Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Lenka Váňová

The Power of Black Theater: Imamu Amiri Baraka and Ed Bullins’s Plays as Reflections of the Transformation of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s

Master‟s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr.

2009

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author‟s signature

2

I would like to thank my supervisor doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr. for his kind advice. I would like to thank Briana, Lisa and Mareen for their invaluable help.

3 Table of Contents

Introduction 5

Chapter 1 – The Turbulent Decade 10

1.1 The Early 1960s: Resonating Integration 11

1.2 The Mid-1960s: Change in Mood and Leadership 12

1.3 The Second Half of the 1960s: Black Power, Black Nationalism, and 14

Black Pride

Chapter 2 – Drama 18

2.1 LeRoi Jones/Imamu Amiri Baraka 21

2.1.1 Dutchman 23

2.1.2 The Slave 36

2.2 Ed Bullins 47

2.2.1 We Righteous Bombers 49

Conclusion 71

English Summary 74

České resumé 76

List of Works Cited 78

4 Introduction

After important courtroom battles over civil rights were decided and crucial laws passed during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Americans were to learn a painful lesson that legislation is nothing without effective enforcement. The early phase of the Civil

Rights Movement concentrated in the South, stressed racial integration and challenged lingering discrimination legally. These nonviolent protests raised considerable hopes and optimism. The latter phase of the Civil Rights Movement was symbolized by a shift both in geography and in tactics. The movement concentrated in the North and its leaders called for more effective steps to be taken by the Government to fight grievances of urban blacks. At the same time more violent forms of protest and radical rhetoric were employed than by the previous generation of activists.

The young generation of blacks coming to age in the late 1950s and 1960s, particularly Northern born, responded most strongly to the calls of radicals. As Herbert

H. Haines argues, “[t]hough they were generally sympathetic with the broadest motivations and goals of the civil rights leaders and organizations, it was not their movement; it did not reflect their day-to-day problems in a direct manner” (58). It was among these poor, working-class blacks that the philosophy of Black Power resonated most powerfully in the late 1960s. Advocated in various forms by many of the newly emerging civil rights leaders and followed mostly by the young, its proponents wanted to achieve a higher level of self-governance in the black community as well as a deserved share in the surrounding affluence. The radical and aggressive tactics they used to express their anger and frustration compared significantly to the slow progress in civil rights and racial equality.

Similar development could be observed on theater stages of this time. The 1960s brought a significant change after a decade of black playwrights stressing the

5 desirability of racial integration and generally depicting blacks as whites in dark skin, having the same virtues as well as faults. Leslie Sanders notes that “[b]y 1965, America was an openly divided society. Having tested integration, black Americans began to question its desirability. Accordingly, the black figure [on stage] assumed a new position in the white ground and became critic, judge, possibly savior.” (7) African-

Americans in the 1960s began to define their own image in theater, more self-confident than ever before, reflecting the new mood reverberating through the black community.

Mance Williams observes accordingly that, besides functioning as a form of artistic expression, an additional purpose of plays written in the 1960s was “the elevation of Black Consciousness on the one hand, and on the other the eradication of the negative Black image created by racist-oriented literature and media through the creation of a new, more positive Black image” (17). Authors of these plays rejected

Western dramatic traditions which they felt were imposed, because “only by repudiating

Western dramatic precedents, by demolishing inherited dramatic conventions either by parody, travesty, mock heroics, or disregard, can the black dramatist claim his radical alternative „to the sterility of the American theatre‟” (Kaufman 195). A distinct kind of drama, forming what is called the Black Theater Movement, emerged. Generally it is politically radical, situated in the black community, conforming to a black aesthetic, and dedicated to a black audience.

Examining the parallel between changes in the wider society and the development of theater is important because “performance,” as Joseph Roach argues,

“is one powerful way in which cultures remember who and what they are. [It] is also one powerful way of making them who and what they are.” (qtd. in Kruger 711) The stereotypes assigned to a particular racial group together with its history shape the dramatic production of such a group. Ed Bullins noted in a 1973 interview:

6 [W]hen you have a culture that is oppressed, that has been enslaved, that

has been deprived, their expression will be different from any other

culture around. Especially the culture that is oppressing them. So, black

literature, black art is different. (109)

Theater and performance then naturally become sites for historians to investigate the formation of racial expressions and racial stereotypes, as well as their challenge.

Genevieve E. Fabre argues in her introduction to Afro-American Poetry and

Drama that “the stage is used with a double purpose: it becomes a platform from which to launch protest against the ills inflected upon black people by white society, as well as a place where black life could be not simply duplicated, but also re-created, receiving its proper scope and depth” (258). When racial history in the United States is considered, theater history can be hardly omitted then. Moreover, its understanding bears relevance for today when African-Americans are still not accepted as equal, as Sheryll Cashin believes: “Racial segregation is still pervasive, and class segregation seems to be an accepted norm. [...] Many poor African Americans live in isolated ghetto neigborhoods that offer violence, weak schools, few jobs, and limited avenues for escape.” (xvi-xvii)

The strife of African-Americans is far from finished and knowledge of its historical development appears vital for its future progress.

From among all the playwrights coming to prominence in the 1960s, LeRoi

Jones – also known as Imamu Amiri Baraka – and Ed Bullins are particularly important for the history of black theater. James Smethurst, a renowned Black Arts Movement historian, identifies Baraka as someone who during the 1960s significantly developed and promoted a new model of a popular avant-garde “that had roots in actually existing and close-to-home popular culture and that was itself in some senses genuinely popular while retaining a countercultural, alternative stance” (59). Baraka‟s work, all through

7 his efforts as a poet, playwright, essayist, cultural critic, and political activist,

“fundamentally changed the conception of art and culture in the United States, both inside and outside the African American community” (Smethurst 76). Baraka is recognized as one of the initiators of Protest Theater in the Northeast of the United

States, creating plays ranging from intellectual exploration of racial revolution to agit- prop pieces, calling for overturning of the social order. He generally pictures blackness as the “innate being of the African American” as well as “a goal to be passionately struggled for” (Kumar 271).

Bullins, “perhaps the most important national Black Arts dramatist” (Smethurst

103), ranks among more conventional writers in the sense of creating full-length plays and picturing full-fledged characters. Bullins‟s writings are crucial for the redefinition of blacks on stage in the 1960s, depicting black as a way of being in the world, as a perspective, and as a specific language. Additionally, in Bullins‟s view, black is also being in bondage – not only to the white man, but first of all to oneself. It is mostly blacks themselves who impose the chains they feel are restraining them – these bounds are familiar, predictable, and secure. By exposing this view, Bullins joins other more explicit protest writers of the 1960s in aiming at a common goal, which is encouraging blacks to shatter the bondage. Thus, Baraka and Bullins are natural counterparts, taking different paths to a shared objective.

Baraka‟s Dutchman and The Slave (both written 1964) and Bullins‟s We

Righteous Bombers (1969) are notable plays not only for their literary value and dramatic structure, but also as testaments to the era and its influence on the authors. Joe

Street argues that the civil rights movement deliberately used music, art, theater, and literature as political weapons: “there was a deep connection between the [civil rights] movement and African American cultural expressions” (161). As the 1960s was a

8 decade of growing violence and radicalism within the Civil Rights Movement, Baraka and Bullins‟s works naturally mirror this development. Contrary to the 1950s, these authors started to look for values and self-fulfillment within the African-American community instead of preaching peaceful integration into the white mainstream society and patience with the slow progress in racial equality.

Baraka and Bullins‟s plays present potent documents of the transformation within the Civil Rights Movement. Their works comprise elements of protest against stereotyping and factors of black self-definition as they correspond to the historical context of the origin of the plays. While examining these I will focus on printed plays rather than theater or performance. I will concentrate on what was written, rather than on how it was staged. Therefore, I will deal with the conceptual content of the plays over the problems of production, acting, or stage design.

9 Chapter 1 – The Turbulent Decade

In the 1960s, the eyes of the nation, tantalized by the Civil Rights Movement, were more and more intently cast upon the North where a black population pursuing higher income, better schooling and an overall higher living standard than in the South resided. However, it showed not to be the Promised Land as sought. Allen J. Matusow notes: “less flagrant than in the South but no less vicious and even harder to reach, northern discrimination took three mutually enforcing forms. Segregated housing led to segregated schools, and these together handicapped lower-class black workers in a job market.” (198) African-Americans found themselves living in decaying urban centers which whites had abandoned for suburbia complete with new houses, television sets and brand new cars.

The 1960s was a decade when more radical means of protest were applied within the Civil Rights Movement. As time progressed, so did the level of radicalism and violence of the protest actions and activist demands. What had started in the mid-1950s as a peaceful effort of blacks to receive recognition by law comparable to that of the white majority, integration and equality of the races, turned into a direct challenge to de facto segregation and more importantly to integration. In the middle of the decade protester violence and radical rhetoric of their leaders became more prominent, leading the nation as far as burning urban ghettos of the North between 1965 and 1967. Of the several hundred disturbances which occurred each summer, the Watts or Los Angeles

Riot of 1965, Newark Riot of 1967 and Detroit Riot of 1967 were most intense.

Violence ceased by the end of the 1960s with the following decade leading to an era of consolidation.

10 1.1 The Early 1960s: Resonating Integration

The continuing southern resistance to desegregation and ignorance of the law by the white majority proved that courtroom decisions on equal opportunities in work, education and culture would not instantly improve lives of blacks. The starting point for legal desegregation as well as the Civil Rights Movement, Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, was to be soon overshadowed by direct, although still non-violent actions such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955/6, sit-ins of the early 1960s, demonstrations against discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and the same year March on Washington, D.C. Civil rights activists decided to confront the enemy in a direct but non-violent manner, pursuing integrationist goals. Out of the sit-in movement which enjoyed support among black college students in the South, the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) emerged in the Spring 1960.

Another crucial organization was the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

What Cornel West claims the most significant in student engagement is not only its very emergence but also underlying class conflict. He states that “the young black student movement was not simply a rejection of segregation in restaurants. It was also a revolt against the perceived complacency of the „old‟ black petite bourgeoisie” (25), which West identifies as composed of teachers and preachers primarily. The SNCC was important in that it “initiated a new style and outlook among black students in particular and the „new‟ black petite bourgeoisie in general” (West 25). It brought on the scene the working class youth which was to play an important role in the radicalization, following

Malcolm X‟s teaching.

In addition, the character of the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s was deeply affected by the 1961 Freedom Rides, the 1964 Freedom Summer and large-scale voter registration projects in Mississippi. One of the most significant events was the

11 1963 economic boycott by blacks in Birmingham, Alabama in demand of desegregation of public accommodation as well as hiring practices. The fundamentally nonviolent protest was for the first time accompanied by black violence in defense of the white police harassment of the peaceful demonstrators. This offensive was significant in the way it showed to the large public together with the Federal Government that blacks would not remain nonviolent forever.

1.2 The Mid-1960s: Change in Mood and Leadership

In the mid-1960s, the effectiveness of nonviolent protest began to be questioned and change in the nature of demands as well as tactics was required. In 1964 and 1965 rioting would become much more frequent and serious, and the number of black self- defense groups began to increase. Haines states:

That changing mood was closely related to the emergence of black

separatism as a replacement for the older integrationist philosophy within

the militant flank of the movement. And as separation was popularized

and publicized, racial integrationism became transformed into a hallmark

of moderation. Racial pride and the rejection of „white-ward mobility‟

emerged as symbols of black radicalism. (50)

This change in rhetoric was connected to the already mentioned geographical shift from the South to the urban centers of the North as hot spots of civil rights battles.

Even though northern blacks tended to approve of the goal of integration, they were naturally more concerned with economic issues. Civil rights and voting rights did not deliver a satisfying job, a decent place to stay, and a share in the surrounding affluence of white America. Resulting urban riots occurred in 1964. These riots, however, were less an expression of a guerrilla war, as believed by some leaders influenced by

Marxism, than a manifestation of what Kevern Verney identifies as the “hopelessness of

12 young urban blacks due to the economic deprivation of inner-city neighborhoods, long- term unemployment, and low standards of education” (63). Contrary to the popular attributions of the violence to rebellious teenagers, Verney argues that these riots were usually sparked by white police officers, inconsiderate to the problems of the community (63).

Underlying all these factors were the unfulfilled hopes raised by the Civil Rights

Movement and its legal successes. Blacks disappointed at the development outside courtrooms started to call for real action and change, accompanied by a change in leadership. Martin Luther King, Jr. was respected by a wide range of people and he was able to consolidate a powerful alliance of various organizations committed to the cause of black equality and integration. However, as West observes, “despite his immense talent, energy, and courage, it became clear that King lacked the organization and support to address concerns [of the urban ghetto dwellers]” (29).

