ASF 2015 Study Materials for

Welcome to 1947 1972 1876

Driving Miss Daisy by

Director John Manfredi Study Materials written by Susan Willis Set Design John Manfredi ASF Dramaturg Costume Design Elizabeth Novak [email protected] Lighting Design Tom Rodman Contact ASF: 1.800.841-4273, www.asf.net ASF/ 1

by Alfred Uhry

Welcome—Let's Take A Drive Together Alfred Uhry is almost as good a chauffeur as Hoke Coleburn. He transports us not only through the span of 25 years in the lives of three characters but also through the transformation of an entire era in the South. He negotiates Characters these changes with smooth, effortless turns, with Daisy Werthan, a widow aged pungent, realistic dialogue, and with detailed 72 to 97 during play character development. To be subject to Uhry’s Boolie Werthan, her son, aged dramatic drive is pure pleasure. 40 to 65 during play Driving Miss Daisy is a memory play, almost Hoke Coleburn, Miss Daisy's a scrapbook of moments. In it Uhry depicts a chauffeur, aged 60 to 85 world he knows well, the world of and during play the Reform Jewish community he grew up in, Uhry on the Play and the South the world that shaped him and which he has “I thought somebody should tell what the Setting: Atlanta, , evoked in shaping this play. Uhry not only creates South was really like,” Alfred Uhry claims as he between 1948 and 1973, memorable onstage characters, but intriguing describes his impetus for writing the play: and on Alabama highways offstage characters as well, for who does not I was tired of all these stereotypes—that white to Mobile enjoy imagining Boolie’s wife Florine or Idella people were running around being openly with her fabled coffee? hostile and rude toward black people, and The strength of Uhry's story, as he realizes, that black people were standing there with is what he calls its truth. His story looks simple, hat in hand saying, ‘Yassir, boss,’ or else but to achieve depth and portray a sense of being firebrand revolutionaries. None of that community with so few characters is far from was true in our case. What’s interesting is About These Study Materials easy. Daisy does not want a chauffeur, but that all those feelings were there under the The study guide offers an she needs one, so her son Boolie hires Hoke. surface, but what was really important was array of options for teaching The process of acceptance—where Daisy is good manners on both sides. Being rude is overview or details and for "transported"—is slow, and the relationship has frowned upon in the South; it’s not so much comparing the play to issues and to be negotiated more than in delicate what you do as how you do it. ideas in your curriculum: social exchanges of white and black, man The situation and characters are drawn 1) information about the and woman, Jew and Christian, “boss” and from Uhry’s own memories. Miss Daisy draws author, Alfred Uhry employee, elderly and caregiver, and finally from Uhry’s grandmother and the chauffeur from 2) public events in the play, friend to friend. Their friendship may take her driver, Will Coleman, who did indeed begin with primary documents, a decades to acknowledge, but it is strong, true, driving for her when she was 72 and continued timeline, and general and unmistakable. It manifests the best of each doing so for the next 25 years. At the Atlanta character perspectives character and suggests the possibility that what premiere of the play, Uhry’s family and Will 3) a discussion of the play's we share can be just as important as what Coleman’s descendants were all present. Uhry structure appears to divide us, just as it can lead us to recalls that “after the play, a young Coleman 4) the dynamics of Hoke's relish and appreciate our particularities. relative asks his grandmother which side of the world—the African American family I’m on.… I find tears in my eyes.” experience The situation was deeply rooted not only in 5) the dynamics of Daisy's Daisy: Where are you going? … place but in time, for who the characters are is world—the Jewish American to a large part derived from when they live. As experience I want to go the way I always go.… This is wrong.… I've been the respect and affection between them grows, 6) the process of assimilation part of the tension of the play is that it cannot driving to the Piggly Wiggly since 7) activity ideas (discussion/ be expressed. As Uhry observes, writing ) the day they put it up.… This isn't the way! Go back! Go back It [that emotional response] would never have happened. My grandmother was not huggy; this minute! she stood very erect, she was very smart Hoke: Yonder the Piggly Wiggly. and she had very high standards. Sentiment Quotations from New York Times Daisy: Get ready to turn now. was never going to get in her way. When I articles related to the Broadway was a little boy and wrote her letters, she production, December 23, 1987; would send them back to me—corrected. In icon from a modern chauffeur service that environment, it was just not good form to express your feelings. ASF/ 2 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry About the Author: Alfred Uhry Alfred Uhry is best known for his 1987 In thinking about his subject, Uhry Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisy, comments, which in 1989 was made into a popular, Academy Everyone thinks Jews are all the same, but Award-winning film starring and we didn’t think so in the South. People were , for which he also won the uncomfortable with being Jewish there. The Oscar for screenplay adaptation. In 1996 Uhry way I was brought up, the best thing to be was commissioned by the Atlanta Cultural was Episcopalian. In our temple the music Olympiad to write a play for the , was Christmas hymns. I was brought up with and he continued his exploration of the Christmas trees, Easter egg hunts—and my Jewish community in his native Atlanta with Jewish face. The Last Night of Ballyhoo, a play about the Uhry’s own life is a testament to the issues he 1930s and Southern Jews’ attitudes toward raises in his plays. Only later in life did he begin “the other kind,” that is, observant Jews to have a seder at Passover: newer to the U.S. I went to Israel in 1992, which really woke up Uhry grew up in Atlanta’s thriving in me that it was nothing to be ashamed of. German-Jewish community and graduated It’s embarrassing to admit you’re ashamed from Druid Hills High School. He was of being Jewish all your life. At the end it educated at and moved was not a prejudice but an ignorance, a hole to New York City to work as a lyricist with where the Judaism should be. . For most of his career, he has been a writer of musicals, including the book and lyrics for the adaptation of The Memory and Reality Robber Bridegroom as well as Here’s Where In his “Preface” to the play (1988), Uhry I Belong, Swing, America’s Sweetheart, and explains the names and basis of the characters Alfred Uhry , a musical based on the case. he created or remembered: He has also written film screenplays forMystic There was a real Miss Daisy. She was Pizza and . a friend of my grandmother’s in Atlanta, Driving Miss Daisy was Uhry's first non- back in the forties when I was a child. She musical play, and it grew out of his depression was a ‘maiden lady’ as we called it then, following a failed musical when he was the last of a big family, and she lived in considering leaving show business altogether. what I remember as a spooky old Victorian Instead he wrote a “straight play” and found house. There was a Hoke, too. He was the new success. He at first thought Daisy was just sometime bartender at our German-Jewish “a little play that could surely have appeal only country club.… And Boolie … well, I didn’t to my family, and to a few other southerners,” really know him, but he was the brother but audiences all over the world have affirmed of my dear Aunt Marjorie’s friend Rosalie. its universality. They were real people, all right, but I have used only their names in creating the three characters in Driving Miss Daisy. I wanted to use names that seemed particular to the Atlanta I grew up in. The actual characters, though, are made up of little bits and pieces of my childhood. Quite a bit of my grandmother, Lena Guthman Fox, and her four older sisters have gone into Miss Daisy herself.… Hoke is based on my grandmother’s chauffeur, Will Coleman, but also on Bill and Riley and Marvin and Pete and other First quotations from “Ballyhoo black chauffeurs I knew in those days. And and Daisy, Too,” American Theatre, Boolie is so many pieces of so many men April 1997. I know (including me, I suppose) that it would be hard for me to say what exactly comes from what. ASF/ 3 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry A Timeline: Daisy's and Hoke's Lives in Historical Context

