." Thrusting forth
her grandson as a representative of the Negro generation of
Youngers to come, she waits in her faith and her love,
knowing that walter will not fail them. She wins, Walter
is able to say to Lindner:

. . . this is my son, who makes the sixth generation

of our family in this country, and that we have all

thought about your offer and we have decided to

move into our house because my father -- my father
-- he earned it. We don't want to make no trouble

 

68Ib1d., p. 135.

107

for nobody or fight no cause -- but we will try
to be good neighbors. That's all we got to say.

Hg looks the man absolupely ;p the eyes. We
don't want your money.
This is Miss Hansberry's way of trying to establish the
nObility of man.by showing him "in all his marvelous complexity."70
The play's ending suggests the notion that love
conquers all and in so doing makes Raisin ;p the Sun a large
"dose" of that old-time religion which appeals to middle
class audiences but not to theologically minded sophisticates
like Tom Driver, who is schooled in the theories of Reinhold
Neibur and Paul Tillich. Driver is not, therefore, partic-
ularly impressed with the old-fashioned sentiment at the
core of Miss Hansberry's play.
The play is moving as a theatrical eXperience, but
the emotions it engenders are not relevant to the
social and political realities. The effect it
produces is comparable to that which would be
had in the concert hall if a composer of today
were to write f concerto in the manner of
Tchaikovsky. 7
Driver's contention is further endorsed by his referral
to Mrs. Younger's potted plant "as the good, green life which
they all long for inside their souls."72
This is a drama in which the superiority of the

hero's character grows out of his relationship with the other

characters: the theme of love develops as a consequence qf

 

691b;do’ po 136‘
7°Robertson, p. 3.
71530111 F. Driver, "Theatre," New BeEubllc (Jme. 1959)!

p. 21.
721b; .

108

behavior rather than as superimposition by the playwright.
Furthermore, Walter's growth is a result of What he is able

to learn from his mistakes. He is able to recognize the
falsity and degradation of Uncle Tomism in relation to the
pride-restoring virtue of being true to his family's code

of honor. In this respect, his superiority of character
during the confrontation scene with Lindner is worthy of
respect because he has earned his manhood. It must be mentioned
here that Miss Hansberry assists Walter's position during

this confrontation by having the representative of white
society be "a little runt of a thing carrying a brief--case,"73
in contrast to Walter, who is "big and strong."7*

Despite the imbalance, however, Whlter's moment of
grace is difficult to resist, especially when the playwright
caps its quiet significance with a comparison of God's ever-
lasting promise to Noah: "He finally come into his manhood
today, didn't he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain. . . ."75
Such imagery causes us to believe he is worthy, assisted
by the playwright's forcing him.to earn his recognition.along
with certain basic principles of love and forgiveness, as
demonstrated through the warmth and strength of Mama. All
of this is there by implication. " . . . the author never

raises her voice, and her effectiveness is all the stronger

 

73Ibid.
7"'I"bid' .
75Hansberry, p. 141.

 

109

because of her quietness."76 It is the fact that all "does
come comfortably right in the end," and a "white audience
may be left safely content"77 that has made Miss Hansberry's
play, be labeled a "safe" play by Negroes.78 Ineffectual
as a play of protest, it is certainly effective as an illus-
tration of a Negro writer's attempt to transcend the color
question and simultaneously present Negro life in realistic
terms.79

Miss Hansberry also contended that it was important
not to show the Negro as all good, a notion certainly supported
in the character of Walter. Perhaps she did not succeed
equally with Mrs. Younger, who is perfect throughout in
attitude and purpose. At times, Walter resembles the ideal
type heroes of earlier plays; at other times, he can be
closely allied to the enraged males who are created by Baldwin
and Jones. In this respect, the modulation of strength and
weakness in walter lends sympathy to a firmly believable
Negro.

In terms of revealing the heart and mind of the Negro
race, one of the gifts of Miss Hansberry's play is the evidence
that the American Negro does not live entirely under the

constant threat of physical violence from whites and that,

 

76Richard watts, "Honest Drama of a Negro Family,"
New Yorlg7 0st March 12,1959, p. 14.
8Littlejohn, p. 71.
8Ibid
79Robertson, p. 3.

110

sometimes, he walks in love rather than in fear. It also
demonstrates that in some instances insults to the Negro's
dignity as a human being are his daily fare and can lead to
resentment and hatred of whites, but, can also lead to an
assertion of integrity that is simultaneously dignified and
respectable. Such a demonstration of Negro attitude may be
"safe," but it is also a tribute.
Thus, it can be concluded that Negro playwrights have
written plays with protagonists who have dreams other than
race dreams. The plays by Eulalie Spence, Joseph S. Mitchell
and Marita Bonner may be incidental and inferior: however,
they are evidences of creativity by Negroes concerned with
matters other than the "race war."80 These plays are self
contained and could never be labeled as "protest“ literature.
Lorraine Hansberry has created a hero whose dreams
are race dreams; her play has been labeled "protest" liter-
ature. Simultaneously, critics claimed that it was not
"protest" material.
. . . . there were Negroes who became angry because
critics said the play really said nothing about the
Negro plight, that it was not an angry play, and
they lauded theaplaywright for showing 'balance'
in her writing.

However, there is much anger in the play, and the hero's

concern with Negro rights and equality cannot be dismissed.

It is interested in the plight of the Negro: as well as the

 

80Littlejdhn, p. 156.

81'Mitchell, p . 1 82 .

111

plight of man engaged in the struggle of mastering his
pride.

This can be said of O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got
Wings which has been dismissed as being disinterested in the
Negro's plight.82 It is indeed concerned with the Negro
insofar as the Negro can identify with the vision of man
wrestling "not against flesh and blood but against princi-
palities and powers .'"83

Almost more than any other modern author,
O'Neill makes it clear what these principalities
and powers are . . . . When we read the Pauline
declaration that 'the last enemy that shall be
overcome is death,' O'Neill enables us to
recogngfie the visage and the strength of the
enemy.

What happens to a dream deferred? When, in a study
of the nature of the Negro hero, it is treated by a Negro
writer like Lorraine Hansberry, it becomes a race dream that
explodes, but subsequently strengthens the dreamer. In
the works of lesser Negro playwrights, plays such as The

Pot Maker, The Elopement, and Undertow, a deferred dream

 

points to the fact that Negro writers can concern their dra-
matic imaginations with something other than the race dreams.
And in the works of white authors, such as O'Neill and Green,
the deferred dream subsidizes the playwrights' theme of

aspiration and defeat.

 

82 Ibid .
83Driver, p. 123.
”Ibid .

{I

CHAPTER IV
THE BRUTE PBIMITIVE

If a Negro playwright depicts a Negro hero as a
primitive, it is in order to emphasize the Negro's native
superiority to the conditions forced upon him by white
society, as in the case of Bigger Thomas in Native Spp (1940)
and John Henry of Theodore Browne's Natural Map (1937); or
to mask an intrinsic goodness, as in the play nglpgp (1934)
by Randolph Edmonds.

It is the white man's treatment of the primitive
that tends to correlate the hero's behavior with qualities
surmised as elemental to a natural savage culture deeply
endowed with superstition and visceral motivations. Among
these are Eugene O'Neill's Dreamy in 2p; Dreamy gig (1918)

and Brutus Jones in 2pc Emperor Jones (1920). Also, there

 

is Fess Oxendine in Paul Green's Supper pp; ppp,ngg (1927),
Blue Gum and Boll Weevil in Green's 1p gppp Mahaley's Qgp;p
(1928), and Pearly Gates in Green's Hypp‘pp_ppp,Risipg‘§gp
(1936).

Th2 Empgzg: Jgpps and Eng nggpy_ggg_emphasize states
of regression. O'Neill seems interested in portraying the
disintegration and death of a man which come as a consequence

of total submission to the control of "anima."

112

113

The anima is the irrational, the vital centre whence
come the dark passions and impulses and instincts.
It is the abode of the unconscious, and both the
aggressive and the seductive forces dwell there.

. . . This level has become well known to us through
the studies of the psychoanalysts, especially Jung.
Here dwell the archetypes, the shadow and anima and
the old magician. But granted these levels, we can
now make a cross-section. In contrast with the
reason, animus, all the workings of the unconscious
and the irrational can be called anima, irrespective
of the various manifestations which arise from the
abyss of the unconscious.

The victim of anima is hypnotized into passivity or self-
destruction. These twin passions of brutality and abasement
or prostration abide in the anima of man, in his animal
instincts.

Webster defines brute as "not possessing reason;

unthinking; as, a brute beast."2 This suggests that a

character described as a brute Negro is one who is governed
by anima.

When Eugene O'Neill first introduces Brutus Jones in
Tpp Emperor Jppgg, a one-act play in eight scenes, the hero's
animal nature is carefully masked with the trappings of
civilization. Jones seems fully in control of himself and
his situation. He seems cognizant of the barbarous tribes
which surround him, but sophisticated to the degree that his

mind and reason will prevent the West Indian natives from

 

1M. C. D'Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love (New York:

Meridian Books, 1956), p. 209.

Webster's New Colle iate Dictionary (Springfield,
Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1961), p. 108.

 

W
.w

(a,

114

becoming strong enough to control him. Even when the Cockney
trader, Smithers, tells Jones that the members of his court

have deserted him and are planning his destruction, the

Emperor does not falter. Having anticipated betrayal, he is
able to rationally outline his course of action and his reasoned
solution.

Does you think I'se a natural bo'n fool? Give me
credit fo' havin' some sense, fo' Lawd's sake!
Don't you s'pose I'se looked ahead and made sho' of
all de chances? I'se gone out in dat big forest,
pretendin' to hunt, so many times dat I knows it
high an' low like a book. I could go through on
dem trails wid my eyes shut. With great contempt.
Think dese ign'rent bush niggers dat ain't got brains
enuff to know deir own names even can catch Brutus
Jones? Huh, I s'pects not! Not on yo' life!

Why, man, de white men went after me wid blood-
hounds where I come from an' I jes' laughs at 'em.
It's a shame to fool dese black trash around heah,
dey're so easy. You watch me, man. I'll make

dem look sick, I will. I'll be 'cross de plain to
de edge of de forest by time dark comes. Once

in de woods in de night, dey got a swell chance

0' findin' dis baby! Dawn tomorros I'll be out

at de oder side and on de coast whar dat French
gunboat is stayin'. She picks me up, takes me to
Martinique when she go dar, and dere I is safe wid
a mighty big bank 5011 in my jeans. It's easy as
rollin' off a log.

The opening line of this quote is a planted note of irony,
since the remainder of the play seems dedicated to an ironic
revelation of his true nature as being void of reason. No
sooner does Brutus Jones enter the jungle, than he becomes
subject to his imagined fears and, consequently, becomes

totally irrational. Anima, with all the attendant dangers

 

3Eugene O'Neill, "The Emperor Jones," Block and
Shedd, pp. 578-579.

115

of surrendering to the lower manifestations of it, grows
in its power and control throughout the final seven scenes.

As Jones proceeds, lost in the jungle he had thought
he knew so well, he is confronted with one ghost
after another from his past, each representing an
aspect of himself or a hidden.motive for his past
action, and each of which can de dispelled only by
his firing one of his six precious bullets. First
appear his 'little formless fears,' then.his guilt,
in two visions -- the ghost of the Negro, Jeff,

for whose murder in a gambling fight he was sent
to prison, and the ghost of the guard whom he
killed in his escape from prison. These three
episodes, stemming from fear and guilt, come from
Jones's 'personal unconscious,' while the three
following ones emerge from his 'collective
unconscious.'

He must fire his fourth and fifth bullets to
dispel the vision of a slave auctioneer who he
thinks is about to sell him from the block. By
this time Jones is naked and exhausted: he lies down
to rest and is surrounded by a group of savages --
his ancestors -- whose voices, beginning with a
low, melancholy murmur, rise in a desperate wail
which Jones first tries to shut from his ears,
then Joins, his voice rising above the others.

The scene of this final vision is laid at a stone
altar near a tree -- . . . .

A Congo witch doctor enters and begins a wild
dance . . . . The witch doctor summons from the
river a terrifying crocodile, whose glittering
eyes fasten upon Jones. He stares at them in
paralyzed fascination at first, then, shouting
defiantly, 'De silver bullet! You don't git me
yit!' fires at the crocodile, which with the
witch doctor, disappears, as Jones falls to
the ground. He lies there, 'his arms outstretched,
whimpering with fear as the throb of the tom-tom
fills the Eilence about him with a somber
pulsation.

The powerless Emperor is prostrate and hypnotized into self-

destruction: having abandoned animus to anima. It is as

 

”Doris v. Falk, Eugene O'Neill and the Tra ic Tension
(New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1958), p. 88.

116

though Jones dwells in anima, the Great Forest, where dwells
also the Witch Doctor, "the old magician," perpetuating a
frenzy not at home in the world, not settled in itself;

Jones is merging again with the elements (i.e., the crocodile)
half in helplessness and half in potential self-transcendence
and mystic triumph. This latter facet is the mystical
artistry of Eugene O'Neill, for just as "the Witch Doctor's

voice shrills out in furious exaltation,"5 Brutus Jones voices

a prayer to the Christian God:

Iawd, save me! Iawd Jesus, heah my prayer!
Immediatel , yp answer pp his prayer, comes the
thought 9: the one bullet left him. Hg snatches
pp his hip, shouting defiantly. De silver bullet!
You don't git me yit! §§_fires §p_the green

eyes 1p front 9: hip. The head 9: the crocodile
sinks back behind the river-bank, the Witch
Doctor springs behind the sacred tree and
disappears . . . .9

 

 

At this point, O'Neill describes the tom-tom as continuing
but continuing "baffled,"7 as if some mysterious power has
interfered. That is to say, man can descend to the "chaotic,
but fertile bosom of nature, be carried away by what is
elemental in him"8 or he can finally pray for some power

and wisdom outside of anima, such as the Christian Christ.
But O'Neill does not sponsor in The Emperor Jpppg self-
transcendence at the moment of answered prayer. Instead, he

says that Jones lies with his face to the ground, his arms

 

gO'Neill, p. 585.
Ipyg,

7Ibid.

8D'Arcy, p. 209.

 

117

outstretched, whimpering with fear. Later, when O'Neill
wrote the ending for pg; gpglg Chillun Qpp,flipg§ placing
the protagonist in a prostrate state and voicing a prayer,
there is an illusion of self-transcendence for Jim Harris.
But not so for Brutus. He is unable to achieve the higher
levels where the individual is not totally bound by anima:

he remains prostrate. The natives shoot him with a silver

bullet.

"Jones has through ignorance violated the inexorable
order of the universe. In O'Neill's work the violated order

is that of the mind . . . ."9

The disintegration process for Brutus Jones is

gradual as well as continuous.

'The progress of Jones,' Doris Falk has suggested,
'is the progress in self-understanding, it is the
striking off of the masks of the self, layer by
layer, just as bit by bit his 'emperor's' uniform
.is ripped from his back, until in the end he must
confront his destiny-himself-in nakedness.' But
Jones never does quite understand his true self,
although his audience does. His tragic grandeur

is rather that of the romantic absolutist who

wears his emperor's mask to the bitter end.

The concluding speech of Smithers explains his
romantic heroism: 'Silver bullets! Gawd

blimey, but yer died in the 'eighth 0' style,
any'ow!'

Yet even this ending seems somewhat theatrical.

The underlying characterization and structure of the
play suggest a deeper significance and a greater
dramatic art than are apparent. The play prefigures
both the basic theme and the structure of O'Neill's
final, great plays. Like Hickey of Tpp_Iceman Cometh,

 

9Falk, p. 44.

 

 

 

118

Jones attempts to live without illusions: his
cynical intelligence has rejected all the romantic
sentiments of life, and he has attempted to
manipulate 'nigger superstitions' to his own end.
But his great illusion is the belief that he can
live without illusions, and his denial of romantic
idealism becomes a denial of life itself. Like
the self-deluded Hickey, he dies in the tangled
jungle of his own mind . . . . He dies as he

has lived, the confused victim of his own past,
lost within 'the Great Forest.' 0

Definitively, this past, according to Falk, includes "unconscious
ideas and symbols arising from his unique situation to make

up the structure of his personal unconscious."11

Therefore,
she concludes, that when Jones confronts the crocodile in the
final scene of the play, "Jones has shed the last layer of
his civilized outward self and has gone back to the dark,
primitive world of the unconscious, where physical and

Spiritual birth are one.u12

O'Neill uses the hero to help interpret the ultimate
complexities of "Life in terms of lives . . . ."13 The play
reinforces O'Neill's admission:

I'm always acutely conscious of the Force behind --
Fate, God, our biological past creating our present,
whatever one calls -- Mystery certainly-- and of
the one eternal tragedy of Man in his glorious,
self-destructive struggle to make the Force

express him instead of being an infinitesimal
incident in its expression. 4

Jones is a powerful expression of man's total helplessness

 

10Frederic I. Carpenter, Eugene O'Neill (New York:
Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1964), p. 92.

11Falk, p. 66.

121bid., p. 68.

13Eugene O'Neill, "Neglected Poet," Clark, p. 505.

lulbid.

119

when caught in the prison of those dark passions that defy

reason and seek to destroy.

Jones not only flees through the actual jungle
to his death, but returns through the forest

of the mind to his own past, . . . . And the
crocodile which he kills becomes a symbol of the
evil, both of his own nature and of all mankind.
But this primitive monster is also a symbol of
his own inner-most self; its death coincides with
his own . . . . The Emperor Jones, on its
primitive level, also dramatizes a 'long day's
journey into night,' which advances in physical
action, as it regresses in psychological

action, until it ends symbolically in an
illumination of the heart of darkness within

the soul of man. The difference is that the
primitive 'emperor' never fully comprehends 15
his own tragedy, and can never transcend it.

There has been much written on the subject of O'Neill's
The Emperor Jones being influenced by "Jungian concepts of

racial memory."16 As Jung would say, Jones' instinct for

 

self-preservation is made ineffective by the recrudescence of

primitive impulses.17 This is the concept of atavism which

critics say exists in The Emperor Jones.18 It is believed

 

that the actor, Charles Gilpin, who first played the title
role "resented the play's atavism, whereby the terrors of
the jungle night reduce the proud Jones to a cringing,
crawling African savage, Just before his end."19 Critics,

such as John Henry Raleigh, go on to say:

 

15Carpenter, pp. 91-93.

16John Gassner, "Introduction," Gassner, p. 3.

17Frieda Fordham, pp Introduction.pp_Jppg's Psychology
(Great Britain: Penquin Books, 1959).

18Rale1gh, p. 109.

19Ibid.

 

120

O'Neill . . . . was himself an atavist and . . . .
thought that the real cultural roots of the Negro
lay in Africa where, in fact, in the nineteenth
century the Negro had been an.aboriginal, who, to
reverse the order of the sequence of the play,

had come from the primeval jungle (Scene VII),
across the Atlantic Ocean in slave ships (VI), to
the auction block in the United States (V), to,
later.on, prison gangs (IV), to subjobs as Pullman
porters and to orgiastic outlets, such as gambling,
for his intolerable situation (III), and, to
therefore, a kind of built-in psychic instability
(II), and to advancing himself in any way he could,
if strong enough and clever enough, like Jones (I). 20
But to go to his death if his power weakened (VIII).

Raleigh does not advance any other evidence to support his
contention that O'Neill specifically was an atavist. "O'Neill
was always defensive, and with some justice, toward accu-

sations . . . that some of his plays were 'expressed and

patterned somewhat too precisely after Freud and Jung."21

Regarding the use of Jungian theory in The Emperor Jones,
Doris Falk has written:

In his use of symbols in Egg Emperor Jones O'Neill
acknowledged, as do most modern authors, the
validity of Jung's theory that great literature
strikes a responsive chord in all men because its
central metaphors can be traced to achetypal images
buried in the unconscious mind of humanity . . . .
The pitfall for the artist, however, may lie --
as in some of the later plays it does for O'Neill --
in his very awareness of this truth. Open-eyed,
conscious manipulation of archetypal symbols may
achieve only a strained and artificial objectivity--
a too-explicit cry for the immortal and the
universal. Wider public knowledge of these symbols
has also weakened their effectiveness: many images
which used to move us profoundly for reasons which
we did not quite understand have now become artistic

 

zolbid.
21Falk, p. 66.

 

121

platitudes . . . . The secret, obviously, is not
in the symbol, but in the skillful adaptation.
In Tpg_Emperor Jones O'Neill achieves a dynamic
synthesis of symbol and dramatic action. The
focus of the play is inward, but it is consistently
inward, and the final revelation is the logical
climax of revelations which have gone before.
However, as always in O'Neill's best plays,
outward reality has the first and last word.
Brutus Jones emerges as unforgettably himself:

a gigantic figure brought low by the very forces
which exalted him; universal, but n35 Man;
individual, but not Eugene O'Neill.

Such comments are highly significant in evaluating the literary

worth of Tpp,Emperor Jppgg. In contrast, Negro critics were.

insulted by archetypal images suggestive of Negro savagery

and primitivism. They reacted to the social insult by making

such comments as: "There is really no need to look toward

the freeing of black people because, once freed, they will

do the same thing as whites."23 Mitchell goes on to say that

the Harlem.Revival of Tpp,Emperor‘Jppg§ caused members of

the audience to shout, "Man, you come on outa that jungle!

This is Harlem!"2u
It is true that Brutus Jones does not flatter the

Negro ego, for he is a cluster of past sins and mistakes

with a self-superiority that cares little for either race

or kin. He is pre-occupied with "bleeding" the island

people, "robbing them just as he saw 'white quality folks'

2
do when.he was a Pullman porter . . . . " 5 His flight

 

221bid., pp. 70-71.
ZgMitchell, p. 75.
2 Ibid.

251pm.

 

122

through the jungle and subsequent death seem to reinforce
the Engel thesis that for O'Neill the ancient “life-death
battle is the paramount reality."26

Eugene O'Neill deals with a similar theme in Tpp
Dreamy K_i_d_, suggesting that something beyond the nature of
Dreamy, against which his resistance is helpless, has the
final hold on his destiny. Although Dreamy is motivated by
superstitious fears, the exposition of these dark passions
is not developed extensively through a series of scenes and
symbols as in 2p; Emperor Jppgp.

Tpp_Dreamy Egg is a one-act play about a Negro
gangster whose fear of bad luck has caused him to return to
his dying grandmother's apartment.

. . . when I heard it was ole Mammy croakin' and

axin' ter see me, I says ter myse'f: 'Dreamy, you

gotter make good wid ole Mammy no mattter what

come -- or you don' never git a bit of luck in

yo' life no more.
Dreamy has just murdered a white man and is therefore risking
his life to adhere to his Mammy's wishes. Although he
committed the murder in self-defense, Dreamy feels compelled
to run away from New York. As a Negro, he doesn't believe
he'll be given a fair trial.

The action of the play consists of the tension created

between Dreamy's desire to be about the business of escape,

 

26Driver, "On the Late Plays of Eugene O'Neill,"
122.

Gassner .
’ngugene O'Neill, “The Dreamy Kid," Locke, p. 12.

 

123

and at the same time, remain with his Mammy until she bestows
upon him the gift of luck.
Thus at the end of the play, as his dying Mammy . . .
tells Dreamy how he got the name 'Dreamy,' in the
good old days before they came 'No'th' to the ghetto
which has turned him into a criminal and when
Dreamy's boyish eyes were 'jest a-dreamin' an'
a-dreamin',' the grown-up Dreamy, armed and like
a cagedzgiger, waits for the police to close in
on him.
Dreamy boasts he'll fight until death before accepting surrender.
"Dey don't git de Dreamy! Not while he's 'live! Lawd Jesus,
no suh!”29
This is not a flattering image of the Negro. It is
a consideration of those elements which reduce man to ineffec—
tiveness and impotency.
Superstition, affection, boyish bravado effect
the disintegration of the adult Negro who was
unfortunate enough to come of age in the sordid,30
alien, white man's environment of New York City.
It is Engel's opinion that the central character in this play
is a man of "physical strength, animal courage, small brain,
who is reduced to impotence by an intangible force, a brute
1
brought to his knees by a psychological mouse."3
Again, O'Neill seems more engaged in surveying the
nature of those mysterious powers which contribute to man's
helplessness in the universe. He does not seem as deeply

involved with the business of creating a Negro hero whose

 

 

28Raleigh, pp. 116-117.

29O'Neill, p. 24.
1Engel, p. 46.

3 Ibid.

124

characteristics are predominantly admirable, since quite
specifically, O'Neill describes Dreamy as shifty, hard,
tough and defiantly scornful. The character's mouth is
said to be "cruel and perpetually drawn back at the corners

32

into a snarl." Furthermore, his manner certainly reinforces

his description: "I croaked a guy . . . . A white man. I

shot him dead . . . ."33

O'Neill, no doubt, like Paul Green, selected a Negro
character to execute his ideas regarding regression because
of the association of superstition that "had taken its impress
from the Southern Negro folkways."34 In contrast, Negro
heroes in Negro-written drama do not seem to be superstitious
or to exhibit infantile regression as intrinsic to their
nature.

Unlike O'Neill, who had no scorn for the savage
except as he apes the ways of civilization's hypocrisies,
for Which his scorn is bitter, Paul Green seems to suggest that
unless man is civilized, his fate can be nothing less than
the "tragedy of Man's waste."35 In 1927 Paul Green wrote
a one-act play, Supper gpp_ppp ng , which he called a tragic
melodrama of Negro life. It is a play of conjuring, super-

stition and elemental passion. The male protagonist is Fess

 

3Zo'Neill, p. 10.

33Ib1d.

31+Engel, p. 46.

35Paul Green, "Hymn to the Rising Sun," Green, p. 510.

 

 

125

Oxendine, a degenerate and vicious Negro who rapes his
daughter and inadvertently causes her death. Fess' wife,
maimed by the slashes of her husband's knife, sends for
Old Queenie, a Negro conjure woman, in order to solve the
mystery surrounding her daughter's death. Old Queenie plays
upon the child-like superstitions in Fess, reducing him to
terrified hysterics. As the hysterogenic agents mount in
power, Fess is described as tearing his clothes, ripping his
flesh and filling the cabin with piercing screams. As his
fear increases, Fess is hypnotized, similarly to Brutus Jones.
Fess' daughter appears and accuses him of betraying her. Fess
admits his guilt and, consequently, is shot by his wife.

The play illustrates Paul Green's concept of the
Negro as "the prey of his own superstitions, suspicions
and practices."36 Such victimization is also illustrated

in Green's one-act play Lp.Aunt Mahaly's Cabin (1928). Two

 

Negro murderers, Blue Gun and Boll Weevil, are motivated

by fear, hate, and greed. In an abandoned cabin, they fight
and tear at each other until their savage passions and
animal tendencies result in simultaneous death for the two
Negroes. Green's association of superstitious beliefs with
the Negro is dramatized at the play's end when the ghost of
Aunt Mahaly, an old witch woman, and her goblins come to

dance over the dead and to haunt the convicts. Once again,

 

36Adams, p. 35.

126

the Negro is allied with criminality and featured as a
degenerate. Green treats the Negro similarly in.gymgltg the
Rising §3n, a one-act play set in a convict stockade.

In gm _t_<_>_ t_h_e_ Rising §__up_, two Negro characters
and a white boy share the sympathetic position. The Negroes
are Hunt and Pearly Gates. Hunt is an emaciated dwarf who

37 After

is locked in a sweat box for "playing with his parts."
a series of beatings and indignities inflicted upon the
crtminals by a sadistic and ignorant white Captain, the play's
climax arrives -- the opening of the box. "Inside the box

we can see a little skinny Negro doubled up like a baby in
its mother's womb, his head stuck between his knees, who has

crapped all over himself."38

The plan ends in a ceremonial
sequence fulfilling Hunt's dream of burial up on the "rail-
road fill so he could hear the trains run at night."39 But
the character's reply, "But how the hell you gonna hear them
trains running at night and your ears packed full of clay?"uO
seems only to emphasize the ironic pathos of another unful—
filled dream. Paul Green seems to attempt to contradict

a traditionally romantic folk-hero with brutal truth. The
criminals in parade fashion.move toward the hill: Pearly
Gates, last in line, carrying Runt's body like a sack on his

shoulder. Photographic realism combines with poetic

 

37Paul Green, "Hymn to the Rising Sun," Green, p. 500.
381bid., p. 509.

39Ibid., p. 510.

“Olbid.

127

evocation to suggest that background of reality and imagi-
nation against which all of Green's plays have acted them-
selves out -- whether on the stage or in the reader's mind.
Obviously, there were objections to these plays as

not being representative of Negro life because they accented
degradation, ignorance and brutality. According to Paul
Green, they were not designed to be representative:

The chief concern here is with the more tragic and

uneasy side of Negro life as it has exhibited itself

to my notice . . . . Those in search of happier 41

and more cheerful records may find them elsewhere.

White playwrights were not the only ones to design

heroes in the manner of brute primitives. Theodore Browne,
a Negro, treats this subject in a play about John Henry.
The drama is structured in eight Episodes and is entitled
Natural flag. Since the playwright seems bent upon manu-
facturing a complex psychological past for his legendary
character, the series of episodes become cumbersome and make
for a disjointed progression of the plot. The conflict between
machine and man serves only as an opening and closing frame-
work for six flashbacks unveiling the hero's past experiences.
Unfortunately, for the play's sake as well as the character's,
Browne uses John Henry's experiences to forward his own

attitudes regarding racial deprivation and injustice. written
in 1937, the play reflects the writer's susceptibility to the

 

MBarrett Clark, The Writing 2.1:. Paul Green (New York:
Robert McBride, 1928), p. 55.

 

 

 

128

1930's preoccupation with the wage-earner and labor's

rights, problems similar to those found in Peters and Sklar's
Stevedore. However, unlike Stevedore, Natural flag is not
concerned with propagandizing Marxist ideology or the union's
glory. When Natural Man talks about "niggers" working for
less wages and spoiling strike methods, it is in order to
protest their unfair treatment. As John Henry points out,

"niggers got to live and the whites won't let them join the

"42

union so --. Natural Man, as a work, is designed to assert

the superiority of the Negro, and the playwright uses the
hero as a means of "getting back at the enemy."43 A scene
in a Jailhouse with a group of unidentified white jailbirds
illustrates this point:

White man's country. White man's world. Big Mister
Great -- I am! Make all the high and the mighty
laws and rules. Change everything to suit hisself.
Black man got to bow and scrape to him, like he

was some God Almighty hisself. Black man got to go
to him with his hat in his hand and ask for the
right to live and breathe, sleep, and eat, sweat
and slave! Got to go to Almighty White Boss for
every little thing. Even down When it comes to
thinking. Black man.got to go to him for that,
too! Nothing he say or do what white man ain't

got something to say about it!

JAILBIRD
What do you want, Nigger, a seat in the White House?
JOHN HENRY

You want to know how I feel? . . . Like a natural
man.mongst a heap of muscle-bound Sissies! . . .

 

uzTheodore Browne, "The Natural Man" (The Schomburg
Collectigg, New York Public Library, 1937), p. 65. (Typewritten).
Littlejohn, p. 4.