It was a young Black Muslim preacher who was to become King‟s surrogate in terms of attraction and influence on the black masses: Malcolm X. His main appeal lay in the fact that, “[m]ore than any other black figure […], Malcolm X articulated the underlying, almost visceral, feelings and sensibilities of black urban America” (West

30). Komozi Woodard further summarizes Malcolm X‟s role and influence:

As the fire prophet of the Black Revolution, Malcolm X set the pace not

only for the younger generation of black activists, but for a generation of

intellectuals and artists as well. Malcolm X represents the path of the

grass roots to self-transformation and ethical reconstruction through the

power of black consciousness. For a generation of black American artists

and writers, Malcolm X‟s example inspired its faith in the potential of

black masses to make their own history. (50)

13 1.3 The Second Half of the 1960s: Black Power, Black Nationalism, and

Black Pride

As blacks accepted their difference from the white majority and became more aware as well as confident of their own distinct identity, they began to question assimilation. Lewis M. Killian argues that “as disillusionment with the results of ten years of militant assimilationism set in, voices appeared in the black community advocating pluralism as a goal to be sought, not an unfortunate condition to be accepted only so long as necessary” (119). Blacks started to dispute their integration into white

America as a goal to fight for and doubt that close alliances with white activists and supporters were worth maintaining. Additionally, blacks began to suspect the white- dominated power structure of not being open to change.

A catching ideology spread among the radical civil rights activists and ghetto- dwellers alike in the second half of the 1960s: Black Power. Even though a precise definition of the concept was never elaborated, Mark Newman identifies its origins to lay primarily with the experience of black SNCC and CORE workers, disappointed at years of patient organizing in extremely dangerous conditions in the rural South for little practical change, “the influence of ... Malcolm X upon them and black youth more generally, and an influx of black nationalists into SNCC and CORE in the mid-1960s”

(116). The slogan was first proclaimed during the Meredith March in June 1966 from

Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi by Stokely Carmichael, a charismatic leader of the SNCC. Later he tried to define it, however vaguely, in a book called Black

Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967). Newman summarizes the message of Carmichael‟s book:

[It] urged African Americans to unite by recognising their common

culture and history, and called for black self-determination and control of

14 community institutions. The authors argued that blacks should close

ranks, like white ethnic groups, and achieve bargaining power „in a

pluralistic society‟. (124)

The concept of Black Power resonated with a new wave of Black Nationalism which boosted black pride, consciousness and identity. It was not an unknown concept in the history of African-Americans – it had accompanied them since slavery.

Throughout history, the notion of Black Nationalism enjoyed several periods of prominence and subsequent decline, as times were more or less favorable to the rights of blacks. The 1960s was only another era of its popular attraction, which Woodard identifies in his comprehensive study of Black Nationalism to be closely tight to “the growth of the ghetto and the increased awareness of race that accompanied the migration from rural to urban areas” (31).

Werner Sollors additionally explains that there are various forms of Black

Nationalism:

The central element of any Black nationalism is the concept of a Black

nation, in which the oppression of Blacks as a minority would come to an

end. The first, most obvious, strategy toward such a goal would be a

literal, physical, escape. [...] The second strategy of Black nationalism

aims at a Black nation in America. (175-6)

Disregarding the utopian effort to establish an independent Republic of New Africa in the lower South, the most viable variant of the creation of a separate black nation is that within the larger American nation.

The notion of black cultural nationalism which aims at uniting blacks throughout the United States by sharing common values and making them a symbolically separate group was strongly advocated by the leaders of the black community in the 1960.

15 Woodard argues that the spread of black cultural nationalism at this time was a logical effect of the fact that “as blacks migrated to the North, they were definitely not assimilated into white America; instead, they developed a distinct national culture and consciousness by synthesizing various elements selected from their regional and provincial backgrounds” (33-4). The growing potency of cultural nationalism then seemed a natural outcome of the blacks‟ position in the society.

Mike Sell argues accordingly that blacks were in fact “forced” into the cultural solution – with no material control of land, blacks could in fact aspire to nationhood only in spirit: “Lacking real territory, they pursued an essentially idealist philosophy; however, this idealism was grounded in the concrete, temporary spaces of public performance” (63). It is therefore not by accident that the Black Arts Movement founded its politics on the validation and exploitation of performative modes of culture:

“for theater and performance can answer specific sociopolitical needs, particularly to a community that is economically depressed and politically advanced” (Sell 65).

The wide appeal of the radical rhetoric of the new civil rights leaders was reflected by a large number of followers as well as the reaction of the Government and the President, who in fear of the threatening violence answered the moderates‟ requirements and passed important laws (Economic Opportunity Act of 1964,

Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Fair Housing Act of 1968) and later created committees for their enforcement. Thus the radicals in fact achieved certain improvements, if not directly. Haines calls it the positive radical flank effects: “a greater level of responsiveness to the claims of moderates brought about by radical groups, either by making the former appear more „reasonable‟ or by creating crises which can be resolved by the lesser concessions required by moderates” (167).

16 The vagueness of the concept of Black Power was one of the reasons for its attractiveness and later also for its collapse. First, it was an advantage that each organization active in the Civil Rights Movement could interpret it their own way, therefore uniting a wide range of people under common cause. Later, however, disputes among the various organizations widened the gap between them. As Newman summarizes, “Black Power divided the national civil rights coalition, alienated white movement supporters, destroyed SNCC, decimated CORE, produced a range of competing visions, and fanned an already advanced white reaction against black demands for the substance of equality” (116). The Civil Rights Movement ceased its violent tendencies and reverted back to nonviolent ways by the end of the decade, enjoying “benign neglect” (Verney 86) in the 1970s. During the Nixon administration there was a loss of national attention due to other issues coming to prominence like the women‟s rights and the Vietnam War.

17 Chapter 2 – Drama

In accordance with the prevailing mood of the 1960s, both Baraka and Bullins wrote about blacks and for blacks primarily. Their works are confident about the fruitfulness and viability of the black life experience. Baraka is generally connected with short pieces engaged in political protest and even propaganda in which he insists on the necessity of destroying white culture in order to build black culture and consciousness. He also wrote longer plays with full-fledged plots, approaching a more conventional kind of drama. One of them is probably his best-known piece as well as the first one counted among protest plays: Dutchman (1964). It is often discussed together with The Slave (1964), a piece closely connected to it in terms of its investigative nature. The Slave is a play significant in the way it explores the consciousness of a black revolutionary and addresses some of the paradoxes inherent to the revolution.

These plays represent Baraka‟s stance before adopting an aggressive and anti- white position of Black Nationalism which is embodied in his later Experimental Death

Unit #1, Black Mass, or Madheart (all 1969). Nita N. Kumar recapitulates that by the end of the 1960s, Baraka “rejected the notion of the melting pot and claimed that, while other ethno-religious groups had no desire to integrate with each other, American blacks alone had been mesmerized by this ideal” (272). What he concluded was that “black nationalism … was the only viable course for blacks trying to forge their individual and collective identities” (Kumar 272). Inspected closely, Dutchman and The Slave signify

Baraka‟s artistic as well as political development by including elements of his later radicalism although in a weakened form.

Bullins typically pictures unpolished black characters who are often involved in drugs and misdemeanor. He shows them as worthy human beings able to find

18 justification in their lives while seeking their betterment relentlessly. Bullins‟s basic concern is with these people‟s values, aspirations and dreams. He probes and questions cliches, stereotypes, and romantic illusions to test what is of value in them. Bullins‟s plays Goin‟ a Buffalo (1968), In the Wine Time (1968), The Fabulous Miss Marie

(1971), and The Taking of Miss Janie (1975) are characteristic of his work.

We Righteous Bombers (1969) is a play considerably different from the rest of

Bullins‟s writing as far as its topic is concerned. It is his only full-length play treating racial revolution and its implications directly. The play explores the arguments of radical civil rights leaders of the 1960s and questions possible results of a rigorous implementation of their demands. I want to contribute to the debate of this work which is not as wide as that of other Bullins‟s plays, and contrast it with Baraka‟s protest plays.

Baraka in his plays almost exclusively intends to excite blacks to act decisively and to transform their lives and the society which oppresses them. He urges blacks to adopt an active role in fighting white oppression by offering them examples to follow, often exploiting violence in the plots of his plays. Helene Keyssar states:

The one characteristic common to [Baraka‟s] plays and those of many of

his contemporaries is that they emphasize a way of being in the world

that is particularly black, and this emphasis is meant to affect a black

audience. Baraka‟s own plays also persistently attack the class structure

and values of white America and warn blacks of the dangers of seduction

into the American middle class. (149)

Bullins often depicts scenes from the lives of blacks and explores the peculiarity of their life experience as it is formed by white America. Picturing the harmful effects white oppression has on blacks and showing the beautiful nature of the black self,

19 Bullins works toward a similar goal as Baraka. He aims at persuading blacks of their value and boosting confidence in their racial background. Bullins creates in his writing a black community building up a sense of a distinct world with values of its own.

As far as the impact on audience is concerned, Baraka and Bullins are both concerned with a black audience primarily, which is also the only authority to judge their plays. It is a change significant in its shift from the effort to please the supposedly race less (in fact white) audience to the intention to establish a black stage reality. The transformation started by Baraka is complete in Ed Bullins‟ work. Sanders observes:

Bullins‟ characters are no longer black figures in a white ground, nor are

they haunted by degrading stereotypes or by fears of judgment by an

ultimately hostile white audience. Rather, they are fully themselves and

fully a part of their dramatic landscape. Bullins‟ imaginative and artistic

assurance and the resulting black stage reality allow him to explore the

black experience with a freedom denied his predecessors. (18)

Correspondingly to the development in the society, Baraka and Bullins suggest that the acceptance of whites is not necessarily the goal which blacks should pursue unreservedly. Rather, what they see as a value on its own is the black culture and history in the United States, which is rich and powerful enough to satisfy the human need for recognition. Therefore their plays commonly show that blacks have an identity of their own which they should not trade for something as doubtful as integration into the white majority, which will never recognize them as a part of their world.

20 2.1 LeRoi Jones/Imamu Amiri Baraka

If there is anyone who can be described as the instigator of the new revolutionary black theater, an originating force in the development of new black thought and literature, it is LeRoi Jones (better known as Imamu Amiri Baraka). His progress in the arts and in his social and political thinking represents a movement from a liberal integrationist stance of his early days in the late 1950s to a militant black revolutionary attitude at the peak of his career in the 1960s to a position of a proponent of scientific socialism and an admirer of Mao Tse-Tung‟s writings in the 1970s.

Woodard comments on Baraka‟s intellectual development:

As the Father of the Black Arts Movement, Imamu Baraka‟s personal

yearning for identity, purpose, and direction captured the imagination of

a generation of African American readers because to varying degrees it

was experiencing similar tensions between feelings ranging from

spiritual ennui, personal malaise, and identity crisis to racial kinship,

black consciousness, and cultural regeneration. (51)

This development can be traced in his poetry, musical works, social essays, and fiction, although nowhere is it so clearly evident as in his dramatic works.

Imamu Amiri Baraka started his artistic career in the late 1950s as a beat poet.

Later he tended to a more dramatic means of expression. He describes the process in his autobiography:

Unconsciously at first, but then very openly, dramatic dialogue began to

appear in my poetry. [...] I began to be interested more directly in drama.

[...] I can see now that the dramatic form began to interest me because I

wanted to go „beyond‟ poetry. I wanted some kind of action literature,

and the most pretentious of all literary forms is drama, because there one

21 has to imitate life, to put characters upon a stage and pretend to actual

life. [...] It is an action form, plus it is a much more popular form than

poetry. It reaches more people and its most mass form today is of course

television and, secondarily, film. (“Autobiography” 275)

Functionalism does not affect only Baraka‟s preference of genres but also the very content of his writings. As Sollors notes, in Baraka‟s concept of a Black Aesthetic, i.e. the form of artistic expression seen as correcting the picture of African-Americans in mainstream (white) art, “the transmission of a message from a teaching Black author to a learning Black audience is the touchstone of literary achievement; other considerations are of secondary importance” (186).

In Baraka‟s view literature must not only be committed and supportive, it must be activist, or else it is of little value. As he himself wrote, “Black Theater has gotta raise the dead, and move the living. [...] A play should make one „Move. Get up. Or

Shoot.‟” (qtd. in Hudson 148) This has always been the purpose to which Baraka adjusted the style and content of his writing. For Baraka

Black theater has meant a kind of black drama that would accurately

convey the life of the black American community while teaching that

community how to struggle for its identity and potency in white America;

it has also meant the creation of black community theaters across the

nation to be the working centers and stages for those plays and other

black arts. (Keyssar 148)

Indeed in Baraka‟s drama the action of the plays is integral to the author‟s revolutionary activism. His early plays tend to concentrate on the exploration of social contradictions and individual incapability to act. This exploratory approach is later abandoned in favor of drama that emphasizes decisive and transforming action. “Yet on

22 the whole,” as Lloyd W. Brown argues, “it is reasonable to suggest that Baraka‟s own revolutionary aesthetic – the synthesis of political commitment and artistic design – is much closer to being realized in [his] early works than in his subsequent, more explicitly revolutionary plays” (136-7). Dutchman and The Slave then comprise both an indisputable artistic value as well as seeds of Baraka‟s more militant protest rhetoric.

2.1.1 Dutchman

Baraka‟s fame as a revolutionary writer is synonymous with the play Dutchman, first staged at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York on March 24, 1964. The play consists primarily of conversation between Clay, a twenty-year old black man, and

Lula, his white female counterpart who is about thirty years old. As such its course is moved on almost exclusively by means of language. What the one act play lacks in terms of action within most of its duration is made up in the last minutes when both of the characters present an emphatic and excited speech, after which Lula stabs Clay with a knife she carries in her bag. Thus she prevents him from further revealing his black self and from shattering his middle-class aspirations embedded in assimilationist efforts, and Clay dies on stage.

Dutchman represents Baraka‟s worldview as he held it half-way through his dramatic career and development as a critical and political thinker. Baraka of the first half of the 1960s is anti-assimilationist, exposing the evil of an effort to melt into something he considers corrupt and of trading one‟s personality for such a doubtful reward as the acceptance of whites. Nevertheless, Baraka in Dutchman does not yet condemn everyone white, nor does he urge the (black) audience to use physical violence in their struggle to break free from white oppression as he does in Four Black

Revolutionary Plays (1969). His main focus in Dutchman is on showing the viciousness of passive embracing of and conformity to outwardly imposed rules and values, and on

23 provoking blacks to act against these by making them realize their ferocity. As Kumar states, the enemy in the play “is not only the white person, who is easily identifiable, but the whiteness hidden in shades of blackness, where it can be more difficult to detect”

(273). At the same time, the play does not so much posit an authentic black self as explore the processes and modes of its misrepresentation.

Another indicator by which the distance Baraka covered on his way to politicized art can be judged is the fact that Dutchman recognizes two different elements in the audience – black and white. In later works Baraka would disregard white altogether, concentrating on teaching the black masses. However, as Keyssar notes, “the inclusion of blacks and whites in the world of Dutchman is not ... the „integrated‟ world of Lorraine Hansberry‟s A Raisin in the Sun” (151). Baraka acknowledges the encounter of the two worlds both onstage and in the audience, but he is aware of different responses to the action by each of them.

The title of the play has several connotations. First, it is the allusion to the legend of the Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship doomed to sail around the Cape of Good

Hope in South Africa forever. Second, it is the meaning of the idiom being in Dutch, which can be translated as being in trouble or disfavor; or going Dutch, a situation in which each participant pays his own way; or the slang expression beat the Dutch, which connotes surpassing anything. Likewise one of the characters is a new Dutchman, a

New Yorker. Last but not least, there is the allusion of the title to the Dutch man-of-war, a historical armed warship which happened to bring the first slaves to the Americas. As such, the play unsettles the audience from the very beginning, making the spectators unsure of what the very name means and what to expect.

The uncertainty raised by the title of the play hints at the nature of the plot as well as that of the characters, which is both realistic and allegorical. Henry C. Lacey

24 argues that “[the main characters] are simultaneously „real‟ persons and highly symbolic types” (74). Creating the understanding that Lula and Clay are real people who exist is crucial to the impact of the play. Our awareness of the fact that Lula is one of the people who ride the subway and is not only a representative of them is central to Baraka‟s strategy. It is important since “the playwright wishes to prohibit the audience from maintaining an intellectual distance from Lula and Clay” (Keyssar 152), and thus prevents the spectators from closing their eyes upon the consequences of Clay and

Lula‟s encounter.

The play opens with Clay sitting in what is meant to be an underground train,

“[d]im lights and darkness whistling by against the glass, […] giving the sense of speed” (Dutchman 1885). Moreover, as the play begins, “a loud scream of the actual train [is heard]” (Dutchman 1885). Only the seat Clay is sitting on is shown. Therefore a perception of a subway is created, but one stripped of the naturalistic details that would make it comfortingly familiar. There are no crowds of people to make this man anonymous, no movement of bodies to distract our attention from the movement of the train and from what is going on between Lula and Clay.

Clay holds a magazine in his hands but looks just beyond it and rather than reading he is watching his surroundings, until he notices a woman standing behind the window at a platform. They exchange smiles and the train continues on its way. Soon the woman, Lula, enters stage as another passenger on the train and sits next to Clay, starting a conversation with him. She is described as a tall, slender, beautiful woman with long red hair, wearing bright, skimpy summer clothes and sunglasses, which she pushes on her forehead from time to time. She is eating an apple “very daintily”

(Dutchman 1886). Clay is depicted as wearing a three-button suit and a tie, contrasting with Lula‟s provocative look.

25 The tension of the play does not originate as much from the characters on their own as from their coming together. When they appear on stage, Lula and Clay are at first common people and each of them alone, we are not particularly disturbed by the sight. They attract our interest when they come together. The sight of a white woman approaching a black man, eating an apple, is enough to make most spectators uneasy.

Because “apples,” as Keyssar states, “in the hands of a beautiful woman are too obvious a part of Christian mythology not to be at least vaguely associated with temptation, seduction, sin, and war” (154). We are to soon realize that this allusion is not far from the truth of the play.

It is Lula who takes the initiative and starts speaking to Clay. Before long we gain an impression that she knows a lot about him and start wondering whether she indeed meets Clay for the first time:

LULA: You look like you been trying to grow a beard. That‟s exactly

what you look like. You look like you live in New Jersey with your

parents and are trying to grow a beard. That‟s what. You look like you‟ve

been reading Chinese poetry and drinking lukewarm sugarless tea.

(Dutchman 1887)

Clay is embarrassed but also intrigued by what she says and later he inquires: “How‟d you know all that? Huh? Really, I mean about Jersey... and then the beard. I met you before?” (Dutchman 1887)

Later, when she even guesses what a friend of Clay‟s named Warren Enright looks like as well as the fact that there is a party at his place, which is also the destination of Clay‟s journey, Lula reinforces a feeling that she has met Clay or someone familiar with him before. She makes the spectators mediate together with Clay whether she knows him or if she simply guesses everything just by his appearance,

26 exchanging stereotypes for truth. To this she replies: “I just figured you would know somebody like [your friend Warren Enright] ... I told you I didn‟t know anything about you... you‟re a well-known type.” (Dutchman 1888-9) All this makes Clay obviously disturbed and discomforted. Lula‟s considerably daring and brazen remarks create the impression that she is the one in control of the situation, teasing Clay.

Looking at the dialogue more closely, nevertheless, shows that Clay never admits openly that what Lula says is actually true. He always answers her remarks in an ambiguous way, like his reply to Lula‟s comments about his growing a beard and living in New Jersey: “Really? I look like all that?” (Dutchman 1887) This may be a confirmation as well as a rejection to acknowledge that what she says is correct. The audience is then led to ponder about the truthfulness of Lula‟s judgments as well as to realize that her observations are based solely on racial stereotypes and on Clay‟s appearance, not on her knowledge of him as a person. Keyssar notes that as a result,

“the black spectator is here led to a quick identification with Clay as part of a community that is repeatedly stereotyped” (156).

For Baraka, stereotype is a powerful weapon white America uses to control its black citizens, helping to keep them in a subordinate position. In Dutchman he suggests that stereotyping is a particularly deceptive form of deceit because a stereotype has just enough valid characteristics to support its creators in their belief in its legitimacy. At the same time, it blinds them to the nature and motivations of those who are stereotyped.

“What makes the stereotype doubly dangerous for the black man is that he is tempted to hide behind it,” argues Sanders (142). Striping the stereotypes of their value is thus important not only for their elimination but also for blacks who may be tempted to hide behind them. In this sense, Baraka exposes the stereotypes to the eyes of blacks to make them realize their mistake in remaining bound by something they should at least try to

27 shatter. There is no one going to help blacks in doing this except for the blacks themselves – a fact which is at the core of Bullins‟s art as well.

As the subway roars on its journey, the exchanges between Clay and Lula continue to oscillate between sexual maneuverings and Lula‟s assaults on Clay‟s identity. The most notable among these gestures is Lula‟s offer of an apple to Clay, commenting that “[e]ating apples together is always the first step” (Dutchman 1888).

The association not only reminds the audience of the world of myth but also “makes us wonder if the pain and self-awareness that resulted from the eating of that first apple will recur in some form here” (Keyssar 158). The difference is that it is not Eden from which Lula wants to tempt Clay, but rather “she seeks to tempt him from behind the safe, assimilationist facade under which Baraka seems to feel Black people have sought refuge” (S. A. Williams 137). She challenges his self-portrait of an Ivy League graduate with middle-class aspirations while at the same time the spectators are going to realize that self-awareness is the last thing Lula wishes Clay to have. In fact she represents a mortal danger to his effort to formulate it.

Soon after the exchange about apples there comes the moment when we first learn something about Lula. She notes that “[her] hair is turning gray. A gray hair for each year and type [she‟s] come through. [...] But it‟s always gentle when it starts.

Hugged against tenements, day or night.” (Dutchman 1889) Suddenly we see an aging, worn woman, no longer the tough, controlling aggressor she appeared to be at the beginning of the play.

Her image of an omniscient and self-confident woman is further shattered by another word game she plays with Clay. She dares as far as trying to guess his name but she is not successful:

LULA: I bet your name is... something like... uh, Gerald or Walter. Huh?

28 CLAY: God, no.

LULA: Lloyd, Norman? One of those hopeless colored names creeping

out of New Jersey. Leonard? Gag...

CLAY: Like Warren?

LULA: Definitely. Just exactly like Warren. Or Everett.

CLAY: Gag...

LULA: Well, for sure, it‟s not Willie.

CLAY: It‟s Clay. (Dutchman 1889-90)

The audience is once again reminded that nothing can in fact be predicted solely on the basis of one‟s appearance.

Nevertheless, the very naming of the protagonists of the play is significant. Clay suggests someone who can be modeled – not only in the sense of someone embracing others‟ models but also in the sense of the first man (alluding to the myth of Adam and

Eve) who was created from this substance. Lula, then, is the woman made from the material of Clay (theatrically, she appears on the stage as the second figure). At the same time, she initially introduces herself to Clay as Lena the Hyena, making a connection to the animal living on dead flesh, suggesting she may be of greater danger than one is likely to imagine at first.

This way the spectators are being warned of Clay‟s death and Lula‟s predatory relationship to him. Baraka leads those who understand to see that the signals are there to be discerned. According to Keyssar, “an important element of the strategy of

Dutchman is thus an attempt to persuade both black and white spectators that the omens of the murderous relationship between black people and white people are all there before us” (159). What Baraka indicates is that if one does not perceive these signals it

29 is the fault of their vision, incapable of seeing through the very stereotypes the play condemns, not the absence of warning. Moreover, the signals continue to appear.

Dutchman represents an encounter of white and black America as they interact in everyday life. In these terms, another game Lula plays with Clay is significant. She wants him to repeat her exact words, alluding to the mainstream society which subdues individuals to conform in order to be accepted as its part. Repeating her lines, Clay subjugates to Lula‟s (and the white America‟s) dominance:

LULA: Now you say to me, „Lula, Lula why don‟t you go to this party

with me tonight?‟ It‟s your turn, and let those be your lines.

CLAY: Lula, why don‟t you go to this party with me tonight, Huh?

LULA: Say my name twice before you ask, and no huh‟s. (Dutchman

1890)

At the same moment she wants Clay to repeat her lines Lula appears to challenge Clay on his embracing the white culture:

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. A three-button suit. What right do you have to be wearing

a three-button suit and striped tie? Your grandfather was a slave, he

didn‟t go to Harvard. (Dutchman 1891)

Her comment implies that beneath his clothes, his educated manners and language, Clay remains “a black nigger” and, even more importantly, that she knows this but Clay does not. This is the very basis for her position of power. What Baraka suggests then is that as long as whites know better who blacks are than blacks themselves, the latter can never liberate from the white supremacy.

30 Lula further enhances the impression that white America will be always escaping from the grasp of the black man. From the very beginning of the play, she constantly denies her preceding lines, never letting Clay‟s remarks be recognized as correct: “I lie a lot. [Smiling.] It helps me control the world.” (Dutchman 1887) It is one of the forms of manipulation she, as well as the mainstream society, employs to make

Clay weakened in his confusion and uncertainty. By rejecting what she said in the past she changes the present, never admitting Clay to win her approval. Baraka warns against a blind effort to please an authority as doubtful and abstract as the “mainstream society” in order to receive its acceptance, since it will never be accessible to the black man.

The opening of Scene II is accompanied by entering of other figures to the stage.

The setting remains the same, but the presence of other passengers adds naturalism to it.

The effect on the audience is that the stance changes from that of a voyeur to a private scene to that of a witness to a more public and ordinary situation. The subway riders remind the audience of the social context of the world in which Clay and Lula live.

They later help Lula to “bury” Clay as her crew. It is important to note that the other passengers are both black and white. Sherley Anne Williams argues that “the Blacks, the Negroes, are what Lula has accused Clay of being, imitation white men with no traitorous awareness peeking from behind their various facades. The whites are the power structure of which Lula is so vocal an exponent.” (137) The passengers become participants in what happens between Lula and Clay by silently observing them.

Allegorically, they represent the society passively noticing racial tension but not trying to relieve it or prevent the emerging conflict.

At the beginning of Scene II, Lula and Clay are fantasizing about the party to which they would go together. There is a notable contrast between the way in which

31 Lula and Clay are now relating to each other and their exchanges in Scene I. Until the very end of Scene I, each was an opponent to the other in his or her various games.

Now, creating a game together, they seem to be one team. What is remarkable is that these are Lula‟s fantasies, not Clay‟s. Clay is a willing participant in the sexual experience they are talking about but it is Lula who creates the scene. As Keyssar notes,

“hers is a fantasy of conquest, of a superiority achieved through the defeat and humiliation of others” (165). Most threateningly to Clay, she sees herself determining his way and leading him on it. Lula‟s need to control is then another important signal the audience is offered as to the nature of her personality and the danger she presents to

Clay.

Progressively, the play becomes Lula‟s attacking Clay‟s personality and identity:

LULA: Clay! Clay! 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.

CLAY: Lula! Sit down, now. Be cool.

LULA: ... Be cool. Be cool. [...] That‟s all you know ... so full of white

man‟s words. Christ. God. Get up and scream at these people. [...] Clay,

you got to break out. Don‟t sit there dying the way they want you to die.

Get up. (Dutchman 1896)

As Sanders argues, Lula‟s savage attacks on Clay‟s bourgeois self-portrait contain elements of truth: “In assuming a bourgeois role, he assumes with it a history, culture, and despair that are not his.” (143) Adopting alien culture results in Clay‟s not being fully aware of the value of his own.

32 Lula continues her verbal attacks at Clay, using more racial epithets and attracting the attention of the other riders of the train. Clay loses his patience and answers her back in what are his best lines in the play, revealing his thoughts – to the audience and very likely also to himself – for the first time:

CLAY: You telling me what I ought to do. [...] Well, don‟t! Don‟t you

tell me anything! If I‟m a middle-class fake white man... let me be. And

let me be in the way I want. [...] 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. You don‟t ever know that. And I sit

here, in this buttoned-up suit, to keep myself from cutting all your

throats. [...] I mean if I murdered you, then other white people would

begin to understand me. (Dutchman 1897-8)

It is significant that Clay‟s violent response comes in words, not in physical action – it is not Lula‟s body but her arrogance which he attacks. Despite the sincerity of his speech, the spectators have little genuine evidence by which to judge the kind of man Clay is. Rather than making clear what he wants, Clay‟s words, Keyssar suggests,

“make it vivid that when black people begin to articulate their desires and move toward effecting them, they are threatened with the loss of the dignity that the American dream dangles as the prize of social mobility” (170). However, to succeed is not necessarily to achieve dignity, because it entails acceptance of external expressions of achievement and praise, often from sources whose sole grounds for respect are their positions of authority.

The rhetoric and diction of Clay‟s emphatic speech strongly suggest that it is his attempt to protest to the white world when he continues:

33 CLAY: And on that day, as sure as shit, when you [whites] really believe

you can „accept‟ them [blacks] into your fold, as half-white trustees late

of the subject peoples. With no more blues, except the very old ones, and

not a watermelon in sight, the great missionary heart will have

triumphed, and all 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.

(Dutchman 1898)

Clay‟s words are another indicator of Baraka‟s position at the time of writing

Dutchman. He encourages blacks to realize their own value and find pride in their racial background and history while he reminds whites that this process may not remain without pain and sacrifice forever. Yet Baraka does not command blacks directly to use violence as a primary means in the process.

Finally, it is Lula who resorts to physical violence when she stabs Clay in reaction to his speech toward the end of the play. Her murder of Clay is shocking but in retrospect, the spectators have been prepared for it. If they have ignored the signals then they have let their assumptions to prevent them from seeing what was before them.

Keyssar points out the differing response of white and black audience to the murder:

[It is] frightening or perhaps bitter for the black because it suggests that

he or she can never feel safe; frightening for the white because it reveals

his own unquestioned violence toward blacks and hints that armed with

this knowledge, black people will prepare themselves for effective

defense. (172)

Baraka prepares to embark on his journey to the black revolutionary fighting for liberation by any means necessary.

34 Lula proves by her vicious response to Clay‟s long-overdue self-assertion that the last thing she wants him to manifest is self-knowledge. At best, she wants him to exchange one role for a more thoroughly degrading one, that of the sexual object. By reversing the stereotype of the white-woman-raped-by-bestial-black, Baraka not only draws attention to its artificiality, but he also “emphasizes his principal assertion that the real perversion and animalism reside with the insensitive dominant culture” (Lacey

80). Letting Lula murder Clay, Baraka asserts his view that it is the white majority which becomes dangerous for anyone violating its standards in effort to self-definition.

S. A. Williams adds another dimension to the discussion by placing Clay “in a long line of fallen Black males who believed that the solution to their Negro problem was for Black people to be less Negro” (139). Clay as an heir to the tradition of assimilationism “differs from his forebears in the fact that he is brought to the realization that no matter how many nigger characteristic he drops, no matter how assimilated he becomes, he is still Black, he is still one of the subject people” (S. A.

Williams 139). He learns that despite all the demonstrations of status, the clothing and the education, he can still be commanded to drop back into his old role.

The play ends with a hint that this tragedy will be repeated – the stage directions instruct that after Clay‟s dead body is thrown out of the train, “very soon a YOUNG

NEGRO of about twenty comes into the coach, with a couple of books under his arm.

He sits a few seats in back of LULA. When he is seated she turns and gives a long slow look.” (Dutchman 1899) The ending underlines those elements of the play which make it the portrayal of a hopeless situation in which the Clays and Lulas of America are trapped. It is not, the ending suggests, a unique occurrence but a rule that Dutchman presents.

35 Dutchman indicates the direction Baraka‟s art would take: toward Clay‟s speech and “real” action. In his following play The Slave Baraka examines the logic of a revolution and the justification of the use of violence before setting on a journey to black liberation achieved by any means. In Dutchman and The Slave Baraka creates a world where partially heroic characters search for their true selves within an alien and hostile white world. “Clay and Walker [the protagonist of The Slave] are black men in transition,” Benston argues, “driven by a desire for freedom from the domination of an oppressive culture yet frustrated in their efforts because of a remaining allegiance to this destructive power.” (188) Although the action of The Slave emphasizes the desirability of radical change, it is actually more significant as an extended analysis of those attitudes which stimulate or retard the capacity for radical change.

2.1.2 The Slave

Premiering on December 16, 1964, The Slave: A Fable in a Prologue and Two

Acts was presented on a double-bill with other Baraka‟s play, The Toilet. The Slave opens with a prologue of Walker Vessels, coming out dressed as an old field slave. His musings lead directly into the play, wherein he becomes a black revolutionary who leaves battle to visit his former white wife Grace, their two daughters, and Grace‟s new white husband Brad Easley. Both of them are surprised to see Walker and their amazement gradually grows into utter disbelief when they realize he has come to claim the children. Before they reach any kind of solution to the situation Easley is shot to death by Walker and later Grace dies too, buried by a fallen beam after a bomb explosion near the house. Walker is the only one alive and the audience is left to wonder whether the children have survived as well. Walker hints at having killed them while waiting for Grace and Easley to come home, but at the very end of the play the stage directions instruct that “there is a child heard crying and screaming” (The Slave 825). It

36 is not clear whether it should be Walker‟s daughters or any other children crying in the uproar of racial war.

The Slave is most meaningfully interpreted as a companion piece to Dutchman.

Walker, like Clay, has been an aspiring black middle-class and well-educated man but he manages to “break loose” (Lacey 83). Unlike Clay, who chooses to subdue his rage and perpetuate the stereotype, Walker tries to escape from racial conventions and to reject the values of his oppressors. They are brothers but Walker has made a definite progress along the path to self-definition. Still, like Clay, Walker is presented as a character not yet fully developed. He is a man who must be brought to see the conflicting forces within his own tormented mind. Although Walker holds the gun during the long night in Easleys‟ home, it is the white couple who are on the attack.

Lacey notes that “on the one hand, he is the untiring seeker of self. On the other, he is the empty receptacle into which a thoroughly committed and revolutionary black consciousness must be poured.” (84) Finally, Clay and Walker are similar in that their attachments to the dominant culture are symbolized in their relationship to white women.

The Slave is less a depiction of actual revolution than an exploration of the consciousness of the black revolutionary. Despite the surrounding explosions it is not a play comprising much action. Spectators are presented with a debate over the kind of man Walker has become since he rejected his integrated life and the nature of the revolution he has instigated. Baraka investigates in this play not only the very values and meaning of racial revolution but also his own attitude to them. Sollors notes that

“The Slave argues the case for Black militancy, but ultimately denounces its fictive realization as an absurd, circular, and enslaving situation” (138). Walker is like Baraka

37 at that point in time: devoid of the illusion of the feasibility of assimilation but groping as to how blacks should achieve a respectable position in the society.

The exploratory nature of the play is indicated at its very beginning when

Walker, as the slave in the prologue, exclaims:

WALKER: … [I]deas are still in the world. They need judging. I mean,

they don‟t come in that singular or wild, that whatever they are, just

because they‟re beautiful and brilliant, just because they strike us full in

the center of the heart… My God! (softer) My God, just because they‟re

right… doesn‟t mean anything. (The Slave 813)

The play proceeds along suggested lines. The meaning of violent revolution in the name of race and possible consequences of overturning of the racial order are examined.

The discussion about the strategy and prospects of violent racial revolution constitutes one of the pillars of the play. It is Easley who openly challenges Walker on the goals of the revolution:

EASLEY: What can you change? What do you hope to change? Do you

think Negroes are better people than whites… that they can govern a

society better than whites? […] Will there be more love or beauty in the

world… more knowledge… because of it?

WALKER: Probably. […] But that‟s not the even the point. […] The

point is that you had your chance, darling, now these other folks have

theirs. (The Slave 821)

Easley, probably as well as most of the audience, does not believe this is an answer strong enough to hold out. Having a chance does not necessarily bring a change. To this charge Walker does not offer an answer any more plausible: “The complete ugly horseshit cruelty of it is that there doesn‟t have to be a change. It‟ll be up to individuals

38 on that side, just as it was supposed to be up to individuals on this side.” (The Slave

821) In this statement Walker does not denigrate the revolution but he acknowledges that a better world may not result. He is aware of the inadequacies of the revolution but he continues to fight in its name.

Another moment further illuminating Walker‟s reasoning is when he discusses with his ex-wife the grounds for her divorcing him. Instead of persuading her that his hatred of whites does not include her, Walker reveals that he does not understand the implications of his conviction, especially for those who are close to him:

WALKER: I guess you never did know what was going on. That‟s why

you left. You thought I betrayed you or something. […] I was preaching

hate the white man… get the white man off our backs… […] But those

things I said… and would say now, pushed you away from me. I couldn‟t

understand. […] We‟d been together a long time, before all that

happened. […] I knew you, if any white person in the world could, I

knew you would understand. And then you didn‟t.

GRACE: You stopped telling me everything!

WALKER: I never stopped telling you I loved you… or that you were

my wife! (The Slave 821)

This is not very persuasive for Grace neither for the audience and rather than explain,

Walker‟s arguments further blur the revolutionary logic.

The question of what it is that makes one stand out from the crowd is so disturbing that it is addressed repeatedly in the play. The issue appears together with the fact that it is not immaterial ideas fighting each other but concrete persons:

GRACE: You were preaching the murder of all white people. Walker, I

was, am, white. What do you think was going through my mind every

39 time you were at some rally or meeting whose sole purpose was to bring

about the destruction of white people?

WALKER: Oh, goddamn it, Grace, are you so stupid? You were my

wife… I loved you. You mean because I loved you and was married to

you… had had children by you, I wasn‟t supposed to say the things I felt.

I was crying out against three hundred years of oppression; not against

individuals.

EASLEY: But it‟s individuals who are dying.

WALKER: It was individuals who were doing the oppressing. It was

individuals who were being oppressed. (The Slave 821)

Ed Bullins addresses a similar question in his play We Righteous Bombers: what qualifies as the factor by which to exclude an individual from the masses? What exempts one person from a group of enemies? Is it age: children are innocent whereas adults are committed to a cause? No one, however, can predict what kind of person is raised from a child. Is it sex then? Men are considered bearers of thought but is it not women who mother the next generation? Many other criteria, such as love, could be named but neither Bullins nor Baraka offer definite answers. This is one of the most discomforting facts about the debate over revolution – especially over a revolution based on something as subtle as the color of skin. Since we are first of all humans it will always be difficult as well as precarious to find something according to which people could be divided. There are more things we have in common than those which make us different.

Walker appears throughout the play if not explicitly doubting then at least questioning the purpose of the revolution as well as his position in it. Still, Walker is willing to use violence and sacrifice others‟ lives to enforce something about which

40 plausibility he is not altogether persuaded. He is not able to give up his ideal neither is he able to convince himself about its righteousness. Thus he becomes a slave to his revolutionary ideas, unable to break free from them. Two souls dwell within his breast:

“Walker-the-rebel – isolated, tortured warrior – and Walker-the-slave – spectral embodiment of history, whose gnawing presence Walker Vessels cannot escape”

(Benston 174). Only by destroying one or the other possibility can Walker motivate himself to take a new stance in the process of self-definition. Even though Walker has had the strength of intellect and will to undertake a revolution, he seems not to be strong enough to persist and lead his revolutionary army toward a victorious end. The action of the play is essentially this combat of identities.

In spite of everything which was mentioned and of the killing he has instigated,

Walker is not devoid of love, at least not for his children:

WALKER: In spite of the fact that I, Walker Vessels, single-handedly,

and with no other adviser except my own ego, promoted a bloody

situation where white and black people are killing each other; despite the

fact that I know that this is at best a war that will only change, ha, the

complexion of the tyranny… (laughs sullenly) in spite of the fact that I

have killed for all times any creative impulse I will ever have by the

depravity of my murderous philosophies… despite the fact that I am

killed in my head each day and by now have no soul or heart or warmth,

even in my long killer fingers, despite the fact that I have no other thing

in the universe that I love or trust, but myself… […] despite the fact that

all my officers are ignorant motherfuckers who have never read any book

in their lives, despite the fact that I would rather argue politics, or

literature, or boxing, or anything, with you, dear Easley, with you…

41 (head slumps, weeping) despite all these things and in spite of all the

drunken noises I‟m making, despite… in spite of… I want those girls,

very, very much. (The Slave 819)

Discussing the fate of the daughters further, their parents come across a distressing question of their race. Walker uses it as one of the arguments for his taking them away with him and making them a part of the black community. He believes that his daughters will always be alien it the white society:

GRACE: Do you want those two babies to be with you when you‟re

killed so they can witness the death of a great man? So they can grow up

and write articles for a magazine sponsored by Walker Vessels Society?

WALKER: Which is still better than being freakish mulattoes in a world

where your father is some evil black thing you can‟t remember. (The

Slave 820)

Walker also argues that the girls will always be considered black: “I mean, after all, only you [Grace] and your husband there are white in this house. Those two lovely little girls upstairs are niggers. You know, circa 1800, one drop makes you whole?” (The

Slave 816) These observations, no matter how truthful they are, would not present a problem should the revolution be successful and white rule overthrown. What Walker admits by arguing about his daughters‟ race is in fact his being skeptical about any improvements brought about by the black rule he is fighting for.

Grace asks Walker not only about the reason but also about the timing of his visit and claim to their children. After not being interested in their upbringing for several years he suddenly comes to lead them away. Walker retorts impatiently that

“I‟ve loved them all their lives. [but] Before this there was too much to do, so I left them with you.” (The Slave 818) At this point Walker as well formulates most bluntly

42 that in fact he is not convinced about the success of the revolution. He expresses his doubts clearly when he remarks:

WALKER: Look, I was going to wait until the fighting was over…

(reflective) until we had won, before I took [the girls]. But something

occurred to me for the first time, last night. It was the idea that we might

not win. […] I‟d sort‟ve taken it for granted… as a solved problem, that

the fighting was the most academic of our problems, and that the real

work would come necessarily after the fighting was done. But… (The

Slave 820)

This does not suggest that either Walker or Baraka are prepared to abandon their militant stance and re-embrace a moderate and possibly integrationist viewpoint. No longer keen on assimilation but not yet completely belonging to those “ignorant motherfuckers who have never read a book in their lives,” Walker is indeed representative of his creator at this stage of his career. He is trapped in his doubts of revolution, unable to either dispel them or abandon his present stance. Lacey argues that:

Baraka, despite his revolutionary fervor at this point, distinctly suggests

that [being a slave to one‟s mission of hate] is as much cause for weeping

as rejoicing. […] Because [Walker] must work for the success of a

revolution that will, in his words, „only change … the complexion of

tyranny,‟ he ends up locked in hatred tantamount to that which marred

the old order. (90)

Despite persistent talk of violence and revolution, Walker‟s rebellion lacks any social vision. “Instead of developing a political concept of Black liberation,” Sollors notes, “Vessels merely follows the impulses of his own love-hate emotions. […] This

43 flaw reduces Vessels‟ political potential to a nihilistic form of action-for-action‟s sake.”

(136) Even though Walker has no hopeful vision for a revolutionary future, he is fully aware of the mistakes of the present time. As an intellectual, he sees the flaws of the current situation and tries to improve it. At the same time he is aware of the impossibility of drawing clear cut boundaries between good and evil and of the inadequacies of the revolutionary solutions, thus not able to embrace them unquestioningly. Still, more likely than abandoning their mission, both Baraka and his protagonists are to appear as strong leaders of revolutionary nationalism in later Four

Black Revolutionary Plays.

The liberal education of all the characters in The Slave cannot be concealed – remarks about literature and poetry appear throughout the play. This targets the audience as middle-class liberal and educated – not truly the black masses Baraka would later claim his desired audience which he wanted to teach black consciousness.

At the very beginning of the play Easley and Walker refer to the world of poetry and later Walker quotes Yeats to be recognized by Easley – and presumably by the audience. Baraka can afford to include such references since “the majority of his readers,” Theodore R. Hudson notes, “are the white intellectuals, the black college students, and the relatively small „ingroup‟ of black cultural nationalists and other Afro-

Americans not identified as being a part of the bulk of the black masses” (182).

In spite of the fact that Easley is a former teacher of both Walker and Grace therefore they all share the same education, Easley denounces early in the play Walker‟s former artistic expression as well as his current doings and thinking:

EASLEY: Can you understand that anything and everything you do is

stupid, filthy, or meaningless! Your inept formless poetry. Hah. Poetry?

A flashy doggerel for inducing all those unfortunate troops of yours to

44 spill their blood in your behalf. But I guess that‟s something! Ritual

drama, we used to call it at the university. The poetry of ritual drama.

[…]

WALKER: Ritual drama… (half musing) yeah, I remember seeing that

phrase in an old review by one of your queer academic friends… (The

Slave 816)

Easley alludes to it even in his last words: [after being shot by Walker and dying]

“Ritual drama. Like I said, ritual drama…” (The Slave 823) Other comments on the world of theater appear earlier in the play when Walker is remembering the time before the failure of his marriage to Grace: “I was Othello… Grace there was Desdemona… and you [Easley] were Iago…” (The Slave 817)

The power of language works in two directions in this play. First, Walker imitates the Irish accent (“affecting an imprecise „Irish‟” – p. 816), Indian (“dancing around and whooping like an „Indian‟” – p. 817), and Japanese (“speaking in pidgin

„Japanese‟” – p. 817) therefore including these groups in the oppression instigated by white society in America. Language, however, also functions as an estranging factor.

Being imposed on its users, it makes them conform to its rules and does not allow them to express what they wish. Walker is aware of that when he says: “I swear to you,

Grace, I did come into the world pointed in the right direction. Oh, shit, I learned so many words for what I‟ve wanted to say. They all come down on me at once. But almost none of them are mine.” (The Slave 816) As Kimberly Benston notes, “in order to achieve complete revolutionary independence, there must be developed new ideas and new linguistic forms for their organization” (187). Otherwise, language remains another factor enslaving its users.

45 After moving back to Newark, New Jersey in 1965, Baraka began to abandon his white audience and to establish a continuing conversation with black people. As

Benston observes, “[his] goal was to communicate with and to educate his people, to unite them in one celebration and ideal of unity” (209). Baraka himself acknowledges:

What „fame‟ Dutchman brought me and raised up in me was this

absolutely authentic and heartfelt desire to speak what should be spoken

for all of us. I knew the bullshit of my own life, its twists and flip-outs,

yet I felt, now, some heavy responsibility. If these bastards were going to

raise me up, for any reason, then they would pay for it! I would pay these

motherfuckers back in kind, because even if I wasn‟t strong enough to

act, I would become strong enough to SPEAK what had to be said, for all

of us, for black people, yes, particularly for black people, because they

were the root and origin of my conviction, but for anyone anywhere who

wanted Justice! (“Autobiography” 278)

Accordingly, the emphasis of his plays has begun to shift from exploration of the problem to realization of the solution.

46 2.2 Ed Bullins

While Baraka engaged in the theater of symbol and allegory, Bullins chose early in his dramatic career what is usually termed “theatre of reality” (Sanders 177) – a relentless exploration of inner forces that constrain black people from realizing their freedom and potential. In directing his attention to this concern, Bullins assumes what

Baraka chooses to explicate, that racist America has formed and deformed aspects of the black experience and consciousness. The constraints that interest Bullins most reside within his characters. In the majority of his plays he focuses on these internalized restraints which prevent blacks from escaping societal conventions and stereotypes in order to reject their subordinate position. Bullins builds on the work of his predecessors while he pursues his central theme, which he examines from a social perspective rather than a political point of view.

Bullins‟s plays assume a black stage reality and a black audience. The matters he takes up are often intimate, sensitive, and particular to the black experience. As Sanders notes, “whites in the audience of a Bullins play are „interlopers‟; they are generally ignored, not threatened” (176). His plays represent the peak of quality of black theater not only in the 1960s. Certain aspects of Bullins‟s technique especially reveal the imaginative assurance on which the black stage reality is based: the way he employs some of his characters in more than one play and his use of music and street language.

This builds up a sense of a black world beyond the limits of any particular play. Bullins delights in black street argot and reveals its lyricism while keeping its harshness and profanity unchanged. Equally a part of the atmosphere of his work is black music – jazz, blues, and rhythm-and-blues. Music frequently provides the background for his characters‟ activities.

47 Bullins never engaged in Protest Theater as intensively as Baraka, even though he as well wrote several short pieces which could be categorized as protest plays (i.e.

How Do You Do, 1968; The Gentleman Caller, 1970; It Bees Dat Way, 1972).

Generally he believes that protest plays fail to analyze and indict racial discrimination.

Their authors become so engulfed in and depressed by their own social predicaments that they lose control of the necessary artistic distance. Bullins is afraid that

[S]uch losses often led playwrights to create false plots and characters

that in no way represented people‟s daily lives as they were. This

encouraged the selecting, polishing, and idealizing of characters so as to

present good faces and arguments to white people. (Hay, “Ed Bullins”

32)

Bullins‟s need to be different caused him to reject these models, all of which simultaneously analyze and indict racism while calmly promoting racial harmony. “The best way of bringing about harmony,” Bullins believes, “is to get people upset by making them look at racism in totally new ways” (Hay, “Ed Bullins” 33).

Bullins‟s usual approach to stage revolution differed markedly from fellow artists. For Bullins, plays describing the revolution were objects of concern in themselves, and typically his plays examine the implications of both revolutionary rhetoric and use of physical violence. Unlike his companions, Bullins sought not to convert blacks to the belief in the revolution but to assume and test the revolutionary rhetoric. In short, from the very outset of his dramatic career, “Bullins was the only black playwright of the 1960s to question what was becoming a dramatic and imaginative cliche” (Sanders 187).

Nowhere is it more perceptible than in his only full-length play highlighting the revolution, We Righteous Bombers (1969). Bullins produced and published the play

48 under the pseudonym Kingsley B. Bass, Jr., allegedly “a twenty-four-year-old black man murdered by Detroit police during the uprising” (Sanders 189). Hay notes that

“Bullins asked that his name not be used on this work because he knew that there would be political and theatrical repercussions” (“Ed Bullins” 102). The production of the play occasioned a symposium where “it was revealed that Bullins, not the fictional Bass, wrote the play” (Smethurst 72).

2.2.1 We Righteous Bombers

We Righteous Bombers, according to Sanders, is “a thinly disguised version of

Albert Camus‟s The Just Assassins” (189). Critics like Mance Williams, who disregards the play as only an inapt adaptation of Camus‟s work, blame its author of misunderstanding Camus‟s intentions. Camus was, in Mance Williams‟s opinion, exploring the philosophical idea that there are limitations to action and questioning the right of revolutionaries and terrorists to take justice into their own hands and kill in the name of an idea. Bullins, on the other hand, “is trying to stretch the theme so that the contradiction, instead of being a moral dilemma, is one that warrants senseless brutality” (M. Williams 119). Mance Williams dismisses We Righteous Bombers as, more than anything else, “paranoid and fatalistic” (119).

Nevertheless, Bullins‟s biographer Samuel A. Hay defends the author. He admits that “Bombers was the „first literary hoax‟ not only in the Black Arts Movement but also in twentieth-century theatre history” (“Ed Bullins” 103), and he agrees that plagiarism is serious. At the same time, however, Hay insists that “Bullins‟s „hoax‟, interestingly enough, is better than Camus‟s original – notwithstanding the latter‟s intelligent theme that justice is all that matters in life. [...] More importantly, Bullins makes the play his own through substantive changes in the plot.” (“Ed Bullins” 103)

49 While Camus established a realistic setting and linear time frame, Bullins creates an open playing space with only a jail cell in the center and a fluid time frame. Lights, sound, and images projected on screens are employed. Most importantly, Bullins reordered the sequence of the play and added a twist to the plot that reveals his additional intent. Thus Sanders believes:

Not only does [Bullins‟s play], through Camus‟ text, comprehensively

raise the ethical issues that must be confronted if the new society

emerging after the revolution is to approach those ideals in whose name

it has been won, but, further, it suggests that the black revolution

envisioned on American soil most likely will result in even greater

repression of blacks than they previously experienced. (190-1)

The play mediates on the meaning of taking other person‟s life for ideological reasons, even in the name of justice. More importantly, blacks engaged in the revolution depicted in the play regularly succeed in executing more blacks than whites who are meant to be the original target. For Bullins, then, whenever blacks talk of killing other blacks or actually kill them for any reason, only the oppressor is served. Other important issues raised in We Righteous Bombers are similar to those treated in

Baraka‟s plays discussed earlier: what is the criterion by which one could be excluded from the group of enemy, and whether the revolution can be confidently promoted even after all the paradoxes it implies are honestly considered.

We Righteous Bombers is set in the future, in a time of apartheid and a complete dictatorship which has existed since black revolutionary activity intensified in America.

It portrays the conflicts of a group of black terrorists who assassinate in a bomb attack the Grand Prefect, ruler over a black community. The first attempt fails because Murray

Jackson who is entrusted with the mission spots the prefect‟s children sitting with him

50 in the car and does not wish to harm them. He is successful the second time, when he finds the prefect alone, and is immediately imprisoned and sentenced to death.

However, Jackson later discovers that the Grand Prefect he killed was a double, as well as others assassinated. In prison, Jackson meets a fellow prisoner who also acts as the executioner, his sentence reduced by a year for every execution. The chief of secret police (who reveals to be the actual Grand Prefect) subsequently forces Jackson to submit and replace the inmate executioner to save his accomplices. In the scene closing

Jackson‟s execution is Jackson executing his predecessor.

The audience is thrown in the middle of a revolutionary uproar when the play opens with a cacophony of urban noises, human screams, moans, dogs barking and music. The effect of rapid acceleration increases through sounds, lights and screen projections, Bullins‟s favored method for creating an atmosphere as well as the setting itself. Lighting effects occur on the several screens arranged around and on the stage.

Swirling together in abstract shapes and patterns projected as fuzzy images upon the screens suggest crowd activity – rioting, disorder, images of fences, walls, closed gates, pictures of bomb craters, gutted buildings, weed choked railroad tracks, and visualizations of social and political chaos.

Abruptly a voice begins to speak over the loudspeaker. It is a “blackman,” shown on a screen and “speaking in the voice of a whiteman” (Bombers 23). He presents news of the day, giving the spectators the context of the play. His speech situates the action in the future, in a time of a heightened racial war – the government‟s policy is that black and white do not mix. Americans are divided into white and exclusively black areas (called Military Pacification Areas) which are surrounded by electrified barbed wire and policed by combat veterans, white police and military detachments and dogs. From those living there, some blacks are loyal to the

51 government, creating the mercenary combat units. Others are black revolutionaries, trying to throw off the government in guerrilla warfare, sniper tactics and planting bombs. However, according to the account given by the announcer, many more blacks are dying in the war than whites (Bombers 23).

It is an era of official apartheid and martial law. As the announcers says, “in these times of crisis it is vital that all citizens understand that the negroes must lose their civil and constitutional rights, so not to give aid and comfort to the Black terrorists and rebels that seek comfort in their midst” (Bombers 24). As soon as all black revolutionaries are captured and destroyed, the government will be handed back to the free peoples of America and free elections will be reinstated. Bullins takes a Booker T.

Washington argument, urging blacks to cast down their bucket and give up their voting right in exchange for economic opportunities. What Bullins depicts and advises against is nothing less than what W. E. B. DuBois was afraid of, blacks confined to ghettos with no rights or economic advantages as a result.

When the lights rise on the stage, the voice of the announcer is drowned by that of a prison guard and the dim shape of Murray Jackson sitting in his cell. He is not the only prisoner but there are also other less distinguishable shapes moving and making sounds around him. One of them is Bonnie Brown who stands out from the shadows and introduces herself as our companion for the evening, “as we go through some Black

Revolutionary changes” (Bombers 25). Similarly, Elton “L” Cleveland steps from the shadows and asserts himself as one of the “righteous Blackmen, Righteous bombers, who do not fear death” (Bombers 25). Accompanied by occasional shouts from the guards, the rest of the revolutionary group introduce themselves as well: Sissie

Williams, Harrison Banes, and Kenneth Burk. Together, they repeat their revolutionary oath, ranking themselves among the black revolutionary nationalists and Muslims: “We

52 Righteous Bombers... Righteous in the Grace of the Supreme Black Spirit, Oneness,

Allah, We do his bidding so as to liberate BLACK PEOPLES of the Conscious

Universe, of this planet, Earth... by any means necessary” (Bombers 26).

Harrison establishes himself as a harsh and strong-minded revolutionary, a radical among radicals, when he utters for the first time what he later repeats: “For me hatred is not a game ... we haven‟t joined together to admire each other‟s blackness...

But to bring our people freedom, justice and self-determination. We have joined together to get something done.” (Bombers 27) In this light, Kenneth Burk appears as his counterpart when he admits that “I‟m just not made for this. I‟m not a terrorist. [...]

It‟s easy to attend meetings, work out plans, and then pass orders for the carrying out of those orders. You risk your life, of course, [...] but there‟s a sort of shield between you and the... blood and flesh.” (Bombers 27-8) Via Kenneth‟s figure Bullins exposes the nature of some of the revolutionaries who fight for black liberation only by uttering empty threats. Bonnie, on the other hand, asks to be given the next bomb to prove her ability to act.

The revolutionaries‟ remarks are uttered in the presence of the prison guard but not directly in the prison. This way Bullins constantly changes the setting throughout the whole play. Scenes from the prison, which constitute the current time of the play and future for the audience, are interwoven with those from the past and other places.

The setting changes only thanks to lighting effects and to the fact whether the characters stand in front of or behind the iron grate – in or out of Jackson‟s prison cell which is open on the sides and therefore can be easily entered and exited.

By situating the action of an imagined future, Bullins allows the characters to speak about the audience‟s present as they recall the past. Thus they enjoy a seeming historic distance and offer the audience a detached point of view mixed with a

53 considerable amount of irony. The temporal detachment of the characters is a very powerful device which permits Bullins to comment on possible consequences of the racial battle started in the second half of the 1960s without directly engaging in the politicized debate. As Hay argues, “the play demands that black revolutionaries take a hard look at themselves and their activities. That look would make them see how much of a joke many of their beliefs and leaders had become.” (“Ed Bullins” 101)

One of the opportunities for such reflection is the revolutionary characters‟ recalling the 1960s upon which they become almost nostalgic. Harrison, the revolutionary veteran, remembers that “I was just a kid back in the sixties when the riots... [...] You know I meant to say the revolution. [...] I was only a kid... when the revolution began for real back in the mid-sixties.” (Bombers 33) Later he even makes allusions to his/Bullins‟s contemporaries when he remarks:

HARRISON: Each summer the intensity of the revolution picked up

[after Watts]. [...] And the power structure became frightened for they

were fighting a foreign war in Vietnam then... And first there was the

silencing of the artists, the Black artists [like brother LeRoi and

Malcolm] ... And then the leaders were systematically tracked down

and... and... [exterminated]. (Bombers 33)

What may seem absurd at first is in fact nothing else than Bullins considering arguments of the revolutionaries of the 1960s, examining their radical rhetoric and depicting possible reactions to them. Harrison, Cleveland, and Bonnie are those who formulate the repercussions for the black community: “the military pacified the entire nation; Blacks were physically separated from whites by walls and fences; American apartheid became official government policy; Black purges were instituted and the

Black concentration camps were activated.” (Bombers 34) Additionally, by assigning

54 loyal blacks to govern every black community, “negroes were appointed to carry out the slavemaster‟s will” (Bombers 35).

Interestingly enough, their speech is accompanied by pictures of various

Hollywood negro comedians being projected on the screens: Rochester, Stepin Fetchit,

Man Tan Morland, Kingfish, Pig Meat Markham, Hattie McDaniels, etc. (Bombers 35)

Bullins implies that black communities of the late 1960s are not governed by prefects but by mass cultural icons instead, supporting white notions and racial stereotypes and biding blacks to conform to them by trying to be similar to their idols. Put differently, blacks‟ conception of the world is governed by “negroes who are more white than the whitest whiteman, negroes who grind the blood, marrow and juices from the Black people to feed the vampire whiteman” (Bombers 35).

When the revolutionary characters disappear in the dark and Jackson is left alone on the stage, in the prison setting, the guard enters, followed by a prisoner carrying a mop and bucket. Foster, the prisoner, begins to wash the floor. At first he takes no notice of Jackson but then they start talking. For the audience it is the first chance to find out what Jackson is convicted of. It is a murder of the Grand Prefect, the loyal black head of the black community in Harlem, instated by the federal military law to govern by white man‟s law. The Grand Prefect was seen by the revolutionaries as an

“Uncle Tom nigger” (Bombers 32) and a dangerous symbol of black compliance with the white order and values which needed to be destroyed.

Foster continues to clean the cell while questioning Jackson as to the reasons why he had killed the prefect, which Foster seems not to be able to grasp. The only motive he is able to identify behind Jackson‟s deed is a woman: maybe the prefect‟s daughter or niece. Jackson‟s answers are of a black revolutionary; he had to kill the prefect yet his answer is not understandable to Foster, who thereby articulates the

55 opinion of the older generation of moderate blacks, and possibly of the mainstream black society: “What kinda bullshit is dat? [...] All you had to do was be cool, little sucker, and you would have had it made. The world is okay for you boys who got some education... you could‟a been an administrator... or sumpten‟... in civil service... with a good lifetime job.” (Bombers 36) Working for the white man all his life and being in the pay of the white power structure is in Jackson‟s opinion something made for old uncles like Foster and something he strongly rejects.

Jackson is very idealistic about the future he fights for, future Foster ridicules as dreams: “A day will come when ... no Blackman will feel ashamed for being Black... or being anything but what he is... We will all be brothers and freedom, justice and self- determination will make our souls glow.” (Bombers 37) Later, Jackson even links himself with Allah as well as his African ancestors, but it is still not enough to persuade

Foster: “Sounds crazy to me, and you got yourself put in prison for stuff like that. [...]

Now what‟s done to people who kill prefects, grand or not?” (Bombers 38) The answer is that they are hanged – a price neither Foster nor most of the audience are willing to pay.

What Bullins proposes is not that blacks should do what Foster recommends.

Rather, he wants people not only to do something but also to make intelligent choices about what they do. According to Hay, Bullins does not aim “to denigrate revolutionaries ... but to stick a mirror in front of them and other spectators both in order for each to compare their professed and practiced beliefs and activities” (“Ed Bullins”

105).

Furthermore, in Foster‟s speech Bullins addresses another painful dilemma of racial revolution – what is the role of the majority which does not become radical? In other words, what gives the radical minority the legitimacy to kill, to disregard the

56 prevailing stance of the community? The moderate majority of the black community may be willing to talk about greater achievements which are desirable but this does not mean they agree with killing in their name. Foster puts it in plain words: “It‟s okay talkin‟ like we‟ve been doin‟ just to pass the time – but if you‟re goin‟ to be hung, and, no, it ain‟t right, it ain‟t playin‟ fair, as I see it” (Bombers 38).

At this point Jackson finds out that it is Foster who is the hangman – further aligning himself with the moderate black majority which eventually becomes the judge and the executor of the rebels. Foster therefore proves the sad truth that the white dominated society will ultimately find ways to commit the moderates of the black community to the status quo and keep them in their place within the long-established power structure. Whites may offer to make certain concessions but they will never comply with all demands of the radicals – which Haines identifies in the introduction as the positive radical flank effect. Bullins does not connote, however, that change is impossible, but he discourages the use of violence and radicalism.

Foster admits that although he is a prisoner like Jackson, he is the hangman, a black killing other blacks, because he gets a “year knocked off [his] sentence for every man [he] hang[s]” (Bombers 39). He is willing to sacrifice his conscience, substituting committing murders of his brothers for carrying out orders. Pragmatically, Foster comments on his situation that “somebody‟s else‟s life ain‟t worth nothin‟ to me... I just am able to cash it in for a year‟s worth” (Bombers 39). Upon hearing this, Jackson shrinks away from Foster, but immediately the spectators are confronted with a retrospect image of Harrison and Cleveland. Speaking in a cold and matter-of-fact manner, racing over whose hand is the steadiest and experience more profound,

Harrison, Cleveland and Jackson are competing for the bomb. They forget that together with the Grand Prefect‟s life they condemn also others of black people who will

57 accidentally find themselves on the spot – committing the same kind of killing Foster does.

In the beginning of the second act, the prison cell is visible again with Jackson alert and Smith entering. This is his first visitor in seven days minus Foster. He is black and described as “spick and span” (Bombers 45) and clearly he is very eloquent. From the first moment we have the impression that Smith, in spite of his ordinary name, is someone of power and prestige. This is soon confirmed by the fact that Smith knows that Foster, despite his agreement, is not going to be released after he hangs Jackson.

Smith tells Jackson that, quite the contrary, “[Foster]‟ll be our new executioner‟s first client” (Bombers 46). It must be this way since “his old head carries too many secrets...

[and] knowledge is dangerous” (Bombers 46).

Eventually, we learn that Smith is the Chief of Security – something which may be striking considering the power such a post entails in a white-governed society.

Nonetheless, Jackson finds only words of contempt for Smith whom he calls a “flunky murderer for the whiteman” (Bombers 47). Smith answers in a slightly surprising way thus summarizing the revolutionary cycle and possibly describing his own fate: “one begins by wanting justice – and one ends by setting up a security force...” (Bombers 48)

He now enjoys such a power that it is possible for him to offer Jackson a pardon, giving him a chance for his life, which Jackson rejects: “I‟m ready to pay the price of what I‟ve done” (Bombers 49). That would be too easy, unlikely as it may seem when one is talking about dying. Jackson will not be executed but he is to carry the burden of his deed, unable to escape by death.

Smith poses himself as someone who is not hostile to the values of the revolution when he tells Jackson that “I am not your enemy. I won‟t even say that your ideas are wrong. Except when they lead to murder.” (Bombers 49) This is something

58 Jackson refuses. In his opinion, he is a prisoner of war, not a person accused of murder.

He states that “I threw the bomb at your tyranny, not at a man” (Bombers 50), making

Smith answer: “Perhaps, but a man got in the way” (Bombers 50). Bullins asks the audience to consider what their attitude is to a violent revolution. Is killing in the name of an idea, however noble and refined, excusable with one‟s sight cast upon the result?

Or does a murder remain a murder, circumstances disregarding? Smith summarizes it:

SMITH: If you persist in talking about a „verdict‟ and asserting that it

was the organization, and the organization alone that tried and executed

the victim – that, in short, the Grand Prefect was killed not by a bomb but

by an idea – well, in that case, you don‟t need a pardon. Say, suppose,

however, we get down to brass tacks; suppose we say that it was you,

Murray Jackson, who blew the Grand Prefect‟s head to bits – that puts a

rather different complexion on the matter, doesn‟t it? (Bombers 50)

Since Jackson does not recognize Smith and the power structure he represents to be an authority, he still refuses Smith‟s words: “I don‟t recognize your right or the right of your masters to sit in judgment of me. [...] You are hoping to make me feel ashamed of myself, burst into tears, repent of what you call my crime. Well, you won‟t get anywhere.” (Bombers 50-1) The audience is tempted to agree with Jackson and contend that an authority which is oppressive to a considerable part of the society it is to rule, loses legitimacy and becomes prone to be disregarded. Nevertheless, Bullins reminds the audience that justice and humanity are above any notions of authority. They represent principles which should be respected in any case. Realizing it, the spectators can do nothing else than agree with Smith who remarks: “Murder isn‟t just an idea; it is something that takes place” (Bombers 51).

59 Smith and Jackson‟s conversation is significant for the understanding of the play in one more sense: it is revealed that Smith, besides functioning as the Chief of

Security, is also the Grand Prefect. Images of Smith are then projected on the screens, showing him wearing different official headgear – policeman‟s cap, government official‟s homburg, and bareheaded with changing eye glasses and without them – suggesting not only that the “right” man has not been killed but more sadly that even if he has, a line of others would follow and take over his place.

The man who has been killed during Jackson‟s second attempt was in fact a double, as well as the children, who previously stopped Jackson from throwing the first bomb. Smith remarks sarcastically that “[the children‟s] parents were able to afford a second car and live in New Jersey from the money they make by hiring their babies out...” (Bombers 53) Apart from the cruelty connoted by hiring out children, the author exposes the fact that the parents “know that not even one of those dreadful Black

Revolutionaries would even touch a kink of their little pickaninnies‟ naps” (Bombers

53). Bullins comments ironically on the humane nature of the revolutionaries who may not be as tough as they like to appear.

The first unsuccessful attack was an impulse for a lively debate among the revolutionaries, none of whom would have difficulties killing an adult but as far as children are concerned their opinions differ. The women see children as a life that could have sprung from them, therefore not able to kill. Burk, however, objects that the Grand

Prefect and his woman were once children too, but Bonnie is only able to retort unconvincingly: “Don‟t confuse things, Brother” (Bombers 55). Making matters more complicated, they all agree that they would be willing to kill a white child but a black one elicits doubts. The question remains then whether children are really so innocent? Is age the right criterion for judging who the enemy is and who is not? Is it the color of

60 one‟s skin? Bullins stirs serious doubts in the audience by openly addressing these painful questions which the revolutionaries often try to evade.

It is the Grand Madame Prefect, the late prefect‟s wife, who offers a more detailed account of the children‟s character when she visits Jackson in the prison. She shatters the persuasion of most of the revolutionaries as well as the audience that children are innocent. Although Jackson does not believe they are to be considered guilty like the adults, Madame persuades him:

MADAME: How can you be so sure? My grand-niece is an evil little

Black bitch. When she‟s told to give something to the poor colored

people, the poor Black people that she sees, she refuses, and spits from

the limousine window at them. She won‟t go near them, except to spit

upon them. Is she not unrighteous? Of course she is. And my poor

husband was so fond of her; she was the light of his eyes. And he was

very fond of Black people too, no matter what you might think. (Bombers

69)

The revolutionaries‟ debate over the innocence of children includes also another important issue which can hardly be avoided – it is the legitimacy of the revolution and limits to the violent action, if there are any. Bonnie asks:

BONNIE: What if the Black people at large don‟t want the revolution?

Suppose our people for whom you are fighting won‟t stand for the killing

of their children, however wrong or lazy of Uncle Tomish they are. All

Black people recognize Black children, whatever their father‟s

allegiances. (Bombers 57)

The heated debate soon reaches a point when Harrison accuses the rest of the group of not believing in the revolution – because if they did, “how could the deaths of two

61 children be weighed in the balance against such a faith?” (Bombers 59) Jackson answers on behalf of all of them:

JACKSON: I am ready to shed blood, so as to overthrow the whiteman.

But, behind your words, I see the threat of another sort of oppression

which, if ever it comes into power, will make of me a murderer – and

what I want to be is a righteous Blackman, not a man of blood. (Bombers

59)

At this moment Jackson speaks from a position he later (for the audience it is earlier in the play) abandons when arguing with Smith. He tells Harrison, who claims that “you and I mean nothing to the total” (Bombers 59), that “we are more than nothing

... if we are nothing then what are we killing for?” (Bombers 59) Thus Jackson admits that revolution is not carried out by ideas but by individuals. Moreover, even when fighting in a revolution, one should not repudiate everything which makes life worth living. Jackson insists that “killing children is a crime against a man‟s nature. The spirit of the race would rebel and move against the hand that destroyed its children, as it is doing to the whiteman now.” (Bombers 61)

Smith, who eavesdropped on the conversation while spying on the group, summarizes the painful dilemma:

SMITH: Your ideals can murder a Grand Prefect, but it hesitates at

murdering women and children, if they are Black. That was a discovery

you made, wasn‟t it? But let‟s go on. If your ideals won‟t allow you to

murder Black children, how can they demand that you murder a Black

Grand Prefect? You Black Revolutionaries are forever fantasizing about

killing white people... but all I find evidence of is your willingness to

destroy Blackmen. (Bombers 64)

62 It is these paradoxes in particular which Bullins wishes the proponents of violent fight for liberation to consider, and his plays repeatedly “had to forge a thinking people capable of weighing situations before committing themselves” (Hay, “Ed Bullins” 104).

The rest of the revolutionaries have not been arrested after the bomb attack, but should Jackson decide to not accept Smith‟s pardon, they will be. If Jackson consents to

Smith‟s bargain, they will remain free. Jackson has to choose the lesser of two evils: either be portrayed as a traitor who double crosses the gang and be hanged or become the new executioner and spare his comrades‟ lives, with Foster as the first victim. The only difference in the fate of these two men is that Jackson‟s quota doubles – he is to hang one hundred and fifty convicts before he is (supposedly) to be let free. “You see... we believe that you are twice the man that Foster ever was” (Bombers 74), Smith notes sarcastically when leaving the scene.

When it is the Grand Madame Prefect who visits Jackson the audience hears an account of what happened after the bomb explosion. Whereas Jackson was led away immediately, she saw her husband‟s dismembered body and has to live with the vivid imagery. This picture sharply contrasts with her knowledge of him as an ordinary human being, sleeping in an armchair in front of a TV set with his feet propped up on a hassock (Bombers 67). Her memory makes the portrayal of the alleged beast painfully human.

Jackson accuses her of being passive and betrayal to the whole race when she married the “super nigger fantasy ... jailer of his people, consular to the whiteman‟s law” (Bombers 68). She claims that she was quiet with her children because “it kept them alive, son... it kept hem alive ... so that you could be here... the dream that is you could be here” (Bombers 68), further blurring the division between the radical revolutionaries and those they fight against.

63 She turns into a mother-like figure when she comments on Jackson‟s revolutionary talk that “all you righteous bombers are mirror images of your fathers...

My husband was exactly like you when...” (Bombers 68) Jackson refuses this by proudly claiming that: “We righteous bombers are the mirror of the future reality. [...]

We righteous bombers are the new, not something that we are killing and have killed.”

(Bombers 68) Madame dismisses that as a smug illusion and the audience is reminded of Smith‟s speech from the beginning of the second act when he summarized his life circle from wanting justice to setting up a security force. Bullins indicates that one‟s radicalism deadens in time and sharp edges are gradually taken off. Moreover, there is always a danger that the revolutionary rhetoric provides an easy means of expression for those who are not able to formulate their own words.

At the beginning of the third act we understand that Jackson has accepted

Smith‟s offer since he prepares for the execution ritual – he tests his equipment and takes on the executioner‟s garb. Simultaneously, a retrospect scene of his conversation with Bonnie is presented to the audience on the screens. Having taken place during the last moments before the bomb attack at the prefect, it relates to another paradox inherent to the revolution:

JACKSON: I‟m ready to give my life up for the revolution. [...] Only,

I‟m still convinced that life is a great thing. I‟m in love with beauty,

happiness. That‟s why I hate the Black people‟s position here in America

and the world. The trouble is to make my brothers understand this.

Revolution, by all means. But revolution for the sake of life – to give life

a chance, if you see what I mean. (Bombers 75)

The paradox is that “when we kill, we‟re killing so as to build up a Black world in where there will be no more killing” (Bombers 75), as Jackson notes. Nevertheless,

64 aware of this contradiction, Jackson and Bonnie are willing to forget about it and continue bombing. Jackson remarks: “Do you understand why I asked to throw the bomb? To die for an ideal – that‟s the only way of proving oneself worthy of it. It‟s our only justification.” (Bombers 76) Unfortunately, not life but death is what they consider their justification.

Life, still, is precious and short, as Bonnie acknowledges. However, it is always others‟ life they speak about and others‟ freedom they fight for – for the next generation, for their children‟s children. Meanwhile they make the present all the more unbearable thanks to the deaths they cause. Most often it is deaths of their black brothers. Bonnie acknowledges: “we are committed to murdering Black men.

Blackmen... not the whites we know we must destroy... but Blackmen like ourselves.”

(Bombers 88) She voices her concern that “sometimes when I hear what Harrison says I fear for the future. Others may replace us who might take our authority for killing; and will not pay with their lives. Only go on killing one after another Blackmen... for the savor of the kill.” (Bombers 89) Cleveland later dismisses her fears by claiming that

“Blackmen are not insane like the white beasts” (Bombers 89). Nevertheless, we should remember Walker‟s words in The Slave – only the complexion of the tyranny may change.

Bullins warns the audience explicitly against the possibility that a revolution may represent not only a struggle in the name of a noble idea but also a chance for those who are keen on killing. When in a frenzy of rage, Bonnie calls the whole revolution a circus, expressing most openly what Bullins seems to signalize throughout the play:

“Why lie, niggers! Why hide behind the Black Revolution when it is your dry, flaking lips that wait to taste blood and bone splinters whether they belong to a Grand Prefect...

65 or a brother. Admit it, weak, selfish, cowardly nigger men... Murder is your last resort.”

(Bombers 82)

Even though she has strong reservations about the revolutionary struggle,

Bonnie still feels an urge to continue in it. She believes that

BONNIE: [T]he only way to destroy the whiteman and his world is for us

to be together. I cannot act any other way than together with my brothers.

I was so happy when I began this adventure of world liberation... and it‟s

so sad, sorrowful and lonely to keep it up. But continue I must. (Bombers

90)

According to Sanders, if the characters remain in the state that makes them unhappy it is only their own choice. Sanders notes that “it is through his insistence on the potential for good and for evil residing in any person or circumstance that Bullins affirms the possibility for liberation as residing within, and thus available to everyone” (226). One cannot blame outside factors neither find excuses.

During their conversation Bonnie tries to warn Jackson about a possible impediment before throwing the bomb. It is easy to live for the dream of the revolution, casting eyes upon the heroic death on the spot or on the scaffold. But before that,

Jackson the revolutionary will have to come out of his dream and face the reality. He will have to confront the human being he is going to kill, look into his eyes – and still end his life. At this moment Bonnie notes what Madame indicated in her narration which is the common nature of all humans, even of those considered beasts by the revolutionaries. This reminiscence sadly contrasts with what is happening on the stage, where Jackson completes his preparations for the execution while Foster is dragged in on the scene. The audience is reminded that Jackson will have to look into many more

66 eyes of people he is going to kill than he has ever imagined, while Bullins warns that one murder only causes others.

Thanks to Bonnie, Jackson finds out that things are “not so simple as it seems. I thought it was quite easy to kill provided one has courage and is lifted up by a dream.

[... But] I have realized that hatred brings no happiness.” (Bombers 84-5) He wants to go beyond hatred – where there is love. Bonnie, however, does not believe love is there for those whose hearts are set on justice – they have no right to love. She even doubts that the revolutionaries love the Black people: “We live so far away from them, shut up in our thoughts. And do they love us? Do they even guess we love them?” (Bombers 85)

She does not feel any response the Black people are giving back for being loved: “there are times when I wonder if love isn‟t something else, something more than a lonely voice, a monologue, and if there isn‟t sometimes a response” (Bombers 85). Again,

Bullins reminds the spectators that it is only a minority of black people who become radical but fight in the name of the whole race.

Bonnie draws a picture of the future the revolutionaries fight for, doubting the plausibility of violence: “I see a picture floating up before my eyes. The sun is shining, pride dies from the heart, one bows one‟s head gently, almost shyly, and every barrier is down!” (Bombers 85) She believes that only after violence is abandoned, love can be resurrected: “Oh, Jack, if only we could forget, even for an hour, the ugliness and misery of this world we are in, and let ourselves go – at last! One little hour or so of thinking of ourselves, just you and me, for a change. Can you see what I mean?”

(Bombers 85) He sees it, but at the same time Jackson is not able to confirm he feels it – he is not able to confirm that he loves justice, blacks, or Bonnie with this kind of love.

Suddenly there is a person who is devoid of tenderness, gentleness and forgetting love. He has killed it together with the people whose lives were sacrificed in

67 attacks by the revolutionaries‟ bombs. Jackson is able to love Bonnie only as his revolutionary sister, not as a black woman. He is not able to satisfy her plea: “I‟m waiting for you to say the word, to tell me you want me ... and I mean more to you than this world, this fucked-up white world that is around our throats like a noose.”

(Bombers 87) After Jackson does not find words other than “shut up”, he leaves the stage with a dim impression behind.

Following Jackson‟s exit, scenes taking place on the stage are no longer from the prison but from the revolutionary base, where Jackson‟s friends watch on television what they think is his execution. They of course do not know about the agreement between Jackson and Smith. Certain hysteria spreads among the group since not all its members are persuaded that Jackson has not betrayed them, repenting and giving the names of his revolutionary brothers over to the secret police. Again, it is Bonnie who defends Jackson most strongly, and Harrison who doubts his character.

At the end of the play, the spectators witness the execution on the screens together with the revolutionaries. Accompanied by various comments by his comrades, ranging from praise to religious wailing, Jackson/Foster is executed in full view of television cameras so that the public can watch the exemplary punishment. Bonnie manages to follow it almost until the very end, when bells‟ ringing is heard. She then asks to be the one to throw the next bomb – and join her beloved Jackson first on television and then in death, which will tie them together forever by the same rope. She does not suspect that Jackson will be her executioner.

The play became a hit. The New Lafayette Theater was filled with spectators for each performance. The “Harlem cowboys,” as Hay describes, “found cause enough for a showdown with [Robert] Macbeth [the director of the theater] ... they demanded that

Macbeth close the show or have his theatre burned down” (“African-American Theatre”

68 107). Macbeth suggested instead that the theater, along with the revolutionaries, co- sponsor a symposium, particularly addressing the question of the responsibility of the black artist. They agreed.

The writers Askia Muhammad Touré and Ernie Mkalimoto opposed the play, insisting that “the philosophical confusion that the play exhibited was destructive for its audience” (Sanders 191). Robert Macbeth, the critic Larry Neal, and Amiri Baraka supported it, responding in various ways that the opposition the play generated was the very mark of its success. Baraka particularly noted its “necessary attack on the cliches he had „helped create‟” (Sanders 191), and while both Neale and Macbeth had reservations about aspects of the play, they defended its production. Bullins, however,

“absented himself from the discussion” (Sanders 191).

The points raised against the play by Touré were: first, it was the argument that art should be not for art‟s sake, but for the people‟s sake; second, Bullins did not make his intentions clear: “is this play intended to be a serious portrayal of the lives of certain

Black activists, [...] or is it a satire?” (Hay, “African-American Theatre” 107-8); the third objection was that Bullins projected the wrong image of the revolutionaries; and the final point of the author‟s opponents was that the play was a “hymn to death – to death as escapism” (Hay, “African-American Theatre” 108).

According to Hay‟s account of events, it was Baraka who defended the play most astutely. One by one, he dismissed all the points and he succeeded in reshaping the debate, moving it away from Touré‟s concerns about content toward the less igniting ground of form. (“African-American Theatre” 108-9) As Hay summarizes, “this symposium and Bombers itself were important in that both forced the [advocates of radical protest] to reexamine their beliefs and strategies. [...] The problem, as both the

69 play and the symposium showed, was that the struggle was both means and end.”

(“African-American Theatre” 111-2)

Even though We Righteous Bombers is different from most of Bullins‟s plays, it likewise shows the principal characters‟ strengths and weaknesses on an equal scale, thus reducing them from paradigmatic types engaged in model situations to people as real as the spectators themselves. This, then, places on the viewers the burden of contemplation and identification, and subsequently of doing something. Bullins therefore concludes what Baraka and other explicitly pro-revolutionary writers strive for

– he entrusts the audience to act.

70 Conclusion

In light of now historic events, the black revolutionary drama of the 1960s may have failed to bring about the collapse of the existing American system, or to alter radically the cultural perception of African-Americans. This act does not mean that the concepts and intellectual bases which provided a foundation for the movement perished.

Indeed, quite the contrary is true. Although conditions have improved since the 1960s,

African-Americans at the beginning of the new century still face a similar kind of discrimination. Therefore it is important to pay attention to what is pictured by the authors discussed because boosting black confidence is necessary nowadays as it was in the past. At the same time, understanding of the possible negative consequences of blind violence and extremist practices in its name is also crucial.

The 1960s was a decade of transformation of the Civil Rights Movement from a non-violent coalition of a wide range of organizations which challenged lingering discrimination of African-Americans and fought for racial equality and integration. By the end of the decade, priorities of the movement shifted from non-violence to radicalism and rioting in the name of racial equality and distinctiveness. African-

Americans abandoned integration in favor of racial pluralism. They gave up the acceptance of white mainstream society, which seemed unattainable for decades, for confidence in their own history and culture, assured of its value.

In its extreme form black racial pride was manifested in the Black Power movement and the radical rhetoric of its leaders. They called for a higher level of self- governance of black communities, so far administered by whites inconsiderate to the problems and grievances of the ghettos. Artistic expression of the decade did not lag behind politics. Similarly to the development in the society, artists often engaged in raising black consciousness and racial awareness. They employed two powerful means

71 of doing so: either portrayed the beautiful black self, distinct from its white stereotypical picture but all the more valuable, or they set examples of radical protest and even violence to be followed by blacks, or both. The former is a way pioneered by

Bullins, while the latter is Baraka‟s favored manner.

Bullins‟s plays about revolution and those depicting the interaction between blacks and whites differ in several crucial ways from those by Baraka treating similar themes. Baraka wants his audience to consider the imaginative possibility of violent revolution, while Bullins assumes and tests it, challenging the taking of human life in the name of justice. Bullins neither advocates nor deplores violent revolution. He simply mistrusts whether it transcends the violence and discrimination it despises. If

Baraka portrays blacks as enslaved by white culture and an imposed white consciousness and focuses on the act of liberation, Bullins depicts his characters choosing white values deliberately, if unconsciously, over black. Bullins focuses on their inability to recognize their own nature, as opposed to Baraka who teaches blacks what their nature is like.

Different as their strategies are, Baraka and Bullins strive at a common goal – establishing self-awareness and self-confidence in blacks. Baraka‟s rhetoric often intimidated whites but proved that the development in theater in the 1960s was not dissimilar to that on the streets, where black protesters against urban poverty also resorted to violent means. Bullins‟s effort to build a black consciousness via portraying black life experience as it is formed by white majority but still valuable in its distinctiveness proved to be fruitful. His plays succeed in making the audience reflect on some revolutionary paradoxes as well as on unconscious embracing of imposed rules and stereotypes, thus committing them to act against them.

72 Both Baraka and Bullins‟s works then represent an important part of the very

African-American culture they cherish and install pride in. They deserve a credit for making blacks committed to action, as well as establishing black drama as a full-fledged genre which is recognized as a potent part of American culture.

73 English Summary

This thesis examines Imamu Amiri Baraka‟s theater plays Dutchman (1964) and

The Slave (1964) and Ed Bullins‟s We Righteous Bombers (1969) while grounding them in the historical context of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It is argued that the plays are potent documents of the changing mood within the black community in the

United States as well as significant sites for both analyzing and challenging racial stereotypes.

The first chapter describes the historical context of the origins of the plays discussed. After a decade of non-violent actions and legal challenges to discrimination, the 1960s was an era of growing violence among the civil rights protesters. Displeased with the slow progress in racial equality they resorted to radical rhetoric and more aggressive means of protest than their predecessors in the 1950s. Connected to the rising black urban population gathering mostly in the North of the United States, the movement‟s priorities changed from peaceful integration to achieving equality while maintaining racial distinctiveness. American blacks in the 1960s began to gain confidence in their racial background and boosted pride in their blackness, supported by cultural leaders of the community who enhanced black consciousness.

The second chapter is devoted to drama and Baraka is introduced as one of the leaders of the Black Theater Movement which took over stages in the 1960s teaching the audience the value of being black. As an initiator of Protest Theater he set in his plays examples to follow in black struggle against white oppression, often picturing violence and physical extermination of white persons. Before adopting an extreme military stance in the late 1960s, Baraka wrote Dutchman, a play which is synonymous with his fame as well as the first one counted among protest plays. Together with The

Slave it sets the ground for Baraka‟s later aggressive rhetoric. These plays are

74 significant in the way they examine white stereotyping of blacks and the revolutionary logic.

Bullins is a more moderate writer than Baraka but his plays contribute to a similar purpose which is portraying blacks as confident human beings with values of their own. They should not adopt unquestioningly what the white majority dictates in order to achieve its acceptance. Bullins‟s We Righteous Bombers is examined as a powerful treatment of the radical rhetoric of the civil rights leaders of the time and the revolution they propounded. The play is different from most of Bullins‟s production in terms of its topic but significant in the way it offers the audience issues to consider before blindly embracing the revolutionary rhetoric.

Different as they are, Baraka and Bullins achieve a common goal. They commit their black audience to reject the outwardly imposed inferior position in the society, either by biding them to employ any means necessary when striving for recognition or by considering implications of their remaining in such a position. Study of these plays is important nowadays when the position of African-Americans is not yet fully equal thus historical knowledge of their struggle as well as caution toward the use of violence is needed.

75 České resumé

Tato práce se zabývá divadelními hrami Dutchman a The Slave (obě z roku

1964) od Imamu Amiri Baraky a We Righteous Bombers (1969) Eda Bullinse. Hry jsou rozebrány na základě kontextu šedesátých let minulého století a hnutí za občanská práva pro americké černochy. Základním argumentem práce je, že tyto hry představují důležitý dokument měnících se postojů v rámci černošské komunity a zároveň že divadlo samo je důležitou oblastí, kde jsou nabourávány rasové stereotypy.

První kapitola se věnuje historickému kontextu vzniku zmíněných her. Po umírněných padesátých letech, která postupovala především soudní cestou, přinesla

šedesátá léta dvacátého století nárůst násilí při protestních akcích na podporu občanských práv černochů. Tento fakt souvisí se zvyšováním podílu městského obyvatelstva v černošské populaci a změnami v jejich postojích. Požadavek na rasovou integraci se ve zmíněném desetiletí postupně změnil na touhu po dosažení rasové rovnosti za podmínky zachování výlučnosti. Američtí černoši v té době začali získávat sebevědomí a rasové uvědomění, ve kterém je podporovali i kulturní představitelé komunity.

Druhá část práce je věnována dramatu a pracím zmíněných autorů. Baraka je považován za jednoho z čelních představitelů černošského divadla šedesátých let a zároveň iniciátora protestního hnutí v divadle. Jeho hry zobrazují nejen rasové hodnoty, ale především navádí černochy na způsoby vzpoury proti bělošskému útlaku, často za použití násilí. Předtím, než Baraka zcela přijal tento radikální postoj, však napsal hru

Dutchman, která ho také proslavila. Ta, společně s hrou The Slave, pak představuje zárodek autorových revolučních postojů a zobrazuje elementy rasových stereotypů a revoluční logiky.

76 Bullins patří mezi umírněnější autory, jeho dílo ovšem přispívá k podobnému

účelu jako Barakovo. Oba se snaží o zobrazení černochů jako plnohodnotných bytostí s vlastními hodnotami, které by neměli neuvědoměle přejímat od většinové bělošské populace. Bullinsova hra We Righteous Bombers se věnuje výhradně tématu rasové revoluce, rétoriky jejích vůdců a důsledkům jejich činů. Tato hra je výjimečná v rámci autorova díla, které se jinak revoluci přímo nevěnuje, přesto je zároveň typická tím, že vybízí diváky k zamyšlení a odrazuje je od slepého přijímání cizích tvrzení.

I přes odlišnosti ve zvolené strategii Baraka a Bullins míří ke stejnému cíli.

Jejich přáním je probudit v publiku aktivitu a přimět je odvrhnout vnější diktát, ať již ukázkou možné strategie nebo zobrazením následků jejich setrvání v ponížené pozici.

Studium těchto her je významné i v dnešní době, protože postavení černochů není v americké společnosti stále ještě zcela rovnoprávné. Znalost historického vývoje a zároveň opatrnost vůči extremismu je tak žádoucí.

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80