Daisy Werthan’s/ Hoke's Life Events in America and the World Popular Culture and Everyday Life in U.S. 1876 •Daisy born in Atlanta 1876 •Custer's last stand at Little Big Horn •Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone • Ulysses S. Grant is president 1877 •Edison invents the phonograph 1880 •First canned fruits and meats sold 1879 •Edison invents the light bulb 1884 •Mark Twain publishes The 1883 •The Brooklyn Bridge opens, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn world’s first suspension bridge 1885 •First modern bicycle built •First skyscraper (10 stories) built 1886 •Statue of Liberty dedicated in NY in Chicago 1887 • Sullivan begins to teach Helen 1888 •trip to Mobile for cousin 1888 •George Eastman invents Kodak Keller Walter’s wedding camera 1891 •Naismith invents basketball • Hoke born north of 1890 •Mississippi begins poll tax and Macon, GA on a farm literacy tests to prevent blacks from 1890s •Werthan’s business voting begins 1893 •Henry Ford builds his first car • Hoke sees lynching 1896 •U.S. Supreme Court upholds racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson, late 1890s/early 1900s: establishing the “separate but equal” •Daisy (age 20+) marries standard Sig Werthan; she 1903 •First teddy bears, named after 1903 •Wright Brothers make first flight at President Teddy Roosevelt teaches school Kitty Hawk, NC 1904 •The first comic book appears 1908 •Boolie born 1908 •Henry Ford's first Model T 1905 •First neon signs automobile, which sold for $850 1910 •The “weekend” becomes popular 1912 •New Mexico and Arizona become 47th and 48th states 1915 •First long distance telephone service 1914 •Outbreak of World War I 1918 •First airmail postal service 1920 •19th Amendment grants women the 1921 •Idella begins working right to vote 1920s • Harlem Renaissance for the Werthans; • Woodrow Wilson is president Boolie in 8th grade 1925 •Scopes’ "Monkey Trial” 1929 •Stock Market Crash 1931 •Freon makes refrigerators safe for : Hoke now a chauffeur 1934 •Dust Bowl hits West, dessicating farms 1930s home use in Atlanta 1935 •Social Security Act becomes law 1938 •First minimum wage law 1941 •U.S. joins World War II after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 1943 •Race riots in Harlem and 46 cities 1948 •Daisy (age 72) wrecks 1948 •President Truman abolishes racial new car; Boolie hires segregation in U.S. military 1950 •“Snoopy” comic strip first appears a chauffeur, Hoke • [Israel becomes a Jewish nation] (age 60) 1954 •In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court outlaws segregation 1955 •Disneyland opens, first theme park 1960 •trip to Mobile for 1955-65 •Civil rights movement; Civil cousin Walter’s 90th Rights Bill passes in 1964 birthday 1963 •President Kennedy, country’s first Catholic president, assassinated 1966 •National Organization of Women 1965 •Vietnam War escalates 1971 •Daisy (age 95) moves founded 1968 •Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated to nursing home 1973 •Atlanta elects a Jewish mayor, Sam 1973 •U.S. ceasefire ends Vietnam War Massell, Jr. ASF/ 4 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Atlanta: A History in Pictures

Sherman burned down two-thirds of Atlanta on his 1864 March to the Sea

The storefront shop of the Rich brothers in 1867 that became the Rich's Department Store chain

Atlanta reborn: Peachtree Street in the 1870s, the time Daisy is born

Atlanta in 1907, about the time Boolie is born

Peachtree Street near Forsyth (near Daisy's childhood Peachtree at Pryor home) in 1950 Left, Atlanta downtown skyline in 1960 today; right, midtown skyline (north on Peachtree)

The downtown skyline today ASF/ 5 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry The Public Events of Driving Miss Daisy

By watching the personal lives of Miss Daisy, Hoke, and Boolie, we also see events and values in the world they inhabit—Atlanta, the South, America. Thus the play is both very personal and specific and also indicative of larger trends and attitudes.

1948: STEREOTYPES In the opening scenes, Miss Daisy and Hoke introduce the outsider’s view of the communities—Miss Daisy objects to more of “them” being in her life, being idle and careless, and Hoke sees the new job as “driving for Jews” who are sometimes seen as “stingy” Rabbi Rothschild of with Dr. Martin and “cheap.” Luther King, Jr. at the Atlanta dinner 1965: THE KING BANQUET 1948: [UN]EMPLOYMENT Uhry mentions the UJA [United Jewish Boolie hires a chauffeur for his mother, but Appeal] banquet honoring King, but Boolie’s thereby we see the aftermath of the World War response parallels another, larger King banquet II economy on the black community in Atlanta. in Atlanta. In October, 1965, Martin Luther King, During the war, blacks had moved into new jobs Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. and new areas of employment, but with the return The white power structure of Atlanta was both of the veterans, white and black, all of whom proud of its native son and appalled at an had fought for their country, the society tried to “agitator” being rewarded. A small interracial, return to the pre-war status quo. Jobs went to interfaith group proposed a dinner honoring Dr. veterans, and many of those who had worked King. At first, white business leaders objected through the war now found themselves out and boycotted, but outside economic pressures of a job. As Hoke observes, “they hirin’ young changed their minds, and tickets to the King if they hirin’ colored, an’ they ain’ even hirin’ Banquet became hot items. much young, seems like.” Finally, on January 27, 1965, 1,250 Atlantans dined at the Dinkler Hotel, which had 1958: THE TEMPLE BOMBING until recently barred blacks from entering except On October 12, 1958, just past 3:30 as employees. As Rabbi Rothschild noted, it was a.m., fifty sticks of dynamite destroyed one “the largest gathering of whites and blacks … in side of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation the history of our city.” Blacks and whites were [the Temple] in Atlanta, the work of the self- seated at the same tables: “it was miscegenation styled “Confederate Underground.” This was at the banquet table. And, for the moment, one of 47 such bombing attacks in the South stature—lineage—derived from an entirely that year, many aimed at black targets, but new, an unforeseen direction: ‘Oh?’ the white at least 10% at Jewish, with a clear sense of women politely inquired, and responded with “us” vs. “them,” “the other” or “not-us,” behind vivacious curiosity, ‘you go to his church? You these acts. Like the Leo Frank lynching, this were with him in Birmingham? You’ve practiced violence brought the Jewish community into medicine in Atlanta for thirty years? You teach focus—as a victim of prejudice and as a romanticism?’ … The conversations took place Rabbi Rothschild and Atlanta Southern minority. on a plane that simply had not existed the night mayor Hartsfield in the wreckage before and did not exist on this night anywhere after the Temple bombing in 1958 else in the South.” Rabbi Rothschild's opening remarks Quotations from Melissa Fay reflected the momentous occasion: “You attest Greene, The Temple Bombing (1996) the truth that goodness and righteousness do reside in the human heart. You give the lie to the canard that prejudice is always stronger than decency, that hate is more powerful than love.…” ASF/ 6 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Primary Documents: Ralph McGill on the Temple Bombing

Ralph McGill’s front-page Atlanta But the record stands. The extremists Constitution column on the Temple of the citizens’ councils, the political leaders Bombing, October 13, 1958 who in terms violent and inflammatory have repudiated their oaths and stood against due Dynamite in great quantity Sunday ripped process of law have helped unloose this flood a beautiful Temple of worship in Atlanta. It of hate and bombing. followed hard on the heels of a like destruction This, too, is a harvest of those so-called of a handsome high school in Clinton, Tenn. Christian ministers who have chosen to preach The same rabid, mad-dog minds were, hate instead of compassion. Let them now find without question, behind both. They also are pious words and raise their hands in deploring the source of previous bombings in Florida, the bombing a synagogue. Alabama, and South Carolina. The school house You do not preach and encourage hatred and the church are the targets of diseased, for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field. hate-filled minds. Ralph McGill was one of the It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and clearest, staunchest journalistic Let us face the facts. over again in history. When the wolves of hate voices supporting the civil rights This is a harvest. It is the crop of things sown. are loosed on one people, then no one is safe. movement in the 1940s, '50s, and It is the harvest of defiance of courts and Hate and lawlessness by those who lead '60s. From his editorial post at the encouragement of citizens to defy law on release the yellow rats and encourage the crazed the Atlanta Constitution he spoke the part of many southern politicians. It will be and neurotic who print and distribute the hate out on the need for equality and the acme of irony, for example, if any of four or pamphlets, who shrieked that Franklin Roosevelt justice in the South. five southern governors deplore the bombing. It was a Jew; who denounce the Supreme Court will be grimly humorous if certain state attorneys as being Communist and controlled by Jewish influences. Analyzing the Editorial general issue statements of regret. And it will • What are McGill's major be quite a job for some editors, columnists and The series of bombings is the harvest, too, points and how does he commentators, who have been saying that our of something else. order them? How does he courts have no jurisdiction and that the people One of those connected with the bombing built his argument? How should refuse to accept their authority now to telephoned a news service early Sunday does he approach his deplore. morning to say the job would be done. It was audience and where does It is not possible to preach lawlessness to be committed, he said, by the Confederate he want them to end up? and restrict it. Underground. • Compare this editorial to To be sure, none said go bomb a Jewish The Confederacy and the men who led it are Martin Luther King's "Letter temple or a school. revered by millions. Its leaders returned to the from Birmingham City Jail." But let it be understood that when leadership Union and urged that the future be committed to How many points do they in high places in any degree fails to support building a stronger America. This was particularly share? Do they address constituted authority, it opens the gate to all true of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Time after time he sensitive audiences the those who wish to take law into their own hands. urged his students at Washington University to same way? What tones do There will be, to be sure, the customary forget the War Between the States and to help they use? What arguments act of the careful drawing aside of skirts on the build a greater and stronger union. and examples? What part of those in high places. But for too many years now we have seen images? What is the power ‘How awful,’ they will exclaim. ‘How terrible. the Confederate flag and the emotions of that of each element? Something must be done.’ great war become the property of men not fit to • Given contemporary issues tie the shoes of those who fought for it. Some of concerning the Confederate these have been merely childish and immature. flag in the U.S., is McGill's Others have perverted and commercialized editorial still relevant? How the flag by making the Stars and Bars, and many of his points still the Confederacy itself, a symbol of hate and resound in our world? What bombings. does it mean if they do? For a long time now it has been needful for • Pick a contemporary issue of all Americans to stand up and be counted on the local, regional, or national side of law and the due process of law - even concern and write your when to do so goes against personal beliefs own persuasive "front-page and emotions. It is late. But there is yet time. column." ASF/ 7 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Primary Documents: Dr. King's Nobel Acceptance Speech Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Nobel Acceptance After contemplation, I conclude that this Speech, December 19, 1964 award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, the answer to the crucial political and moral Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and question of our time - the need for man to Gentlemen: I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at overcome oppression and violence without a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization States of America are engaged in a creative and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes battle to end the long night of racial injustice. of the , following the people of • Dr. King's Nobel acceptance India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is speech is available online at I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force http://www.emersonkent.com/ which makes for social transformation. Sooner speeches/nobel_prize_ and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. or later all the people of the world will have to acceptance_king.htm discover a way to live together in peace, and I am mindful that only yesterday in • McGill's Temple Bombing thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out editorial is available at into a creative psalm of brotherhood. http://georgiainfo.galileo. for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, If this is to be achieved, man must evolve usg.edu/thisday/own- snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful for all human conflict a method which rejects words/10/13/ralph-mcgill- that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, revenge, aggression and retaliation. The response-to-temple- young people seeking to secure the right to foundation of such a method is love. The bombing vote were brutalized and murdered. And only tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, • Dr. King's "Letter from yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. Birmingham Jail" is also the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or This is a road over which millions of Negroes available online through the burned because they offered a sanctuary to those are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This King website. who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my same road has opened for all Americans a new people and chains them to the lowest rung of era of progress and hope. It has led to a new the economic ladder. Therefore, I must ask Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be why this prize is awarded to a movement which widened and lengthened into a super highway is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting of justice as Negro and white men in increasing struggle; to a movement which has not won numbers create alliances to overcome their the very peace and brotherhood which is the common problems. essence of the Nobel Prize. I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. (continued)

above left, Dr. King with the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and above, earlier with others in a civil rights demonstration in Mississippi ASF/ 8 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Primary Documents: Dr. King's Nobel Speech/ 2

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional sat at the controls as the freedom movement love will have the final word in reality. This is soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief why right temporarily defeated is stronger than Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's for his people, are still met with the most brutal mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still expression of man's inhumanity to man. You hope for a brighter tomorrow. I honor the ground crew without whose labor believe that wounded justice, and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could lying prostrate on the blood- never have left the earth. Most of these people flowing streets of our nations, will never make the headline and their names can be lifted from this dust of will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years shame to reign supreme among have rolled past and when the blazing light of the children of men. I have the truth is focused on this marvelous age in which audacity to believe that peoples we live - men and women will know and children everywhere can have three will be taught that we have a finer land, a better meals a day for their bodies, people, a more noble civilization - because these education and culture for their humble children of God were willing to suffer for minds, and dignity, equality righteousness' sake. and freedom for their spirits. I I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean believe that what self-centered when I say that I accept this award in the spirit men have torn down men other- of a curator of some precious heirloom which centered can build up. I still he holds in trust for its true owners - all those to believe that one day mankind whom beauty is truth and truth beauty - and in will bow before the altars of whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood God and be crowned triumphant and peace is more precious than diamonds or over war and bloodshed, and silver or gold. nonviolent redemptive good Dr. King accepting the 1964 Nobel will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion Analyzing the Speech Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway; and the lamb shall lie down together and every • What is Dr. King's rhetorical situation below, being congratulated by the and does he use it argumentatively/ Nobel dignitaries man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." persuasively or declaratively? What are I still believe that We Shall his major points and how does he order overcome! This faith can give us them? How does he built his speech? How courage to face the uncertainties does he approach his audience and where of the future. It will give our tired does he want them to end up? feet new strength as we continue • How does he negotiate the issue of the our forward stride toward the individual honor in light of the group city of freedom. When our days movement? become dreary with low-hovering • Compare this speech to his "mountain clouds and our nights become top" speech (his last speech before his darker than a thousand midnights, assassination). How many points do they we will know that we are living in share? Do they approach their audiences the creative turmoil of a genuine the same way (identify each audience and civilization struggling to be born. situation)? What tones do they use? What arguments and examples? What images? Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired What is the power of each element? and with renewed dedication to humanity. I • Given contemporary issues concerning the accept this prize on behalf of all men who love deaths of black citizens at the hands of peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a police officers and neighborhood watch trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware members, are Dr. King's speeches still that this prize is much more than an honor to relevant? How many of his points still me personally. Every time I take a flight, I am resound in our world? Are his hope and always mindful of the many people who make faith in humanity well placed? a successful journey possible - the known pilots and the unknown ground crew. So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have ASF/ 9 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Daisy and Hoke: One Town, Two Worlds

Miss Daisy Mrs. Daisy Wertham is 72 years old in “The history of the Americans 1948 when the action of the play opens, which means she was born in 1876, a mere 11 years of African descent and Jewish after the close of the Civil War. Her sensibility descent is a story of two groups and cultural prejudice have been shaped by of people who have suffered the harsh racial attitudes of Reconstruction uncommon persecution but who and the in effect for so many have persevered with uncommon decades in the South. She denies being a faith. This is our common ground. racist, but the world in which she lives seems We share the dream of a beloved inherently racist, just as it is often anti-Semitic. community where one can live She has witnessed much change, but not without the threat of racism, nearly so much change as will occur during the 25 years of the play’s action, which ranges poverty, or violence. We share the from 1948 to 1973, from the aftermath of World dream of a beloved community War II through the civil rights era. where the worst of the human spirit Atlanta History Center picture of Hoke is defeated by our best.” Crew Street School, where Miss Daisy taught fifth grade; it was then Hoke Coleburn, who is 60 when the —Martin Luther King III an all-white segregated school. play begins in 1948, is likewise a product of Below: the kind of sign Hoke those same Jim Crow laws and decades of Coleburn lived with much of his life. segregation, but since he is black his experience with society is in many ways markedly different Daisy has had a black maid for almost three than Daisy Werthan’s. Daisy could easily get decades, and Hoke has driven for a Jewish judge an education or go to public parks; she could prior to being hired to drive Miss Daisy. Both ride on the front of the bus. Hoke grew up come from groups often excluded from Atlanta on a farm north of Macon and was never society and parts of Atlanta life. Each knows taught to read. He was barred by his race something of the other’s world, but nothing from many aspects of public life in Atlanta into of the individuals in it. Time and experience the 1950s, well beyond the start of the play. He, changes that for them, just as it changes the ATLANTA DEMOGRAPHICS too, is aware of differences and stereotypes. world around them. If Daisy says “they” have no manners and Metropolitan no conscience when she suspects Hoke of Atlanta Population/ # of Jews theft, Hoke acknowledges that many people 1850 2,572 26 consider Jews 1880 37,409 600 to be money- 1910 155,000 4,000 focused, a view 1950 331,000 10,000 he says he does 1970 500,000 16,500 not share. 1990 2,959,950 70,000 2010 5,729,304 120,000

Atlanta Population / # blacks 1850 2,572 492 slaves 18 free 1870 71,700 32,982 Atlanta in 2010, still evidence Atlanta % white % black of separation, 1940 65.4% 34.6% but improving. 1970 48.4% 51.3% Between 1970 2010 38.4% 54.0% and 2014, housing segregation decreased from 82% to 66%. ASF/ 10 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry The Shape of the Play's Action and Issues

Driving Miss Daisy is a classic example of For her part, Daisy does not want more the Rodgers and Hammerstein song black presence in her life or home. Over "Getting to Know You": "Getting to know time she has gained an uneasy truce with you, getting to know all about you;/ Getting her maid, a kind of apartheid or Jim Crow to like you, getting to hope you like me." separation, but we see her prejudice as Such learning environments are not just she counts her silver and pantry items so the stuff of Broadway musicals; they are as not to be robbed by "them." Getting Key to a new 1948 the stuff of human life. While romantic love past the "them" to individual identity is Oldsmobile Futuramic— fills drama with Romeo and Juliet "getting part of the challenge the play poses her which Daisy holds on to to know you" plots, human connection is and us. So she refuses to use Hoke as a more than just romantic—friendship and driver, even when he is there. She says Action as Imagery understanding across social barriers or she'll take the bus. Explore the way these prejudice are also significant and worthy • Of course, Hoke's presence is only part of moments work as images human connections. the change Daisy is facing as the action for larger issues in the play: Any time strangers from different begins; she is also facing an aging crisis. • being able to drive backgrounds are thrown together by Boolie insists she cannot drive any more, • backseat driving/ going the circumstances, the learning curve can and driving works as an image for guiding/ route I've always gone be steep at first; then a breakthrough deciding one's own life. Daisy faces • tending the graves occurs, an opening that engages more several accommodations and challenges • being able to read than the surface of prejudice, presumption, at the top of the play, and her very human • the map and getting lost and suspicion of the "other"; and finally first response is denial and rejection on all • using the restroom on a trip friendship can emerge. fronts. • the power outage Alfred Uhry shows this changing dynamic • Once she lets Hoke drive her to the store, • the Temple bombing using individuals from two minorities in she becomes an insistent backseat driver, • recognition banquets the American South, Jews and African setting the route the "old way," the way she • a care facility and caring Americans. has always driven. While she's insisting, Initial Problem: You Can't Drive Hoke simply drives another, actually • Boolie brings Hoke and Miss Daisy together shorter route to the store. The old way to solve a problem, which is both his may not be the best way—and that is true and hers. Her driving skills seem to be of far more than the route to the grocery slipping, a fact she denies and rejects, in this play. Times change and people and he needs her to have mobility but change. Tradition and being set in one's not driving herself. In addition, Hoke ways and prejudices and views of self needs a job, so all three are poised for and others need examination from time to a working relationship. The immediate time, and the play offers that opportunity. challenge, however, is how to make But Daisy cannot easily concede to Hoke's the relationship "work." route; without commenting on the better • We see prejudice and stereotyping route, she tells him where to park. at work immediately. In his interview, Miscues and Assumptions: Doors, Salmon Hoke mentions the stereotypes about • The stereotypes do not change quickly. A Jews as stingy, but he says he rejects delicate détente still leaves gaping holes that view and mentions that a former in the relationship, as the next scenes employer gave him secondhand the reveal. Hoke pulls right up to the door of In this ad, the 1948 Oldsmobile nice suit he's wearing comparing the Temple to pick up Miss Daisy after "Futuramic" drives off into a modern that to the woman who offered to sell services; she is mortified because it or "futuristic" world. To what extent him badly worn family clothing (we see seems presumptuous, as if she were an do both Daisy and Hoke drive off this secondhand element developed as aristocrat. To Hoke, of course, Daisy is into a "futuramic" world at the start Hoke later buys Daisy's car when Boolie rich; her family can afford a chauffeur. of the play? How long does it take replaces it). Her anger over that moment pales beside them to arrive? her finding an empty can of salmon in the trash­—she already thinks "they" steal and now Hoke has stolen. He knows the way of the white world so well, however, that he walks in with a replacement can and defuses the explosive moment. ASF/ 11 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry The Shape of the Play's Action/ 2

Breakthrough #1: I Can't Read Breakthrough #2: I'm Stopping this Car • The individual issue finally breaks through • The drive to Mobile poses two challenges when Hoke must admit to Daisy he cannot to the white/black power structure and Jim read. He tries to hide the fact, but Crow assumptions. cannot just "look at the pictures" to First, under Jim Crow "separate and find the right cemetery headstone supposedly equal" laws, Hoke cannot use as he does with the newspaper. a whites-only restroom, even though he Ability and vulnerability are now needs to urinate. Daisy tells him not to apparent on both sides: Daisy can stop the car, but he does, insisting she read but not drive; Hoke can drive see him as a person with needs and not but not read. just "the back of a head" in the front seat. As a teacher, Daisy dealt with He demands basic personhood and with students' reading challenges her respect walks away to urinate, leaving entire career, and rather than Daisy to sit a moment in the darkness defining herself as a white woman alone. with a black chauffeur, a definition The drive to Mobile also raises the issue of that still engages her prejudice, who chooses the route, a development of The Jewish section of Atlanta's she now defines herself and engages with the first Piggly Wiggly drive and the larger historic Oakland cemetery (a Hoke as a teacher to build his skill. Giving backseat driving pattern. Daisy keeps the modern shot with the current skyline) Hoke a textbook as a non-Christmas map on this trip and tells Hoke where to present at Christmas becomes a larger turn, but they have gotten off the route expression of acceptance and working and she becomes flustered and blames Thinking about the Play together. She does not see it as a "they" Hoke. Insisting on one's own way, a way • Compare Boolie's relationship issue; it is addressing Hoke's need. in which one can get lost, causes difficulty with and caring for his And consider the image of this scene being and impedes the journey—in life and on mother with Hoke's set with Miss Daisy in the cemetery highways—as Daisy learns the hard way. relationship with and caring tending the graves of the dead. She was Breakthrough #3: It's All Right; Hoke's for Miss Daisy raised to remember the family this way; Here • Compare the challenges of Boolie just says let the cemetery staff do it. • The winter power outage clarifies who Daisy and responses to aging in Daisy is loyal, commemorative. But as an can rely on. It is cold and she is alone the three characters image, in what ways are Daisy's behavior without "power." Being "without power" is • Assess the role of the unseen and views also a way of tending something itself a powerful image; an ice storm is a characters: Boolie's wife, dead, old attitudes, old ways of preserving kind of leveler; how much "power" is she Hoke's granddaughter, a world that, if not dead, perhaps should without? She calls Boolie, who says he will Martin Luther King Jr. be re-evaluated and moved beyond? The try to come later. Hoke just shows up; his reading incident is such an opening. work experience driving a dairy truck gave him skills in winter weather driving. He is there not because Daisy wants to drive anywhere but because he knows she is cold, alone, and without electricity to make her breakfast or morning coffee, so he brings them and himself unasked. That is more than doing his job; that is a caring personal relationship. ASF/ 12 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry The Shape of the Play's Action/ 3

The Other "Others": The Temple Bombing Banquets and Recognition • The earlier scene of Hoke picking up Daisy • Juxtaposing Boolie's business award at the Temple shows her sensitivity to with the Atlanta community's effort public appearance and her place among to recognize Martin Luther King Jr.'s her peers. Her car should not be "out Nobel Peace Prize turns things around front" as if she were rich—part of an yet again. Boolie talks about his family ongoing sensitivity to money matters working to achieve and is grateful for the that is shared by many older Americans recognition of his community. However, on a fixed income. [Even in medieval Daisy never considers, or "recognizes," morality plays, money matters only that Hoke might want to go and celebrate appear in later life.]. She does not Dr. King's Nobel recognition, saying "you want to appear to flaunt wealth amid can see him any time." The importance of this community that has worked hard "recognition" becomes clear, socially and for generations so that many have individually. (Would Daisy have wanted to succeeded and gained some wealth. attend such a banquest in 1948?) • The next scene of driving to the In between these two scenes is Boolie's Temple is climactic in several senses. explanation to his mother of why he cannot The Temple, home of Atlanta's The normal "route" of life is shattered by go to the banquet, why he must "fit in" oldest Jewish congregation. They an explosion. Prejudice in our world is moved to this structure on north with the general attitudes of the Atlanta Peachtree in the 1930s. not only focused on in business community, which he suggests the South but against anyone who can are still prejudiced. He must consider the be defined as "other"—here, the Jews majority view. of Atlanta at a time when synagogue Care and Caring bombing was occurring across the South. • Daisy's aging reaches another stage at The incident actively shifts Daisy to the the end of the play; she can no longer receiving end of prejudice. We have live alone but needs a care facility (or watched the cultural accommodation family care, an option not explored). Her and assimilation in the Christmas scene mobility challengemay have shifted from discussion, the "fitting in" issues and neediong a driver to needing a walker. Daisy's rejection of her daughter-in-law's Boolie continues to take care of his mother illuminated decorations. by arranging the care facility and selling At first Daisy cannot fathom a reason for her house—without telling her. Compare bombing the Temple. Hoke helps her see this moment to his hiring a driver for her that hatred and prejudice often have no without her consent at the beginning. (And basis; they are not there for a justified his attitude about the cemetery?) specific reason, but just emanate from the Hoke's caring is of a different nature. He no hater. longer drives Miss Daisy or drives at all, • Is Hoke's having seen a lynching as a child but he still gets paid, an unofficial form of comparable to the bombing? For anyone retirement benefit. As in the power failure, Jewish in Atlanta the mention of lynching Hoke shows up in friendship to visit Miss would remind Daisy of the 1913 anti- Daisy and she is pleased to see him. semitic outcry in Atlanta culminating in Is it important the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man that this is a falsely accused of rape and murder? She holiday visit, would have lived through that time of being and that the vilified by one's peers who suddenly do not holiday is see the Jews as one of themselves but as Thanksgiving? "others." Lynching is a scarring memory Is "giving they both share. thanks" part of the end of the play? ASF/ 13 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry "Us" and "Them": Shifting Southern Perspectives

For all the talk of America being a melting recent World War. Waves of racist rhetoric and pot of nationalities, beliefs, and religions, every terrorism from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan region of the country has its ethnic majority kept life uneasy for Hoke and other Southern and ethnic minorities, its particular cultural blacks, whose awareness of disparity in the land hegemonies, and its divisiveness. In the South, of the free was growing exponentially. Daisy: “Isn’t it wonderful the distinction between “us” and “them” can Since he is black, Hoke's experience with the way things are be brusque or subtle, as brusque as the black society is markedly different than Daisy's. Born changing?”… versus white of Jim Crow or side by side country 11 years after the Civil War ended, she lived in Hoke: “Things changin’, clubs, one excluding Jewish members and one the white world and could get an education, teach but they ain’t change for Jews, or as subtle as who gets a business school, go to public parks, ride at the front of the contract or a job. bus. Hoke was never taught to read, and he was all dat much.” White, Black, & Jim Crow—Hoke's World barred by his race from many aspects of public The history of the South has long been life in Atlanta into the 1950s. His entire life has told in terms of white and black. The system been an awaress of difference and stereotype. of slavery on which the antebellum plantation The long wait ended in the civil rights movement economy relied brought on the War between the of the 1950s and 1960s, when boycotts of buses States, and the freeing of the slaves promised and lunch counters, freedom marches and sit-ins a deep and abiding change in Southern society. and speeches at the Lincoln Memorial forced It was a deep and abiding change that did not an end to legal segregation. come, however, for along with suffrage laws “Not Our Kind”—Miss Daisy's World granting black men the right to vote came a Yet religious differences were not less of series of exclusionary laws designed to separate a problem than racial differences in the South. the races as forcefully, perhaps, as before the The majority of the population was Protestant, War. The era of “Jim Crow” segregated schools, so even to be Catholic or Jewish was to be dining establishments, railroad waiting rooms, almost a pariah in Southern society. Suspicion restrooms, water fountains, and even dictated and ignorance drove such feelings, which were The separate and supposedly that black customers could not try on clothing present but not as graphic in much of the 19th equal world of Jim Crow at a unless they lined the garments with paper so bus station century, but they gained force and visibility their skin did not touch the fabric. in the late 19th and early 20th century. The Blacks who could afford to bought land and German-Jewish community sought to blend in farmed it; those who could not afford to buy land to Southern society, dropping dietary laws and rented it as tenant farmers or sharecroppers other practices that separated them who earned a percentage of the crop at Clubs suddenly became “exclusive”—that harvest time, but before then borrowed money is, exclusively white and Protestant—and white to buy seed, supplies, and household goods, society would shift its defintion of “us” depending including food. Harvest meant paying the huge on the context. Daisy and Boolie live in this bill owed the landowner or the local store out social world, insulated in their own community of the small percentage of the crop the farmers and yet vulnerable to the prejudice of the larger could call theirs. Not surprisingly, when cotton society. Anti-Semitism surged in Atlanta between prices plunged or insect infestations damaged 1913 and 1915 and regained strength during crops, many tenant farmers were forced off the the 1930s, when all Europe was awash with land. Such economic hardships fed the Great Nazi-fed anti-Jewish sentiment. Migration northward in the early decades of the Daisy denies being a racist, but her world is twentieth century as tens of thousands of blacks inherently racist, just as it is often anti-Semitic. Whitehall Street in 1880—Boolie felt the call of Chicago, Detroit, Philadephia, or She has had a black maid for almost three says the Werthan began New York City, where opportunity seemed more decades, and Hoke has driven for a Jewish on Whitehall Street about this time. promising than in the South. Note the trolley tracks in the street. judge. Both come from groups often excluded This migration also drew rural blacks into from Atlanta society and life. Each knows the Southern cities; that is Hoke’s history. He something of the other's world, but nothing of the has grown up under Jim Crow in rural Georgia, individuals in it. They have witnessed change, moved to Atlanta, been forcibly “separate” but not nearly the change that will occur from all his life, and yet watched his fellow African 1948 to 1973, the range of the play's action, Americans defend the United States through the from the aftermath of World War II through the civil rights era. ASF/ 14 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Coming to America: Two Very Different Experiences The Black Experience: Slavery to Freedom The pattern of settlement and assimilation In 1619 a Dutch trader sold 19 African was repeated generation by generation through slaves to settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, and the end of the 19th century, for the vast new thus began a very different journey to freedom opportunties of America involved new Jewish for blacks in America than that experienced by settlers in the general social life to a much the Jews coming to America as immigrants. In greater degree than they had experienced in time, some 3.5 million other slaves joined the Europe. Therefore, while they remained Jews, at first 19 in America to help build America without the same time they actively became American. fully being able to benefit from its promise. There was no enforced, exclusively Jewish Slavery separated families, tribes, and cultural community, ghetto, or shtetl, as there had been groups and continued as a stern and often in the old country; now the Jews were part of brutal system of forced labor, denying education the community at large, with equal opportunities. Slaves adapted their various faith systems to As one writer points out: Christianity and forged a strong black church, In the traditional community, an all-pervasive while freedom became a dream that some pattern of Jewish thought, action, outlook, struggled to buy for themselves and others fled and association had been punctuated by into at great peril. occasional excursions into the general In the 19th century the United States society primarily in pursuit of economic divided into "slave" states and "free" states ends. In the newly developing American Africans were sold or kidnapped along the Mason-Dixon Line, and western Jewish mode, a distinctively American style into slavery and then had to endure expansion extended this polititcal and territorial of thought, action, outlook, and association the Middle Passage before getting to divide. The Civil War resolved the national was punctuated by occcasional excursions the New World;. Above, an exhibit of issue without resolving the basic political to the synagogue for the performance a slave ship at the Griot Museum of and social issues, resulting in the passage of on increasingly marginal ceremonial Black History and Culture in St. Louis. discriminatory "separate but equal" Jim Crow functions. Violence did not prompt the laws that emphasized difference for almost Each new group of Jewish immigrants immigration that brought Daisy's another century. sought to redefine their presence in America. But German Jewish family to America, as the United States grew through the frontier but the second wave of Jewish The Civil Rights movement that boycotted immigrants came fleeing pogroms in buses and took to the streets and lunch counters phase and the Land of Opportunity became Russia and Eastern Eastern. Below, in the 1950s and '60s finally got such legal more industrial than agrarian, the nature of a postcard of a pogrom in Odessa. discrimination reversed with the passage of the the assimilation as well as the needs of the Voting Rights Law and other legal assurances incoming groups changed. Through the end of of equality. Business and social attitudes began the 19th century acculturation was the norm; to evolve in the wake of this movement and the established American Jews often saw Jewish legal protections it fostered. As a matter of pride, newcomers as “alien, abrasive, and uncouth,” African Americans keep their roots evident in while immigrants found Jews already there to be their identification as Americans. “lax in religious observance,” for the newcomers The Jewish Experience: Free to Succeed wanted to recreate the intimate and religiously The first Jews in America were Sephardic, observant Jewish village or ghetto life they had Jews from Spain and Portugal, and Ashkenazim, known before. the Jews of northern European origin. The 19th-century pattern changed, Immigration continued from the first settlement however, with the influx of nearly two million of Jews in New York in 1654 as communities Jews from Eastern Europe between 1890 and founded synagogues along the Eastern 1915. These immigrants came not by choice seaboard during the 18th century, but their but from necessity, driven from their homes by governance was secular until 1840, when the pogroms. They were more interested in safety first rabbi came to America. and their own community than assimilation. Such an influx affected the Jewish community in Atlanta as the Russian orthodox community founded new synagogues and made its own way rather than joining the reform Jewish community in melding with Southern culture. So another issue of separateness and Jewish identity arose in America. ASF/ 15 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Hoke’s World: Growing Up “Colored” in the South When Driving Miss Daisy opens, Hoke Civil Rights Timeline Coleburn has lived all sixty years of his life under 1866 • 14th Amendment grants citizenship Jim Crow, the nickname given to the segregation to former slaves and equal laws that separated the races living in the same protection under the law locales all over the South. Even in the 1940s and 1950s, Georgia had 1870 • 15th Amendment makes it illegal not yet awakened from the dream and to deny a citizen the right to vote the nightmare of the Confederacy. Black on account of race or color students were barred from attending public schools with white children and were not 1896 • Supreme Court upholds racial accepted at a single [non-black] southern segregation in Plessy v. university, graduate school, law school, Ferguson, establishing the or medical school. The percentage of 'separate but equal' standard. the state budget going to the education Segregation flourishes. of black children was infinitesimal. ‘The negro child,’ Governor Hoke Smith had 1944 • Supreme Court, in Smith v. stated, ‘should be taught to work.’ Black Allwright, declares all-white children and adults were prohibited from political primaries violate the 15th enjoying public parks, playgrounds, Amendment. (In Georgia, elections botanical gardens, golf courses, and were virtually won in white-only swimming pools; and they were Democratic primaries.) excluded from white churches, hotels, barbershops, restaurants, 1947 • Jackie Robinson breaks the color movie theaters, and cemeteries. barrier in baseball's major leagues in clothing stores, they could not try on clothing. On the 1954 • In Brown v. Board of Education sidewalk,, they were expected of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme to step into the street to allow Court rules that racial segregation whites to pass.… Black doctors violates the 14th Amendment and nurses could not treat white patients; black patients could not be seen in white 1955 • Rosa Parks refuses to move to the hospitals. back of the bus in Montgomery, They were required to use separate elevators, Alabama, beginning the and courtrooms had two Bibles: one for the oaths Montgomery bus boycott led by of white witnesses, one for black. young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These worlds were certainly separate but 1958 • A Raisin in the Sun, first play on in no way equal. For many black Southerners, Broadway by a black playwright, opportunities were few, hard-earned, and Lorraine Hansberry fragile. Yet the experience of World War II and a renewed effort at voter registration and 1961 • Demonstrations and Freedom organization began to change life for black Rides confront segregation Atlantans. Moreover, the nonviolent civil rights movement in large part came to be centered 1964 • After a filibuster by Southern in Atlanta, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at senators, the Civil Rights Bill is Ebenezer Baptist Church and as president of passed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). 1965 • Selma-to-Montgomery March Other groups, such as the Student Non- • Voting Rights Act passes Congress Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Signs of the Time • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. awarded the Black Panthers had more activist agendas Nobel Peace prize as an array of approaches worked to address the problem of inequality in America. 1968 • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in ASF/ 16 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Success in "Sweet Auburn"—The Heart of Black Atlanta

Many black neighborhoods during Auburn Avenue was the genesis of this segregation did not share in Atlanta's growth progress. By day, Auburn Avenue was an Atlanta and Civil Rights and modernization—the roads were still dirt, the economic center with business and medical • In 1895, Booker T. houses plain and with no city services: no running offices, banks, restaurants, hardware stores, Washington's famous water, no sewers, no electricity. Yet a substantial barbers, hairdressers, churches, and a library. "Atlanta Compromise black middle class was also emerging in Atlanta, By night, it was full of clubs playing jazz and Speech" at Atlanta's Cotton and they made their own opportunities blues, where folks could dress up and partake States and International In fact, from the 1920s through the 1940s of the entertainment, and the entertainment Exposition advocated a the black community built their own city within included Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dinah gradual move to equality. the city. And at the heart of this black community, Washington, Ray Charles, the Supremes, and • W. E. B. DuBois, then a Atlanta had Auburn Avenue, a mile and a half long the Temptations, and Atlanta's own Gladys Morehouse professor and and the “main street of black America,” which in Knight . “It was,“ says , “for activist, said the speech 1956 Forbes Magazine called “the richest Negro newcomers, like the first sight of Israel for a Jew, was seen as a surrender. street in the world." In Atlanta: the first breathtaking sense of majority.” • In 1906, a race riot, fed by • there was a black daily newspaper, the newspaper accounts of (the first such paper black men assaulting white in the country), women but really driven by • and in 1949 the first black-owned radio fear of white working class station, WERD, began broadcasting. job loss to black workers, • Atlanta had the first black CPA in the led to about 25 blacks country, the first black optician's shop; killed. • there were a number of black millionaires. • The legal challenge to • There were “more black homeowners segregation began in the than any other southern city.” 1920s as lawyers Charles • Moreover, in rebuilding the city after the Houston and Thurgood Civil War, Atlanta also became home Marshall "decided to train a to a consortium of black colleges, a group of black lawyers who graduate school, and seminary (later would challenge the laws." known as Atlanta University)—making • One of SNCC's first lunch it the “intellectual capital of black counter sit-ins after its first America.” After World War II this meeting, in Atlanta, was at neighborhood became the fashionable Rich's department store area for black development. • Dr. King's presence at Ebenezer Baptist Church and with the Atlanta-based Birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr. SCLC kept non-violence in on Auburn Avenue the forefront • Since 1974, Atlanta has had one Jewish and five African American mayors Auburn Avenue's Herndon Building, built in 1924 by Alonzo Herndon, a former A Cadillac slave and shoeshiner LaSalle key who founded the opens Hoke's Atlanta Life Insurance "new" used Company (also on Cadillac which Auburn Avenue) and he buys once became Atlanta's first Boolie gets black millionaire. Daisy a new car ASF/ 17 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Jews Coming to America: The Promise of Opportunity

The European Experience: Jews Apart The American Experience: Equality Under From the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 the Law B.C.E. to the creation of Israel as a Jewish The promise of religious freedom drew state in 1948, the Jews had no homeland. many peoples to America—the Pilgrims, the As Jacob Neusner points out in The Way of Quakers, and the Jews among them. But more Torah, “the majority of the Jewish people has than religious freedom, for which the Jews had not lived in the Holy Land suffered for thousands of years, the promise since the second century of equality and economic opportunity attracted C.E. and does not do so Jewish immigrants who for hundreds of years today.” Consequently, being had been denied access to economic and Jewish living amid other personal well-being in other societies. groups has long shaped the America changed that, and the traders and Jewish experience. Jews peddlers from Europe found that they could have spoken the languages come to America and trade in the newly settled of their dwelling places, areas of the Midwest and South—trading with adopted their mores, lived in whites and blacks. As the son of one such trader their societies. At the same explained, “The itinerant merchant … filled a time, Jews have recognized real want, and his vocation was looked upon that as a people their history as quite dignified. Indeed he was treated by the is one of suffering centered owners of the plantations with a spirit of equality on the theme of exile and that it is hard to appreciate today.” Eventually return. such traders might buy a small store, which The first "ghetto" [Italian for A People Unto Themselves often grew into far more sizable concerns. The foundry, its previous use], For nearly 2,000 years, Jews lived amid success stories of 19th-century Jewish peddlers the island where all Jews in Islam and Christendom but within their own and small store owners are inspiring: Renaissance Venice were required communities and laws. Thus they were not fully to live. Its only two bridges were • Atlanta’s Morris Rich, whose tiny shop barred and locked at night. integrated into other nations, but lived as a people became Rich’s Department Store within a people. While these centuries involved • Henry, Emanuel, and Mayer Lehman from the study of philosophy and the law through Bavaria who emigrated to Montgomery, talmudic commentary for the Jewish community, Alabama, in the late 1840s, traded with “to the outside world, Jewish history was the tale packs and then from a small store, shifted of persecution and massacre, degradation and into cotton brokering and founded what restriction to despised occupations, then riot became the Lehman Brothers financial and expulsion, and the discovery of new homes empire elsewhere.” It was debilitating and dangerous • Adam Gimbel left Bavaria in 1835, landed to be perceived as “other.” in New Orleans, traded up the Mississippi A People Restricted from Society River and opened a dry goods store in Thus from the Middle Ages through the Vincennes, Indiana, from which grew the Enlightenment, Jews were separated from Gimbel Brothers department store chain the other members of society partly by their • Benjamin Blumenthal of Bavaria landed own doing, but also partly by restrictive laws in New York in 1837; in 1886 his that forbade them housing, forbade them sons opened Bloomingdale Brothers professional development except in certain Department Store lines of trade such as peddling and cobbling • In 1843, 14-year-old Levi Strauss left and moneylending, and forbade them citizenship Bavaria for New York, where two of his rights. Forced into ghettos and misunderstood brothers already owned a textile business; due to their differences, Jews often found their he went to California and created denim every success to be suspect. For instance, when cloth for miners' durable work pants. Morris Rich's original small they thrived as moneylenders, one of the few Not every immigrant became a business dry goods store in 1867 grew professions open to them, the larger community tycoon, of course, and many Jewish businesses into Rich's, the city's first large considered them greedy. Opportunities were department store, which opened thrived as distinctly local concerns until the in 1906, one of the first to use few, restrictions were many, and suspicion was mall phenomenon and standardization of chain plate glass windows to encourage rampant. Even when Jews sought to emigrate, stores after 1970. "window shopping" difficulties often arose. ASF/ 18 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Americanizing Immigrants: Jewish Assimilation in Atlanta

Until pogroms drove nearly two million Thus, when the early 20th century brought a Russian and Eastern European Jews to the fear of “aliens” in Atlanta, the Temple community "Simply, quietly, in a U.S. between 1890 and 1915, America's sought to be perceived as “native.” Nonetheless, world ruled by Anglo-Saxon Jewish immigrants had come by choice. social clubs and benevolent societies began to Protestants, southern Ostracized in Europe and for centuries following exclude Jews from membership, and the 1913 their own moral, ethical, and ceremonial arrest of Jewish businessman Leo Frank for Jews had laid aside their commandments governing clothing, diet, the rape and murder of a teenage employee yarmulkes; forgotten their work habits, and conduct, they arrived to find inflamed the Atlanta community, flames fed by Hebrew letters; culitvated themselves Americans and finally part of the anti-Semitic press accounts. The innocent Frank a taste for shellfish, baked larger community. As one writer observes, they was lynched—an act with two consequences: ham, and pork roast; and adoped "a dintinctively American style of thought, the formation of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation celebrated Christmas and action, outlook, and association … punctuated League to fight prejudice and a resurgent Ku Easter with their children.… by occasional excursions to the synagogue Klux Klan, which had almost died out in the late for the performance of increasingly marginal 19th century but now spreadsix million members The members [of ceremonial functions." 1924. The conviction and lynching of Frank left a the Temple] kept up the Some of this response was also driven by permanent scar on Atlanta's Jewish community appearance of perfect the 19th-century reform movement in Judaism, and mitigated their public support of civil rights. contentment … by insulating including abbreviated services, use of national These events enhanced Rabbi Marx’s themselves against the languages rather than Hebrew for sermons desire for the Jewish community at the Temple petty insults, glass ceilings, and prayers, and a minimization of ceremonial to be “invisible.” It was common for Temple and restrictive clauses of commandments, thus limiting the differentiation members to celebrate all the holidays, Jewish the outside world." of Jews from the rest of the community. and Christian, including Christmas and Easter, —Melissa Fay Green, Slavery kept Jews from settling in Atlanta, though Jews usually put a Star of David atop The Temple Bombing but after the Civil War the community grew with their Christmas trees. Only the coming of Jewish immigrants who wanted to join American Rabbi Rothschild in 1946 began to reorient society. Thus, during the late 19th century, the the community toward observing more Jewish Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, known as tradition. Also, one of the first issues he the Temple, slowly moved to embody reform. championed was civil rights. With the 1890s' influx of observant Russian Jews who maintained traditional dress and Seeing Assimilation in the Play customs, reviving ideas of Jewish “difference,” Holidays the established German-Jewish community, • Boolie: Mama? Merry many now white-collar businessmen, sought Christmas! to blend even more thoroughly. and Daisy discussing Florine: • Daisy: She always has to go Atlanta laws forbade businesses from and stick a wreath in every window she's operating on Sunday, so many Jewish stores got. and businesses stayed open on Saturday, even Hoke: Mmm-hmmm. though that is the Jewish Sabbath. By the 1890s Daisy: And that silly Santa Claus winking on observance of dietary laws was largely dropped the front door! … by the Temple congregation, and ham and Hoke: I enjoy Christmas at they house. shellfish began to be served in Jewish homes Daisy: I don't wonder. You're the only and at the Temple. Christian in the place! Rabbi David Marx was the Temple’s Food first American-born rabbi when he came to Architectural Assimilation—above, • Hoke: I know you say to eat the leftover the original Jewish synagogue in Atlanta in 1895. He stayed at the Temple pork chops, but they stiff. until 1946, leading the way to radical Atlanta built in 1875 on Forsyth The Temple bombing Street (in the neighborhood in Reform. The bar mitzvah ceremony waned, • Daisy: Well, it's a mistake. I'm sure they which Daisy grew up). On page and Marx instituted a Sunday service. To insure meant to bomb one of the conservative 12 compare the architecture of his congregation thrived, he sought closer ties the new Temple built on north synagogues or the orthodox one. The with Protestant churches than with the Russian Temple is reform. Everybody knows that." Peachtree (note: Daisy, too, moves Jewish synagogues. He the Temple “the Jewish to the north side of Atlanta as her [implying that we're not "other"] husband's business prospers). church,” and felt Jewishness was for Friday night Hoke: It doan' matter to them people. A Jew at home, but the rest of the week congregants is a Jew to them folks…. were Americans. ASF/ 19 Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry Questions and Activities for Driving Miss Daisy

Friendship Social Issues • What is the basis of friendship? Do all • The film ofDriving Miss Daisy, which came friendships have the same basis and out in 1989, the same year dynamic? Do you "make" friends or does released , has been friendship grow, evolve or discover itself? criticized for soft-pedaling the racial issues What does "friend" mean in our Facebook in the South and preserving a nostalgia world? How many kinds of "friend" are for the past (and a one-sided view of the there? Which ones would bring you break- past). Does the play sugarcoat the issues fast in a power outage? and characters? does it show how one relationship developed? does it present Perspectives the truth as Uhry experienced it? does it Take the perspective of one of the say this is the truth for all? The new 1963 Cadillac that • Boolie buys his mother looks like characters and express his or her personal a stretch limo next to the 1948 views. What are Boolie's concerns? What • Change is a major element of the play. Oldsmobile she had (in title icon do you suppose Boolie says to his friends Compare what changes and what does above) that was new when the play about his responsibilities and his mother? not between the characters and in their opens. Though we never see the cars Hoke rarely says what he must really feel society. What is the play's view of change? mentioned, anyone with automotive and think; what is his inner monologue? knowledge has a clear sense of What might Hoke say to his daughter • Does social change or changing attitudes changing car styles and what they about the ongoing nature of his new job? toward groups of people work the same say about American popular culture and its values. What would Daisy put in her diary? What way individual relationships do? Does the might Daisy say to a sister about Boolie or play suggest an answer to this question? Hoke in 1948 or twenty years later? • What is the role of the automobile in History / Cultural Literacy American society? Has it changed since Interview • As these study materials suggest, having 1948? Is driving an appropriate and • Pick a relative or a family a sense of some 20th-century cultural important "vehicle" for this play's concerns friend two generations older history deepens the experience of seeing and issues? How or how not? than you are, and interview this play, so research the 1948-73 time that person about what frame and its background, especially: • We talk of America as a melting pot. How everyday was like when • Reconstruction and its aftermath does the play look at American society—is they were your age, how • Jim Crow laws it a melting pot, a pot, or a styrofoam they saw themselves and • the Holocaust container with separations? others, and what the world • the idea of cultural assimilation for —What has happened in the U.S. since looked like to them then. immigrants and former slaves 1973 that might continue or alter the —What has changed between • the varieties of social prejudice and commentary of the play? What groups then and now? How does social divisions in America and the confront each other over what issues in your world work? ways they can be overcome our contemporary society? • the Leo Frank incident in Atlanta —If we are one nation, does that mean Plays with Chauffeurs • the Civil Rights movement we all have to be identical and share • Compare Hoke in Driving • anti-Semitic actions in post-World War exactly the same views? to what Miss Daisy to Walter II America extent is unanimity desirable and when Lee Younger in Lorraine problematic? Are there majority and Hansberry's A Raisin in Self and Society minority concerns that need heeding? the Sun. