HOME FRONT AS WARFRONT: AFRICAN AMERICAN WORLD WAR I DRAMA BY Copyright 2010 Anna Katherine Egging Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson, Iris Smith Fischer Committee Members:________________________________ Maryemma Graham ________________________________ Janet Sharistanian ________________________________ Henry Bial ________________________________ Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka Date Defended: ___27 August, 2010_______________ ii The Dissertation Committee for Anna Katherine Egging certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: HOME FRONT AS WARFRONT: AFRICAN AMERICAN WORLD WAR I DRAMA ________________________________ Chairperson, Iris Smith Fischer Date approved:____27 August 2010_______ iii Abstract This dissertation recovers little-known African American World War I plays that blur the boundary between the home front and warfront. I argue that with this focus, the plays wage their own war for African American citizenship rights, using language and performance to gain access to the “imagined” community of the nation. Yet plays from different time periods focus on diverse aspects of the Great War; these differences provide insight into how World War I was thought of and employed, and for what purposes, in African American communities during the interwar years. The project fills an important gap in African American drama, theatre, and war literature scholarship; no book-length analysis exists, yet scholarly conversations surrounding African Americans in the Great War are energetic. Despite scholars’ arguments that the war “gave birth” to the New Negro, the plays that dramatize the subject have drifted into obscurity. Thus, this project is overdue; the plays complete the historical picture of African American drama and provide a better understanding of the ways contemporary life in the United States is still haunted by World War I. iv For my grandmother, Hope Brooker Anderson, who modeled the transformative power of education and inspired me to become a teacher. v Acknowledgments Growing up on the High Plains of Nebraska, my dreams were as large and colorful as the sunsets that stretched across our ranch’s horizon. I fantasized about becoming a trick rider, a journalist, or even a synchronized swimmer. In all of my imaginings, though, I never dreamed I would go to graduate school or finish a Ph.D. Thus, I have many people to thank for helping me navigate the often-unfamiliar waters of academia. First, I would like to thank my committee for their time and guidance. To my chair, Dr. Smith Fischer, thank you for your encouragement and the countless hours you’ve spent nurturing my scholarship and professional relationships. I will always hold your teaching and mentorship as the standard I strive to attain. I would also like to thank Dr. Graham and Dr. Sharistanian for pushing me to see the dissertation not as a solitary activity but as a conversation with other scholars. Your models have encouraged me to communicate with people heretofore I had thought of only as names in texts. Making those connections has been one of the most stimulating parts of the dissertation process. Thanks also to Dr. Bial and Dr. Ajayi-Soyinka for lending their expertise to my project. In the vein of scholarship being a conversation, I would like to thank those scholars and librarians who, through their correspondence, helped me rediscover these plays: James Hatch, Kathy Perkins, Winona Fletcher, George Hutchinson, Ann Haugo, Kurt Piehler, Jim Payne, Craig Prentiss, Steven F. Fullwood, Jeff Loeb, and Jenna Kubly. I would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the archivists with whom I worked: Rebecca Johnson Melvin of the University of Delaware; Adam Fielding, Robert Vay, and Veronica Fisher of George Mason University; Louise Bernard of Yale University; Tonia N. Sutherland of the University of Massachusetts Amherst; Martha Geier and Jaelithe Lindblom of the Louisville Free Public Library; and Betsy Morelock of Kentucky State University. Through their generous assistance I was able to find archival gems. A special thanks also goes out to Darren Canady, who graciously agreed to let me discuss his play False Creeds (2007) in my epilogue, and Colin P. Hubbard, who provided invaluable information and memories about his step-grandfather, Conrad Seiler. I hope I have done justice to both of you. This project would not have been possible without the generous funding of numerous organizations. The University of Kansas Office of Graduate Studies’ 2009 Summer Research Fellowship as well as the University of Kansas English Department’s 2009 Kenneth Rockwell Award and 2008 Jacobs Prize in the Humanities made much of my research travel possible. Thanks also to the South Central Modern Language Association for the 2008 Prize for the Best Paper in Historical, Literary and/or Cultural Studies. I would also like to thank the Nagoya American Studies Summer Seminar for hosting me for a week of intense scholarly work and camaraderie; the experience changed how I view American literature. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their kindness and support during this process. My parents, Pam and Dale Anderson, not only instilled in my sisters and me a strong work ethic, but also dove into the nitty-gritty of the dissertation and generously helped fund my research. My mother made me food while I studied for comps, travelled with me on my research trips, and my father was always on the lookout for books related to my topic. My sisters, Beth vi and Laura, gave me countless hours of phone therapy. Thank you all for your interest and encouragement. To my support network, Alicia, Gaywyn, and Heather: thank you for your eyes when mine grew weary, and for your friendship. Finally, to my biggest supporter, Matt: thank you for your constant love and encouragement. Life is a beautiful adventure with you. vii Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….....1 Chapter One: The Home Fires Have Been Built Upon African American Flesh………….27 Plays Examined: Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Mine Eyes Have Seen Mary P. Burrill’s Aftermath Chapter Two: “A seething world is gone stark mad”: Staging No-Man’s-Land…………...66 Plays Examined: Joseph S. Cotter, Jr.’s On the Fields of France S. Randolph Edmonds’s Everyman’s Land Chapter Three: Ghosts of the Great War: Memory and Memorial……………………...…110 Plays Examined: May Miller’s Stragglers In the Dust Langston Hughes’s “The Colored Soldier” Chapter Four: A New Form of War: Class Struggle……………………………………….158 Plays Examined: Conrad Seiler’s Sweet Land Abram Hill and John Silvera’s Liberty Deferred Epilogue: Legacies………………………………………………………………………….216 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………224 1 Introduction Prologue: The “Official” Play About African Americans and World War I There is no future for men and women, Black or white, until the world is safe for democracy. We have a present duty, which is to do all we can to win the war. We cannot remain a free people— we do not deserve to be free—unless in all things we stand by our government together with all free people who are fighting to make the world safe for democracy. For us, Black and white, it is freedom or slavery.1 This address, spoken by a white dignitary while African American children marched on stage holding American and Allies’ flags, was the cornerstone of the United States Food Administration’s Fourth of July pageant for African Americans, “Why We Are at War,” a clear effort to gain and promote African American support for the Great War. On May 28, 1918, a year after the United States entered the conflict, the government agency distributed letters to major population centers of African Americans urging them to organize and put on this spectacle. The pageant included patriotic music, such as “The Star Spangled Banner,” “Over There,” and “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” lessons on food conservation, and grand speeches from government or city officials. Clearly, the United States government recognized the usefulness of the theatre in influencing American (African American or otherwise) attitudes about the war. Yet, the particular rhetoric of the pageant is worth noting; it shows a very different emphasis than that of the dramas that African Americans wrote about the Great War. The trope 1 From “Why We Are at War,” United States Food Administration, 1918. Reprinted in Hatch and Shine’s Black Theatre U.S.A. The editors note that Hatch discovered the materials in the papers of the U.S. Food Administration in the National Archives. 2 of freedom (contrasted with “slavery”) is employed purposefully to garner support for the Allied cause from the African American audience. The lack of focus on just what “freedom,” “slavery,” and “democracy” meant for African Americans living in a Jim Crow society, however, seemed to escape the organizers’ grasp. For example, the pageant outline provided by the Food Administration contains this instruction: “The point of the celebration [is] to reflect the serious conditions of the war and the celebration [is] to be not for pleasure, except for the children; the men and women are to be present that they may learn what they can do to help stop the destruction of their liberty, as well as the liberty of all free men—or to keep from being slaves” (qtd. in Hatch and Shine 94). While the allusion to American slavery (still very real in 1918, just fifty-three years after it was outlawed in the United States) might have been persuasive, it is also unintentionally ironic: “help stop destruction of their liberty” suggests that African Americans in 1918 had equal liberties to begin with, or that Jim Crow America was not simply a system of neo-slavery, an argument several of the later African American World War I plays make explicit.