 

 

129

Like a great king without a throne to sit on! . . .
You damned right, a king! Every inch, White Folks,
every inch! That's me. King without a throne,

but king right on. You tallow-faced Sissies might
be sitting on the throne, but that don't make you
king cause you set there. Nossir! I built that
throne. Built roads so you could travel from
place to place. And I ain't asking you all to
thank me for what I do. I ain't asking you to be
my friend. Ain't wishing to eat at the same table
with you. Ain't wanting you to put yourself out

of the way for me at all, understand? All I

ask is that you let me be. You can have swell
palace and the golden throne but don't mess up
with my crown! I'm going strut the earth with
that crown on my head till old Gabriel sounds

his trumpet for me to go on up to Glory! And

I'm going walk right smack into glory Kingdom

with my crown still on my head.LF

Theodore Browne's play tries to remind the white man
that he is vicious and foul, making this play a litany of
abuse at the expense of legend.

John Henry in in; Natural Man is a criminal because
he shot a white man for having beaten a Negro child into
exhaustion. Rationalizing his behavior, John Henry says,

JOHN HENRY

Black man's easy to get along with, long as white
folks'll treat him human. He do his work and never
squawk. When white folks start meddling, it makes
him mean. Cause he talks back and stands up for
his rights, white man don't like that. Calls him a
bad nigger. Nigger'll work his head off to please
a white man. Try to be his friend, but Mister
Charlie ain't going to let him. I'm this way.
Ain't going to be no door-mat for white man to wipe
his foot on. Nossir! I don't ask for any favors.
I do my work the best I know how. And all I ask

is that he treat me honest. Don't cheat me.

Don't mess up with my hard-earned money. Just

 

uuBrowne, pp. 66-67.

 

 

130

45

pay me off and let me go on about my business.
Theodore Browne tries to glorify the primitive elements,
supposedly ingrained in the John Henry character, by having
his hero say repeatedly whenever he is in a position to

I
explain himself, "I'm natural-born."46 However, the play
does not clarify what this means. Because of the legend, it
could be assumed the playwright means this man is more prone
to a kinship with nature than with manufactured products of
man, such as a steel driving machine. This, after all, is
his final contest. But outside of the periodical boasting
about being "natural," the play does not develop this kin-
ship with nature. Consequently, it seems a stubborn conceit
that motivates Browne's character into competing with the
steam drill.
JOHN HENRY

All right, you punks! Thanks for the send-off!

But, that's where you're wrong. The king ain't

croaked yet. Old Death ain't laid his cold hands

on him yet. He's still walking the earth like a

natural man. When they do shove dirt in his face,

his Spirit's going rise from the lonesome grave,

and walk the earth for him. His Spirit's going

walk the earth like a natural man. Going walk

and walk till this whole earth is destroyed by

fire, like the Good Book says it will, on the day

of Judgement. And all your god damned laws,

man-made steam engines and gadgets'll be melted

like wax. Then the Spirit's going take on his natural

flesh again and put a ten-pound hammer in his

hand. Tell him to go on back to earth and
see what he can do. Start all over again.

 

45

.I___

bid., p. 680
b .

I id

 

131

Hammer out a new earthly kingdom, all his own.
Yes, Lord, a solid natural kingdom that'll last
forever! And, once more, the natural man's going
take his rightful seat on the throne, and rule
the earth like a mighty king!47

Strongly implied is a need for identification, dignity
and recognition. The words seem to directly and overtly
strike out against the concept of the Negro as humble,
servile dependent, indolent, lazy and inefficient. They
deliberately boast an identification.

The problem of 'facelessness,' as James Baldwin
puts it, is the main preoccupation of Negro liter-
ature, each writer using his own metaphor to describe
it. DuBois, for example, felt it as a sense of never
being heard: . . . Ralph Ellison, uses a different
metaphor -- invisibility -- to describe the same
phenomenon. 'I am an invisible man,' he states

in the opening paragraph of his novel: . . . To
James Baldwin, on the other hand, the problem

is that 'nobody knows my name.' It is not Just
the white man who does not know the Negro's name,
however; the Negro does not know either. In the
literal sense, the Negro American has never

been able to decide what to call himself. The
Black Muslims, for example, violently object

to use of the term 'Negro,' which they feel
connotes slavery; the Muslims insist on the term
'black' or 'black men,' though in actual conver-
sation even so controlled a Muslim leader as
Malcolm X occasionally forgets himself find
unconsciously uses the forbidden term.“

Apparently, Theodore Browne deals with the problem of "face-
lessness" and uses the idea of Enatural man" to erect identi-
fication for his Negro hero.

As literature, Browne's play fails. "Louis Kronenberger,

 

”71bid., p. 68.
48Silberman, pp. 109-111:

132

in reviewing the performance of Natural Man in New York,
suggested 'that perhaps Mr. Browne wished to point out that
Negroes cannot find a solution to their problems through
brute force.'")+9 Mr. Kronenberger seems to have overlooked
the perversion of the legendary folk hero into a self appreci-
ative character of supreme ego. Theodore Browne does not
seem interested in problem solving as Mr. Kronenberger
suggests. Rather, he utilizes a legendary figure to lend
strength to complaints of injustices inflicted upon Negroes.
Therefore, it is not surprising, because of Browne's motive,
that Mitchell, a Negro critic, would refer to Natural Man as
a "fine play."5O However, it was never published and little
criticism of its values exists.

The final play to be considered in this chapter is
Randolph Edmonds' one-act play, Bad Man. It is mainly con-
cerned with the idea that often took flight in romantic
imaginations -- in every bad man there's a little good.
Edmonds is preoccupied with the good and the bad as personi-
fied by a male and a female character. fig; Man concerns a
curious girl, Maybelle, who visits a lumber camp in order to
meet Thea Dugger who has a killer's reputation.

Dey say once when he was workin' in a steel mill
in Birmingham, he went into a pool parlor where

dey was gamblin'. One man started tuh pull a
gun on him. He picked up a cue ball and hit him

 

”9Hicklin, p. 285.
50Mitchell, p. 113.

 

133

in de temple and killed him daid as a goat. Den
he picked up de man's Smith and Weston and shot
up de place. Everybody ran out in de street.
Thea ran out after dem but didn't see nothin'
but a mule. So he poured de lead into de mule.
Dey say de mule jumped up and fell down.daid.

During the course of the play, Thea purports to add
another killing to his record, when Maybelle enters the
scene, and requests that he refrain from murder. Thea is
moved by this concern for his behavior: and consequently,
adheres to her request. The consequence of this action is
a willingness of Thea's part to give himself in martyrdom
to a white mob that comes seeking a "nigger" to burn as
atonement for a white man's death.

While substantially superficial, the play does reflect
another Negro's effort to portray a brute hero in a sympa-
thetic light. In so doing the writer re-emphasizes a recog-
nizable pattern in Negro literature of treating the hero as
ideal and as superior. Natural Man and Bad Mg; reflect the
time-honored desire of the Negro's drive for an identification,
honor and respectability.

The last hero to be considered in this chapter is
Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas. Bigger is the central
character in Native §gg,(1940). Originally, Native Sgn was

a novel, however, with the assistance of Paul Green, the

novel was adapted into a three-act play, and, subsequently,

 

51Randolph Edmonds, "Bad Man," Six Plays for g,Negro
The tre, ed. Randolph Edmonds (Boston: walter H. Baker
Company, 1934), p. 16.

 

134

given a Broadway production.

Native §gg has been described in various quarters as
'one of the finest novels ever written by an American,'
'the finest novel ever written by a Negro,' 'an
American version of Crime and Punishment' and 'a
disgrace to Negroes because it labels them

killers' . . . ."52

Bigger Thomas is a "brooding, violent Negro Whose
father was killed in a Southern race riot, Who lives with
his mother, sister and younger brother in one room in the
Chicago slums."53 Bigger is out of work because "the white
boys got all the good runs -- They don't want no niggers
driving trucks down to Florida --"54

With his pals he indulges in fantasies of machine-
gunning white enemies. These illusions are motivated by
Bigger's passion for freedom.

BIGGER
Look up there . . . . .Dramatically. That airplane--
writing on the sky -- like a little finger -- So
high up, looks like a little bird. Sailing and
looping and zooming -- And that white smoke coming
out of his tail -- H§_walks restlessly about.
Speed! Speed! That's What them white boys got! . . .
Go on, boys, fly them planes, fly 'em to the end
of the world, fly 'em smack into the sun! I'm
with you. Goddam255

Bigger pulls out a pistol from his pocket, which
he imagines is a machine gun, and pretends to shoot down

the imaginary enemy. Into this scene a social worker comes

 

52Mitchell, p. 115.

53"New Plays in Manhattan,'| Time Volume XXXVII (April
7. 1941) Po 76-

BuPaul Green and Richard Wright, Native Sgg, (New York:
Harper and Brothers Publishers, 19G1), p. .

5521.21... p. 33-31».

135

and offers him a position as chauffeur in the home of Mr.
and Mrs. Dalton.

The Negro goes to the Dalton home where he is
told of his duties, which include driving the Dalton's
daughter, Mary, around Chicago. As Mary explains, "Your
job is to do what I tell you!"56 This includes assisting
her to her room during the early morning hours after a
drunken orgy that has placed Mary in a semi-conscious stupor.
Drunkenly, she insists Bigger stay with her. Frightened by
the prospect of being caught, Bigger struggles to disengage i
himself from the white woman's room, but not soon enough.
Aware that her daughter drinks heavily and concerned for her
welfare, Mrs. Dalton (who is blind) enters Mary's room to
see if she is in need of anything. Bigger is terrified and
in a moment of hysteria, he smothers the Dalton's daughter,
hoping that Mrs. Dalton will assume the silence means that
she is sleeping. She does, and ignorant of the truth,
leaves the room. Continuing to act out of fear, Bigger
carries Mary's body to the furnace room and stuffs her into
the furnace.

As the publicity about the missing Dalton girl
mounts, Bigger becomes consumed with the notion of seeking
ransom money. He writes a kidnaping proposal, which he

hopes will bring him freedom and prestige:

 

561bid., p. 53.

._“_J

136

Twenty years, up and down the dark alleys, like a
rat. Nobody hear us -- nobody hear you, nobody
pay any attention to you, and the white folks
walking high and mighty don't even know we're
alive. Now they cut the pigeon wing the way we say--
Face alight with his vision. Like bars falling
away -- like doors swinging cpen, and walls
falling down. And all the big cars and all the
big buildings and the finery and the marching

up and down, and the big churches and the bells
ringing and the millionaires walking in and out
bowing low before their God-Hunh-huh. It ain't
God now, it's Bigger. Bigger, that's my name!57

But this vision is destroyed by a curious reporter
who questions his actions in the furnace room and manages
to evoke his guiltiness. Bigger flees to an abandoned
building where he hides waiting for his chance to escape.

He is captured instead, and sentenced to death. Edward

Max, a Darrowesque lawyer, makes a plea for Bigger's life on
the ground that racial oppression must inevitably lead to
twisted, savage psychologies; but the defense lawyer's plea
is futile. Bigger Thomas is executed.

Bigger Thomas is a weapon of wright's personal philos-
ophy because even members of the Negro race insist that
wright's hero is atypic, and not representative of the "what
it is like to live in a Negro head, in a Negro home, in a.
Negro ghetto."58

Bigger dreams of some black man who will weld

all blacks together into a mighty fist, and feels,

in relation to his family, that perhaps they had to
live as they did precisely because none of them

57Ib1d., p. 90.
58Littlejohn, p. 102.

137

had ever done anything, right or wrong, which
mattered very much. It is only he who, by an
act of murder, has burst the dungeon cell.

He has made it manifest that 'he' lives and
that his despised blood nourishes the passions
of a man. He has forced his oppressors to

see the fruit of that oppression; and he

feels, when his family and his friends come to
visit him in the death cell, that they should
not be weeping or frightened, that they

should be happy, proud that he has dared,
through murder and now through his own imminent
destruction, to redeem their anger and humiliation,
that he has hurled into the spiritless obscurity
of their lives the lamp of his passionate life
and death . . . . What is missing in his situ-
ation and in the representation of his psychol-
ogy -- which makes his situation false and his
psychology incapable of development -- is any
revelatory apprehension of Bigger as one of the
Negro's realities or as one of the Negro's
roles . . . . His kinsmen are quite right to
weep and be frightened, even to be appalled:
for it is not his love for them or for himself
which causes him to die, but his hatred and

his self-hatred; he does not redeem the pains
of a despised people, but reveals, on the
contrary, nothing more than his own fierce
bitterness at having been born one of them.

In this also he is the 'native son,' his
progress determinable by the speed with which
the distance increases between himself and the
auction-block and all that the auction-block
implies. To have penetrated this phenomenon,
this inward contention of love and hatred,
blackness and whiteness, would have given him
a stature more nearly human and an end more
nearly tragic: and would have given us a
document more profoundly and genuinely bitter
and less harsh with an anger Which is, on the
one hand exhibited and, on the other hand,
denied.59

Bigger not only reveals "his own fierce bitterness at having
60

been born" a Negro; he also reveals Richard Wright's

 

59James Baldwin, "Many Thousands Gone: Richard
wright's 5Native Son,'" Gross and Hardy, pp. 2&3-244.
Ibid.

138

peculiarly personal bitterness which makes Native Son a
vehicle of Richard wright's interpretation of the Negro

03118 e 3

As both Ellison and Baldwin have made clear, Wright
is not, in any sense, a representative American
Negro. His militant anti-religious atheism (from
the age of -- what? ten?), his alienation from
family and community, his sincere claim that

there is 'a strange absence of any real kindness
in Negroes,' or of honor, loyalty, tenderness,
love -- all of this contrasts markedly not only
with the experience of a Baldwin, say, for he is
not 'typical' either -- but with that, I am

sure -- of most other living American Negroes.
wright himself confessed (in Black B91) the
distance he felt from other Negroes. He

marveled at their laughter, their resilience,
their so easy adaptation to 'a separate, stunted
way of life,' when all he was ever able to do

was resist and fight back. He may never have come
to understand white mgn; but he never understood
many Negroes, either. 1

Bigger Thomas is the incarnation of a myth.62 This mythic

dramatization of the Negro characterizes his nature as "a
pure engine of hate, brutalized, behavioristic, driven by
unrelieved suffering."63 Ralph Ellison contends this notion

is as "stultifying and incomplete a stereotype as any

white Southerner's 'nigger.'"6u

. . . stereotypes are malicious reductions of
human complexity which seize upon such charac-
teristics as color, the shape of a nose, an
accent, hair texture, and cOnvert them into
emblems which render it unnecessary for the
prejudiced individual to confront the humanity
of those upon whom the stereotype has been
imposed.65

 

51Littlejohn, p. 109.
6ZBaldwin, p. 2M0.
63Littlejohn, p. 109.
gulbid.

5Ellison, p. 80.

139

Ellison insists in Shadow and Act that it is wrong to use
unrelieved suffering as the only "real" Negro experience
because it dehumanizes and stereotypes him.

. . . I am compelled to reject all condescending,

narrowly paternalistic interpretations of Negro

American life and personality from whatever quarters

they come, whether white or Negro. Such interpre-

tations would take the negative details of our

existence and make them the whole of our life and

personality. But literature teaches us that

mankind has always defined itself against the

negatives thrown it by both society and the

universe. It is human will, human hope, gnd

human effort which makes the difference.6

Such are the arguments used to criticize the nature
of Bigger Thomas in Native Son. Writers like Baldwin and
Ellison feel that Richard Wright has taken "the negative
details of Negro existence" and tried to "make them the
whole of Negro life and personality."67
Certainly, there is an absence of any real kindness

in Wright's hero victim combination. He personifies abnormal
delight in cruelty. For example, in the first scene, Bigger
pursues the rats which inhabit his living quarters with a
passion that resembles sadism. "I got you, old man Dalton,
got you that time! I put out your light, mashed you into
a mushy, bloody pudding. You dead now -- dead, dead,
dead --"68 Nor does he vent his cruelty on dumb animals

only: his family, his friends, his sweetheart, his God as

 

67Ibid.
68Green and Wright, p. 1#.

 

140

well as his enemies inherit his venom. To his sister he
says, “I wish you'd stop being a little snot, dirting up
where you don't belong."69 When his mother suggests that he
needs God, Bigger mocks, "God! Yeh, you got him hanging on
the wall there -- the white folk's God!"70 When his girl-
friend, Clara, tries to love and to help him, she earns only
his laughter.
CLARA

Please, Bigger, I don't mean to make you mad. I

want to make you happy -- that's all I want.

You know that. I know your folks tries to turn

you against me -- say I ain't no good.

BIGGER

Growling, n2 turns and seizes her roughly ny the
shoulders, his voice a mixture of anguish and

cruelty and bitter love. Goddam it, you know why
I come here -- Cause I can't help it. I wish
I could help it ~- Now I wish I could --

CLARA

Bigger, what's the matter? Don't you love me
no more?

BIGGER

Sometimes I do love you -- Then I feel you holding
me down -- pulling at me --

CLARA
I don't -- I don't --
BIGGER
And it's your little soft baby-talk again --

fumbling around my heart -- and then we get some
liquor -- and end up by kissing and going to bed.

 

69Ib1d., p. 8.
7°Ibid., p. 10.

 

141

You all around me -- Like a swamp sucking me
under -- Can't see -- Can't think -- Goddam,

I hate it! I hate it! Wish it was different.
Now I do.

CLARA

Now! How come you keep saying 'now' all the time?
How come you laughing like that?

BIGGER

Yeh, I'm laughing -- laughing at everybody --
everybody in the whole damn world. Laughing
at you.7

Despite the fact that Bigger acts out of fear when
he murders Mary Dalton, the character cannot be disassociated
from the brutal detailing of horror which, according to
Littlejohn, is Wright's trademark.72

No one describes a lynching, a burning, a dismembering
with quite the same evident gusto. It is this, as
often as not, that provides the raw material behind
Wright's explosions: a girl's head is sawn off

in order to fit her body into a furnace: still
sizzling black corpses are dragged out of a

burning dance hall; a dog is slowly eviscerated
with a knife; a little boy's body makes a

'cushy PLOP!' on the sidewalk after a ten-story
fall. The effect of such horrors, such sub-
literary sadism, is perhaps no more 'useful,'
socially, no more legitimate or lasting than

that of the pornography it resembles.

Obviously, these horrors manifest themselves much more con-
cretely in wright's fiction and can only be indirectly
associated with the play version of Native Snn through the
memory of the novel's descriptive passages. Littlejohn

further contends that:

 

7:1bid., pp. 82-83.
7 Littlejohn, p. 105.
Ibid.

 

142

Richard wright was never able to see himself, or
other men, or the Negro Problem, or anything else
(see his view of world history in White Man,
Listen!) except in the shape 0; the fixed
abstractions of his moral myth. 4

 

As a result of this fixation, the secret hero in Native
§gn is an assumed moral superiority being peddled through
the amoralist, Bigger Thomas. Richard wright's Negro is
the "tormented martyr" who is not responsible for anything
he does -— murder included. "The only significant relation—
ship, in his scheme, is hate; the only significant action
is murder."75 As Bigger awaits execution, he says proudly
that he at last feels himself a man.

BIGGER

Naw, Mr. Max. Everywhere you turn they (the whites)
shut the door in your face, keep you homeless as

a dog. Never no chance to be your own man. That's
what I always wanted to be -- my own man -- Honest
to God, Mr. Max, I never felt like my own man till
right after that happened -- till after I killed
her.

MAX

Fiercely. No, Bigger.
BIGGER

Yeh -— and all the peoples and all the killings and
the hangings and the burnings inside me, kept me
pushing me on -- up and on to do something big —-
have money like that kidnap note -- power -- something
great -- to keep my head up -- to put my name on the

‘ hot wires of the world -- big -- And, yeh, and all the
bad I done, it seemed was right -- and after they
caught me I kept saying it was right and I was gonna

 

7”Ibid., p. 10a.
751bid., p. 103.

 

143

stand on it, hold it -- walk thatlong road down
to that old chair -- look at it, say, 'Do your
worst! Burn me. Shoot your juice, and I

can take it. You can kill me but you can't hurt
me -- can't hurt me -- It's the truth, Mr. Max,
after I killed that white girl, I wasn't scared
no more -- for a little while. His voice rises
with feverish intensity. I was my own man then,
I was free. Maybe it was 'cause they was after
my life then. They made me wake up. That

made me feel high and powerful —- free! With
growing vehemence. That day and night after

I done killed her -- when all of them was
looking for me -— hunting me -- that day and
night for the first time I felt like a man.

MAX
Loudly. You don't believe that, Bigger.
BIGGER

Yeah, yeah, I felt like a man . . . .76
To which Grenville Vernon replies, "When we consider that
the reason for Bigger's new-felt 'manhood' is, as he him-
self proclaims, his murder of a white woman, we wonder what
kind of morality Mr. Wright believes in."77

Mr. Wright contends that white society is responsible
for breeding and nurturing the Bigger Thomases. "Yes, sir,
it is we, or some several thousand of us, who force the
Bigger Thomases on relief, and into alleys, and one-room

tenements."78 Thus, Bigger Thomas, "however 'wicked,'" is

"morally victorious in defeat." Richard Wright "descends . .

 

76Green and Wright, p. 141.
77Grenville Vernon, "Native Son," The Commonweal,
Volume XXXIII (April 11, 1941), p. 622.
Burns Mantle, "Native Son Stirs Audience to
Emotional Pitch at St. James," Daily News, March 25, 1941,

p. 37B.

144

to explicit moral justification" in Max's speech.79

MAX

. . . Night after night I have lain without sleep
trying to think of a way to picture to you, and
to the world, the causes, the reasons, why this
Negro boy sits here today -- a self-confessed murderer
-- and why this great city is boiling with a
fever of excitement and hate . . . . Where is the
responsibility? Where is the guilt? For there is
guilt in the rage that demands that this man's
life be stamped out! There is guilt and respon-
sibility in the hate that inflames that mob
gathered in the streets below these windows!
What is the atmosphere that surrounds this
trial? Are the citizens intent upon seeing that
the majesty of the Law is upheld? That retri-
bution be dealt out in.measure with the facts?
That the guilty, and only the guilty, be caught
and punished? No! There, under that flag, is
the likeness of one of our forefathers -- one

of the men who came to these strange shores
hundreds of years ago in search of freedom.
Those men, and we who followed them, built here
a nation mighty and powerful, the most powerful
nation on earth! Yet to those who, as much

as any others, helped us build this nation,

we have said, and we continue to say, 'This

is a white man's country!' Night and day,
millions of souls, the souls of our black
people, are crying out, 'This is our country
too. We helped build it -~ helped defend it.
Give us a part in it, a part free and hopeful
and wide as the everlasting horizon.' And

in this fear-crazed, guilt-ridden body of

Bigger Thomas that vast multitude cries out

to you now in a mighty voice, saying, 'Give

us our freedom, our chance, and our hope to

be men;' Can we ignore this cry? Can.we
continue to boast through every medium of
public utterance -- through literature,
newspapers, radio, the pulpit -- that this

is a land of freedom and opportunity, of

liberty and justice for all -- and in our
behavior deny all these precepts of charity

and enlightenment? Bigger Thomas is a

symbol of that double-dealing, an organism

 

79Littlejohn, p. 104.

145

which our political and economic hypocrisy has
bred. Kill him, burn the life out of him, and
still the symbol of his living death remains.
And you cannot kill Bigger Thomas, for he is
already dead. He was born dead -- born dead
among the wild forests of our cities, amid the
rank and choking vegetation of our slums ~-

in the Jim Crow corners of our busses and
trains ~- in the dark closets and corridors
and rest rooms marked off by the finger of a
blind and prejudiced law as Black against
White. And who created that law? We did.

And while it lasts we stand condemned before
mankind -- Your Honor, I beg you, not in the
name of Bigger Thomas but in the game of
ourselves, spare this boy's life! 0

It is through Max that wright tries not only to accomplish
the assumption of responsible guilt by whites, but also to
suggest the beneficent qualities of the members of the
Communist party. "Communism frequently plays a part, more
often as party than as dogma,"81 in wright's writing. In
Native Son it is clearly stated that Max is a member of
the Communist party. Quite naturally, his points are tinged
with Marxist ideology:
BIGGER
Seem like with you here try to help me -- you so
good and kind -- I begin to think better. Shaking
his head again. Uh, but why the folks who sent
me here hate me so? That mob -- I can hear 'em
still -- 'Cause I'm black?
MAX
With entle, yearning comfort. No, that's not it,
Bigger. Your being black just makes it easier to

be singled out in a white man's world. That's all.
What they wanted to do to you they do to each other

 

80Green and wright, pp. 124-125.
81Littlejohn, p. 104.

146

every day. They don't hate you and they don't hate
each other. They are men like you, like me, and
just as you do, their own chance. But as long as
these are denied them -- just so long will those
millions keep groping around frightened and lost --
angry and full of hate -- the way you were, Bigger.
Hg pauses. Bigger, the day these millions --

these millions of poor men -- workers, make up
their minds -- begin to believe in themselves --

BIGGER

Yeh, rggkon the workers believe in themselves all
right.

But, for Wright, the cause of Communism is a secondary issue.
"The communist ideology may be skimmed off as something
curdled by age, something gray and inessential."83 Bigger
is Richard wright's monster who cries blatantly that the
lower classes are innocent of their crimes. Thus, Richard
Wright attempts to redeem a symbolical monster in social
terms.8u
While it is difficult to determine what Native Son

tells us about the heart and mind of the Negro people, it
clearly indicates its author's point of view. As with many
myths, there is much about Bigger Thomas that is false.

And the same applies to Richard Wright, of all

his once-in-twelve-million uniqueness -- a man

in great part 'false,' atypical, exceptional,

but no less useful for that.

An infant crying in the night,

An infant crying for the light,

And with no language but a cry.

He, after all, was real. If he was not telling all
the truth, neither was he lying. The fact that he

 

82Green and Wright, p. 135.

Littlejohn, p. 106.
Baldwin, p. 249.

83

 

147

was obsessed, as a writer, with sadism and brutality
grants us no permission to ignore the fact that
there is, in White America's treatment of the

Negro, a great deal of sadism and brutality. If
white America did not make Bigger Thomas, as

his lawyer insisted it did -~ and let us not be

too sure -- it did make Richard WEight, for

whom Bigger Thomas was necessary. 5

Each of the heroes considered in this chapter are
motivated by murderous primitive passions.

John Henry, Thea Dugger and Bigger Thomas are men
whose conflicts and personal actions are conditioned by their
environment and the persecutory hostility of the whites.

The Negroes who become killers, particularly Bigger Thomas,
are cultural products "fighting against overwhelming odds,
filled with ineffectual resentments that explode in the
murderous impulses."86 As a consequence, Browne and Wright
have written tracts, rather than.works of art. So conscious
are they of race prejudice they seem duty-bound to assault
it at every turn, injecting personal opinion and philosophy
into the mouths of their characters.87

Eugene O'Neill and Paul Green do not seem ignorant of
the massive odds against which the Negro struggles; however,
the source of their heroes' passions does not seem confined
to white brutality. In contrast, Browne and wright attempt
to peddle the theory that White society is responsible for

any misdemeanor committed by their respective heroes.

 

ggLittlejohn, p. 110.

Charles I. Glicksberg, "The Alienation of Negro
Literature," Phylon, XI (1st Quarter, 1950). p. 54.

7William Gardner Smith, "The Negro writer: Pitfalls
and Compensation," Phylon, XI (4th Quarter, 1950), p. 298:

h“

148

Even the arbitrary burning of the "bad man" created by
Edmonds, is an obvious commentary on the white man's
bestiality.

From a literary point of view, none of these brute
primitives suggest the universal humanity of the Negro.
The exotic portrayal of Negro giants, killers and monsters
points toward a social ill. Once again, as social tracts,

the plays written by Negroes reinforce the problem of identi-

fication and a Negro male's desire for recognition.

 

CHAPTER V
THE MARXIST CUDGEL

Nearly all dramas written by Negroes are propagandistic
to a degree. As a result, the Negro writer is too often
driven by social circumstance to write a weakly structured
tract. So conscious is he of the pervading evil of race
prejudice, he feels obligated to assault it at every turn,
injecting personal opinion at every opportunity and utilizing
his characters as media for exposing racial philosophy.
It is,therefore,not surprising that during the
1930's the Negro became an instrument through which the
"leftist oriented" thinkers could exercise their Marxist
ideology.
The host of social ills the Negro was heir to --
crime, poverty, disease -- that began to emerge
from behind the mask of finger-snapping gaiety
made him a natural for the leftist-oriented
criticism of the 'angry-decade,' and inaugurated
what many critics, at least until very recently,
think is his most viable image in literature ~-
protest. This is not to say, of course, that
the Negro writer's resentment at being the
victim of the most glaring of democratic
hypocrisies began in the 1930's: it had been
there all along.

In this chapter, subjection to the aims of the propagandist

will be considered. The dramas which will be considered

 

1Gross, p. 16.

149

150

exist as a part of proletarian literature and state quite
openly that civil rights and human rights can be directly
improved through a society reconstructed on "Marxist-
Leninist" foundations.

Words and pictures have played a more continuous,
and perhaps a more vital role than bullets or
rubles in Moscow's struggle to undermine the
social order of capitalism and to reconstract
society on 'Marxist-Leninist' foundations.

Marxist influence on the drama, as upon literature in general,
was greatest in the middle of the 1930's,

. . . a period which witnessed the major productions
of The Theatre Union, the emergence of Odets, and
the brief flowering of 'proletarian' drama, the
genre which produced such plays as Lg; Freedom

Ring, waiting in; Lefty, Stevedore, Marching

Son , and Black zip. Indeed, the entire phenom-
enon of proletarian literature is significant

as a reflection of the impact of Marxism on
American letters.

In brief, the depression years licensed Negro protest plays
and an atmosphere of mass rebellion against social, political
and economic conditions.

The editorial manifesto of Eng Challenge, a radical
Negro journal begun in 1937, announced the necessity
of depicting Negro life 'through the sharp focus of
social consciousness' and was backed up by Richard
Wright's 'Blueprint for Negro Writing,' in which

he pleaded for 'Negro writers to stand shoulder to
shoulder with Negro workers in mood and outlook.'
Two years before, in a speech to the American
Writers Congress, Langston Hughes articulated the

 

2Frederick Barghoorn, "Soviet Doctrine of the Role
of Propaganda," Public Qpinion nnd Communication, ed.
Bernard Berelson and Morris Janowitz (New York: The Free
Press, 1366), p. 360.

the Thirties (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964),
p. 34.

 

 

151

new revolutionary image of the Negro: by placing
himself 'on the solid ground of the daily working-
class struggle,' the Negro writer can 'reveal

to the white masses those Negro qualities which
go beyond the mere ability to laugh and sing and
make music.' The Negro writer must expose the
bigotry in unions, the 'sick-sweet' lies of
organized religion, the false leadership of
Negroes 'owned by capital,' the economic roots

of race hatred, and the 'Contentment Tradition

of the O-iovely-Negroes school of American

fiction.'
Paul Peters and George Sklar's Stevedore (1934) was designed
to arouse direct action against race prejudice in union labor.
Stevedore is "undoubtedly one of the best of the first full-
scale battles of the Negro in which the Negroes didn't

fight for themselves, but were fought for."5

The play was the second production of the Theatre
Union, “an organization formed in 1934 devoted to fostering
the drama of radical propaganda."6 The Theatre Union took
over the Civic Theatre on 14th Street in New York City and
gave a series of plays based on a clearly defined philosophy:

'Whether or not they adhered to a party program,'
John Gassner has written, 'they recognized the
Marxist principle that modern society is divided
between two camps, capital and labor. Their
first production was Peace 2n Earth (1933) by
Albert Maltz and George Sklar. In Stevedore
they found a play which had dramatic effective-
ness, an exciting plot, movement, emotion,
conflict, as well as argument. An excellent
mixed cast, . . . gave authentic$ty to a force-
ful picture of a labor struggle.

 

”Gross, pp. 16-17.
gLinnehan, p. 157.
Joseph Wood Krutch, "Drama on the Barricades," Eng
Nation, LXXXVIII (May 2, 1934). p. 515.
Rosamond Gilder, "A Picture Book of Plays and Players
1916-1941," Theatre Arts, XXV (August 1941), p. 593.

 

 

152

Stevedore utilizes suggestions from such actual occurrences

as:
. . . the New Orleans dock strike, the attacks on

Negroes in East St. Louis in 1919, the Chicago
attacks in 1919, the Dr. Sweet case in Detroit,
the Bogalusa lumber strike and the attacks on
sharecroppers at Camp Hill, Alabama . .
Presumably, Mr. Peters knew some or all 0%
these aforementioned troubles first hand.

Stevedore is a three-act play by white authors whose
primary concern is ennoblement of Marxist-endorsed labor
unions. It is a Negro laborer, named Lonnie Thompson, who
takes up the cudgel of propaganda for the authors. This
hero is a militant Negro stevedore who is employed by the
Oceanic Stevedore Company in New Orleans, Louisiana.

A false charge of rape -- at the start of the play --
leads to a wholesale roundup of Negroes, including
Lonnie . . . . Later his labor activities bring on
a second arrest on the same charge, but he escapes
not only the police but also a gang of white
hoodlums in the pay of the stevedore company.

When the gang threatens to attack and burn down
the houses in the Negro quarter, Lonnie persuades
his companions to defend themselves. Reinforced
at the last minute by a white organizer and some
of his union.men, the Negroes win the pitched
battle hat ensues, though Lonnie himself is
killed.

The play is melodrama. Many critics have made note of this
characteristic. One critic, Joseph Wood Krutch in his The
American Drama Since 1918 has discussed this claim in

detail.

 

8Linnehan, p. 157.
9Edmond M. Gagey, Revolution in American Drama (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1947), p. 160.

L; ,

0-0-

 

 

 

 

153

What was needed if the full possibilities of (simple
melodrama) were to be explored was a politically
minded playwright willing and able to disregard
entirely the current tendency to intellectualize
drama and to compose a left-wing melodrama
conceived in terms as elementary as those which
purely popular authors were accustomed to

employ. Such a playwright, or rather two such
playwrights, appeared when the Messrs. Paul
Peters and George Sklar composed Stevedore . . . .
No exposition or defense of 'revolutionary'

ideas is necessary: the hero and villain can

be drawn in pure black and white; there is no
reason why re-enforcement for the picket line

may not arrive in the nick of time to be

greeted by cheers from the audience precisely
like those which on many occasions have greeted
the opportune arrival of a select company headed by
Captain Blake, U.S.N., at the very moment when
all seemed lost. Such a play may be good or

bad, exciting or feeble -- as melodrama.

But it cannot rise above the intellectual or
artistic level of melodrama, and it is always
upon that level -- good though it is in its

own way -- that Stevedore remains. 0

It was Krutch's opinion that Stevedore was "uncommonly
effective"11 as melodrama.

. . . it sticks with uncommon persistence to a
single purpose -- which is, to inflame the passions
of its audience and to sweep that audience for-
ward on a wave of fighting hate. Most authors
of such plays seem a little uncertain just what
it is that they are trying to do. They explain
a little, they debate a little, and they plead
a little. The result is usually as dispiriting
as a protest meeting and gets just about as
far. But those responsible for 'Stevedore'
have adopted a different method. They have
assumed -- safely enough -- that the audience
knows the arguments already and that its
sympathy is with them. Their business, like
the business of any mob leaders, is to get

 

10Joseph Wood Krutch, The American Drama Since 1218
(New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1957), pp. 250-251.
11Krutch, "Drama on the Barricades," p. 515.

154

the crowd going somewhere, and 'Stevedore' becomes an

incitement to riot of the very first order . . . .

a goodly percentage of those who saw 'Stevedore'

were probably ready to seize the nearest club

and crack somebody over the head. Most books

and plays offered as proof that 'art is a weapon'

remind me of wooden swords, but this particular

work is really a bomb -- homemade perhaps but

full of powder and quite capable of going off.
Another reason why 'Stevedore' succeeds in

generating a fighting mood is that its victims

of white injustice are not, like those in most

such plays, merely victims. The central character

is a huge Negro with firm ideas about the necessity

of the class struggle and a gift for converting

his more timorous fellows. Perhaps I should add

that 'Stevedore' is good enough to ,make such

peaceable fellos as I shake in our boots.

Personally I should not be much surprised to

hear any night that the infuriated audience

had rushed out on to Fourteenth Street and

lynched a white man just on general principles.

That would be a change if not, necessarily, an

improvement.12

Time Magazine seemed to think that the enthusiastic reception
of Stevedore would not lead to corrective measures.

Stevedore turns into a glorious melodrama in the
grand manner of Eng Three Musketeers and the
Count 9; Monte Crisco. As a finale, the Negroes
defend their homes from a White trash mob lead
by a red headed bully named Mitch, as lively

a scene as ever came from the pages of Hugo

or Dumas. When the white stevedores rush to

the aid of the besieged blacks, the play's
strictly partisan audience found itself cheering
not for the symbolism of a worker's united
front, but simply for a thrilling rescue.13

This response indicates the kind of criteria critics used to
evaluate Stevedore. Most of the major critics dealt with

the play in terms of its theatrical effectiveness. They

 

12Ibid.
13"NeW Play in Manhattan," Time, XXIII (April 30,
1934), p. 26.

 

155

paid minimum attention to theme and content values. For

example, Stark Young wrote:

I am trying to say that in going at the race problem,
black and white, the authors of 'Stevedore' are
wise in not making it a dead-canary imitation of
a bad translation of Ibsen, which is what plays
about New England and plays of the Manchester
school were doing ten years ago. Everybody
knows that great tragedy is one thing, but
otherwise the theatre should bounce and sing
and even yell, for it is a bright art . . . .
Oppressed or not, you love to throw a brickbat
and hit the enemy square in the eye . . .

I am trying to pay the Theatre Union a compli-
ment on secure instincts, popularly, in keeping
up the snap and variety of its second production

and play.1

Peters and Sklar are not as concerned with the
sufferings of the Negro as they are in emphasizing the
importance and significance of Negro and white workers
recognizing their common class unity. It is true, however,
that they use some of the Negro's social trials and tribu-
lations in order to win audience sympathy for the protagonist:
injustices such as unfair wages and abusive tongue lashings.
For example, the truth of the conditions surrounding
Lonnie's examination for attacking a white woman are delib-
erately aimed at soliciting a sympathetic audience which will,
in turn, be receptive to the suggestions of a common class
unity.

Audiences the first week were hardly less active

 

1u’Stark Young, "Stevedore," The New Republic,
LXXVIII (May 9, 1934), p. 367.

156

than the actors. When Lonnie called on his black
brothers to stand up and fight for their rights,
the play had to stop until the cheers and clapping
of the spectators died down.15

Once an audience identified with Lonnie, the leftist
writers had opportunity to open the door for Marxist prOpa-
ganda. Throughout the entire play, Lonnie's suffering is
alleviated by the union leader's promises, and the union

ideals, as a continuous attempt is made to "arouse to fever

,..16

heat the passions of an audience . Nearly all of

Lonnie's speeches are aimed toward this propagandistic
purpose.
LONNIE

Ain't no peace fo' de black man, ain't never gwine
be, till he fight to get it. We try to organize
to get ourselves a decent living. And what happen?
Dey beat us up, dey arrest us, shoot us, burn
down our houses. Why? Why? Why dey do dat?
Because dey like to see you dangling from a tree?
No. Dat ain't de reason. De reason is dey want
to keep de black man down! . . . And why dey

want to keep de black man down? Because dey

want to use him. Dey want to use him fo' de
hardest jobs got . . . . Dey want him to work

for nothing . . . . Dey want him.to be satisfied
wid a crust of bread . . . . Dat's why dey keep
him.down. Dat's why dey burn and lynch him.

And dat's why we got to stand up against it. We
got to show 'em dey can!t do it no mo' . . . .

We got to show 'em we won't live dat way no

mo' . . . . we can't wait fo' de judgement day.
We can't wait till we dead and gone. We got

to fight fo' de right to live. New -- now --
right now. We don't stand alone hyar. We ain't
just a handful. Lem Morris' union, dey stand
behind us, too. Dey hold a meeting dis afternoon

15Richard Gillman, "Stage: 'Stevedore' Draws Grim
Circles About the Color Line," Newsweek, III (April 28, 1934),

Po 39.
16Krutch, The American Drama Since 1918, p. 252.

157

and dey say dey gwine help us. Now what you
gwine do? Put yo' tail between yo' legs and
run away? Or are you gwine stand up and fight?

17
Because Lonnie fights for his rights, he dies. According
to Stark Young, his death is justified. The basic race
tragedy is implicit in this character, "and to let him live
would be to suggest a solution of the problem that is by
no means achieved."18
Lonnie Thompson is representative of the men brutalized

by industrial society and by white society. Although the
hero is primarily serving the propagandist's aims, Lonnie
Thompson is also telling

. . . the one thing even the most liberal whites

preferred not to hear: that Negroes were far

from patient or forgiving, that they were scarred

by fear, that they hated every minute of their

suppression even when seeming most acquiescent,

and that often enough they hated . . . the decent

and cultivated white men who from complicity or

neglect shared in the responsibility for their

plight.19
As propaganda, with the exception of a few didactic moments,
Stevedore avoided the chief pitfall of the propaganda play --
that of letting the playwright do the audience's thinking
and feeling.

The audience, it is true, still applauded most

loudly the

. . . preachy places, but there were moments of
effective silence when you felt your throat tight

 

17Paul Peters and George Sklar, Stevedore (New York:
Covicg-Friede, Publishers, 1934), pp. 108-109.

1 Young, p. 367.

19Gross. pp. 18-19.

158

and your eyes hot with the bitter fate of the
young Negro longshoreman falsely accused of a
crime in which he had no part, and of his
fellows, lost to justice and to pity.

Such audience response to Stevedore revealed with
open clarity the attitude and point of view of Negroes in
the 1930's.

Negroes were shouting and screaming them, in

theatre and out, demanding an end to injustices,

demanding fair employment and fair housing. They

recognized, in and out of the theatre, the need

for white support. Anyone who had listened then

would have known the Negro was not going to

accept fully the patchwork, piecemeal measures

that sought to delay his demands. The fact that

these voices of the nineteen-thirties fell on

deaf ears is directly related to present-day

events in Los Angeles, Chicago and Springfield.21
Thus, the left-wing play succeeded more in fostering a strong
reaction to the Negro problem in all of its hideous fullness
and totality of meaning than in instigating a Communist
following among the Negroes. "Communists have not succeeded
in getting any appreciable following among Negroes in America
and it does not seem likely that they will. It is bad enough
being black without being black and red . . . ."22

The Communist philosophy endeavored through drama
to bring public opinion to their way of thinking. When they
used the Negro dilemma in order to convert the masses to

Communism, they seemed more successful in revealing the

 

2C’Edith J. R. Isaacs, "Broadway in Review," Theatre
Arts, XVIII (June 1934), p. 409.
21Mitchell, p. 98.
2Linnehan, p. 158.

 

159

tragic plight of the Negro.

Marxism filtered its way into another play containing
a Negro hero. Randolph Edmonds' IEE.L§EQ 9; Cotton, a
four-act play, (1941) concerns itself with the laborer's
rights also. The play ccntinues the criticism of white
America's social system and white power structure. The
major instrument of propaganda for Edmonds' play is a large
brown-skinned Negro man, Gurry, whose primary concern is
civil rights.

The play's plot is similar to Stevedore. An intelli-
gent white man, Clay Sherman, interested in labor's problems
and the Negro, persuades the share tenants to organize for
their rights. Ben Jackson, the white evil plantation
owner has told them that financial matters are such that
"I just can't back nobody this year on a tenant basis."23
Gurry confronts Jackson stating that Jackson surely will
rent him a small piece of land. The answer to Gurry is
Jackson's own economic concerns; he intends to put all the
open land under cultivation. For the Negro such treatment
is unfair. Jackson responds negatively informing Gurry
that no "nigger" is going to tell him how to run his business.
As a consequence, the men fight and Curry is dismissed from

the plantation.

 

23Randolph Edmonds, "The Land of Cotton," The Land
2£_Cotton and Other Plays, ed. Randolph Edmonds (washington,
D. C.: The Associated Publishers, Inc., 1942), p. 33.

 

160

In the second act of IQ§,L§QQ‘2£ Cotton, several
share croppers have gathered under one roof in order to
discuss their rights. They plan a strike; however, before
they can execute it, the meeting is disrupted by Ben Jackson's
men who forcefully usher Gurry off to jail on the charge
that Negroes have no right to participate in organized
meetings. This leads to another confrontation between
Curry and Jackson in which the issue of ownership rights
versus worker's rights is aired. As a consequence, Jackson
becomes petulant and slaps Gurry, while the latter reacts
with self control, demonstrated by immobility and a smile.

By Act III, the land workers have gone on strike.
The white men who find the independent behavior intolerable
trump up a false charge of rape. Disguised as Ku Klux
Klansmen, the whites decide to invade Gurry's home where many
of the strikers plan their activities.

Up until this point, Edmonds has managed to restrain
his usual maudlin touches. However, the fourth act loosens
restraint. It opens with Negroes gathered around the coffin
of Gurry's mother. Her death has been caused by starvation
due to the strike. Into the scene of mourning comes Gurry,
newly released from jail, who is described as falling to his
knees and sobbing. The intrinsic implication is that the
Negro's mother would have lived had the white man not denied

the Negro his rights.

161

Meanwhile the Klansmen.arrive with the intent of
lynching one of the share croppers for rape. Under Gurry's
leadership, the men respond to the cause of the race by
the decision to fight and, in the ensuing battle, Gurry is
shot.

Throughout the play, Edmonds maintains a strong
determination in the hero, but keeps his manner polite and
humanitarian. Even at the end When the minor war ensues,
Gurry directs his men not to kill. As he dies, he Says to
’his wife, "Colored folks and share croppers -- got to learn
sometime to die for their rights."24 This willingness to
sacrifice one's life for a cause is treated in a strongly
melodramatic fashion similar to Stevedore's structure, in
an attempt to arouse audiences.

The play is designed to be a missile. Clay Sherman's
final speech on.martyrdom contains the detonating power:

These are our first martyrs for worker unity.

Let us raise our hands and swear that nothing

will split this union of farmers and workers

until the whole evil of sharecropper

exploitation has been swept away from the

farms of the south.2
The play struggles to suggest that Negroes want what "everyone
else wants: jobs, on all levels from the most humble to the

highest: recognition and prestige; and the advancement of

26
group interests." This is its social significance.

 

24Ibid., p. 142.
221mm, p. 143.
Littlejohn, p. 104.

162

Tnn_Lnnd 2; Cotton does include a white man's
organizational theory, however, the playwright's pre-
occupation with depicting the wicked South in contrast to
Negro victimization dominates to the point of making
Edmonds' play another example of Negro resentment. Therefore,
Communism plays a part, but as in the case of Native gnn,
it is more often as party than as dogma.27 It would be
difficult to claim that Edmonds' primary concern is with
Communism's ability to solve social ills; his play seems
to indicate much more interest in showing the Negro, through
a character similar to the ideal hero types, as an innocent
victim and "morally victorious in defeat."28

As literature, once again, the play is handicapped
by an.over-abundance of subjectivity, sentimentalism and
static dialogue. The treatment of the Negro is more often
than not of a maudlin nature, and the play's movement is

labored and self-conscious.

27Ibid.
28Glazer and Moynihan, p. 67.

CHAPTER VI
THE PROTESTANT

If the excellence of art is measured by its intensity,
capable of making all disagreeables within the observer
dissolve, it can be said that a purpose of art is to give
pleasure. This premise is directly related to the Aristote-
lean premise in the Poetics:

. . . though the objects themselves may be painful
to see, we delight to view the most realistic
representations of them in art, the forms for
example of the lowest animals and of dead bodies.
The explanation is to be found in a further fact:
to be learning something is the greatest of
pleasures not only to the philosopher but also

to the rest of mankind, however small their
capacity for it; the reason of the delight in
seeing the picture is that one is at the same time
learning -- gathering the meaning of things, e.g.
that the man there is so-andso: for if one has

not seen the thing before, one's pleasure will

not be in the picture as an imitation of it,

but will be due to the execution of colouring

or some similar cause.1

At the same time, such a premise can work in reverse. The
picture's execution can cause displeasure —- often the intended
reaction toward which Negro protest literature aims. The
writers of these plays frequently make a deliberate attempt

to agitate dissatisfaction and guilt within the conscience

 

1Aristotle, Rhetoric and Poetics, trans. Ingram
Bywater (New York: The Modern Library, 1954), p. 227.

163

 

164

of white audiences and readers. The aim is not to pleaSe;
it is to rankle and disturb.
The protestations are familiar, dealing primarily
with equality and fair treatment. Specific areas of protest
'Linclude slavery, lynching, military service without social
reward, wage slavery, housing and segregation. Degrees of
complaint in these areas have appeared in plays previously
discussed; however, the playwright's treatment of his hero
or his theme made it possible to consider both in some other
light. For example, when the playwright promotes a remedial
solution, such as Marxist ideology in Stevedore, the hero's
function is more than that of protest. He becomes an instru-
ment propagandizing a remedy for his social ills. Such
problem-solving methodology is not as blatantly overt in
the plays that simply have protest as their singular aim.
Most of the heroes of these works are designed to be
“better than their society. The society in which they exist
Lis depicted as cruel, symbolized, for the most part, by
whites who are in possession of power positions. Unlike
many modern plays in which society wins because the central
characters are passive figures who disintegrate in solitude,
society wins in these plays because it is unfair. The
characters fight valiantly against this dominating power
structure. Yet often the hero is forced to choose death
or defeat because he cannot attain his objective in society.

Despite the sacrifice, the same social conditions prevail.

 

165

As a consequence, the heroes appear to be failures, but
never because of something intrinsic to their own natures.
And when this is the case, reconsideration reveals that
the Negro playwright is damning white society as the failure
rather than the Negro.

In the classical drama society, the established

order, the universe, or whatever one wishes to

call it, is a worthy opponent of and foil for

its heroes and heroines. Existence, as well as

the hero, has meaning. At the conclusion of a

classical play the universe and man are justified.

In the modern theatre not only are many of the

heroes sick but thg society which has spawned them

seems even sicker.
In the Negro-written dramas dedicated exclusively toward
producing results for the cause of the race, the hero's
society is sick: but the hero is extraordinarily immune.

Certainly, if the implication exists that if this
world could be corrected, these more than worthwhile heroes
could live a meaningful life. The consequence of this
superiority tends to frequently make the hero an egotist
whose personal problems assume total prominence.
In addition, the protestants are, in many instances,

direct descendants of the ideal type differing slightly in
some cases, extensively in others. They are not as scrubbed

nor as saintly nor as one-dimensional. In many of them can

be detected the seeds of cold fury which erupt in the Negro-

 

2Robert Emmet Jones, The Alienated.Hero in Modern
French Drama (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1962),
p. 118.

166

written drama of the 1960's. Mary Burrill's Aftermath (1919)
is an illustration of a play whose hero is made of the same
angry material as the surfaced fury of the LeRoi Jones'
heroes. Between the 1920's and the 1960's, an internalized
anger steadily evidences itself, clearly indicating a direct
line of descension as each decade passes. The wound deepens,
the politeness dissolves gradually, and the intense dissatis—
faction ripens into rage until by 1964 entire dramatizations
are devoted to the detailed process of punishing whites
unmercifully, as a token of black rebellion and black
supremacy. However, the desire to retaliate is not a new
disposition; only the expression, consistently developing
its intensity, its freedom and its more highly concentrated
strength.

An examination of the protest plays of the 1920's,
1930's, 1940's, and 1950's reveal they are harbingers; they
contain the dynamite that explodes in the 1960's.

Willis Richardson's The Flight g; the Natives is a
one-act play protesting against slavery. " . . . slavery
is pictured as all bad. It constitutes an insupportable
insult to the human dignity of the strong; it rots the morals
of the weak."3 In the words of one of Richardson's female
characters: "They can say sickness is hard and bearin'

children is hard, but ain't nothin' in the whole world as

 

3Kuhlke, p. 62.

 

167

hard as livin' in slavery."4 "Trying to reinforce this theme,
Richardson's Negro characters are courageous, resolute and
ingenious in spite of their ignorance."5
Eng Flight 9: BER Natives tries to depict the desper-
ate situation that existed for the Negro slave. Mose, a
large broad shouldered man of thirty, is the dominant male
figure, who, with a group of fellow slaves, plans an escape

to freedom. The play begins with the discussion of a fellow

slave's escape and the projected consequences which eventually

‘

transpire. The escaper is caught and beaten by John, the
slave-master. When this occurs, Mose asserts his pride and
proclaims that no man shall ever beat him. As a consequence,
John promises to sell Mose down the river in the morning

of the following day. Out of desperation the protagonist
plans an escape; however, only because Luke, a mulatto slave,
agrees to lead the slaves, disguised as a white plantation
owner, is the plan put into action.

The dynamic pain in this play includes the beatings,
the buying and selling of Negroes like cattle, and other
continuous injuries to human dignity. When Mose boasts of
his physical prowess and unwillingness to accept the whip
lashes, he gleans admiration despite his egocentricity. The

pain heightens for Mose and his pride when circumstances

 

”Willis Richardson, "The Flight of the Natives,"

LOCke ’ p5xilihik 62
e! p' ‘

168

force him to submit his plan of escape to a slave whose
color is such that he can "pass" for a white man. Such
humiliation further protests the emasculating features of
slavery despite the hero's assertion of manhood. At the
end, Mose is a pathetic figure who tries to shrug off his
indignities, dominance by whites and all other realities
with a flight into escape. He says, "Come on, Ah tell yuh,
ef you-all wants to be free. Ah'm not 'pendin' so much
on Luke's foolin's, Ah'm goin' ta run, Ah am."6 This is
where the play ends; this is its essence.

On the surface, the play and its hero suggest that
a race is dreaming of freedom. But upon reconsideration of
race desires, hints emerge of a drive for identification
and self reliance. For example, Mose says repeatedly,
"Ain't no man ever whipped me! . . . ain't no man goin' to
whip me!"7 When John states he intends to send Mose down
the river, Mose replies, "Ah ain't goin' down no river!"8
At another point when Mose conceives of a way in which they
can escape successfully, he is described as "rising to a
sense of power."9

The obvious point, however, is that Mose has done

nothing to justify his suffering; therefore, he is innocent

and his society, personified by John, is cruel.

 

6Richardson, p. 116.
7Ibid., p. 109.
Ibid., p. 108.
91bid., p. 111.

 

169

Randolph Edmonds' Bleeding Hearts (1934), NEE Turner
(1934), and Breeders (1934) are additional attempts to depict
the slave and his painful situation. Edmonds' one-act play,
Bleeding Hearts, takes place in the dilapidated room of the
Negro slave, Joggison Taylor. Two-thirds of the play are
given over to the death of Miranda Taylor, Joggison's wife.
Her simple request for her husband to be with her during
work hours is ruthlessly criticized by Marse Tom who refuses
Joggison permission to leave the cotton fields. When, at
last, he comes home and finds his wife "cold", the reaction
of the bereaved man is strong in its bitterness and despair.
Parson Robert, having been called to the house to minister
to the dying woman, tries to console Joggison, receiving
pained protests for his efforts.

Extreme poverty, white brutality, lack of medical
aid and Christian hypocrisy are the sources of Negro pain
in this one-act play. When Joggison protests these con-
ditions in the end, the extent of his suffering seems to
justify and make acceptable his determination to kill rather
than follow the Christian minister's suggestion that "he
pray." When Parson Robert is shocked by the protagonist's
murderous rage, Joggison replies violently:

Shocked hell! Ah don't give a damn of you is.
Ah'se been listening tuh yo' talk fuh six yeahs,
an' tryin' tuh worship Gawd as yuh tole me.
Clenching Elé nnngn in excitement. Now, whut
has Gawd done fuh me? Heah Ah'se in debt f'um
head tuh feets. Despairingly. I ain't got a

cent tuh give ma 'ooman a decent burial, and
gut a big doctah's bill to pay, an' on top of

 

 

 

170

all dat, pointing his finger menacingly a man who
wurships de same Gawd as yuh does, wouldn't even

let me come home tuh see ma wife in huh dying

hour. Violently. I asks yuh whut has I gut

tuh pray tuh Gawd fuh? Whut did He ever do fuh

me dat Ah should serve Him? . . . Ah knows

whut Ah'll do. Ah'll leave dis place. Ah'll

leave dis whole country, and go whar Ah can be

free. Ah'll leave everythin' and git 'way frum

heah jes' ez soon ez Miranda's in de ground . . .

Maybe den ah'll be free.1

Joggison suggests, in the conclusion of his speech,
an escape to a better world than the one in which he is
trapped. As he protests the existing world, he indicts
Christianity for endorsing social decadence in religious
orders which are mouthed but not practiced. As Joggison
lays bare the falseness of these social practices, he is
projecting his own moral superiority. Indirectly, Joggison
is suggesting eradication of Marse Tom and all that his
plantation symbolizes, i.e., the white power, and its evils.
The failures that exist are not of his own making; they are
made by slave owners and their white god. Joggison has done
nothing wrong. White evil is juxtaposed to Negro innocence.
If the speech began in violence, a modification of

politeness intervenes before the play ends when Joggison
adds that once he is free, maybe "den ah won't turn ma back

on de Lawd."11 In the 1960's this kind of softening or

compromise was to be totally absent in the dramas by Negro

 

10Randolph Edmonds, "Bleeding Hearts," Edmonds, Six
Plays for n Negro Theatre, pp. 125-127.
I11bid., p. 127.

 

171

playwrights.

The final speech is important because it contains
the germ of the "predictable insurrection" that would
beseme headlines in 1967. In 1937, Seymour Brown wrote of
Bleeding Hearts and Breeders that they "definitely take with
Negro audiences."12 Perhaps, it is the slight release of
tension, rage, and willingness to fight and kill that tends
to attract an identification within the viewer as well as
the hero's moral superiority.

Edmonds treats white power with the same one-sidedness
in his one-act play, Breeders. Among the evils committed by
the white slave masters was breeding.

Negro men and women were . . . encouraged to breed
like animals, in or out of wedlock, so that the
slaveholders would acquire more slaves. Not at
all uncommon . . . was the keeping of strong,
Ziiiiiisfiiiifieifafii‘é‘éi£33232if???“ ”e“

The dynamic pain intrinsic to Edmonds' one-act play,
Breeders (1934) is an extreme. A white lord, Marse George,
who believes in planned mating for his Negroes, brings a
strong virile breeder, Salem, to the shack of Ruth. It is
irrelevant that this young girl should have her own hopes,
dreams, and desires. She is to mate and to produce for the

cotton owner's economic designs. The consequence of this

brutality is a struggle between Salem and the play's hero,

 

12Brown, p. 122.
13Brink and Harris, p. 30.

172

David, which ends in death for the latter. Much in keeping
with the mode of Juliet, Ruth consumes poison and dies
sacrificially in order to be with David, rather than submit
her virginity to the breeder. The play ends with Ruth's
grandmother questioning the universe and its long stream
of injustices for the Negro.

Lawd, Ah don't want tuh question Yo' justice an'

murcy, but Ah kain't help but axe how long Yuh

will let Yo' chilluns be sold down de river lak

horses an' cows, an' beat wussen de mules dey

water down at de waterin' branch. Moaning.

Stop it soon, Lawd! Stop it soon an' let Yo'

chilluns drink of de water of frefidom, an' put

on de garments of righteousness.1
Again, the playwright is advocating the necessity for these
practices to be eradicated; consequently, despite the fact
that David has tuberculosis, he is depicted as a fighter.
He attacks the symbol of this white man's power, despite his
failure to kill him. Indirectly, he defeats Salem because
when the breeder returns to claim his mate, having departed
momentarily to bury David, he finds that Ruth is dead.
Despite all the pathos that encompasses this vehicle of
protest, there is, no doubt, something admirable about the
willingness of the hero's attempt to withstand the despic-
able. David's recognition of immorality gives him moral
superiority over Marse George who is the chosen symbol of

white supremacy and its moral decay.

Edmonds' one-act play, Nat Turner (1934) continued

 

luRandolph Edmonds, "Breeders," Edmonds, pp. 100-101.

 

173

this playwright's protest against slavery. In this instance,
Edmonds drew upon history for source material. In 1831, the
slave Nat Turner and his followers turned on their masters
in Southhampton County, Virginia. They made it their
objectives to "carry terror and devastation wherever [they]
went."15 Tribute was being paid by Edmonds to that historical
figure who was willing to confront and fight the white power
structure.

Edmonds does not execute the glorification of Nat
Turner with clarity. Nat Turner's intent to free his people
becomes muddled because of the playwright's detailed involve-
ment of the insurrectionist's relationship with visions.
From the very beginning, the play wanders off on.a symbolic
tangent about "blood on the moon" and all of its potential
meanings. This is followed by the description of Nat's
prayer life and its various innuendoes. Spliced between
these conversations is the "call to arms." Straightforwardly,
a slave decrees: "We is gwine tuh organize a army and kill
all de white folks and set all de black slaves free."16
Immediately following this is a continuation of Edmonds'
involvement in describing Nat's primitive and naive mystic
life. For example:

He can spit blood whenever he wants tuh, and he

 

15M. B. Duberman, In White America (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin Cgmpany, 1964). p. 22.
1 Randolph Edmonds, "Nat Turner," Edmonds, p. 67.

I z..—

 

174

can prophesy when strange things gwine tuh
happen. He show'd us some plain leaves on de
trees and told us dat some strange writin' would
be on dem de next day. We went dere de next
Mawnings and sho nuff, dere 'twas. Nat ain't

no conjurer. He's gut de sperit p' God in

him, dat's all. He is a prophet. 7

When Nat Turner of Edmonds' play begins to speak he
is more racist than prophet. It is Edmonds who is apocalyptic,
revealing as much of the mood and attitude of racial
rebellion as existed within the natures of the 1831 Virginia
Negroes.

Today is the day. Ah been communicating wid de
Holy Sperit all day. Ah wanted tuh be sho we
was right. Dis idea ob fightin' fuh our
freedom ain't jes' come tuh me. Hit is been
in ma head a long time. De Iawd put hit in

ma mind yeahs ago . . . De sperit revealed dis
tuh me: dat tuh-night is de best possible

time tuh start dis insurrection. Most ob

de white folks is gone over in North Ca'lina,
tuh Winton and.Murfreesboro, tuh tend de

big meetings. Dat only leaves a few around;
and dey won't bothuh us 'cause dey is so far
apart. Even now dey thinks we is away having
a meeting ob our own. We can kill dese few
white folks, organize all de slaves in a large
army and take Jeresulem, de county seat git
all de guns and ammunitions. We can den
conquer de whole county, march tuh de Dismal
Swamp and work frum dere. Soon we can overcome
de whole state, den de whole country lak George
washington did from de British . . . Fiercely.
Because we wants tuh be free men. Because we
wants tuh call de 'tention ob de whole worl'
tuh de condition ob slavery. we can strike

de blow dat will make de whole worl' tremble
at our might. Dere ain't no better way ob
declarin' tuh de worl' dat black men is gwine
be free dan tuh rise up and fight. With ge
help ob Gawd we is gwine tuh do hit too.1

 

17Ibid.
1 Ibido, pp. 80-810

R

175

This speech clarifies the intentions of Edmonds'
Turner. There is desire on one level to free the slaves;
but there is also the implicit ambition to "over-come de
Whole state, den de whole country . ."19
Edmonds' play is bound by history and an historical
figure who failed in his efforts. However, Randolph Edmonds'
Nat Turner is not a failure. He is a successful innocent
whose cause is elevated by the soliciting of God's blessings.
Speak tuh me and show me, Iawd . . . . Ah is gut
tuh git me a army and fight some mo fuh freedom.
Ah wants freedom! Ah mus' hab freedom fuh all 20
de black slaves. Show me how tuh glt hit, Lawd!
Society is degraded for it is society which creates the evil
he fights. The attitude of the hero is masked by visions,
pain and politeness while he struggles to extricate himself
and his people from an imperfect world. The playwright does
not try to be logical. He seems only intent upon the glori-
fication of a Negro man and praising his cause, whether that
cause be freeing the slaves or over-coming the entire country.
William Branch's full length play, In Splendid Epppp.
also makes a villain of society. The playwright, like
Edmonds, makes use of history and important figures and
events as he, too, protests slavery. Ln Splendid Epppp
depicts an interpretation of the historic relationship

between abolitionist John Brown and Frederick Douglas, freed

 

191bid., p. 81.
2°Ibid.

176

slave and statesman. The events leading up to John Brown's
historic raid on Harper's Ferry, the trial and execution of
the great abolitionist and the relationship between Brown
and the former slave constitute the subject matter and plot
of William Branch's play.

Whether or not it is intentional cannot be judged;
however, by controlling John Brown with reasons that stem
primarily from highly activated emotions rather than tactical
sense, this leader appears to be driven by some form of
lunacy rather than skill and sense. In contrast, the Negro
hero is depicted as a man closely allied with the plaster
saints. His moral stature seems spotless and despite the
fact that Brown calls him a coward, the playwright handles
the scene in such a manner that it is the man who shouts
fool who seems, in the end, to be the most foolish.

The entire action of ;n Splendid Error takes place
in the parlor of Frederick Douglas' residence in Rochester,
New York from 1859 to 1860. The playwright's pride and
respect for his central character are reflected in the
description that is included in the manuscript.

He is a tall, broad, compelling figure of a man
. . . His face of magnificent bone structure,
would be a sculptor's delight with the high
cheekbones, the strong broad nose, the proud
flare of the nostrils. His eyes, brown, deep
set, peer intently from beneathe the ridge of
his prominent brow, and the straight grim

line of the mouth seems on the verge at any
moment of an awesome pronouncement. A long
mane of crinkly black hair sweeps back from

his stern forehead, and together with heavy
moustache and beard, lends a strikingly dis-

177

tinguished, leonine air. His large frame, bolt
erect, is dressed conservatively in a suit of
black broadcloth, with embroidered waistcoat
and gold watch fob. His is an impression of
challenge, achievement, dignity, together with
strength, quiet but omnipresent. His vgice is
sonorous: he speaks with cultured ease.

During the course of the play, however, it becomes evident
that the playwright can only sustain his admiration for
Douglas by making his protagonist regret his wise and
dignified decision not to accompany Brown in his folly at
Harper's Ferry.22
Douglas was a conservative who believed that the
fanatic raid could only undo the hard work that had gone
into the campaign to free the slaves. The major confrontation
scene between Brown and Douglas in Branch's play reinforces
this negative reaction.
DOUGLAS
But don't you realize what you'd be doing? You
can't attack Harper's Ferry. You'd be attacking
the U. S. Government. It would be treason.
BROWN
Treason! Government! Laws! Blast them all to
hell! I answer back, Douglas. I answer you
back with humans and right! I answer you back
there is a higher law than all!
DOUGLAS

John, you're living on earth -- you're dealing
with.men.

21William Branch, "In Splendid Error" (The Schomburg
Collection, New York Public Library, 1954), p. 10. (Typewritten.)

Douglas, written py Himself -- His Early Life §§.§ Slave,

His Escape from Bondage and His Complete History pp the
Present Time (Boston: DeWolfe, Fiske and Company, 1892).

178

BROWN
I deal with God.
DOUGLAS

. . . And is it God who counsels you to rash,
inopportune action? Is it God who calls you
to dash away your talents and your usefulness
in a single ill-considered stroke? And what
of the slaves themselves -- You.want to help
them, you say. Why then do you think of doing
the very thing that will harm them most? Why
bring the nation's anger on them? You may
defy the federal government but they cannot . . .
You have changed your plan. I cannot go with
you now . . .

BROWN

Tauntingly. Have you carried the scars upon
your back into high places so long that you

have forgotten the sting of the whip and the
lash?

DOUGLAS

John, that's not being fair! Don't ~-
BROWN

Lygg g thE- Or are you afraid to face a gun?
DOUGLAS

Slowly. I have never really questioned it
before, John. If it would do good . . . if it
would do good, this moment I would die, I swear
it, John! But I cannot cast away that which I
know I can do for that which I know I cannot do.
I have no right to do that. I should rather
fail you, John, than feel within myself that I
have failed my people. For them -- I believe

it is my duty to live, and to fight in ways that
I know can succeed.

BROWN

I shall miss you Frederick.23

 

23Branch, pp. 41-44.

179

Branch is not content to allow Douglas to retain his
position and, consequently, in order to ally his hero with
the men who fight slavery, he proceeds to fill his protagonist
with regret and self disgust for having withdrawn from the
actual fighting which resulted in Brown's being hung. The
play ends with an adolescent hero as emotionalism overtakes
Douglas' initial wisdom. The detailed dialogue complaining
about Negro ills contribute to the play's static nature.

The play espouses a militant democratic outlook.
The Negroes' hatred of slavery appears in the denunciation
of greed, cruelty and oppression. But once again, this
masks the thing which is being praised -- an identification
with the war posture whose followers are willing to fight
and to kill to relieve the slave's social ills.

In In Splendid Epppn, John Brown is one of the few
white characters who is treated sympathetically by a Negro
author, but this is due, to a large extent, to Brown's
identification with the cause of the race. In contrast,
Branch depicts Forbes, the white man hired by Brown to plan
the military siege, as a collection of despicable traits.
He lies, cheats, steals and betrays the entire Negro cause
by revealing the plans of attack to the federal government.
At the same time, these characteristics afford Douglas the
opportunity to stand up to a white man and dominate with

towering stature:

180

FORBES

. . . This constitutes in essence a conspiracy —-
a conspiracy against the peace of Virginia and a
plot against the government. All I'd have to do
would be to go to washington and seek the proper
authorities and it would be a bad day for you, sir!

DOUGLAS

You may go where you like and tell whom you please,
but you'll not intimidate me one whit! Now, I'll
thank you tozkeave my house. . . . Take your hat
and get out.

The play depicts two ways of fighting for a cause; however
Branch quite obviously sponsors the militant method.

The major bulk of criticism of In Splendid Epppp
amounted to an insistence that "the work was too long, too
talky, that John Brown's role was better written than

Douglass' and that the author was using this historical
25

drama to make a contemporary point."
Similar to the plays protesting physical slavery,
are the plays protesting wage slavery and job inequalities.

The 1960 census reported that the median income
of the Negro workers in the New York metrOpolitan
area was about 70 percent of the white median.

. . . The freed slaves and later the migrants

to the North were absolutely without financial
resources, even the scanty sums needed for tiny
businesses. They met unbending prejudice and
discrimination in their effggts to get stock,
capital, or space for rent.

John Matheus' Cruiter (1918; copyright 1926), Willis

 

2L"Ibid., p. 34.

2gMitchell, p. 167.

2 Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Be ond
pnp Melting Ppp (Cambridge: The M. I. T. Press, 1963 ,

pp. 29-32.

181

Richardson's Tnp_ln;p_fipng_(l929), and Randolph Edmonds'
LEEQ 9; Cotton (1914) are examples of plays protesting
economic unfairness.
John Matheus' Cruiter is a one—act play about a
young Negro man.whose earning capacity is exploited by
white villains. The consequence of the exploitation is
rebellion and the proverbial plan for escape to freedom,
equality, material gain and riddance of the white menace.
Sonny, a young tenant farmer, his wife, Sissy, and

his grandmother live in a farm cottage in lower Georgia.
The young couple work in the cotton fields from dawn until
dark. They are victims of a cruel landlord who keeps them
in continual debt to him. In the beginning of the play,
the landlord, a member of the draftboard, forces Sonny to
sacrifice his earnings in payment for a draft deferrment.
Consequently, when a labor recruiter tells Sonny about the
wage opportunities in the Detroit munitions factories with
the standard offer of free transportation to Detroit for the
worker, his family and a job when he gets there, he recognizes
an ideal chance to escape the hopeless life of tenant farmer
and accepts. The young couple work hard to persuade their
Grannie to go with them, but in the end she decides to
remain behind.

The conflict in the play, the choice Sonny must

make, is between the fatalistic acceptance of

inferior status as represented by Granny, and

the desire for equality, freedom, opportunity
which burns within Sonny, Sissy, and, we assume,

182
gtghin all the younggy generation, which cries

positive action.

Elements conducive of pain are "a life of misery,
overWork, frustration, suppressed indignation. There is no
mention of the happy, carefree, improvident lovable children
described by Joel Chandler Harris and Marc Connelly."28

The playwright labors to solicit pathos and sympathy
for the hero and distaste for the society created by whites.
In his defense, Matheus protests against the existing social
milieu and, Simultaneously, gives evidence as to why the
Negro kept "fleeing toward a community where he might find
a measure of safety."29

One of the plays that protests against discrimination
in employment is Willis Richardson's 222 Iglg Hpng (1929).
This is a one-act play that tells of a young Negro who is
black-listed for refusing to behave in a servile manner.
Consequently, he is unable to get employment and is forced
to rely upon the wages his sister and mother earn as
laundresses. The outcome of these frustrations for George
Broadus is thievery which culminates in the theft of a
diamond brooch left on a dress by one of the customers.

The arrival of the police ends the play.
iflfi.l§l§.§2§g.is slanted in such a way that the

writer is trying to justify the hero's act of crime by

 

27Kuhlke, p. 154 .
28Ibid.
29Mitchell, p. 56..

183

suggesting that if jdb discrimination did not exist,
criminal action would not have resulted. If George steals,
he is not to blame. Once again, white society is the
villain.

2E2 Iglplnpng_reveals the hero's hurt and anger
over being penalized for his refusal to adhere to the role
of servant. True to standard formula, the playwright is
asking that George's ability to stand up to whites be
admired, his criminal behavior be understood and the social
conditions be remedied.

George Broadus is of the angry Negro vintage, similar
to the numerous other angry Negro heroes in Negro written
drama who rebel, as George rebels, when a white man says,
"Here Sambo, here's a tip for you."

In addition to protest against slavery and poor
economic conditions, the Negro has also felt compelled to
voice his grievances concerning the American policy of
universal military service without the extension of other
rights and privileges. Consequently, Negro soldiers are
the heroes in a group of plays including Alice M. Dunbar
Nelson's M;ng_§yp§|finyp.§ppn (1918), Mary Burrill's

Aftermath (1919), Arnaud d'Usseau's and James Gow's Deep

m

re the Roots (1946) and William Blackwell Branch's n Medal

or Willie (1951).

H:

The idea that "the American Negro, having been

consistently denied the right to participate as an equal in

 

 

184

the society of white America, has no duty to help fight
white America's battles,"30 is the issue in Alice M. Dunbar
Nelson's one-act play, Ming Eyp§_nnyp‘§ggn. In this play
Miss Nelson's hero expresses his unwillingness by refusing
to acknowledge his draft notice. His older brother and a
Jewish boy finally convince the young Negro, Chris, that

he owes a duty to the country in which he lives, "and, that
he is furthermore duty bound to uphold the good name of his
'race' by conducting himself with honor in battle."31 As a

"32 All of

character Chris is "fiery, rebellious and bitter.
the play's arguments, such as the need by Chris' brother
and sister for financial support, the murder of their
parents by a white mob, the burning of their home by the
same whites, and the denial of human dignity are heavily
weighted toward justifying Chris' position. Chris indicates
through his attitude that he would like to strike back

at all these injustices rather than obediently accept his
draft notice. This seems to be his natural intent rather
than the forced acceptance of duty. His final willingness
to serve his country is the author's polite way of having
the character do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Chris is fiery and rebellious, but he does bend.

He is, therefore, not as closely related to the 1960 off-

 

30Kuhlke, p. 197.
311bid.
32Ibid.

185

spring of these early protestants, as the protagonists

who are less flexible. John Thornton, in Aftermath (one~act)
. . . epitomizes the American Negro who returned from the
battlefields of France."33 Ardently, the play supports the
position of Negroes fighting wars in the name of a country
that refuses them recognition and civil treatment.

Naivete, cleanliness and Victorian domesticity
dominate the mood and setting of Aftermath with its old
armchair and "well-scrubbed" table, its kerosene lamp and
Bible resting on the mantel over the hearth.

Many of the one-act plays written in the 1920's by
Negro authors with interior settings have introductory
paragraphs that include such descriptive adjectives as
"spotless," "well-scrubbed," and "immaculate;" a method
of combating the outworn stereotypic notion that Negroes
kept untidy homes.34

Embraced by this docile environment are two characters,
Mam Sue and her grand-daughter, Millie. They are waiting
the return of Millie's brother, John, who has just completed
a tour of duty in Europe. He is a war hero having won a
considerable glory on the battlefields of France.

John's father had been needlessly burned by whites.

As the play progresses, it is learned that Millie has hidden

the death from the returning soldier. When John does return,

 

3ZIbid., p. 35.
3 Brink and Hrris, p. 140.

 

186

'women continue to evade the issue but are unsuccessful
ill their deception. A neighbor woman arrives and inadver-
tently reveals the truth. Hurt, angry and bitter, John
gives a pistol to his younger brother and taking a pistol
for fflmmelf goes out to atone for his father's death by
seeflcing to kill the responsible lynchers.
The play is frankly protestant. John's final speech

enccnnpasses the grievances which this war hero feels.

I'm sick 0' these W'ite folks doin's -- we're :

'fine, trus'worthy feller citizuns' when they're

handin' us out guns, an' Liberty Bonds, an'

chuckin' us off to die; but we ain't a damn

thing when it comes to hanin' us the rights

we done fought an' bled fu'! I'm sick 0'

this sort 0' life -— an' I'm goin' to put an'

end to it! . . . This ain't no time fu'

preachers or prayers! You mean to tell me

I mus' let them w'ite devuls send me miles

erway to suffer an' be shot up fu' the

freedom of people I ain't nevah seen, while

they're burnin' an' killig' my folks here at

home! To Hell with 'em!3
The play treats directly one of the primary precipitating
forces in the creation of a Negro who was no longer willing
to passively accept his degradation and servility. John's
final words, "To Hell with 'em" is one of the more direct
and forceful expressions of self reliance and rejection of
whites to emerge in a Negro-written drama during the 1920's.

The plot structure builds directly and tightly to

this climactic moment. It begins with the fears expressed

 

35Mary Burrill, "Aftermath," The Liberator (1919),
p. 140

187

'by mam Sue that hint the threat of new suffering and death:
MAM SUE

See dat log dah, Millie? De one fallin' tuh de
side dah wid de big flame lappin' 'round hit?
Dat means big doin's 'round heah to night!

MILLIE

hflth n start. Oh, Mam Sue, don' you go proph'sying
110 mo'! You seen big doin's in dat fire de night
'befo' them w'ite devuls come in heah an' tuk'n

po' dad out and bu'nt him!

 

MAM SUE

Calmly. No, Millie, Ah didn' see no big doin's

dat night -- Ah see'd evul doin's an' Ah tole

yrfl po' daddy to keep erway f'om town de nex'

day wid his cotton. Ah jes knowed dat he wuz

gwine to git in a row wid dem W'ite debbilg --

but he wou'd'n lis'n tuh his ole mammy --3
This dialogue tends to stir uneasiness rather than pathos.
This tension continues to mount and increase as the situation
is made known that John is coming home uninformed of the
father”s murder. Tension increases as the women continue
to keep him from discovering the truth. This step by step
build~up assists an empathetic response to the feelings and
intent of John. All that he feels and all that he intends
to do seems entirely justified. This is due, primarily,
to the power of the play generated by the carefully con-
structed plot.

Diametrically opposed to the well structured plot

of Aftermath is the loosely assembled plot structure of

 

36Ibid. , p. 10 .

188

William Blackwell Branch's A Medgl for Willie (1951),
another play protesting social benefits for war heroes. In
this one-act play of seven scenes, the playwright tries to
string together a series of experiences for characters whose
lives have been touched in one way or another by Willie
Jackson, a dead war hero. The plot tends to wander from one
expression of nostalgia and longing for the dead to another
in a number of loosely jointed scenes that treat of the
thoughts of his mother, Mrs. Jackson, his sister, his sweet-
hearts, his school teacher, his principal, his school's
janitor and his barber. Consequently, the characters do not
interrelate and the plot is not unified. It is comprised of
a series of impressions by characters who never meet each
other.

All of these impressions are aimed toward soliciting
a feeling of pity for Willie in preparation for Mrs.
Jackson's ax-grinding speech. In this speech, the author
is able to criticize passionately the evils of segregation
and "all the white supremacist cruelties as a casually-

accepted part of the American way of life."37

This speech
occurs at the end of the play. The Jackson family and
Willie's friends have gathered at the school in order to
receive Willie's service medal. At the climax of the

ceremony, Mrs. Jackson stands up in order for the General,

L

37Amy Schechter, "A Medal for Willie," New World
BEVISN} Dec. 1951.

M

189

who has come from washington for the occasion, to pin the
medal on her breast. The principal of the high school puts
a speech in her hand. Turning to the men on the platform
she says that it's fine to give Willie a medal he can't
wear, name a park after him they haven't built, but where
were any of them when she was struggling to bring him up
decent and put clothes on his back?38

. . .if they say her Willie died to keep things
just as they are, they are just plain talking lies.
Just using her boy's memory to make themselves
believe that everything they had been saying

all along was true. Willie was dumb, she says,
he didn't know much: he thought if he joined
the army and did everything they told him, he
would get through and come home and maybe they
would treat him a little different -- maybe they
would treat him like somebody -- so he had
gotten himself killed in the war overseas,
holding a mountain pass open with his machine
gun, while his buddies came through. She

says he tried hard and she is glad he saved
somebody's life -- but she isn't sure he was

on the right side. 'Maybe,' she says, 'Willie
should have had that machine gun right here at
home, where it might have done some good.'

And then the thin little Negro woman walks
up to the pompous general from washington and
tells him to take his medal back, and When he
won't, she takes it and throws it at him and
walks out of the ceremony with her family
behind her.39

These words belonging to Lorraine Hansberry clarify Branch's
grievances as he protests the hypocritical policies of the
white power structure. To further endorse this criticism,

he makes the General in charge of presenting the award, a

38Lorraine Hansberry, "A Medal for Willie," Masses

and‘Wainstream, Dec. 1951.
Ibid.

190

highly prejudiced, pompous and stupid southerner.

The General is not the only caricature, for all
of the characters seem exaggerated types. Brooks Atkinson
in commenting on the purpose of the play, describes this
character deficiency:

Its weakness lies in exaggerated caricature. Even

the most malevolent of those we meet inIn Medal

for Willie have comic opera qualities that detract

from what should be the dominant note of the play.

Mr. Branch has attempted to present characters

representing forces of fundamental evil in modern

society. Too often he has made them seem ludicrous 40

and much less sinister than they would be in reality.
Because the hero never appears, it is not possible to comment
upon his nature in terms of egocentricity. cold fury and
the intent to avenge all the "angles of jim-crow."Lp1 The
"cold fury," however, is basic to the play.

"Mr. Branch's play didn't only shock White people.

It shocked Negroes. Many pseudo-academicians

argued that the mother wouldn't have done that,

that she wOuld have cherished the medal and cried

over it. Besides, they added, we don't wa t to

show white folks how angry we really are."

Despite comments of this nature, William Branch's
play, A Medal for Willie, explicitly depicts the anger of
the Negro. Like all of the Negro-written protest plays,
deeply rooted anger is the catalytic agent motivating the
play's minor action.

Another play to treat of the problems that occur

 

uoBrooks Atkinson, “Attack on Bigotry,” New York
Times, Ofitober 16, 1951, p. 35.
1Schechter.
”ZMitchell, p. 152.

191

upon the return of a Negro soldier after the war, is
Arnaud d'Usseau and James Gow's Deep are the Rootg, a three-
act play written in 1946.

While the plays previously discussed as plays of
protest were written by Negroes, Eggp an; pn§,nppp§ is a
white man's attempt to protest prejudice and its evil
consequences. Yet despite its theme, the hero's plight is
softened and romanticized by the love and attention of two
devoted white women and tends to make his position less
pitiable.

Qpppinpg‘pngfnpppn Opens in the Langdon home in the
"Deep South." Senator Langdon and his oldest daughter,
Alice, are awaiting the return of Brett Charles. Alice
busies her mind with plans for Brett's future. There is no
indication she will consult with Brett on these matters.
The Senator does not sanction his older daughter's visions:
"Just because he can read and write, making a doctor of
philosophy out of a nigger! Why wasn't I told of this
monstrous stupidity?"43 As representative of the author's
notion of a "truly prejudiced Southerner,"uu Langdon's main
soliloquy throughout the play amounts to ". . . until the
day I die, I'll fight for the rights and privileges of the

superior person."45

 

e Roots

3......

 

uBArnaud d'Usseau and James Gow, Dee are
(New Yorgfi Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946), . 14.
Ibid.
451b1d., p. 24.

192

When Brett enters the scene, he is described as a
good-looking Negro of twenty-six. He is in uniform. His
manner is polite, poised; he seems mature for his years.
During his war experiences, he has earned four decorations.
One of the characters who most admires Brett is the
Senator's younger daughter, Genevra, who admits openly she
loves him. It seems the Negro taught her to catch fish, not
to be afraid of snakes and to interpret Shakespeare. When
Brett and Genevra exchange their feelings of love, it is
Brett who discourages their relationship. It is Brett who
seems to understand more fully the difficulties a Negro-
white marriage will have in the South.

As the play progresses, Brett does such things as
go to the library and try to check out books, propose his
plans to attend a Civil Rights meeting in Atlanta, and speak
articulately on the immorality of segregation. These actions
perturb Alice's plans for Brett's future and she tries,
however unsuccessfully, to discourage him from making his
own decisions.

Meanwhile, the Senator is enraged and proceeds to
pin the blame for the theft of his gold pocket watch on
Brett. All seems inevitable ruin and shame for Brett, when
Alice's northern fiancee happens to find the watch in the
laundry chute, returns it to the Senator and clears the hero
of thievery. This frees Brett, and Genevra offers the Negro

a proposal of marriage. Brett refuses. Fornlornly,

1.1;.“-

193

Genevra leaves on the next train; the Senator announces
his intention to fight and kill Negroes, and Alice remains
with Brett deciding in her mind that the two of them together
will fight social injustice. Brett reaches out his hand
and Alice closes the play with "We're on the same side.
Yes, Brett. Yes. Yes."46
Negro heroes in Negro-written drama, unlike Brett
Charles, do not find themselves in a position of dependency
upon the kindness of white women. ". . . he finds it
impossible to cut the string of authority that binds him to
her; while her management of the situation is easy -- she
treats him with the fond peremptoriness that one would show
an unruly pet."47
It is a Negro critic's opinion that Brett Charles

succeeds in completely annihilating himself through
violation of manliness in love and in self-defense. Couch
uses five major incidents from the play to verify this
assertion:

(1) Brett Charles' refusal to escape Southern

prejudice by going North. (2) His resolve to

remain in the South where he can teach other

Negroes. (3) His plan to join an interracial

group. (4) His romantic involvement with a

white girl. (5) His indivhgual opposition
to local racial traditions.

 

uéIbid., p. 205.

47William Couch, Jr., "The Problem of Negro Character
and Dramatic Incident," Phylon, XI, (2nd Quarter, 1950),
p. 129.

 

1+8Ibid.

194

Furthermore, there is no trace of militant hatred for
whites in this character. He is in love with one white
woman, and bound to another. Even in his Single angry
moment, he cries as a child cries when he is hurt. Alice
slaps him and receives no retribution other than his childish
outburst of hurt feelings. The speech, in isolation,
suggests that Brett is enraged; but his almost immediate
willingness to forgive Alice and forget their misunder-
standings cancels the theme of long-term hatred for whites
continuously prevalent in the Negro written literature.
BRETT

Human beings are allowed to defend themselves --

to explain -- to use words. But not a 'nigger.'

Human.beings are permitted to have feelings.

But not a 'nigger.' With n_sob. Damn you,

Alice Langdon, I would have died before I

would have brought harm or suffering to Nevvy

[Genevra]! Damn you, I would have cut off this

arm, rather than touch her! Seizing her arms,

she slaps him. No . . . No, I don't have to

kill you! You're not worth killing. Go on

living. And shake with fear every tfime you

see a black face. . . . White scum. 9

It has been suggested that the aim of these protest

plays is to prick the white man's conscience. Dramas
written by Negroes do not include scenes in which the whites
actually assume responsibility for social ills as does the
white man's play Deep are the Roots. Although the author

disclaims any formula for solving race problems, the recona

ciliation that does take place grows out of the awakening

 

u9d'Usseau and Gow, p. 181.

 

195

of conscience on the part of Alice, the white protagonist.
The awakening is not profoundly moving because the character,
Alice, has been governed by "trite emotions"5O throughout
the play. However, despite this shallowness, Negro and
white are united in.a mutual bond of friendship and dedi-
cation to problems of Negro and white relations which they
will undertake to solve under white leadership. This will-
ingness to compromise is one of the more clearly delineated
points of difference between Negro and white-written drama.
In the protest plays discussed prior to Qppp are the Roots
such willingness to compromise does not exist. The ”white
point of view found in Deep are the Roots" which declared
"white is right" is not to be found in Negro-written dramas.
In their plays the point of view is clearly, "white is
wrong."51

The authors clearly indicate a desire to establish
white guilt for the Negro dilemma. As Mitchell would have
them say: "We didn't write that play for Negroes . . . .
We were talking to whites who think they are progressive,
liberal, or whatever they want to call themselves."52

In the three-act play Blnpg'§pnl§,by white author
Annie Nathan.Meyer, once more the hero is willing to compro-
mise. §l§23.§23l§: protesting against segregation with a

particular emphasis upon race relations and lynching,

 

5oStark Young, "Rootless Roots," Eng Ngn Republic,
CXLIV (April 1, 1946). p. 446.

1Mitchell, p. 124.

2Ibid.

.-‘. -.

0?"

 

196

appeals to the conscience of responsible whites as it tries
to present the problem of the American Negro emancipated
into a society which will not receive him. As in Qppp app
pnp_nppp§, one of the white characters assumesthe responsi-
bility and burden of guilt.

A Negro war veteran who has recently returned from
EurOpe is the fulcrum upon which the play balances. The
theme concerns the consequences of miscegenation, and the
white man's attempt to persecute the Negro.

Andrew Morgan, Principal of Magnolia, a School for
Colored People in the Black Belt and David Lewis, his brother—
in-law, recently returned from military service in World
war I and a "Professor of Belles Lettres" at Magnolia, share
the role of hero. The play takes place a few years after
World war I. In the beginning, students sing "Steal Away"
in the near distance setting a nostalgic mood as characteristic
of Magnolia and its melancholy Negroes.

In Scene One, it is learned that Andrew is preparing
to speak to a gathering of Negroes at the school. David
criticizes his brother-in-law for catering to white expecta-
tions and prescriptions. Andrew, in his replies to these
accusations, seems to symbolize the teachings of Booker T.
washington.

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the
old attitude of adjustment and submission. He
practically accepts the alleged inferiority of
the Negro races and withdraws many of the high

demands of Negroes as men and American citizens.
Mr. washington asks that black people concentrate

197

all their energies on industrial education, the

accumulation of wealth and the conciliation of

the south.53
Andrew is willing to compromise because he believes it will
further the progress of his people. David, having been to
France, has learned respectibility. He is a poet, sensitive,
intelligent and revered by children. He is also disillusioned,
bitter and eager to escape the Southern hostilities that
hurt and anger him. As a consequence, David and Andrew
expend much dialogue debating the future of the Negro.
Andrew has faith in the Southern whites'interest and their
fundamental integrity. Therefore, he is willing to compro-
mise to help his school receive white monetary assistance
and, thus, development. To David this is a betrayal of the
cause of the race. When Andrew suggests such pat phrases
as "Love accomplishes where hate defeats," David accuses him

of possessing a "slave mind."54

The argument converges on
an overburdened story related by Andrew in which he tells

of nearly being hanged by white mobs who, at the last
minute, cut him down. Andrew suggests this was in answer to
prayer. Facing the mob, Andrew promised to educate Negroes
in exchange for his life with the explicit promise never

to "educate them above their position.” In keeping with

this Booker T. washington philosophy, Andrew offers to make

 

5ZDuberman, p. 55.
5 Annie Nathan Meyer, Black Souls (New Bedford:
Reynolds Press, 1932), p. 32.

 

   

198

the Negro students "better farmers, better carpenters,
better neighbors."55
But David is not persuaded that staying at Magnolia
is the answer for him. He proposes to return to Europe.
The proposal unleases his brother-in-law's wrath with a
list of reasons why David owes it to his race, his family
and himself to remain in the South and help educate "the
colored people." The guilt-propelling diatribe ends with
Andrew saying, "Forget! Why, man, you might as well try to
tell me you can forget that your heart beats as to tell me
you can forget the past that throbs in your veins!"56
David, described as "crushed," agrees to stay at Magnolia.
Senator Verne and the Governor of the State, arrive
for a meeting at Magnolia. It is learned that Andrew's
wife Phyllis is the apple of the Senator's eye and his
intentions are to solicit Phyllis' affections. It is also
learned that the Senator's daughter, Luella, and David were
good friends during the war in France. Aggressively,
Luella proceeds to encourage the continuation of their
relationship. David, like Brett in Dppp app ERR Rpppn,
senses the dangers of this and tries to dissuade her.
Ignoring his protests, Luella follows David into the woods
to a cottage used by the poet for meditation and writing.

Alarmed by her arrival, David tries to persuade her to

 

SgIbid., p. 35.
5 Ibid., p. 53.

 

199

leave immediately, but not before they confess their love
for each other. Luella's departure is too late, however.
Hostile white faces appear at the window and imply David's
fears will be realized.

The faces in the window conclude the third scene,
and the play shifts to Andrew's study in which a frightened
Negro boy stands waiting for Phyllis to give him David's
coat which he has requested of her. Later in the scene,
it develops that the whites had paid the boy to get the
coat in order to supply hounds with David's scent. By the
time Andrew is ready to address the school's students
alongside the Senator and the Governor, he learns that a
lynching is in progress. The news deeply troubles the
Negro leader. It becomes a moral struggle for his con-
science because he feels obligated to speak out against
this brutality while at the same time, he feels pressured
not to jeopardize the future of Magnolia. When he dis-
cusses his feelings with the Senator, Verne emphasizes the
necessity to avoid such contentions if he doesn't want to
lose the "good will" that Andrew has earned for Magnolia.
This leads to another verbal debate resulting in an appeal
to the Senator for the white power structure to extend its
laws and fair trial system to the Negro. The Senator
rebuffs the proposal and accuses the Negro of cohesiveness

that must be stopped by the whites. "We white folks won't

 

200

stand for it. We white men are banded together in the
most sacred Cause in the world -— the Supremacy of the
White Race."57

Ignoring this proclamation, Andrew continues to
beg the Senator to interfere with the lynching, but there
is no response. Finally, Verne agrees to allow Andrew
to visit the scene of execution after his speech. Consid-
ering himself a hypocrite, Andrew proceeds to adhere to the
Senator's bidding and goes to make his speech which follows
long pompous simpering pronouncements by the state's
politicians and ends with the "haying of hounds."

In the sixth scene Andrew and Phyllis learn that
it is their David who has been hanged. When the Senator
enters, Andrew tells him of his daughter's relationship
with his brother-in-law. The Senator scoffs at the truth
until his daughter confirms it. During these climactic
moments, the playwright uses the characters for expressing
social ills and their evil consequences, such as the non—
chalant indulgence of white men with Negro women. Phyllis
presents the theory that lust is inherited and that the
only way to prevent "lust getting into the blood" of the
children was through abstinence. "If you want your women

8
to stay clean, you've got to stay clean yourselves."5

 

57Ibid., p. 74.
8Ibid., p. 98.

 

201

After considerable preaching of this nature, the
Senator withdraws humbly. Andrew and Phyllis confess their
mutual grief and failings. The play ends with Andrew
saying in a voice vibrant with agony, "No human being has
the right to rdb another of his manhood."59

This statement iS Annie Nathan Meyer's purpose
sentence -- her key idea for the dramatized sermon. At
the heart of her play is the plea for whites and Negroes
to love one another, to avoid the sinner's life and to be
kind, decent human beings. She labors to be fair with
the positions of both races and to present them openly and
honestly. Obviously, she does not condone irresponsibility
in Negroes, extramarital sexual relationships, hypocrisy
of any type and the White's attitude of supremacy.

As was characteristic of Degp are the Roots, Blnpk
Spnln depicts Negro willingness to compromise. Andrew
suggests love and good will as a means of problem solving;
there is no mention of fighting, no declaration of war, no
cold fury. David shows affection for a white woman.and
respect, characteristics that seldom occur in Negro-written
dramas. It is the white author who suggests that Negro men
and white women are mutually attracted to one another. Both
David and Andrew show hurt feelings that lack the burning

indignation common to black heroes in Negro protest dramas.

 

59Ibid., p. 99.

202

Both David and Andrew are willing to give consideration to
the white point of view and seem willing to recognize the
possibility that it is not altogether completely objection-
able.

Annie Nathan Meyer's play is directed toward improving
the situation for the Negro. It suggests homespun Christian
formulas as means of problem solving. She asks whites to
realize what really nice people the Negroes are. She does
not design a hero who is superior. She designs heroes who
recognize their position, who are sensitive about it, who H
ask for moral rights. These characters want the good life
of Christian, middle-class, conventional descendants of the
Puritan fathers. For these gifts, the characters are made
to seem morally betrayed.

A search for criticism of this play has proven
fruitless. Although published, it seems not to have stirred
any critical acclaim.

Moral indignation is also a major characteristic
of David Bennett, another Negro hero fashioned by a white
female author. David is the male protagonist of Maxine
Wood's three-act play, 9n Whitman Avenue (1948). This play
protests against unfair housing practices. Sociologists
say that "housing discrimination is the greatest and most
important remaining area of discrimination —- important in

its extent, its real consequences, and its social and

., -.=_..

 

203

psychological impact."60
The law forbidding discrimination in housing is much
less effective than the law forbidding discrimination in
employment. It is weaker, and provides no specific penal-
ties, though if a landlord remains adamant, the city can
bring him into court. It is the white middle—class citizens
on whom the moral injunction to form a community together
with Negroes falls most heavily, at least from a theoretical
point of view.61
9n Whitman Avenue is a hypothetical situation in
which this point and its numerous consequences for one
middle class white Protestant family forced to neighbor
with a family of Negroes is considered. The play is illus-
trative of the difficulties Negroes encounter who wish to
live in non-Negro neighborhoods.
These situations in which white and colored live
together without tension and without problems,
and perhaps even comfortably enough with each
other to begin finally to appreciate their
real differences, mark the course of the
future. . . . The only question is, hgg
fast, and against how much re81stance.
The street, Whitman Avenue, might be in any pleasant,
tree-shaded suburb in any northern state. It is a clean,
prosperous, and typical American neighborhood. Ironically,

the name Whitman suggests the poet, walt Whitman, who felt

and wrote about the free spirit of Americanism.

 

goGlazer and Moynihan, p. 53.
611bid., p. 60.
2Ibid., p. 67.

204

The play begins as a Negro family moves into this
peaceful suburb. While the Tilden family is at a druggist's
convention, their daughter, Toni, rents the upper story
of their suburban house to the family of David Bennett,

a Negro ex-Seabee who saved the life of Toni's sweetheart

in the Pacific. The Tildens return and talk pleasantly
about the nature of their tenants, ignorant of the fact

they are Negroes. Shocked at discovering the "awful truth,"
they are soon engaged in neighborhood warfare. They are
threatened not only with social ostracism, but also by the
refusal of the real estate company to renew the lease on

Mr. Tilden's store. How each member of the family reacts

to this pressure comprise the core of the play. Toni and
Mr. Tilden want the family to stay; Mrs. Tilden and her son,
Johnny, want them to go. In a burst of anger, Mrs. Tilden
speaks to the Negro family with cruelty and malice. Immedi-
ately, the Bennetts proceed to move. By the irony of social
development, it is the Bennetts, driven from pillar to post,
who are united, while the Tildens, saved from the "shame"

of harboring a Negro veteran, his pregnant wife and his
family, are lost to each other. Toni leaves home enraged

at her mother, as does Mr. Tilden Who can no longer respect
or live with an intolerant wife. Mrs. Tilden tries fruit-
lessly to restore her husband's confidence and love. Johnny
has run away to the Lund's, the "nigger-haters" house, and

Mrs. Tilden, at the end of the play, is left alone with

{A

 

205

nothing of her home and family except herself and the
house.

The Negro family is pictured as the epitome of
gentility and refined grace. Not at any point in the play
do they commit an act that would warrant anything but
respect. At the same time, they are not exaggerated ideal
types. They behave with normal good taste, making the
treatment they receive appear as an.act of absurd injustice.
Even Owen, the nine-year old Negro boy, and his attempt to
protect himself with his Gramp's garden knife when Johnny
Tilden and Bernie Lund attack him, seems completely justi-
fied and warrants sympathy.

The hero, a twenty three year old Negro -— well-built
and good looking, who carries himself well, and "holds his
head high," never resorts to violence, overt demonstrations
of anger or hate. When he protests injustice and asks
for his human rights, he exhibits courtesy and good manners.
Nething he says implies that he's a fighter or a potential
destroyer of the present status quo. When the neighbors
held their meeting in the Tildens' living room, middle
class ethics competed with money to convince David Bennett
that he should move for his own sake. As long as the neigh-
bors think they can convince him to leave "of his own free
will," they glimpse his humanity, and their guilt makes them
slavishly solicitous of his feelings. When he doesn't yield

immediately to their demands, they become impatient and then

{i

 

 

206

hysterical and savage. The token gestures of good will
disappear and a form of lynching transpires. The leader
of the assault on the Bennetts is the real estate agent
who takes up a collection to pay for David's moving. Ed
Tilden fights back, encouraged by his daughter's love and
the support of his customers and other community members.
Yet, when the question of lease renewal comes up, his wife
attacks him. With his security threatened, Ed Tilden tells
David he must move. Thus, it is a thrust of irony by the
playwright when Mrs. Tilden turns to David for his help.
MRS . TILDEN

David! Talk to Toni. She's got a crazy idea in

her head that She has to leave because your

family's moving. That can't help you. It

can't help anybody! She has respect for you!

She'll listen to you. I was hysterical last

night. I didn't mean what I said. I knew

better. I don't ask you to forgive me. You

must hate me --

DAVID

I did last night. But now -- now I feel sorry
for you!

MRS. TILDEN

Then don't take my family away from me! Don't
punish me like this!

DAVID

Mrs. Tilden, bglieve me, I'm not the one who's
punishing you. 3

 

63Maxine Wood, 9n Whitman Avenue (New York:
Dramatist's Play Service, Inc., 1948), pp. 78-79.

 

 

207

Although the play was charged with being "poor theatre" by
the critics, Negro audiences were inspired by the dramati-
zation of one of their major problems.

. . . it gave one the feel of what it means to

be a self-respecting dark-skinned American in

search of a fundamental American right and

finding instead only humiliation and indignity

and an order to return to a racial concen-

tration camp. The volcanic, fist clenching

silences of Canada Lee as the Negro war veteran

were eloquently human indictments of white 64

America's toleration of an undemocratic sin.
But if there were "volcanic, fist clenching silences" in the
play, 9n Whitman nyenue, they were placed there by an actor.
Maxine Wood's script, as written, does not suggest volcanic
attributes as intrinsic to the nature of her character,
David. Instead, as written, he seems passive. Like Lt. Brett
Charles, David is designed in such a way that he appears to
be an ordinary, decent, law abiding, average person with
common desires. "In 9n Whitman Avenue Negroes were projected
as human beings."65 The only thing that sets David apart
from the other characters is the degree to which the play
dramatizes the sociological status of the Negro in society.
For this purpose, Maxine Wood has tried to paint the Bennetts
as the kind of people middle class Americans could most

desire as neighbors, in order to support her "good cause"

about the unfairness of housing discrimination.

 

64

Albert Deutsch, "Negroes in Search of Decent Homes -
'On Whi an Avenue,'" 2. ., May 21, 1946, p. 9.

M
5Mitchell, p. 127.

208

Louis Kronenberger felt that 9n Whitman Avenue was
detrimental to this "good cause" because it was a bad play.66
"The answer heard in Negro circles was: 'When are these
folks going to learn that we're not a good cause nor a
bad cause? We are human beings who want our rights!"67

"Despite its painfully vital theme and generally

plausible story, Qn,Whitman.Avenue is flattish

propaganda and flatter theatre, working from

the problem in, instead of from the people out,

it consistently substitutes cardboard for flesh

and blood, cliches for sharp individual reactions.

Dramatically, moreover, it soon hobbles,

eventually halts! Fairly interesting while

matters are coming to a head, from then on

it can only repeat its wrangleg8 restate its

issues, and delay its ending."

In keeping with Black Souls and Deep are the Roots,

Maxine Wood has constructed an affinity between a white
female and a Negro male. Also, unlike the Negro written
dramas, there is a certain docile quality within the hero
that does not seem to exist in the protestants of Negro
written dramas. Unlike the heroes of Black Souls and Deep

are the Rootg, David's compromise manages to remain detached

 

from emotionalism. He neither weeps nor remains dependent
upon the white woman, nor does he bemoan his own inadequacies
and mistakes.

The major difference between Qn,Whitman.nyenue and

the other plays under discussion, is that in this play the

 

66Ibid.
67Ibid.
68uTheatre,n Time, XLIX (May 20, 1946). p- 49.

 

209

author not only forces the burden of guilt upon the whites
but extends it into a series of disintegrating punishments
for the persecutors. It is a thinly designed attempt to
illustrate the Greek notion of retribution Whereby evil
begets evil.

In contrast, the Negro-written.dramas attempt to
bombard the white conscience. When whites are caught in
the throes of moral decay in Negro-written dramas, it is
their nature and not their punishment as 9n Whitman Avenue
suggests.

Another playwright depicting the trials and tribu-
lations of a Negro family is Theodore ward. He tells of
Negro travail in Eng Elg.flhl£2 Egg which was first produced
in 1940 at the Federal Theatre in Chicago.69

Inp_§;g_wn;pp_fipg (1937) is a three-act lamentation
of denials and joylessness. It tries to proclaim that

70 It

Negroes "are human beings who want [their] rights."

is a serious attempt by a Negro dramatist to depict the

struggle and outlook of his people in their search for

freedom and happiness in the midst of a system which seems

unable to accomodate them. It shows clearly the influence

and emotional power appeal of the hope of "Garveyism."
After World war I, Negro resentment became more

vocal. Marcus Garvey's movement of Black
Nationalism, a forerunner of today's Black

 

ggMitchell, p. 114.
Ibid., p. 127.

 

210

Muslims, appracted hundreds of thousands of
followers.

"Garvey created, on paper, the 'Empire of Africa,' made
himself provisional president-general, created a whole
hierarchy of potentates, knights, and dukes, and organized
an.army, an air force, and a steamship line."72

Garvey's primary appeal was a glorification of
blackness. He instructed Negroes to keep their blood pure
and to return to Africa. At the heart of his teaching was
the notion that black was superior to white and God and Jesus
were black. Negro history was accented with heavy emphasis
upon the belief that African civilization was older than the
EurOpean.73

We are too large and great in numbers not to be
a great peOple, a great race, and a great nation.
we are the descendants of a suffering people.
we are the descendants of a peOple determined to
suffer no longer. The time has now come when
we must seek our place in the sun. If Europe
is for the Europeans, then Africa shall be for
the black peoples of the world. We are not
asking all the Negroes of the United States

to leave for Africa. The majority of us may
remain here, but we must send our scientists,
our mechanics, and our artisans, and let them
build railroads, let them build the great
educational and other institutions necessary,
and when they are constructed, the time will
come for the command to be given, 'Come Home!'
The hour has come for the Negro to take his own
initiative. No more fear, no more cringing, no
more sycophantic begging and pleading. Destiny
leads us to liberty, to freedom: that freedom
that Victoria of England never gave; that

 

7éKuhlke, p. 57.
7 Arnold Rose, The Ne ro's Morale (Minneapolis:
Universigy of Minnesota Press, 1949), p. 44.

Ibid.

I-_ ._

 

,- -3

~ -.-—J.fl-

 

 

211

liberty that Lincoln never meant; that freedom,

that liberty, that will see us men among men,

that will make us a great and powerful people.7u
This is the essence of Marcus Garvey's philosophical posture.
According to Brawley, "The influence of Garvey on the liter-
ature of the Negro Renaissance was inestimable."75

Bigiwnipp,fipg is an illustration of Garvey-influenced
drama. This is a play, as the title symbolizes, protesting
the world of white prejudice —- a world where, because of the
white man's frank denial of opportunity to the group, Negroes
frequently possessing the highest scholastic attainments
are forced into the most menial types of employment. It
also characterizes the confusion which society engenders in
the minds of members of the race as they seek a way out of
their unhappy predicament.

Covering a period of ten years in the historical
development of the Negro in the industrial North, Big E2122
[Eng deals with the life of a single family engaged in the
general quest for security, self respect and a sense of
belonging. Several stories are told, the chief of Which is
that of the father, Victor Mason, an educated idealist,
formerly of the South, who, dissatisfied with his lot as a
hod-carrier and bitter over the situation of his race, turns

to Garveyism and its dream of a black empire, only to

 

7”Duberman, p. 59.
75Benjamin.Brawley, The Negro Ln Literature and Art

;n_the united States (New York: Duffield and Company,
1930). p. 115.

(an’

 

212

encounter financial ruin and see his vision shattered by
the eventual collapse of the movement.
VICTOR

Be patient a little longer. . . . We'll soon be out
of this rut and on our way to Africa. 222 word
recalls BAR hope, pp that np_halts pn the ntairs,
Africa! I can see her now, like a mother weeping
for her long lost children, calling us to return
into our own. Soon, and it won't be long now
H;§_tone grows gradually exalted, you're going to
see the black man come out of the darkness of
failure into the light of achievement, wearing
the cloak of human greatness about his shoulders
-- Yes, Lord! And our enemies shall tremble

when he stretches forth his mighty hand to

gather in his share of the God given stars of
glory! E9; n moment, np remains clutched in
hi§.2flfl spell§6then awakens pp ascend the stairs

with dignity.
His wife says miserably, "What can you do with a man like

that?"77
Running counter to Victor Mason's tragic attempt to
escape, is the story of Dan Rogers, who, adhering to the
prevalent philosophy of individualism, begins his career
as a Pullman porter, manages to get in business for himself,
but is in the end wiped out by the stockmarket crash.
Inextricably bound up with the lives of Victor and
Dan are the stories of the other members of the family.
Percy Mason, Victor's brother is a disillusioned veteran

of the World war I who strives to wrest some degree of

 

76Theodore ward, "Big White Fog," (The Schomburg
Collection, New York Public Library, 1937), pp. 1-1-15 -
1-1-16. $Mimeographed.)

7 Ibid.

 

213

happiness from life by the process of high living, and
inevitably disintegrates. The pathos of his defeat is only
matched by the unmitigated sadness that marks the life of
wanda, the elder daughter, who at the outset looks upon

the prospect facing the average Negro girl, defies her
mother, revolts against going to school, and in the end
tops a life of frustrated young womanhood by sacrificing
her honor for the sake of her family when it is about to be
evicted. Victor has invested all of their money in Garvey
projects. Early in the play, it is declared that these
projects are worthless and as a consequence, Victor loses
his investments. Victor's son, Lester, expresses their
predicament: "Seems like the world ain't nothing but a

big white fog and we can't see no light nowhere!"78 Lester
is a splendid youth denied the fruits of a well-earned
scholarship because of his color; he awakens early in life
to his people's situation and turns toward Communism.
However, the play is not a propagandistic appeal for Marxist
ideology as an answer to the Negro's needs.

The stories of Ella Mason, the mother, Mrs. Brooks,
the grandmother, Juanita, Lester, wanda, Percy and Dan all
revolve around the father's unfortunate investment in the
ill-fated Garvey movement and the inner racial color question

with its hampering influence on the progress of the race.

 

781bid., p. 1-2-18.

 

W.
_
n

 

214

When it becomes evident that the Mason family is to be
evicted from their home, Victor in his Garvey uniform, goes
to the court to plead for re-consideration but receives
insults instead of assistance. Victor quotes his white
assailants:

Quoting. 'Oh, so you're one of the Niggers who
think this country isn't good enough for you,
eh? Well, well, and yet you've got the nerve
to appeal to this court for leniency?' AS if
that wasn't enough, he went on to rub it in by
telling me how thankful we ought to be to his
people for bringing us out of savagery —- but

I couldn't say anything.7

The mockery, the denials, the bitterness, the despair,
the humiliations, the son's rejection by institutions of
higher education, the daughter's enforced prostitution, and
the eviction congregate within Victor's mind and produce a
cold and hard fury that precludes any alternative except to
fight. This is his decision, this is the play's end, and
this is his death warrant. Throughout the play, the white
power structure is depicted as heartless and cruel. Victor
refers to whites as the enemy -- as the oppressors:

For should the Negro successfully wrest his economic
independence from his white oppressors, their
attitude of superiority would inevitably disappear,
since it would no longer possess any basis in reality.
But this is of course merely to indulge in fortuitous
wishing; so that in passing, I am constrained to

give you: The Agrarian Co-Operative Economy of

the Provincial Republic of Africa, the hope and
destined fulfillment of the Negro's dream. For

just as the gigantic Pyramids of Egypt stand in
eternal witness to the strength of our black

 

79Ibid., p. 3-1-18.

 

215

forefather's hands, so shall the New Africa,
which we shall have builded through this means,
stand before the generations of tomorrow in final
testimony to the black man's wisdom --. . . .
We're still in the hands of the enemy, with

our children cut off from opportunity, and the
lynchrope and faggot lying ready for any black
man who dares to raise his head. Grieviously.
We have yet to acquire -- a single inch -- of
the soil of Africa that we can call our own;
bitterly, and, while we celebrate, our great
leader stands within the shadow of the peni—
tentiary His voice cracking, branded as a

-— common criminal! Pause. These are dark
and terrible truths, my friends, and, as I

face them, I feel that the only proper response
I can make to your toast, is to ask you to
drink a pledge with me. ln_§ilence the
garveyites refill their glasses strongly.
Brothers and Sisters and members of my family,
let us pledge our hearts and minds and the

last ounce of our strength to carry on -- to
carry on without ceasing until our cause is
won and the black man has achieved his place
in the God given sun, a free man, honored

and respecged in the eyes of the Nations of

the world! 0

Neither Victor's philOSOphy nor his dreams are realized in
the play. The white mob comes to evict him and kill him
instead. The final impression is one of despair and pessi-
mism: "This world ain't nothing but a big white fog, and
nobody can't see no light nowhere!"81

In ward's play, there is the single Negro assertion
that the white man's world has not been just in its treat-
ment of Negroes. The playwright has attempted to glorify
his hero by directing him toward a willingness to struggle

against odds and, if necessary, die for his rights as a

 

8°Ib1d., pp. 2-1-5 and 2-2-20.
811b1d., p. 3-3-10.

 

 

215A

human being.

The protests are forthright, honest and clear.
Although the dialogue is often melodramatic and leaden,
"Mr. ward has the instinct for honest realism."82 "Mr.
ward proved to be a realistic writer, a craftsman poetically
inclined, and his work glowed with theatricality."83

The gig White Egg was not the only protest play that
incorporated the Garveyites. William Jourdan Rapp's and
Wallace Thurman's three—act play, Jeremiah Egg Magnificent,

which was presented by the Repertory Playhouse Associates

 

at the Negro Repertory Theatre in New York in 1933, was
also influenced by elements of Garveyism. Rapp and Thurman
comprise a Negro-white playwriting team.

In Jeremiah the Magnificent, Jeremiah Saunders, a
tall, heavy set, powerfully built Negro, assembles a group
of followers interested in sailing back to Africa. Jeremiah
considers himself to be one of the chosen Back to Africa
Garveyites. He is described by the authors as having a
"commanding personality, possessing a high degree of per-

sonal magnetism, and a deep mystical nature. In addition

to these merits, the authors add:

He has no especial mental powers, but possesses
the clever and shrewd intuitiveness natural

to some children. This shrewdness, however,
only evinces itself in his relations with his
enemies and opponents. His friends can easily

 

82Hicklin, p. 287.
SgMitchell, p. 11L».
William J. Rapp and wallace Thurman, "Jeremiah the
Magnificent" (The Schomburg Collection, New York Public
Library, 1933), p. 7. (Mimeographed.)

 

' 3...”.

' *H— $53.“-

 

 

216

lead him into openly dangerous paths so long as

they flatter him. Also, like the child that he

really is, he has a vivid imagination, as well

as a love for ostentatious and colorful clothing.

His long contact with the Bible and religious

literature ave given him ease and eloquence

of speech.8§

One of the false friends who leads Jeremiah into
"openly dangerous paths" is the mulatto lawyer, Grayson,
who resorts to a number of tricks in order to assure him-
self of rich and satisfying rewards. Into this situation
comes Melissa who is persuaded by Grayson to marry Jeremiah,
go with him to Mexico for a quick divorce from his existing
wife and join him in the journey to Africa with the first
Negro Americans who will begin colonization. Melissa
agrees to do this in exchange for a rich and happy life in
France with Grayson and the confiscated Garveyite funds.
When Melissa and Jeremiah return from Mexico,

Grayson urges an immediate departure for Africa suggesting
to Jeremiah that he's being sought by the U. S. Government
for selling stocks in a non-existent Marcus Garvey company.
Having split a large profit with an unscrupulous sea captain
on the sale of a faulty ship to the Black Movement group,
Grayson is anxious for the Garveyites to depart in order
to make his own lucrative escape to France.

The third act of the play takes place on board the

ship which is being managed by a crew of Liberians and

 

85Ibid.

‘~~~—a~—-.:=..¥s—~'

217

Negroes Who are ignorant of sea-faring skills. When a

storm arises, the ship crashes into the rocks off the coast

of Maryland. As a result, the ship is abandoned by the

Back to Africa pilgrims and Jeremiah is ruined. The Negro

characters in Jeremiah, £22 Magnificent, desert and betray

each other. In this respect, the play illustrates a socio-

logical premise that Negroes have not developed the same kind

of clannishness characteristic of European immigrant groups.

"Negroes often say, 'Everyone else sticks together, but

we knock each other down. There is no trust among us.'"86

Sociologists go on to say:
This is a stereotype and probably has the same
degree of truth that most stereotypes have, that
is, a good deal. Without a special language and
culture, and without the historical experiences
that create an elan and a morale, what is there
:fieifianghgm to build their own life, to patronize

Jeremiah, Eng Magnificent is not typical of the Negro

protest plays. The pain dynamic is scarcely visible and

the major emphasis is upon the melodramatic story. Little

can be said about the play as art, or as revelant of humane

and admirable thought. Jeremiah, as characterized, is

neither absolutely a fool nor absolutely a villain because

of his working cause. He places all of his confidence in a

fellow knave, he sheds his wife for another woman, commits

acts of fraud, he listens only to what he wants to hear

 

ggciazer and Moynihan, p. 33.
Ibid .

{I

 

 

 

218

and his own personal gain seems uppermost. His foolishness
is illustrated by his willingness to be Grayson's pawn
with all of that role's attendent expendability. Despite
his preaching, it is impossible to admire Jeremiah. If

his foolishness and stupidity could have led to any form

of recognition or awakening of insights, perhaps Jeremiah
could have elicited some form of respect. These are the
final words spoken by Jeremiah as all of the Back to Africa
pilgrims depart the ship. They are almost identical in

content, style and delivery to the first words spoken by

 

the hero:

Our Father, we are following your guiding star.
You Who are infinitely merciful, cheer us,
strengthen us, help us in our journey back to
the promised land. Oh, Father, we have suffered
without a complaint! We have endured great
hardships and never lost faith! No, Father,

we have never lost faith, not even when white
lash, the rope, and the flame have been turned
against us. And now we hearken to your call ~—
Your call to the black men and women of the
world to return to Ethiopia that it may rise
again in all its glory. We are ready Father.
We are ready. Our cry hencefoggh is, 'On

to Ethiopia! On to Ethiopia!'

In the core of this prayer-sermon which constitutes the
major portion of Jeremiah's dialogue rests the protest
element. Jeremiah says, "Your period of slavery and semi-
slavery here need not go for naught," or "No more must white
men place a yoke around his neck; no more must they apply

the lash, or resort to the rope, yeah -- even to the flames

 

881bid., pp. 12-14.

 

219

as a means of keeping him submissive, of retaining him in
slavery."89

Jeremiah's turgid nature and banal personality make
him wearisome. The play's melodrama does little to relieve
the tedium. At times, it appears that the playwrights
are trying to satirize the Daddy Grace type of religion.
At other times, it seems they are trying to point out the
fallacies of movements such as the one instigated by Marcus
Garvey. Occasionally, it seems to be their intent to
elicit pity for the naivete and ignorance of the Negro
people. And finally, it seems that the playwrights are
demonstrating the Negro's need for social recognition. When
Jeremiah is preaching, the references to white power suggest
that the author's intent is to prick the white conscience.
In this respect, the play allies itself with the protest
plays written by Negroes. This play's inferior literary
nature, is, no doubt, responsible for non—availability of
meaningful criticism. The play has not been published.

When the Negro author is primarily protesting, he
is intent upon creating in every white man's conscience a
sense of guilt and responsibility. Within the marrow of
these protest plays is a silent reprobation accusing white
society of sponsoring suppression of the Negro. Consequently,

a great many dramas written by Negro playwrights show

 

89Ibid., p. 15.

4*"

 

220

violence as a psychological necessity. The plays suggest
its use as a cleansing force freeing the Negro from his
inferiority complex, his despair and inaction; making him
fearless and restoring his self-respect.
In contrast, the white authors protesting social
ills, do not suggest fighting, killing or any other form
of violence as ways of achieving psychological fulfillment.
The white playwrights, in this chapter, suggest, through the
hero, that the Negro is continually stripped of effective
purpose or self—will and must expect his salvation in the
slow awakening of white conscience
. . . during which time there can be neither real
success for him nor the 'success' of tragic
failure, except, insofar as his pathetigO
presence is acessory to that awakening.
Qgep are fine Boots, Black Souls and On Whitman Avenue, plays
of protest by white authors, depict the Negro male as one
who is dependent upon the white female for his success in
life. Again, this is not characteristic of Negro-written
plays.
As literature, the plays of this chapter are insig-
nificant.
The secret of artistic creation and of the
effectiveness of art is to be found in a return
to the state of 'participation mystique' -~ to
that level of experience at which it is man

who lives, and not the individual, and at which
the weal or woe of the single human being does

 

goCouch, p. 129.

x.—

 

 

221

not count, but only human existence. That is

why every great work of art is objective and

impersonal, but none the less profoundly moves

us each and all.91

The very essence of these plays is a pre-occupation

with the personal woes of a race; they are primarily sub-
jective and highly personal having not discovered the
"secret of artiStic creation." That criticism which does
exist suggests that the plays, as literature, are labored,

artificial and self conscious. Only as revelations of

Negro mind and mood can they be considered significant.

 

91Falk, p. 70.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII
THE ANTI-HERO

Most of our modern dramas are clinical histories of

maladjusted people who are lost in a world that does not

understand them.1

Despair is a valuable thing. In reasonable
doses, it tenderizes the heart. It toughens
biceps as we strain to rise above it, and it
puts a higher value on our joys. But today
in our literature, and especially in our
theatre, we're in danger of running despair
into the ground.~

The heroes in many of these despair-filled plays are exiles
because they are individuals who will not adjust to or
accept the world of which they are a part. Some of these
alienated exiles have been labeled the anti—hero.

The anti-hero, as Ester Jackson (and others) have
so vividly described him, is a man struggling to
reconcile a profound inner division . . . . One
word: maybe. 'Maybe' is a key prop in the
construction of the anti-hero. He is, as T. S.
Eliot once suggested, merely a projection of
many courses of possible action because both

his knowledge and his will are riddled with
contradictions. He is, in other words, an
'unbeing,' a transparent void through which

the terrible imperatives of life pass freely

and unmolested. He is the one thousand piece
puzzle with pieces that cannot, or refuse to,
interlock. (I don't think it's really

 

 

1Jones, The Alienated Hero in Modern French Drama,
p. 118.

2Tom Prideaux, "Despair is Not Enough,“ Life, LVIII
(January 15, 1965), p. 10.

 

222

fin 7% . _—_————--.——
Mai-Wm ——-

 

 

 

 

223

significant, but it's amusing to note that

jigsaw puzzle manufacturers have come up with

the perfect anti-hero puzzle: a blank disc,
chopped up into hundreds of weakly defined pieces
that torment even the most dedicated puzzle-
assemblers. When, and if, it's ever assembled,
you have the pleasure of staring at a blank

disc, chopped up into hundreds of weakly

defined pieces.

William Hanley in his three-act play, Slow Dance 2n
the Killing Ground (196k) has created one of these "trans-
parent voids." The character is a hurt and frustrated
Negro boy named Randall.)+

Slow Dance 2n the Killing Ground grows out of a
confrontation of three characters: Glas, Randall and Rosie.
They are tormented people who meet for a few hours one
night in a small candy, soda and lunch store on a dark
street in Brooklyn. The shop belongs to Glas, a German
immigrant, who is taking an inventory of items when the
play begins. Almost immediately Randall "bursts into the
store in evident fear of some pursuer."5

He is wearing a close-fitting suit with a short
jacket and a velvet collar, a narrow-brimmed
hat with a high crown, and a rather voluminous
cape that falls to his hips. He carries a
tightly rolled umbrella. The over-all effect
is somewhat Edwardian but for the dirty white

sneakegs on his feet and the dark glasses he
wears.

 

3Golden, p. 103.

“Harold Clurman, "Theatre," The Nation, CXCIX
(December 28, 1964), p. 524.

5Ibid.

6William Hanley, Slow Dance 9n the Killin Ground
(New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 19355,p. .

n a”.

 

224

7

The umbrella is the most conspicuous element in his costume.

. . . . it is not long before he is menacing
the storekeeper with this improvised weapon,
muttering wild irrelevancies in a hip, auto-
didactic verbal style. Accounts of the
psychopathic killer known as the Umbrella Man
have prepared us for the brutal attack which
must follow —- but the expected blow never
falls. Instead, the Negro sits down, removes his
glasses, changes his ominous tone, and --
employing a highly eloquent vocabulary . . . .
initiates a three-hour talkathon, quoting
from Gide and Kafka, and analyzing the roots
of his own behavior . . . .

The playwright has entitled the first act of Slow
Dance 9n the Killing Ground -- "Pas de Deux," suggesting
that it is a dance for two. During this act, Randall and
Glas threaten, insult, anger, and pacify each other. There
is very little action.
[Hanley's] play has already happened before it
goes on stage. His characters are not peOple
but composites research out of faded newspapers:
they are set forth, not in the music of evocative
monologues, but in the unrelenting din of talk,
talk, talk.9
It should be noted that Time's criticism seems to
suggest that there is something wrong with a play that is
predominantly "talk." This is not justified since many
recognized plays are problem solving plays and rely heavily

upon discussion as a means of forwarding the play's primary

thesis. It does not seem fair to condemn Hanley's Slow Dance

 

7Robert Brustein, "Three Plays and a Protest," Egg
New Republic, CLII (January 23, 1965), p. 32.
g—UIbid.
9"Goodbye Cruel World," Time, XXCVII (December 11,
196k), p. 73.

225

o the Killing Ground for the mere reason that it "talks."

*w

 

The critic would do better to judge its merits in terms of
what it talks about and use of language style. The article
fails to do this.

The second act of the play has been designated,
"Pas de Trois," referring to the third character Rosie, who
enters, and partakes of the insults and pacifications,
humiliations and annoyances. Rosie is pregnant "from her
first encounter with a man, and at the moment on her way to
an abortionist. Apart from her lack of caution, Rosie is
a bright, wise-crackingly blunt student at New York University
with ambitions to become a novelist."10 As before, there
are long periods of actionless discussion.

By the third act, which is called "coda," three case
histories have been presented.

Mr. Hanley started his career as a one—act
playwright, and he.seems to have encountered some
of the same difficulties as Edward Albee in trying
to stretch himself to three. He sets an interesting
stage (one-act playwrights can do this almost in
their sleep), but then is faced with those
trackless wastes of development that three-act
playwrights must stumble through somehow. His
solution, like Albee's in 'Virginia Woolf,' is
to have each of his characters recite his own
case history in the form of traumatic anecdotes
and hopes that the anecdotes can be linked
together finally in the shape of a play. The
trouble with this method is that it is likely
to lead to a series of recitations, rather
than a dramatic event. The characters do not

10Clurman, p. 52#.

 

226

interact with each other sufficiently to produce
an objective happening.

This criticism is echoed by Mr. Clurman:

The play develops entirely on the basis of largely
unprovoked confessions. Each of the characters
tells us the sad story of his or her life. There
is barely a situation or a consequent action which
necessitates and determines these confessions.
Worse still, what is confessed is as trite as it
is 'shocking.'1

At the end of the play, each character is as alone as
he was when the play began, except that Glas is not as guilty.
He has been judged by Randall and Rosie in a mock trial.

A gentile, he had been.married to a Jewish woman
in Germany and they had had a child. When the
Jews were being carried off to extermination
camps, Glas not only abandoned his wife and
child so that he might carry on the fight for
the Communist cause, but also served as an
engineer on the trains which transported the
Jews to their death. Randall and Rosie sorrow-
fully pronounce him guilty of the crimes for
which, after his escape f8 America, he deeply
desires to be condemned. '

As for Rosie, the playwright gives no indication that
she has been persuaded by the suggestions given to her by
Glas and Randall to cancel her abortion plans. Hanley is
"content simply to have described with sadness and with
humor contemporary man's futile and grotesque attempts to
withdraw from too violent and painful processes that consti-

tute real life. Randall, the son of a prostitute and

 

llWilfrid Sheed, "The Stage," Commonweal, XXCI
(January 3, 1965), p. 485.
iBClurman, p. 52A.
Ibid.
1”Henry Hewes, "waiting Periods," Saturday Review,
XLVII (December 19, 1964), p. 25.

227

motivated by uncontrollable love mingled with hate, has
stabbed his mother to death prior to his arrival at the
candy store. The play implies his reward will be some kind
of inevitable violent death on the "killing ground."

Each of the three characters has a primary anxiety
reflecting the symptoms of alienation and the correlating
threat of meaninglessness that hangs over our age. Each
character moves through "his own slow dance to the inevitable
music of his own.making."15

According to Randall, the world "out there" has
little if any meaning. It is variously, a pack of wolves,

a butcher shop, or "just one big bug-house."
we are all bugs. You, me. Everybody! . . . Just
waitin' to be squashed . . . . so what is
euphemistically called life is actually just one
big bug—house and you either gotta grow up to be
one a them big bugs or you gotta scurry. Know
what I mean? Scurry. You stand still and you
find yourself bein' sqgashed. That one of my
philosophies of life.
The world is also "grotesque." "It is . . . bizarre! . . .
That is the killing ground out there."17

Having found no tenable faiths in the outside world,
Randall wanders aimlessly. He is impressed with and pursued
18

by the demon of dispossession.

You know Franz Kafka? . . . You know that story
he write where this fella wake up one mornin' and

 

15Howard Taubman, "William Hanley Makes His Broadway
Debut," ¥§fl York Times, December 1, 1964, p. 50.
Hanley, pp. 18-19.
7Ibid.
18Golden, p. 104.

228

find out he turned into a bug? You know that
story? That actually happen to me . . . . Yeah.
One mornin' I wake up and I realize I'm actually

a bug.
GLAS

Don't you ever stand still, boy?
RANDALL

Stand still! Baby, get me to stand still they
gonna have to nail my feet to the floor! 9

According to Golden, this aimless wandering is the fate of

the anti-hero. Such a condition is the most "serious upshot

of alienation."20
The indirect theme of the alienated man in Hanley's

play is abundantly clear: get involved. The message grows

out of Slow Dance 2n Egg Killing Ground through the characters!

supreme efforts not to confront each other. For example,

Randall says to Rosie who is discussing her abortion plans:

"Rosie . . . don't do it, Rosie." She replies: "What do

you mean, don't do it? What's it to you, anyway?" This

answer is enough to send Randall scurrying into himself

again. He resorts to his "hipster lingo"21 and answers:

"Ain't nothin' ta me, little chick, nothin' atall."22
Throughout the play, Randall is characterized by

these demonstrations of "a knowledge and will riddled with

contradictions."23

 

19Hanley, pp. 10-11.
20Golden, p. 104.
21Clurman, p. 524.
22Hanley, p. 65.
23colden, p. 103.

229

Eighteen years old and a IQ of a hundred and
eighty-seven. When I was a little kid they used
to be always givin' me a lotta these here tests,
you know? They take me up to Columbia University
and all these cats be sittin' round puffin' on
their pipes and askin' me a lotta questions, you
know, tryin' to figure out how it could happen
I be so smart. But that just the way it is:
a genius is what I am. 4
However, outside of being able to quote newspaper statistics,
his genius seems not to have contributed to his finding
substantial meaning in life.

Randall's contradictory nature causes him to function
in a host of different roles, "the Umbrella Man, for example, Q
acting as confessor, confidant, orator, psychological
counselor, social worker, and judge, in sequence. At the
end, he returns to his original role as menace . . . ."25
The consequence of this, according to Brustein, is that "all
credibility has been swallowed up . . . ."26 It also helps
to forward Ester Jackson's notion that the anti-hero is a
man struggling to reconcile inner division.

One of the most pronounced contradictions is the
idea that Randall is incapable of feeling love. This is
symbolized by the Negro's claim to have been born with a
hole in his heart.

. . . . you got no love in you, Randall, you're
all mean and black inside and you got no love

in you! Which was all too true, of course.
Because that piece which had never grown

 

24Hanley, p. 11.
Brustein, p. 32.
Ibid.

   

230

into Randall's eart? . . . That was the place
where love is.

And yet, he feels such love for his mother that he cannot
tolerate her giving her body to strangers, and, consequently,
stabs her to death. The act as described is certainly
violent, but Randall's description of the murder leads
immediately into intrinsic longing for peace.
RANDALL
Do you know the Cloisters, Rosie?
ROSIE
They'll catch you, Randall, they'll kill you.
RANDALL

That's a quiet place, the Cloisters, like where
them monks used to live long ago. I sure woulda
liked to be one a them monks. Maybe next time.

ROSIE

Oh, Randall, Randall, there won't be any next
time! They'll kill you for what you've done!

RANDALL

Of course, but I mean after that. The next time
I come back. I neglected to tell you, Rosie,
you see, I believe in the Resurrection and the
Life -- . . . The one thing worries me a bit
is that I might go to Hell. Of course, you
must understand, Rosie, my conception of

Hell is not that of others, the Eternal Flames
and all. There are no flames involved, in
Hell. What Hell really is is the denial of
rebirth. The soul is a ghost, adrift.

Adrift and aware of life looking for a new
body to inhabit, a new flesh looking for a
way back into the world, into life. And
being denied it. That's Hell, little

 

27Hanley, p. 30.

F‘x

“‘é—ifiW

 

 

231

chick . . . . And heaven, Rosie -— Heaven is

that first filling of ghe lungs with that first

breath of a new life.2
Randall epitomizes the anti-hero who is the Twentieth
century's "Everyman, condemned to wander until he can find
and declare a value to his life."29

William Hanley can be compared to other white play-

wrights who use the Negro to help foster a philosophy of
life. Randall seems to tell us that the world is one in
"which each of us must attempt to survive but in which
compassion for each other is of absolutely no help at all."30
All of the characters are moralists. Glas, the most mature,
pronounces the playwright's conclusion:

Don't you see, Rosie. Randall must die now,

violently, because of what he is and because

of what he has done. And I will live, without

violence, because of what I am and what I have

done. And you, Rosie, you will go to your

doctor, up that dark street, and afterwards

you will write books maybe . . . about how

people should save each other. We choose,

Rosie. We choose the dark streets up which

wevmdk. We choose them. And if we are guilty

of the denial of life, who is to save us from

that but ourselves?

Hanley does not use Randall. as a tool in the race

war. Randall seldom refers to racial issues. He makes a few

glib remarks about the color of his skin such as: "I had a

feelin', I just knew we was brothers under the skin, somehow.

 

28l§id-. pp- 68-69.
29Golden, p. 106.
Erik Wensberg, "Damned with Loud Praise," Egg
Reporter, XXXII (February 11, 1965), p. 51.
leanley, pp. 69-70.

 

232

I hasten to repeat, under the skin, no offense intended,

32

no indeed, sir." Randall does not accuse the whites.
He points to the world beyond the candy store's door and

says "that's No Mans Land out there, Daddy,"33 but he speaks
only of an effect; never of a cause.

Randall, Glas and Rosie seem to be personifications
of the weak -- the weak being defined as those individuals
whose sensitivities allow them to be victimized by life's
callous tricks. When.Randall refers to the "Yahoos out
there" he does not necessarily mean the whites in contrast
to Negroes; but rather, he infers that there is a class of
people who represent the butchers of this world and whose
strengths enable them to squash the bugs. This is a philo-
sophical concept which the play seems to promote.

Therefore, as a character, Randall becomes an instru-
ment of this philosophy. As has been pointed out before,
this is often the case for Negro heroes created by the white
playwright. It is true that Randall makes nine or ten
references to being a man of "color," but he makes these
statements in such a glib fashion they seem more the clever
remarks of an actor than the pained expressions of a member
of a race that has been mortified, bruised and enslaved by

white man.

Hanley has demonstrated an unusual imagination and

321bid 1
___n., p. 3.
33Ibid.

233

cleverness in constructing this Negro character who simul-
taneously understands so much about life and_yet so little.
The character's jive talk coupled with intellectual insights
and profound wisdom have caused the critics to claim the
character is incredible. Incredibility is further accentuated
by Randall's claim to be callous and cruel. During the

course of the play, his actions betray a man who is willing
to help his fellow man -- hence the instigation of a mock
trial that frees Glas from guilt and his willingness to

help Rosie.

Although Randall is similar to many characters in
today's drama insofar as he is one of this century's guilty
little men who cannot precisely recognize or label his guilt,
he is unlike other Negro heroes being considered. For this
reason, he is not a Negro type; he is an anti-hero caught
in the process of "unbeing" and searching aimlessly and

without success for meaning of life.

 

CHAPTER VIII

THE SEXUAL GIANT

Richard Henry is the hero of Blues for My. Charley
(1964), a three~act play by Negro playwright, James Baldwin,

which takes place in "Plaguetown, U.S.A." In Blues for

 

My. Charley, Richard Henry is murdered by Lyle Britten, a
white man, who is subsequently acquitted. The play begins
with this murder which occurs not long after Richard's
return from the North, where he started out as a jazz
musician. There is the suggestion that Richard would have
been successful in this profession, if he had not become
victimized by narcotics.

When Lyle and Richard meet for the first time in
the play, they instantaneously dislike each other. Richard's
sweetheart, Juanita, tries to persuade Richard to ignore
Britten, but the Negro is unable to resist antagonizing the
white man. He goes purposely and deliberately to Lyle's
store where he insults both Lyle and his wife. A fight
ensues; RiChard knocks the white man down and the latter
shoots him.

The firing of these shots opens the play. When Lyle
drops his victim into the weeds and exits, the play flashes

back to the day before the funeral services. It then moves

234

 

235

forward through the trial which comprises nearly all of

the third act. As the play moves forward, it also moves
backward in a series of flashbacks which begin with Richard's
arrival in Plaguetown continuing through the series of

events which lead to the murder. There is no suspense.
Richard's fate is clear from the outset, and it is clear that
the jury will acquit the killer.

Richard's father, The Reverend Meridian Henry, searches
for the meaning of the murder. His search is the major
factor which seems to bind these sequences together. He is
a pious man who busies himself trying to save the souls of
his people and preaching non-violence to them. Richard
rebels against his father's passivity. The play suggests
that Richard went North because he hated his father's unwill-
ingness to fight aggressively for his rights.

As the scenes move back in time, we learn that
Richard who died by another's violence, had come
prepared to protect himself against such violence.
He had returned armed with a gun, and now, in
the past, we hear him say that he will use it

in his own defense if he has to. He has
supposedly been demoralized by his failure in
the North (ending in the narcotics cure at
Lexington) and this demoralization only feeds
his ancient hatred of the white man. It was

the white men lusting after his mother who

one day pushed her down a flight of stairs to
her death; Richard's departure from home was

in part an attempt to leave that horrid memory
behind, and to leave his father, whose power-
lessness before such humiliations he had come

to hate as well. He is rich with anger, and

yet in the very first scene with his father,

he surrenders to him the pistol he has

brought back with him from the North, an act

.._ ._

{i

 

236
for which he will in the end have to pay with
his life.1

Most of the play is devoted to the unveiling of the
town's reaction to the murder. The whites form a solid
front, totally self-righteous and seemingly ignorant of
human rights or justice. The exception to this white
solidarity is Parnell, a white man who attempts to remain
friends with members of both races. These split loyalties
result in Parnell's avoiding the truth when he is on the
witness stand in the trial scene. The consequence of
Parnell's impotence is the extinguishing of any hope that a
Southern white jury will grant a fair verdict in favor of
the Negro. Indeed, justice never materializes. Lyle
Britten, who is guilty of murder, is set free.

Richard Henry is a composite of many characteristics
predominant in Negro male protagonists as created by Negro
playwrights. For example, Baldwin seems to have been
influenced by the characteristics of the ideal type. His
hero is a superior physical specimen, able and willing to
subdue whites physically; characteristic of the idealized
Negro hero.

If there is ever a Black Muslim.nation, and if
there is television in that nation, then something
like Acts Two and Three of Blugg g 3 My. Charlie

will probably be the kind of thing the housewives
will watch on afternoon TV. It is soap opera

 

1Philip Roth, "Channel x: Two Plays on the Race
Conflict," New York Review 9; Books, II (May 28, 1964),
p. 10.

{I

237

designed to illustrate the superiority of blacks
over whites. The blues Baldwin may think he is
singing for Mr. Charlie's sinning seem to me
really to be sung for his inferiority . . . .
Indeed, so much that comprises the Southern
stereotype of the Negro comes back through
Negro mouths as testimony to their human
superiority, that finally one is about ready

to hear that the eating of watermelon increases
one's word power. It is as though the injustice
of our racial situation is that inferiors are
enslaving their superiors, rather than the other
way around.

The following scene is illustrative of this point. It takes
place in Lyle's store. Richard asks Lyle's wife, Jo, if
she put the cokes into the machine with her own "little
dainty dish-panhands?"3 This pushes Lyle too far and he
demands that Richard get out of his store. Richard answers
him by calling him "stud." A fight ensues threatening
danger to the Britten baby in the store. Jo yells for them
to watch out for her baby which gives Richard a chance to
flaunt his self-esteemed sexual superiority.
RICHARD
A.baby, huh? How many times did you have to try
for it, you no-good, ball-less peckerwood? I'm

surprised you could even get it up -- look at the
way you sweating now. Lyle raises hammer.

down. Look at the mighty pegierwood! On his
ass, baby -- and his woman watching! Now, who
you think is the better man? Ha-ha! The master
race! You let me in that tired white ghick's
drawers, she'll know who's the Master!

 

2Ibid., p. 11.
3James Baldwin, Blues for Mr. Charley (New York:
Dial Prefis, 1964), p. 72.
Ibid., p. 74.

238

During the trial sequence, Juanita's testimonial soliloquy
also adulates Richard's physical superiority. She says,
"He lay beside me on that bed like a rock . . . . I
suppose God does for Mama what Richard did for me."5
Even in the end, when Richard,is fully cognizant

that Lyle intends to kill him, there is no evidence of
cowardice. But there is an icy irony and, perhaps, an
honesty.

You sick mother! Why can't you leave me

alone? White man! I don't want nothing from

you. You ain't got nothing to give me. Lyle

shoots . . . Why have you spent so much

time trying to kill me? Why are you always

trying to cut off my cock? You worried about

it? Why? Lyle shoots again. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Keep your old lady home. You hear?

Don't let her near no nigger. She might

get to like it. Ygu might get to like it,

too. Wow! Falls.

Richard's physical superiority is primarily sexual.

Negro heroes have fought with Negro-created white villains
as far back as Mary Burrill's John Thornton in Aftermath
(1919). They have demonstrated extraordinary physical
prowess. By their continuous moral victory over whites,
they have demonstrated the author's desire for them to appear
heroic and admirable. But not until Baldwin has the Negro

playwright used an extensive sexual heroism as the prime

power of the hero's nature.

 

51bid., p. 94.
61bid., pp. 119-120.

 

239

What these characters give evidence to, what
the play seems to be about really, is the
smallemindedness of the male sex. It is about
the narcissistic, pompous, and finally ridiculous
demands made by the male ego When confronted
by moral catastrophe. Of course to take pride
in one's maleness, as so many of the men in
this play would like to do is hardly ridicu-
lous, but to identify this maleness with the
size and capabilities of one's penis is to
reveal about as much depth of imagination as

I remember finding one long Saturday after-
noon among my colleagues in an Army motor
pool.7

Or is sexual potence a means of dramatizing and
symbolizing the warfare between Negro and white people?
This seems more to the point. Baldwin is taking a major
reactionary step with radical boldness.

. . . he has described racial strife as racial
strife, warfare between black people and white
people that is rooted in their separate ways

of experiencing life, the difference symbolized
in their sexuality. Baldwin thus opened himself
to . . . attacks that critics were not slow to
make: that he had swallowed 'the myth of Negro
sexual superiority,' . . . .8

The superiority aspects of the ideal Negro heroes,
particularly those of the 1920's, were utilized primarily
for purposes of soliciting audience admiration and contra-
dicting the prevalent stereotypic notions. Baldwin's
attempt to say that Negroes really do think and feel differ-
ently and that the assumption they don't is the white man's

presupposition that his standards are normative.

 

7Roth, p. 11.

Tom F. Driver, "Baldwin's Blues for Mister Charlie,"
Christianity and Crisis, June 22, 1964, p. 124.

 

 

 

240

'Negroes are more alive, more colorful, more

spontaneous, better dancers, and above all. better

lovers than the pale, gray, milk—white, chalk-

white, dead-white, ice-hearted, frozen-limbed,

stiff-assed zombies from downtown . . . .' To

a touch of primitivism he adds flat assertions

of superiority.9
In Blues for My. Charley, the hero's superiority serves the
purpose of soliciting fear and presenting Baldwin's concept
of a truth about his people. Some critics argue that the
play failed on Broadway because the truth frightened
people by challenging the status quo.10

Another characteristic suggesting Richard's direct

line of descent from the early Negroes in American dramatic
literature, is his being cast in the mold of a Northern
Negro whose return to the South is disruptive. The ideal
hero types were generally Northern Negroes. This meant
they were more educated, and, above all, possessed more
race pride and standards of living antagonistic to those
of the Southern Negro and the white man's world and law.
There was, in these earlier versions of the NOrthern Negro,
the suggestion that life was fine and good in the North and
to have lived there was to benefit intellectually and
socially. To have been a Northern Negro was equivalent to

having gone to a finishing school. Baldwin's view of the
Imystique of the North is antithetical except that Richard,

 

9Robert A. Bone, "The Novels of James Baldwin,"

Gross and Hardy, p. 285.
0Driver, p. 124.

 

241

like his predecessors, makes an_impression on his companions
and elicits adulation. However, instead of idealizing the
North, Baldwin criticizes it by making it a source of
degradation for Richard.

I was a junkie! . . . A junkie, a dope addict, a
hophead, a mainliner -- a dOpe fiend! My arms
and my legs, too, are full of holes! . . . I

got hooked about five years ago. See, I
couldn't stand these chicks I was making it
with, and I was working real hard at my music,
and, man, I was lonely. You come off a gig,

you be tired, and you'd already taken as much
shit as you could stand from the managers and
the people in the room you were working and you'd
be off to make some down scene with some pasty
White-faced bitch. And so you'd make the scene
and somehow you'd wake up in the morning and the
chick would be beside you, alive and well, and
dying to make the scene again and somehow you'd
-manage not to strangle her, you hadn't beaten
her to death. Like you wanted to. And you get
out of there and you carry this pain around
inside all day and all night long. No way to
beat it -- no way. No matter how you turned,

no matter what you did-no way. But when I
started getting high, I was cool, and it didn't
bother me. And I wasn't lonely then, it was

all right.11

Baldwin is defining the North as a better personal experience
for his hero: a composite of dope, white women (who desire
Negro-lovers) and isolation. Social history declares clearly
that conditions were pathetic, if not more so, in the North
as in the South. writing about the Negroes in the North,
which began to witness mass migrations of Negroes as early

as 1910, a noted sociologist writes:

 

11Baldwin, pp. 29-30.

 

242

Negroes accepted an inferior place in society;
and in this inferior place, despite the existence of
distinctions of class and status, poverty was
matter—of-course and segregation was universal
. . . . Ten years of depression has been for
the Negroes a disaster that almost rivaled
slavery. Claude MacKay, wrote a book on
Harlem and quoted estimates that 60 per cent
of the population was on relief, 20 per cent
held WPA jobs . . . . White workers knew what
it was to go two or three years without

steady work, but a case of special distress
”in the Ehite world was the norm in the Negro
world .1

Another characteristic that ties Richard's literary
ancestors is no fear of white authority. However, Baldwin
does not stop by simply showing the black man's lack of
fear, as his predecessors seemed content to do. He breaks
down preconceived ideas by showing that the Negro's lack of
fear is reinforced by the presence of fear in the white
man.

The riots in Birmingham in the spring of \\\
1963 . . . showed . . . how much Negroes have lost
their fear of whites. The rioters were the unem-
ployed and the poor and the uneducated -- those
who had always suppressed their hatred to protect
their own skulls. They had had no part in the
non-violent demonstrations led by Martin Luther
King and his followers, and the ministers
wanted no part of them. But for two weeks
they had watched the police dogs and the police
hoses at work, and their hatred built up; they
had watched the disciplined young ministers of
King's organization.defy the police, and they
had seen shiny-faced school children marching
off to jail, and their courage built up. The
spark was ignited when the Gaston Motel and the
home of Dr. King's brother were bombed. And
when the Birmingham cops ran for cover under

 

12Glazer and Moyniham, p. 28.

 

243

a barrage of rocks and bottles, instead of
opening fire in return, the Negro revolt entered
an entirely new stage. The echoes were wide and
far. In Chicago, a few days later, two Negroes
assaulted the Mayor's eighteen-year-old nephew,
shouting, 'This is for Birmingham.' It was for
Birmingham, all right -- but it was for three
hundred fifty years of history before Birmingham
as well.13

In the past, white villains were depicted as arrogant,
blustering, heartless, self-centered, cruel caricatures.
Although the injustice of it was made abundantly clear,
the white man managed to remain the master. Cleverly and

purposely, Baldwin's white man is reduced to a position of

real inferiority. This is conveyed in Parnell's soliloquy
during the trial scene:

Richard would say that you've got black fever!
. . . All your life you've been made sick,
stunned, dizzy, oh, Lord! driven half mad by
blackness . . . . Out with it, Parnell! The
nigger-lover! Black boys and girls! I've
wanted my hands full of them, wanted to drown
them, laughing and dancing and making love--
making love -- wow! And be transformed, formed,
liberated out of this grey-white envelope . . .
I've always beefl afraid, afraid of what I saw
in their eyes.1

Without compromise, Baldwin's Negroes reinforce the sociolo-
gist's thesis that Negro illusions about white sincerity
have been destroyed along with their fear of white authority
as well.15 One of the unique reasons for this reversal in

fear relationships between white and Negro has been offered

 

13Silberman, p. 67.
1 Baldwin, p. 106.
SSilberman, p. 62.

244

by Tom Driver who wrote:

The social significance of Blues 39; Mister
Charlie lies in what it reveals about our fear
of fear. It should be looked at side by side
with the reaction many people made to the
threatened "stall-in" at the World's Fair,
the threat of water wastage proposed by Brooklyn
CORE, and other demonstrations that go beyond
attack on specific injustices in a spirit of
generalized protest.

There is indeed something illogical in these
actions. The public, including many white
liberals, seems to see in them a threat of
anarchy, and many Negro leaders have warned
that riots and the temporary breakdown of law
enforcement can be expected. The North is dis-
covering its kinship with the South, and its
reaction is beginning to show itself as fear.

At this point some of our fixed notions display
their inadequacy, and the Baldwin play becomes
relevant.

Dogma has it that nothing stands in the way
of racial harmony but the ill will of benighted
Southerners and other reactionaries who deny civil
rights to Negroes. Ill will can be cured in due
time by education, preaching and better laws.
This view is so utterly rational and progressivist
in character that it cannot accommodate into its
understanding irrational antagonisms between
racial groups. Hence it declares, contrary to
much evidence, that sexual envy, which no doubt
is irrational, has nothing to do with the
problem. When a Baldwin says that it does, for
Negro as well as white, he is said to be a
purveyor of "myth."

The dogma, being designed to rule out fear,
breaks down when fear becomes unavoidable.

That is just where we are now. Southern
"moderates" have been there a long time.

Having no adequate resources to help them face
that fear, having been told it was unrealistic,
they became paralyzed by it and were notoriously
ineffective in Southern politics. Power was
exercised by the Faubuses, Barnetts and wallaces
who, however unprincipled, were realistic enough
to see that fear existed, that it was inevitable
and action must be predicated on it.

On the other side, Negroes became a political
force in the South by virtue of the fact that
they, who had lived long in fear, ceased to be

245

afraid of it. They did not eliminate it, could
not and did not try it. But they ceased to try

to avoid it, and in that moment their ineffective-
ness ended. I do not deny that an awakened class
or racial consciousness had its importance, but
class consciousness without the courage to face
fear is impotent.

Impotence born of the fear of fear is what
has been overcome by Negroes in the past 15
years, and it is what Baldwin is talking about
in the Rev. Meridian Henry, who puts down his
brief case and takes up his gun and his Bible.
The message is not very sophisticated, but it
is true enough: and it Could hardly be more
to the point at a time when the paralysis of
the Southern "moderate" is creeping all over
the country.

The Sober citizens of the North, Midwest,
and West, if they do not want to be swept onto
the sidelines in the next five or ten years,
will have to learn that some (we don't know
how much) violence is unavoidable. They will
have to learn that violence itself is far from
the worst of evils, even in a peaceable
democracy. The repression of violence by a
force that perpetuates injustice is worse.

The violence of terrified people is worse than
the violence of brave men.

Moderates will have to know that fear is
their lot. Those who cannot risk when they are
afraid, Who cannot cepe with anything but
rational progress, will be made impotent by
their fear; and their impotence will bring
anarchy and violence all the closer. If
Baldwin's play is offensive, or even just
unrealistic, to them, they will figd their
moment of truth arrived too late.

Baldwin's work reinforces his sensitivity to a

tradition of racial suffering by avoiding sentimentality.

He speaks in harsher terms than his predecessors, and is

able, subsequentky, to present an.added dimension by

interlacing Negro pain and humiliation with the rhythm and

release of sexuality.

 

16Driver, pp. 125-126.

{an’

246

To the question, Who am I, he can now reply:

I am he who suffers, and yet whose suffering

on occasion is 'from time set free.' And

thereby he discovers his humanity, for only

man can ritualize pain. We are now very

close to that plane of human experience

where art and religion intersect.1
Negro playwrights prior to James Baldwin were not close to
the intersection of art and religion before. Because
Baldwin is essentially a realistic preacher,18 he's able
to give new depths to suffering far beyond a solicitation
for white pity for the Negro.

However, Baldwin is certainly nOt quite free from
the practice of using his play and his hero to voice per-
sonal protests. In this light, the hero is also related
to the protestants. Little opportunity to brand the white
conscience is bypassed. Because of this tendency, it has
been said that the real hero of Blpgg £9; My. Charley is
blackness and the villain is whiteness.19 It has been
established that Baldwin succeeds in making the whites seem
inferior to the blacks. For example, at the end of the
play Parnell asks to walk to the cemetery with the Negroes.
Juanita tells him that they can walk in the same direction,
but Parnell follows at the rear of the processional reminiscent
of Negro bus-riding status. When Lyle is described as

afraid, he becomes a symbol of the weaker race, unable

to cope with fears, capable only of destroying his black

 

igBone, p. 275.
Harold Clurman, Thg Naked Image (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1958), p. 38.
19Both, p. 11.

 

247

brother: "Lyle suffers -- from being in the dark -- from
having things inside him that he can't name and can't
face and can't control."20
Particularly echoing Richard Wright's attitude,

Baldwin is saying that his hero is what he is because of
what white society has done to him. The fact he was a dope
addict or a failure or a murderer's victim was in no way
a fault of his own. Like Bigger Thomas, he was society's
victim, and as in the case of Native Spa, and many plays
with Negro heroes, society is on trial in view of its crimes
against the blacks. In essence, Baldwin's interpretation of
the reason why white America does this to its darker brother
is because of white America's inability to face its own
inner terrors and sins. Parnell refers to those "things
inside" that ”Lyle can't name and can't face and can't
control."21 Baldwin's thesis is that the unremitting
daily warfare of American race relations must be understood
in these terms.

By projecting the 'blackness' of his own being

upon the dark skin of his Negro victim, the

white man hopes to exercise the chaotic forces

which threaten to destroy him from within. The

psychic Cost is of course enormous. The white

man loses the experience of 'blackness,' sacri-

ficing both its beauty and its terror to the

illusion 82 security. In the end, he loses his
identity.

 

ggBaldwin, p. 42.
Bone, p. 279.

 

 

 

 

El

248

This final statement strongly relates to Parnell's position
at the end of the play. He has no identity. He is not
with the whites. The blacks reject his offer to walk with
them.

In essence, the play is a bid to action. Baldwin
challenges the whites to do something -- to break the
vicious circle of rejection and hatred if they can. At the
same time, he is suggesting, that the whites are impotent.
It is Baldwin's solution that makes him remarkable and a
whole new voice in American Negro literature. His answer i
is direct confrontation on the part of the whites. They
alone can break the vicious circle by facing the void, by
confronting chaos, by becoming closer acquainted with the
blues.23 No playwright in the midst of his protestations
has invited whites to take this step before. Baldwin is
asking that the whites recognize Negro superiority.

Bipgg £23 My. Charley, for this reason, alienated
the white middle class paying audiences.24 Baldwin presented
a view of the racial conflict that white audiences either
feared was true or refused to accept as truth. In this
respect, Baldwin is speaking to the human condition. There
is much in the nature of Richard Henry that descends
directly from the nature of the Negro heroes who have

preceded him.

 

23Littlejohn, p. 73.
Driver, p. 12 .

. .--..—-

 

 

 

249

Baldwin's major handicap is his use of language.
The dialogue, "for the most part, is . . . faked banter,
faked poetry, doctrinaire racism, dated slang, all
conflated with artificial violence and obscenity."25 It
seems, that despite Baldwin's occasional bursts of eloquence

and feeling, his rhetoric is merely naked preachment.26

Blues for My. Charley never achieves its own poetry;27
however, through his characters, Baldwin manages to speak
of the breakdown of Negro fear for whites in a forceful

manner. White people should be compelled to listen.

 

2

5Littlejohn, p. 73.
2 Clurman, p. 8.
27Ibid., p. 39.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX

THE SATANIC DEMAGOGUE

Most of the critical reactions to the work of
LeRoi Jones suggest that he is very angry and his work
is "designed to shock."1

Mr. Jones writes with a kind of sustained
frenzy. His little work is a melange of
sardonic images and undisciplined filth.

The impact of his ferocity would be stronger
if he did not wgrk so hard and persistently
to be shocking.

Robert Brustein, writing for The New Republic commented:

The decay of Western culture -- to which the

playwright frequently alludes in The Slave --

is nowhere better exemplified than in the

unwarranted favor this culture has lavished

on LeRoi Jones, because he has shown little

theatrical purpose beyond the expression of

a raging chauvinism, and few theatrical gifts

beyond a capacity to record tge graffiti

scrawled on men's room walls.
It is true that Jones is angry. It is also true that he
tries to shock. But the implication that he has no purpose
other than.making foul statements perhaps should be
evaluated. ‘One wonders if some of the objections to Mr.
Jones language aren't really objections to his statements.

"What he said is that American society is a foul toilet,

 

1Howard Taubman, "The Theatre: 'Dutchman,'"
‘Ngy York Times, March 25, 1964, p. 42.

21bid.

3Brustein, p. 33.

250

 

251

a slave society. It is as simple as that."LP

The Jones' heroes kick, swear, threaten to kill
and win victories over whites. The superiority trend has
now evolved into a character who not only has the physical
and intellectual power to destroy, but also the self-designated
right. The unspoken philosophy which undergirds every
word spoken by the Jones hero is the idea that the Negro
has the self-appointed right to atone for white injustices
inflicted upon Negroes. An eruption of pain and frus-
tration into violence forms the basis for the situations !.
and the events in Jones' plays, and the action of the plays
moves with a kind of relentless, doomed fury which has been
a long time in the making.

Like a number of plays created by Negro playwrights,
the conflict situations in 2p; Toilet (1964), Th; §l§y§
(1964) and Dutchman (1964) are phenomenally racial: a
confrontation between blacks and whites which is, in every
sense, a battle. In this respect, Jones follows in the
footsteps of his predecessors. But when the battle becomes
more than mere physical conflict between two opposing
sides -- when it shifts to an internal battle for the hero
-- the Negro playwright is neoteric. Jones' work comprises
an important literary document of the race war.

In essence, this demagogue in Jones' work instructs

 

”Mitchell, p. 204.

 

 

252

blackness not to respond reciprocally to the love offerings
being extended by the whites who are, like Baldwin's whites,
very inferior. Jones' theme only intensifies the hatred
being expressed and extends the temper of brutality. It
also helps to humiliate the sensitive whites. Never before
has a Negro playwright depicted whites needing and aggres-
sively seeking a Negro response to the degree that Jones
does.

LeRoi Jones does not concern himself with the
conscience of white America. His portrait of whites is k‘
derogatory to the point of making white persons void of
conscience. If they have feelings, they are bland and
mediocre. Jones' ideas revolve around the rotting and
destruction of a conscienceless America.5 Earlier, Negro
protest writers implied that a conscience existed which
was noble and strong enough to implement change for the
better. Jones is saying that such a conscience no longer
exists. Only insofar as the Negro will recognize the truth
of "whiteness" does the Negro have a chance for meaningful
survival. In this way, he is helping to execute his own
threat, to destroy America.6 In other words, Jones'
reasoning seems to imply that once the Negro can recognize

the foul baseness of the white man, he cannot help but

 

 

5George Dennison, "The Demagogy of LeRoi Jones,"
Cdmmentagy, XXXIX (February 1965), pp. 67-70.
Ibid., p. 70.

 

" \u:&.nw- _. -.=_-.. .__.__. ~ —

l

 

253

want to extricate himself from the White world and white

man's ways.7 His plays bear evidence to this proposition.
Dutchman, winner of the Obie Award for 1963-64

"may be the most important imaginative literary document

"8 Jones has

of the American race war since Native Sgp.
channeled his anger into two antagonists, a young Negro

boy, Clay, and a violent white female, Lula. They meet on
a subway train which is at first empty and eventually fills.

Lula sets out to seduce Clay; she teases, mocks and insults

-u—-e--

him. Eventually, Clay agrees to take her to a party with
the suggestion that he'll later go to her apartment. When
Lyla engages in a wild sexually suggestive dance, Clay
drags her back to her seat and erupts with all of LeRoi
Jones' pent up fury against white America. He concludes
his tirade by the pronouncement: "Sorry, baby, I don't
think we could make it."9 Lula responds by taking out her
knife and stabbing him. She then instructs the passengers
to remove themselves and the body; they comply. Lula marks
something down in a little notebook (one more victim,
probably). At this point, another attractive Negro man
boards the train and when he is seated, Lula gives him a

10

"long slow look." One assumes that the preceding

seduction scene will be repeated in exactly the same

 

,
7Ibid.
8Littlejohn, p. 75.
9LeRoi Jones, Dutchman Egg The Slave (New York:
William M%fifisw and Co., 1964), p. 37.

 

254

ritualistic manner with exactly the same results.

At first, it seems that what Dutchman is trying to

communicate is that the Lulas murder the Clays -— "a

generalization which, . . . Jones means us to make when

:at the end of the play the next Negro victim boards the

subway car."11 Roth goes on to say that this really isn't

a truth that needs dramatizing because it is a fact "we

already know from the newspapers," 2 and that what's left

begging to be dramatized is:

i . . . not simply that such atrocities are
practiced in this country . . . as of course
they are, but what it is to be a Negro man and
a white woman meeting in a country where these
possibilities constantly impinge upon the
consciousness, and so cannot but distort every
encounter between the two angry races.

.-

In“.

But if Jones had adhered to this rational suggestion, he

would not have been true to his own purpose. He is not

concerned with what it is to be a Negro man and a white
woman meeting in America where social conditions are what

they are. He does not pretend to present a man and a woman

who meet and fall in love and realize what consequent
difficulties they will encounter (as is suggested in Deep

are the Roots). So much did Jones succeed in depicting

Lula as something less than human, that Harold Clurman

took her to be more than a symbol of whiteness. He saw

 

11

 

 

 

' --.- ... 3:43:9—

 

255

her as a symbol of our civilization.

She is our neurosis -- not a neurosis in regard

to the Negro, but the absolute neurosis of

American society . . . . In the hardware blonde

of Dutchman, Jones conceived a concise and

piercing dramatic image for the killer our

society gepgrates through its metallic

emptiness.
But this is not what Jones is saying. He is talking about
what it is to be black in this country. He is not interested
in depicting the "bubbling, boiling garbage cauldron newly
produced by our progress."15 He is interested in depicting
the "rotting and destruction of America"16 produced by the
White man's refusal to treat Negroes respectfully.

The play's struggle exists "entirely in the vicious,
non sequitur conversational game."l7 Lula tries to jive-
talk and jazz-step her way into putting herself forth
as more black than Clay and thus shaming him into breaking
through his supposed respectable cover-up. The stereotype,
of course, is her own.18

The sense of danger lies in Clay's attempts to
keep up, to hold his own, to stay resilient and
responsive before this redheaded harridan, and
prevent the raspy human comedy from collapsing

into chaos.

The following dialogue clearly exemplifies this idea:

 

1u'Clurman, p. 91.
Ibid.
16Gross, p. 24.
17Littlejohn, p. 77.
Patricia Brooks, "Lik: It Is to LeRoi Jones,"
National Guardian, March 27, 19 5, p. 10.
"'— 19Littlejohn, p. 77.

 

r' '—r

-— YEW—-

 

256

LULA
And why're you wearing a jacket and tie like
that? Did your people ever burn witches or
start revolutions over the price of tea? Boy,
those narrow-shoulder clothes come from a
tradition you ought to feel oppressed by . . . .
Your grandfather was a slave, he didn't go to
Harvard.

CLAY
My grandfather was a night watchman.

LULA

And you went to a colored college where every-
body thought they were Averell Harriman. '

CLAY
All except me.
LULA

And who did you think you were? Who do you
think you are now?

CLAX

Well, in college I thought I was Beaudelaire.
But I've slowed down since.

LULA

I bet you never once thought you were a black
nigger.

Lula continues the insults until she finally goads
Clay into slapping her.

You middle-class black bastard. Forget your
social-working mother for a few seconds and let's
knock stomachs. Clay, you liver-lipped white
man. You would be Christian. You ain't no
nigger, you're just a dirty white man. Screw

 

20Jones, p. 18.

257

yourself. Uncle Tom. Uncle Thomas wooly-head
. . . . Let, the white man hump his 01' mama,

and he jes' shuffle of in the woods and hide

his gentle gray head.

This stereotype is Lula's and Clay explodes it for her.

Shit, you don't have any sense, Lula, nor
feelings either. I could murder you now. Such
a tiny ugly throat. I could squeeze it flat,
and watch you turn blue, on a humble. For
dull kicks. And all these weak-faced ofays
squatting around here, staring over their
papers at me. Murder them too. Even if they
expected it. That man there -- I could rip
that Times right out of his hand, as skinny
and middle-classed as I am, I could rip that
paper out of his hand and just as easily rip
out his throat. It takes no great effort.
Fo what? To kill you soft idiots? . . .
I'll rip your lousy breasts off! Let me
be who I feel like being. Uncle Tom.
Thomas. Whoever. It's none of your business.
You don't know anything except what's there
for you to see. An act. Lies. Device.
Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart

. . . And I sit here, in this buttoned up
suit, to keep myself from cutting all your
throats. 2

 

At this point, in Clay's speech, Jones writing becomes allied
with Baldwin's declaration of white sexual inferiority.

Clay demonstrates an intellectual insight that strips

Lula's pretentiousness and grants him not only the physical
victory but also the spiritual victory. He wins because

in every way he is the superior. His is the superior
insight because he sees through the sham of her sexual

dance designed to torment him.

You great liberated whore! You fuck some black
man, and right away you're an expert on black

 

211119.111.” pp. 32-33.
Ibid-3 pp. 33-34-

 

 

 

 

258

people. What a lotta shit that is. The only
thing you know is that you come if he bangs
you hard enough. And that's all. The belly
rub? You wanted to do the belly rub? Shit,
you don't even know how. You don't know how.
That 01' dipty-dip shit, you do, rolling

your ass like an elephant. That's not my
kind of belly rub. Belly rub is not Queens.
Belly rub is dark places, with big hats and
overcoats held up with one arm. Belly rub
hates you. Old bald-headed four-eyed ofays
popping their fingers -- and don't know yet
what they're doing. They say, 'I love Bessie
Smith.' And don't even understand that Bessie
Smith is saying, 'Kiss my ass, kiss my black
unruly ass.' And if you don't know that,
it's you that's doing the kissing. . . . If
Bessie Smith had killed some white people she
wouldn't have needed that music. She could
have talked very straight and plain about the
world. No metaphors. No grunts. No wiggles
in the dark of her soul. Just straight two
and two are four. Money. Power. Luxury.
Like that. All of them. Crazy niggers turning
their backs on sanity. When all it needs is
that simple act. Murder. Just murder!

Would make us all sane . . . . With no more
blues, except the very old ones, and not a
watermelon in sight, the great missionary
heart will have triumphed, and all of those
ex-coons will be stand-up Western men, with
eyes for clean hard useful lives, sober,
pious and sane, and they'll murder you.
They'll murder you, and have very rational
explanations. Very much like your own.
They'll cut your throats, and drag you out
to the edge of your cities so the flesh can 5%11
away from your bones, in sanitary isolation.

 

Faced with the exposure of his racial identity in the only
sense in which it has any real meaning, namely as a product
Of the relation between oppressor and oppressed, Lula
quickly halts the revelation by murdering Clay.

Roth seems to think that Clay should have been

x

231103}... pp. 34—36.

 

 

 

- ...--.. ......_...'___ .

 

 

259

given furious insights in the first scene as well as
in the second scene.

I can think of Clay not so much as a potential
murderer with a steely grip on himself, as a man
who has genuine cause to imagine that he himself
may be murdered. And I don't believe it would
in the least compromise Clay's virility for the
playwright to admit to such terror. That the
only terror Clay has is his fear that he may
murder a white man seems to me a very penetrable
posture, and one which does indeed put his
virility in doubt . . . . For about the predica-
ment he is in -- about being a black man with

a strange white girl who keeps putting her hand
on his thigh -- he knows nothing, or acts as
though he does. His innocence is guarded at
every turn, as though, if he had the slightest
suspicion of any kind of danger, his own
victimization would be compromised in the

eyes of the white audience, whom I believe

this play is written for -- not so that they
should be moved to pity or to fear, but to
humiliation and self-hatred. For that purpose,
nothing bflt a black innocent and a white devil
will do.2

If whites attend this play with a shred of dignity, LeRoi
Jones tries to strip them of every last shred of self esteem.
His intent is to lay bare every white pretense with one
grand insult and to incite white audiences to actual
violence.

Mr. Jones is a brilliant man who appears to be more
of a poet and essayist than a playwright who seems to be
primarily interested in ideas. In place of fully dimen-
sional characters Jones uses his anger, often strikingly.

The difficult thing to comprehend is [sic] the
defensive attitudes about Mr. Jones, the constant

 

24Roth, p. 13.

 

260

need to downgrade him to accuse him of fomenting
race hatred. Yet obviously Mr. Jones did not
create race hatred. Nor has he said half of

the vicious things uttered by William Buckley,
Eastland, Thurmond, wallace or Ross Barnett.
Here, then, is the American double standard

in its most blatant form . . . . A white

citizen may say or do whatever he chooses --
including murdering three youths in Mississippi
or gunning down James Meredith. But a black

man who returns 'fire with fire' is a hatemonger,
a racist and an ingrate. Well, whether whites
like it or not, their attitudes toward LeRoi
Jones confirm the suspicion held by many, many
Negroes -- that there is more truth in his 2
words than anyone in America cares to admit. 5

Jones' anger continues to reveal itself in his two-

 

act play, The Slave. In this play, the race war is

 

actually raging outside a middle-class living room with
Negroes and whites fighting for the control of the city.
Thg Sggyg is a discourse on a common Negro theme: the
injustice of the white. Littlejohn describes it as a
"blatant, unmodulated scream of racial abuse . ."26

The hero of this play is a Negro revolutionary
poet named Vessels who comes to the home of his white
ex-wife and her present husband, a professor who was once
Vessels's teacher and has apparently been his intellectual
Sparring partner over the years. Vessels has come, he
says, to see his wife one last time, and to take away with
him the two young daughters of their former marriage.

Most of the play's dialogue consists of Vessels's

R

25Mitchell, p. 207.
26Littlejohn, p. 74.

261

shrieking justifications and explanations of his actions
and his feelings.

Vessels runs the full gamut of emotions between

love and hate, both toward the white couple and

toward himself. He alternately assaults and 2

embraces them, defends and despairs of himself. 7
At last, unable to make himself understood, he shoots the
professor. He is about to take away his daughters when the
house is blown up by the troops outside, killing his wife

while Vessels stumbles away.

One of the ways in which Jones suggests that separ-

ation of the Negroes from the whites cannot and will not
come easily is by adding a Prologue to The SlaVe. In this
Prologue, Vessels enters as an old man dressed as a shabby
field slave many years after the main action of the play.

He delivers a loose and nearly incoherent mono-

logue which speaks with mocking disrespect of

'ideas' and 'rightness' and the futility of

either against the movement of time and human

passion. The stage darkens to the haunting

cries of children, the same sound which will

end the play as the explosions of the war 5%

has started destroy his wife and children.
Mr. Jones is insisting, despite any ideology, that so long
as there is emotional entanglement with whites, some form
of slavery will continue to exist. Jones is overtly steering
Negro thinking toward the idea of revolution. In The Slave,
‘Vessels succeeds in destroying the whites. He is the ful-

f‘illment of Clay's prophecy: " . . . all it needs is that

 

i
|
27Brooks P. 10.
281bid. ' '

262

simple act. Murder. Just murder! Would make us all
sane."29 Revolution includes murder.
But Jones is further suggesting that this warfare
is not enough. The Negro must also succeed in disengaging
his emotions entirely or his slavery will continue. Vessels
is not yet free of his human passions. If he were free, he
would not have returned to see his white wife one last time
or have felt the need of reclaiming his children. Nor would
he need to constantly explain himself and his actions.
. .I have always found it hard to be neutral

when faced with ugliness. Especially an ugliness

that has worked all my life to twist me . . .

The aesthete came long after all the things

that really formed me. It was the easiest weight
to shed. And I couldn't be merely a journalist

. . . a social critic. No social protest . . .
right is in the act! And the act itself has
some place in the world . . . it makes some

place for itself.
Vessels seems aware of the consequences of his actions,
axm.of their inevitable cost and futility, even as he is
1>roclaiming them.

He knows, he tells his wife, that the racial
strife he has promoted 'is at best a war that
will only change . . . the complexion of
tyranny.' And he recognizes the cost to
himself, to his ability to love, to create,
to retain any order in his life. But it is
the laws of nature -- human nature -— not of
reason that prevail, Jones is saying; and
those laws decree that the pressure created by
oppression, if unrelieved, will erupt with a
violence that no amount of reason or regret
can restrain.

 

29Jones, p. 36.
30Ibid., p. 75.
1Brooks, p. 10.

 

or“

 

 

263

There is a recognition of the consequences of hate -- the
erosion of human feeling and the total incompetence of
negativism to produce anything positive because creative
human endeavor is frustrated. Where there is love, creative
human endeavor is there also. When Vessels and Grace loved
each other and lived, momentarily, in harmony, they created
children. The play ends with violence and death, but sur-
viving the bloodshed are Walker's daughters, who perhaps
"symbolize the hope for a fully miscegenated and therefore
nondiscriminatory society."32
Keeping Vessels dressed as an old field slave could

be interpreted as:

. . . a prophecy that after destroying Western

society's romantic illusions about the nature of

idealism, the radical Negro revolt will be

defeated, leaving behind the slave 'goin' down

:igfiétiieatip:§:e§egioAggrica's ineradicable
If the Negro cannot get rid of the past, if his ability to
change cannot measure up to human need, then slavery is
forever. Merely killing the whites is not enough. He
must cease to feel inferior as well. Something must transpire
and, thus, transform within the very mind of the Negro too.
So long as the Negro conceives of himself as an inferior

being, he will be defeated. He must recognize his

superiority to whites.

 

2

3 Henry Hewes, "Crossing Lines," The Saturday
Heaview, XLVIII (January 9, 1965). p. 46-

331bid.

Fix

 

 

264

It is difficult to understand why LeRoi Jones

must use the "graffitti scrawled on men's room walls"34
in order to present these ideas. The white professor's
initial speech is:

Son of a bitch. Those black sons of bitches.

Why don't they at least stop and have their

goddamned dinners? Goddamn son of a bitches.

They're probably gonna keep that horseshit up

all goddamn night. Goddamnit. Goddamn it.3
For many, the only response to this tendency to shock, white

or black, is one of embarrassed and annoyed detachment.

"Which, perhaps, is what Jones wanted."36

 

The most shocking of the LeRoi Jones plays is The
Toilet (1964). It is a one-act play first presented at
the St. Marks Playhouse in New York on December 16, 1964.

Egg scene gg g large bare toilet built pf gray
rough cement. There app urinals along pp; wall
gpg g partition separating them from pp; commodes
which app along ppp same wall. Tpp toilet must
resemble php impersonal ugliness p: g school
toilet or a latrine of some institution. A

——.————-—_—_-—.—__————_ —

l
l
few_rolls 2: toilet paper are spread out on
1

 

 

 

 

Egg floor, wet through. The actors should—

 

 

give the impression freguently that the place
smells. 7

The students congregate in the toilet, "during pauses in
‘the educational process, to exchange insults and Obscenities,
811d to gang up on unprotected students, usually 'whiteys'."38

.It is also used for other purposes.

 

3”Brustein, p. 33.
Jones, p. 6.
35Littlejohn, p. 75.
37LeRoi Jones, Tpg Baptism gpd 2E2 Toilet (New York:
1967). p. 37.
38Ibid.

Fl.

 

265

Ora breaks through the door grim ipg, then gigglipg.
Looks around the bleak place, walks around, tthen

 

 

 

 

pees, still grinnipg, into one p: the commodes,
spraying urine over the seat.39

 

 

Following this action, a gang of Negro boys drift into the
toilet. They fight, tease and insult each other as they
wait for Karolis, a white youth who has written a love
letter to Foots, their leader, and who is being hunted down
for a showdown fight between the two. While they wait

for Karolis, their conversation becomes honestly obscene:

HINES

as.—

Hey, Willie.
LOVE

Still peeipg: What you want? Comes out, zipping
his pant .

 

HINES
Man, this cat's in here pulling his what-chamacallit.
HOLMES

Yeh. Damn, Love, why don't you go get Gloria to
do that stuff for you.

LOVE
She—et. Grinning. Huh. I sure don't need your
01' lady to pullin' on my joint. Laughs. Holmes
begins pp spar with him. 0

ITie play's dialogue and action continue in this vein until

PQaIHolis is dragged into the toilet. He is kicked, beaten

 

39Ibid., p. 38.
“Olbid.

266

and left motionless with wet toilet paper across his
body and face. This is the essence of the play except for

a conclusion that is as follows:

After g minute 9; pp Karolis moves his hand.
Then his head moves and he tries to look _p.
He draws his legs pp under him and pushes his
head off the floor. Finally pg manages pp_
ggp to his hands and knees. He crawls over
to one of the commodes, pulls himselfu pp,
then falls backward awkwardly and heaviLg.
.At this ppint, the door is pushed open

_ slightly, then it gpens completely and
Foots comes in. —He stares at Karolis'
body for a second, _looks Quickly over his
shoulder, then runs and kneels before the

bodyal weepipg and cradling the head in hlS

 

 

 

Foots' return to the bloody unconscious white, is a demon-
stration of love. The existence of these feelings are
revealed during the fight sequence.

KABOLIS

Yeh. That's what I'm going to do Ray. I'm
going to fight you. We're here to fight. About
that note, right? The one that said I wanted

to take you into my mouth. Did I call you

Bay in that letter . . . or Foots? Trying
§p_laugh. Foots! Shouts. I'm going to break
your fucking neck. That's right. That's who

I want to kill. Foots!

ORA

Bushing Karolis into Foots. Fight, you goddamn
sissy-punk bastid!

FOOTS

Slaps Karolis with his open.hand. You crazy bastard!

411bid., pp. 61-62.

267

KAROLIS

Are you Bay or Foots, huh?
HINES

Hit the sonofabitch, Foots!
FOOTS

Fight, you bastard!
KAROLIS

Yeh! That's why we're here, huh? I'll fight
you, Foots! I'll fight you right here in this
same place where you said your name was Ray.
Screaming. fie lunges at Foots and manages 32
grab him in a choke hold. Ray. you said your
name was. You said Ray. Right here in this
filthy toilet. You said Ray. You put your
hand on me and said Ray! 2

 

There are two prominent actions in this play.
Karolis descent into hell and his subsequent rescue by a
Negro who is simultaneously his enemy and the supreme
object of his love. When the Negro recognizes the white,
there is implication and suggestion of survival for the
latter. When the Negro takes the white student in his arms,
he is able to suggest the possibility of love despite all
the obscenity and perversion which surrounds the play.
Foots is able to enter into the suffering of another. This
is a new concept of superiority rendered in Negro-written
drama. It is not a forced, superimposed superiority which
is discussed but seldom demonstrated. It is an elevation

0f character through allowance of the hero to empathize

 

 

42mm” pp. 59-60.

268

With the pain of another human being despite his complicity
in provoking suffering. Recognized critics, however, do

not acknowledge this philosophical possibility as being
inherent to the play.

Foots? superiority is also demonstrated in his

strong will. Karolis is simply an object subservient to
Foots' every wish. Without Foots, he has no life of his

own; his salvation is solely dependent on the Negro's
acceptance or rejection. This is an interesting reversal.
For years, the Negro has asked the whites to accept white
guilt for the cruelty inflicted upon Negroes in a land
dedicated to the principle of unrestricted civil and

social freedom. By the 1960's, it was painfully obvious

to the Negro -- that law without implementation was not

only meaningless but a mockery. Moderation, as apparent in
James Baldwin's plays, began to break down. In the 1960‘s
the Negro began to take matters into his own hands and to
fight free from his bonds. The absolute refusal to be a
slave to affliction is apparent in Jones' plays. The profound
question that emanates from Jones' plays is —— if my grace
is sufficient for you whites, why is your grace not sufficient
eriough for me? Jones is implicitly suggesting brotherhood.
lie does it in an indirect and shocking manner and, perhaps,
urfl.ntentionally. Nevertheless, his insight not only
:recflcons with the harsh reality of race relations, but also

sugggests new horizons regarding reconciliation. Right now,

 

269

so long as the cold fury remains a cold fury, it can lead
to power over the whites.43 All of Jones' plays clearly
say that the black power can and will lead only to des-
truction. Of course, as long as the major white critics
such as Robert Brustein, brush his proclamations aside with
the belittling comment that they are "psycho drama, designed
for the acting out of sado-masochistic racial fantasies"Ll'LF
white society will remain unalarmed. On the other hand,
Clurman has been stirred to the point of remarking that
Jones' plays are to be heeded. "They say 'Beware!'"45
Jones' heroes are extensions of the ingenuous efforts
which originated in the 1920's with Negro heroes seeking
recognition. They have developed into furious satanic

demagogues who are in possession of a frightening attitude

that promises destructive consequences.

 

fimttiejohn, p. 79.
4 Brustein, p. 33.
SClurman, p. 93.

 

 

 

 

a

 

CHAPTER X

THE O-LOVELY-NEGROES

It can now be said, after an examination of the
nature of the Negro hero in Twentieth century American
drama, that the image of the Negro as a "syncopated inhab-
itant of Nigger Heaven (to use the title of Van Vechten's

influential novel)"1 is the work of the white writers.

 

The "Contentment Tradition of the O—Lovely-Negroes school
of American fiction"2 has neither been created nor fostered
by the Negro.

The Negro deplored the position to which Negro
life was consigned by such works as Th; gaggn Pastures and
223g1.3 Negroes believed that these plays simply catered
to a demand on the part d‘white people for a portrayal of
Negroes as beautiful, simple and "just like children."4
As James Weldon Johnson pointed out in Algng Thig Way,
the image of Negro life with its "exclusive emphasis upon
the picturesque, has obscured the fundamental, relentless

forces at work" in the racial life of Negroes.5 The

 

1Gross, p. 14.
Ibid., p. 17.
3Walter White, "Negro Literature," American Writers 9Q
Innerican Literature, ed. John Macy (New York: H. Liveright,
1116., 19 15, pp. 532-51.
Mitchell, p. 134.
James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (New York:
Ynez: Viking Press, 1933), p. 381.

 

270

.e‘

 

 

 

 

271

Negro is "not interested in forgiving and forgetting, but

6

in changing, improving, reforming, revolutionizing."
According to Negroes, The Green Pastures and Porgy seem to

be works created by people who didn't know anything about
7

Negroes.

One night the talk began to circulate about a
play that was going to open on Broadway in
February, 1930. The name of that play was

22$ Green Pastures. A lot of actors were en—
thusiastic about its chances, but Dick Campbell
asked a grave question. 'From what I know of
that soript,‘ he said, 'I don't know which is
going to claw the Negro image the most -— that
play or this depression.‘

 

gar-u

 

The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly is based on
Roark Bradford's burlesque.stories, Old Man Adam and His
Chillun.

The work, labeled 'an attempt to see certain
aspects of a living religion,’ describes a
Southern Negro child's image of the Creation.
God, for the child, is 'De Lawd' -- a frock-
coated, ten-cen-cigar-smoking preacher, wit—
nessing the fish—fry, the crap-shooters, sinners
and Noah wanting a second keg of liquor to
balance his Ark. Black blood flowed in those
pasturgs as white knives ripped at the Negro
image.

In contrast to Negro thinking, the white critic
Inaintains that The Green Pastures is the finest single
eachievement of the American Theatre. Mark Van Doren

c:onsiders Marc Connelly's treatment of God and scripture

 

6V. F. Calverton, The Liberation 9: American
lkitberature, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932), p. 381.
Mitchell, p. 94.

 

 

 

272

to be representative of literary artistry.

When is a play more than a play? When it is
literature —— when it contains something over and
above the machinery that is needed to keep our
attention riveted upon a group of actors
masquerading as men and women . . . . We

have been too busy representing life on the
stage to do the one thing which seems to

me worthwhile for a dramatist to do --

say something about life, or better yet,

show life not in representative phases but

in something like its full and rounded glory.
. . . I like the spectacle of a dramatist

who makes free with the materials of his world,
who indeed makes a world, and who plays his
mind over the surfaces of that world with
something like the affection which God
presumably felt on the sixth day, if never
since . . . . There is so much more enter-
tainment in excess, in superabundance, in

the visible gesture of a creating hand. I
have talked with no one and I have read no
critic who seems not to have been touched
with thig kind of joy at The Green Pastures

 

It seems indeed unfortunate that Negroes tend to
resent Thg Gaggn Pastures when there is so much about the
characters that should command respect.

Marc Connelly's Lawd is a stately gentleman who
:permits cherubs to play with his coat tails, "rars back
ean' passes" miracle after miracle, chides Gabriel for being
'too eager to blow the trumpet, refuses to let Noah carry

niore than "one keg" on the Ark, makes Moses the "bes'
tiricker" in the world because Pharoah is "awful fond of

't]?iCkS," despairs over the continual sinfulness of man,and

 

10Mark Van Doren, "It's Not a Bad Season," Theatre
(Puiuld Magazine, April 1930, p. 19.

 

 

273

finally admits "even beinl God ain't a bed of roses."11

Once again, a white author uses the Negro char-
acter to point out a philosophical truth. In this
instance, Connelly is not so concerned with the Negro
experience, as he is interested in suggesting that the
wisdom of God is a developmental process. Connelly portrays
the progressive growth of De Lawd. The development of the
character parallels man's conception of a god from a tribal

deity with almost human weaknesses to a universal deity -—

 

loving and suffering for all mankind. When the symbols of
mankind refuse to adhere to De Lawd's commands, like an
immature child, De Lawd withdraws to his Heaven and closes
his door.

Dat's about enough. I's stood all I kin from
you. I tried to make dis a good earth. I
helped Adam, I helped Noah, I helped Moses, an’
I helped David. What's de grain dat grew out
of de seed? Sin! Nothin' but sin throughout
de whole world. I've given you ev'y chance.
I sent you warriors and prophets. I've given
you laws and commandments, an' you betrayed
my trust. Ev'ything I've given you, you've
defiled. Ev'y time I've fo‘given you, you've
mocked me. An' now de High Priest of Israel
tries to trifle wid my name. Listen, you
chillun of darkness, yo' Lawd is tired. I'm
tired of de struggle to make you worthy of de
breath I gave you. I put in bondage ag'in to
cure you an' yo' worse dan you was amongst de
flesh pots of Egypt. 80 I renounce you.
Listen to the words of yo' Lawd God Jehovah,
for dey is de last words yo' ever hear from
me. I .repent of dese people dat I have

 

11
Marc Connelly, "The Green Pastures," British and

[Unerican Plays 1§30-1245, ed. Willard Higley Durham and
.Tokun W. Dodds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947).

 

 

 

 

 

 

274

made and I will deliver dem no more.12

As the play develops, this petulance mellows and
matures into wisdom and a loving deity. When Hezdrel, one
of God's children, teaches De Lawd that the old God of
wrath and vengeance has surrendered to "de God of mercy,"
De Lawd returns to his Heaven and meditates on the meaning
of suffering not only for man but also for God. As he
reflects on the way to find mercy through suffering, a
voice cries: "Oh look at Him! Oh, look dey goin' to make
Him carry it up dat high hill! Dey goin' to nail Him to
it! Oh, dat's a terrible burden for one man to carry!"13
De Lawd's development is expressed in terms of God's own
successive stages of learning. The God who calls for "mo'
firmament!" is very different from the God at the end of
the play. In homespun uncanonical terms, de Lawd realizes
that God, too, must learn mercy through suffering.

The language, the humor, the beauty and the intent
never permit De Lawd's petulance or childlike immaturity to
seem offensive. As Ralph Barton stated:

. . the Lord has more dignity, more grandeur,
more lovable charm than He has in Genesis.
Dressed as a Baptist preacher, He is humble and
omnipotent. It is impossible not to believe
that it was a wave of His arm that brought
down the walls of Jericho. When He steps to

the window of His office and remarks that the
old sun is making things powerful hot and says,

 

 

12Ibid., pp. 609—610.
13Ibid., p. 613.

 

 

275

softly, 'Let it be jest a little bit cooler,‘

and, presently, in gratitude, 'That's nice,‘ 14

it seems the most natural thing in the world.‘

All faith and hope, all love and longing, all rapture

and despair, look out from the eyes of de Lawd. He is
gentle as a child; he has also the strength of Hercules.
De Lawd is truly one of the great products of American
literature -- a lasting embodiment of what the white man

conceived the Negro was during the period of development

when the Negro seemed to be most attractive. He is, to be

 

sure, no great tragic figure, no suffering hero, torn by
conflicting desires, dominated by an overwhelming passion,
ruined by disgrace. Yet Connelly has succeeded in setting
forth the hero as convincingly true to human nature, alive
and breathing.

It will charm a child, disarm a cynic and enchant
a sophisticate. In no other play is there such
endearing humor as in the moment when the Angel
Gabriel almost blows his horn behind de Lawd's
back and is halted by de Lawd's quiet admonition,
'Watch yourself, Gabe'; or in the scene in which
Noah falls in step along the road with de Lawd
and begins to get acquainted. Later, at Noah's
dining table, the future builder of the Ark is
asked, 'What would you say was it to rain for
forty days and forty nights?‘ -- and he replies,
'I'd say dat was a complete rain!‘ In no other
play is there a scene more lovely, more touching
than Moses' leave-- taking of his people near the
end of their journey to the River Jordan. Nor

is there elsewhere the exaltation of the final
moments of Eng Green Pastures, when de Lawd
discovers that he must be a God of mercy if this

 

14Ralph Barton, "Theatre," Life Magazine, March 21,
1930, p. 18

 

 

276

troublesome earth which he created is to

improve.
But the Negro does not agree. He is not content to be
depicted as Marc Connelly's version of what Roark Bradford
said was a Negro preacher's version of religion. Negroes
do not want to be portrayed as happy children. And yet
it is such a mystery to understand why the Negro mind con-
siders such portraits as those found in Egg Toilet, for
example, any less childlike. It would seem that this kind

of arrogance and boasting would claw the Negro image more

mar. — -——-

than the humility and beauty of De Lawd. But of course,
this is the dilemma. The Green Pastures, in the mind of
the Negro, claws the Negro image; and The Toilet, in the
mind of the white man, claws the Negro image.

Porgy, in the Dubose and Dorothy Heyward play of
the same name, is another of the "O-Lovely—Negroes" created
by whites. This hero is a crippled beggar of the Charleston,
South Carolina streets,

. . who has done much to overcome his handicap
of almost powerless legs by supplying himself
with a patriarchal and very dirty goat, which
draws a cart made of an upturned soap box, on
two lop—sided wheels, which bears the inscription,
'wfldeeSwp,RmeaMfiW%mmmJ
Porgy is neither young nor old. "There is a suggestion of

the mystic in his thoughtful, sensitive face."17 .

 

15John Chapman, "A Beautiful Play Returns," Daily
News, March 25, 1951, p. #2.
1 Dorothy and Dubose Heyward, Porgy, (New York:
.Doubleday Doran and Co., Inc., 1928), p. 11.
7Ibid.

 

 

277

The story of Porgy is the story of a man's love for
a woman. The woman is Bess, mistress of an exotic gambler,
killer and lover named Crown. All day on the Charleston
streets Porgy begs, and by night, he lives with his friends
in Catfish Row near the harbor. Porgy is gentle and lovable,
with something about him that makes him a born genius among
beggars. Where the others get nothing, every night he
brings home a store of small coins.

Of these coins, Porgy counts out enough for his
living, such as it is. The rest is gambled on dice games,
the passion of his life. In a Saturday night game, one of
the dwellers in Catfish Row is killed. Crown, the killer,
runs away and his sweetheart, Bess, takes shelter with
Porgy, She is degraded, a drunkard and a dope addict, but
something about Porgy changes her.

At a picnic on one of the islands off the shore
among the palmetto jungles, she meets Crown again, and
feels his old power over her. He swears that in the cotton
season, he will return for her. Bess has come to love
Porgy, and does not want to return to Crown. She knows
that she is lost if she does. Later, Crown, keeping his
oath, returns. He steals into Porgy's house at midnight,
while Bess is asleep. Porgy kills him in the dark and with
the help of a woman who runs the cookshop next door, drags
'the body to the water's edge. White officials come to

Ckatfish Row and take a frightened Porgy to the Coroner's

 

 

 

——

278

office in order to identify Crown's body. As soon as

Porgy is gone from his home, Sporting Life takes over. He
is a cunning irresponsible man who peddles "happy dust."

At first, Bess is able to resist his advances and his nar—
cotics, but without Porgy's strength to support her, she is
helpless and finally, yields to her tempter. Sporting Life
persuades Bess that Porgy will be gone a year's time, and
that she should spend that time with him in New York.

She agrees and departs with him for New York. Porgy returns
after five days with gifts for his friends and for Bess. E
He has had a lucrative success with dice in the jail.

When he looks for Bess and finds she has gone, he crawls
into his goat cart, asking "Which way Noo Yo'k?“ His
friends tell him New York is "Up Nort' - past de Custom
House.“18 Porgy turns his goat and drives slowly with

bowed head toward the gate. His friends protest, but Porgy
continues Northward as if he did not hear.

Porgy has insurmountable problems; however, in the
play, not only does the character confront them, he surmounts
them. For the perennial romantic, his strength is of such
dimension that there is hope that he will overcome the
final hurdle and find Bess as he has overcome poverty,
physical deformity and Crown.

Porgy feels no anger, bitterness, hate or desire

 

18Ib1d., p. 203.

 

 

 

279

to kill the whites. He is capable of murder when his
love is threatened, but when the deed is done, it seemed
motivated by love for his woman and self-defense.
Throughout most of the play, Porgy is in a happy frame of
mind. He is the white man's version of the poverty
stricken Negro beggar who is poor but, nevertheless, content.19
Porgy is similar to De Lawd insofar as the char-
acter has been given a balance of faith and hope, love and
longing, rapture and despair. Unlike De Lawd, Porgy also
demonstrates a capacity to be afraid. Negro heroes created
by white authors have shown fear, but rarely, has this
emotion appeared in the heroes of Negro—written dramas un-
less the author, like Richard Wright, defined the fear as
one created and generated by whites. But Porgy fears the
violence of nature and the unknown thus urging him toward
closer contact with other human beings. He fears death
and death's face, for example. "I can't look on Crown's
face! Oh, Gawd! What I goin' to do!"20 And when a
buzzard flies over his house, Porgy is frightened. "Get
out ob here! Don! yo‘ light! . . . Yo' hear me! Some-
body help me! Oh, Gawd!"21
Much of the admiration that Porgy solicits is for

his heroic ability to be honest, eloquent, hopeful and

 

19Gross, p. 17.
20Heyward, p. 186.
211bid., p. 89.

 

_—-?. ‘~

"fin

 

 

0.

 

""'IIlIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIlllIlllllllllllllllllllllll

280

Stu?ong. Most refreshing of all, is the absence of the
demoralizing agent psychologists have come to label as
the "inferiority complex." When Crown returns, and Porgy,
in his crippled state has every cause to whimper and moan,
he rises to the situation saying: "Dat all right, honey.
Don' yo' be worryin'. Yo' gots Porgy now an! he look
atter he 'oman. Ain't I don' tell you? Yo' gots a man,
now!"22 This is rare phenomenon for Negro heroes who are,
more times than not, egocentric.

Apparently, Negroes tend to shun Porgy because he
is housed in the trappings that continue to embarrass the
Negro, such as poverty, ignorance, superstition and criminality.
The play does not show the Negro as he would like to be
seen in his sophisticated vision of himself. Until the
embarrassing social ills are resolved for the Negro, appar-

ently, he will continue to find it difficult to identify

 

 

 

with nggy or Green Pastures despite its rich romance and
strangely vibrant universal appeal. Despite the popularity
of Porgy and De Lawd in the past, the present day Negro
.resents an identification with poverty, ignorance, dia—
1_ectical language, and the fantasy construct of a lovable
czohildren stereotype that removes Negroes from consideration

as mature equals .

It is a paradox that this dilemma should exist since

22Ibid., p. 125.

 

 

 

—

281

‘38 Ikawd and Porgy are the most admirable and human of the
‘Negro heroes. They do not depend upon perfection of char-
acter. They seem to be in touch with those elements of
living which concern all. But until the Negro as a race
gains more maturity, it will not admit to this. And therein
lies the difficulty and the breach of understanding between
the Negro and the white races. Both seem waiting for the
other to mature.
Before concluding this chapter, it seems appropriate

to make reference to one other Negro hero. The character is

 

Brother Martin whose origins are taken from real life. This
"O-Lovely—Negro" was a Catholic saint born of a Spanish
father and a Negro mother, who lived during the Sixteenth
Century in Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings). Urban
Nagle, O. P. dramatized the highlights of Brother Martin's
life in his three-act biographical play, ngy 9; gingg (1949).
City of the Kings was the name given to a city in
Peru, now known as Lima, by Francisco Pizarro who founded it
in.1535. This Peruvian community was Brother Martin's
tnirthplace. The boy's family consisted of a father in
swearch for political status and a forsaken mother who was
bezaautiful and bitter.
As Brother Martin grew to manhood he revealed a
rua‘tsure that refused to be influenced by his mother's bitter-
ruesESS or his father's materialism. He seemed concerned only

1N1t;ja God and man. Upon completing an education which

' '- WA”. -.

 

 

 

 

282

QJualified him to enter medical practice, he decided instead
to enter the church. The play is primarily concerned with
depicting Brother Martin as a patient teacher of the
younger, less disciplined monks, a creator of miracles
and a thorn in the flesh of his professional superiors who
consider his multiple acts of kindness too frequent, too
demanding and too impractical. He befriends the mice, heals
the sick, leads obstinacy to forgiveness, prolongs life,
gathers vast sums of money for the poor and diverts a fatal
flood. In the end, as he dies, his friends and peers stand
in awe and respect not only of his accomplishments but of
the manner in which he accomplished them. In contrast to
those heroes who turgidly pronounce their desire to be
recognized as their civil right, Brother Martin's friends
pronounce his manhood as simple benediction to the dedicated
life that was, in consequence, the most mature of lives.

. . . Martin who could never be the equal of the

proud Spaniards in the new world because he

wasn't the proper color went downwards instead

of upwards -— down to the animals, the lepers,

the neglected poor -- and by going down in

humility . . . became the greatest man in

the city . . . one of the greatest men in

the world. In the City of Kings, Brother
Martin became man.

There are many references in City 9: Kings made to

fikajrtin's social position. He even requests to be sold as a

23Father Urban Nagle, Cit _o_f Kings (Rochester:
ChrLStOpher Press, 1949), p. 1 1.

 

 

 

 

 

283

Sliave in order to bring needed funds into the monastery
treasury. But as the play develops, Martin's kinship with
inferior social status and slavery is cancelled by his
chosen spiritual status and total devotion to the Christian
God. In this paradoxical way, the theologian Nagle is
trying to illustrate the Christian message which teaches
that "He who loses his life shall find it." Paul Tillich,
a Christian theologian, speaks to this point in The New
Being, helping to define Nagle's concern as follows:
If I were asked to sum up the Christian message

for our time in two words, I would say . . .: It

is the message of a 'New Creation . . .' For the

Christ, the Messiah, the selected and anointed

one is He who brings the new state of things.

Let us think about this striking assertion of

Paul. What it says first is that Christianity

is more than a Eeligion; it is the message of
a New Creation.

- :3:

Brother Martin, through chosen submission and union
with Christ, is a new being. The old state of things have
passed away; there is a new state of things because of his
faith and service. Nagle has used the martyr's dramatized
life to emphasize the message of Christianity which is a
"New Creation." This certainly is true of Martin as de-

1::icted in the gypy 93 Klggg. He exchanged the role of
s lave for that of master. The fact that Brother Martin was
a; Negro merely dramatizes man's potential when in union

wd_'th Christ.

 

 

24Paul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1955). pp- 15-16-

.6,

 

 

 

284

There is little to say about the play as art; there
is more to be said of the play as moral lesson. The play's
teachings, synonymous with Christian theology, propose
a solution to misery and defeat, to both personal and
social humiliation and suffering. It suggests that the
rejected who are able to forgiVe can not only love but,
in turn, be loved whether white or Negro.

There is a minimum of tension between characters
in the play. This is often the case with dedicated Christian
heroes. They manifest little resistance, and, consequently, "I
reduce the struggle, while energizes the drama. Nagle's
concern to put together the "unyielding facts" surrounding
Brother Martin's life tends to hamper theatricality and
produce a static lesson in religion.

Yet, despite the lack of action and conflict, the
characterizations are often credible; Nagle allows his
central character to display stubbornness, impracticality
and a sense of humor, traits which are developed whole—
heartedly. An interesting example is Martin's conversation
with an unwanted mouse named Miguelito. Father Fernando,
Martin's Superior in rank, has set a mousetrap for his

Ilmice friends and ordered Martin to desist from bringing
tlne rodents to the Priory. Father Fernando departs and,
t.lnen, springing the trap, Brother Martin converses good

litixmoredly with Miguelito:

—

285 "

Hello Miguelito! We have certain standards now;
haven't we? . . . Don't be frightened. I
want to talk to you. I've got to talk to
somebody. Father Provincial awes me with

his carefully chosen words -- and you can't
talk to Fernando. He doesn't listen . . .

But you heard me. I really wanted them to
sell me as a slave. I think it was a wonder-
ful idea. But now all of a sudden they want
me to be a Dominican —— not a tertiary but

a member of the first Order. I suppose it's
to be but I don't feel good enough. It's
quite a thing, Miguelito, if it's done right.
Hastening back pp pick pp ppg trap. But here!
I shouldn't be wasting time. Brother Fernando
is serious. Confidentially. The Spanish are
excitable, you know . . . I'll make a deal
with you. If you'll stay out of the Priory --
altogether out of it -- and tell your brothers
and sisters and all your friends to stay out
too, I'll see that you get enough food from the
left overs. Every day I'll bring something
down to the lower garden wall -— way over in
the corner . . . But tell them, if they ever
come in here again, I won't be able to save
them. By this time pg lg stepping outside

ppp door gpg hp stoops pp: p: sight pp

release Miguelito.

 

 

 

Like many of the previously discussed plays written by white
authors, the Negro hero in Qipy p: Klpgg is used to supple-
ment a philosophical thesis, including in this instance, a
theological precept. glpy p: Klpgg is not a documental
study; it is a personal and religious interpretation.
(Catholic critical reactions to it suggested "Father Nagel

"26

f::ad done an honest job of chronicle writing. The fact

'ttqat Brother Martin was a Negro seems incidental to the

algzthor's intent and is not mentioned in the Catholic review

——

:gNasle. pp. 75-76.
Kappo Phelan, "City of Kings," The Commonweal,
XLIX (April 1949). p. 611. "‘ _____.._..

 

 

 

 

286

Vflnich emphasizes Nagle's intention to present "his hero
to people who need him as a friend."27 That he was suc—
cessful in this intent is beyond confirmation.

Unlike The Green Pastures and Porgy, this play has

 

not achieved literary acclaim. Tpg Commonweal concluded
that the play was a "subject entirely interesting."28 The '
Negro periodical, Ph lon, found the play to be "sticky in its
sentiment and unbearably over sanctified."29

Sociologically, the play contributes nothing to

the revelation of Negro disposition as a people. A white

 

author, although describing the life of a man who actually
lived, uses the lovely Negro to forward a religious pre-
cept: He who loses his life shall find it. This is in
keeping with the treatment of Negro heroes by white play-
wrights, in that he uses the character for purposes of
clarifying a thesis that is other than white man's inhumanity

to Negroes.

27Ibid.
281pm.

29Miles M. Jefferson, "The Negro on Broadway, 1948-
:19——49." Phylon, x (2nd Quarter, 1949), p. 108.

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

By studying the nature of the male Negro hero in
Twentieth century serious American drama, certain obser-
vations become apparent. When the white man creates the
Negro hero, he is nearly always an instrument ofphilosophy
or romance, pointing toward a universal truth pertaining
to man's relationship with himself, mankind or the universe.
White authors are not as prone as Negro writers to treating
the Negro as a victim of circumstances, aggressive to
paranoic excess, a victim of white man's sadistic hatred,
Obsessed on the subject of race or as ceaselessly nursing
fantasies of revenge.1 Instead the white writers have
suggested the humanity of the Negro and, in certain
instances, honored this humanity. This is illustrated by

The Green Pastures and Porgy.

 

In contrast, the Negro-written drama, with few
exceptions, has revealed an obsession with race and has
:functioned primarily as an instrument of race war trying

'Tio make clear the guilt and wickedness of whites. The
bfemux>dream is clear throughout the history of Negro-written

d:z:ama; and if Maxwell Anderson's statement -— " . what

——

lGlicksburg, pp. 134—135.

287

 

 

 

 

'—

 

288

'we are to become depends on what we dream and desire . . . ."
is correct -- than what the Negro will become is the master
race.

In the beginning, when Negro plays were first being
written, clearly delineated attempts were put forth to
design heroes of decidedly superior parts. In these plays,
the Negro was either a superior fighter, possessed a
superior morality or demonstrated a superior intelligence
or integrity. The plays were interpreted by psychologists
as Negro attempts to overcome the built-in inferiority a
complex. No one seemed to notice the seeds of revolution.
No one seemed to pay much attention to the hurt, the envy
and the anger that was smouldering subtly within the plays
written by Negroes. Many believed the Negro was talking
about and asking for equality. No one seemed to note that
the LeRoi Jones' themes had been the underlying dream and
desire of the Negro for many years.

White authors have managed to ignore the Negro's
obsessive concern with racial issues. Paul Green came as
close as any white author to suggesting that he understood
the Negro's world.

Chopping cotton down the long rows with Lazy
Lawrence dancing on ahead was no imagined exper-
ience to Paul Green. He knew why black laughter

came from cabins at the end of a back-breaking
day in the fields. He understood the emotional

 

2
Golden, p. 63.

 

 

 

V ‘—
289

release afforded by an assimilated religion

which the descendants of African tribesmen had

bent to their needs much more successfully than

had their white neighbors. The comedy of

shiftlessness and wayward fancy, the comedy of

a human earthy attitude toward sex, the

melodrama of a quick temper, were made part

of him by a long series of memories of the

black people he knew. So were the tragedies

of the Negro girl and her white lover, of the

restless despair in the veins of the mulatto,

of the persecution undertaken in the name of

white supremacy.
But he seemingly didn't know about the seeds of revolution
or about the desire for black supremacy. He didn't seem
to recognize that Negroes were not willing to forget or to
forgive the society which produced a slave system as cruel
and dehumanizing as ours. In nearly every Negro-written
play, there is a reminder that the whites perpetrated a
colossal crime on black people. This is why, for example,
Richard wright could create his monster, Bigger Thomas, and
feel justified in making him a killer without conscience.
This is why Randolph Edmonds could fashion his Nat Turner
in harmony with the Holy Spirit directed to rid the earth
of the whites.4 This is why Clay in LeRoi Jones Dutchman
can righteously scream at Lula: "Murder. Just murder!
Would make us all sane . . . ."5 Negro playwrights harbor
a bitter inheritance of the kidnapping and enslavement of

innocent people, the destruction of their culture, the

 

 

3Carl Carmer, "Paul Green," Theatre Arts Monthly,
XVI (DecEmber, 1932), p. 997.

Edmonds, "Nat Turner," Sly Plays 39; g Negro
CPheatre, p. 127.

5Jones, p. 36. . 1

 

 

 

V —
290

breakup of their families and the attempt to instill
in the Negro a dependent, subservient attitude toward white
authority.

For awhile, the plays written by Negroes seemed to
imply that the Negro merely desired the whites to grovel in
guilt and seek forgiveness from the wronged party. But by
the time moderation had broken down, it was obvious the
Negro was no longer desirous of granting forgiveness. He
was making it clear that he was going to fight, to murder,
if necessary, and claim his rights not as inferiors but as
superior beings. As Richard Henry in Blpgg :2; My. Charley

puts it:

 

Look at the mighty peckerwood! On his ass, bab —-

and his woman watching! Now, who do you think is

the better man? Ha-ha! The master race! You

let me in that tired white ch%ck's drawers, ;

she'll know who's the master! ‘

The white reaction was to consider the attitude a

perverse myth.7 Unfortunately, too often whites see the
Negro in the light of their own interpretations rather than
his. By now it should be clear that understanding of black

people designed mainly from the white point of view can be

marked by error. There is implicit in Negro drama a sig-

hates the white man. He no longer desires tokenism or

white admittance of guilt. He desires revenge.

 

nificant threat which has been largely ignored. The Negro ‘

6Baldwin, p. 75.

7Driver, p. 124.

 

 

291

But the white man turns his back. The Negro play

is not produced for national viewing unless it features the
O—Lovely-Negroes. Jones and Baldwin may be featured on
television, but not their plays.

. . . one of the things that became apparent

during the attacks on Mr. Jones is that all

American Negro history is anti-white for one

simple reason: White America has ignored it

completely, deliberately, white America fears

to see it, particularly on stage, screen or

television. White America will put Jones or

Baldwin on television to take pot shots at it,

but when, oh, when is it going to put on plays

written by them? Never. For this would prove

to be incendiary.
The revelation of danger remains hidden. The terrifying
tremors that tore at American cities during the summer of
1967, for example, came to this country as an ominous
warning. They announced that the United States was in the
grip of a sickness and an anger that springs from a deep-
seated pain. The irony is that a study of the Negro-written
dramas from 1920 could have given warnings of such eruptions.
They serve to predict such events with intriguing clarity.
And in 1964, clearly and distinctly, without compromise,
they tell that the Negro wants revenge.

Whites who get involved with guilt complexes need

to read and understand the historic roles of white people in

the black revolution -~ a revolution that did not begin in

1954, but in 1619.

 

 

8
Mitchell, p. 207.

 

 

 

 

 

 

292

. . . if I were a white man committed to the
Freedom Movement, I would stop apologizing for
white atrocities while lecturing to Negroes.

I would say to my black associates: 'I am not
a Rankin, Bilbo or Eastland. I want to do
something to wipe them out. What can I do?‘
And the answer to this is one offered by

white actress Madeline Sherwood during the
rehearsals of Ballad 92 ppg Winter Soldiers ——
and the answer was later orchestrated in the
Student Non—Violent Coordinating Committee's
position paper on Black Power. The answer is
that committed whites should stop talking to
Negroes who are already committed and go out
and organize the white cogmunity to ally itself
with the black community.

Despite all its perverted sexual implications, this is what
Jones could be advocating in that final scene of The Toilet.
When Foots cradles Karolis head in his arms, there is a
love alliance —— a black and white alliance. But whites
do not see it and whites do not hear it. As Mitchell says:

I can see what makes LeRoi Jones give up on

trying to talk to whites. I am still not anti-

white, but I wish our friends would listen to

what we are saying and not tell us what they

want us to say.

At the deepest, most fundamental level, one can
note certain psychological obsessions, certain fixations,
certain recurring myths that loom large in Negro-written
literature. It is impossible to say whether or not the
myths are true in fact. It is important to know that they

seem to be necessary and they seem to suggest truth. What

the white man can gain willbe in direct measure to his

 

9Ibid., p. 214.
101bid., p. 215.

———

293

ignorance at the start. It is certainly true that one
can learn, from this glimpse at the Negro in American
drama, about what the Negro dreams and desires. But such
dreams and desires must be noted as to source. There is
reason to believe that Negro dreams and desires in the plays
created by whites are not indicative of the Negro race.
Whereas -- most Negroes -- including most Negro writers --
cannot and will not write of Negro life except as a pronounce-
ment of feelings against the envied and hated white majority.
"America, all of it, goes on hating blackness,"ll and con-
sequently, fosters a neurosis, composed of hate, hurt and
desire for revenge. According to Littlejohn, this black and
white void holds off the day of a true Negro art.12
As literature, most of the plays considered in this
study are inferior. Prior to 1940, plays written by Negro
playwrights are structurally primitive. In many instances,
they are only one or two pages in length which allows
insufficient development of either plot or character. They
contain stilted dialogue, a child-like emphasis upon the
moral stature and superiority of the Negro hero, and clumsy
constructions. Almost without exception, the language is
trite, commonplace and superficial. During the 1920's
especially, the language seemed to be written in a primer

sstyle with an occasional forced elegance.

 

11Littlejohn, p. 168.
121bid., p. 169.

 

 

 

 

294

In contrast, the plays written by such white authors
as Eugene O'Neill and Paul Green merit the literary praise
given to them. They demonstrate universality, individuality
and richness of association. O'Neill and Green do not seem
ignorant of the massive odds against which the Negro
struggles; but their portraits of the aspirations, anxie-
ties, ambitions affecting humble Negro people in American
society are reflective of a white man's perspective.

This is also true for the plays Ppygy and Egg Gygpp
Pastures which have been labeled literary masterpieces.
According to the Negroes, these plays seem to be works
created by writers who knew nothing about Negroes. However,
these are the only plays in the study portraying life in
its full and rounded glory. They are the only plays capable
of arousing, simultaneously, a strong impulse towards
laughter and tears. Both plays are brilliantly constructed
and possess a believability of characterization blended
with charm and magic.

After the 1940's white playwrights have written no
plays of literary merit which have pictured a Negro hero,

with the possible exception of Slow Dance pp the Killipg

 

 

Ground. Yet, there are critics who do not look favorably
upon this play suggesting that Hanley's characters are

caricatures and not set in the "music of evocative monologues."13

 

13"Goodbye Cruel World," Time, XXCVII (December 11,
1964). p. 73-

 

295

In contrast, the drama written by Negroes since the
1940's reveals a growth and development in the use of literary
skills. Such plays as Dutchman and Blpgg :2; My. Charley,
for example, continue to be highly subjective social tracts
and fail to approach that level of experience at which it
is man who lives and not the individual; nevertheless, they
are indications of writer maturity. There is indication
that these plays written after 1940 suggest to the Negro the
universal humanity of himself. Negro audience reaction

has tended to verify this point. These plays do not move

 

all of us owing to the continued lack of objective treat-
ment, but they seem to depict the heart and mind of modern
Negroes with an improved vividness of expression and strong
individuality. The plays by Negro playwrights never achieve
their own poetry; but, as social tracts they speak of the
breakdown of Negro fear of white supremacy. They do this
with clarity and force to such a degree that all whites
should be compelled to listen. It is in this sense, as
literature, that the plays are of utmost significance --

not as a source of pleasure, but as a means of instruction

and revelation.

 

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30L»

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IV. LIBRQRIES

”7ijij M

   
 

29

 

9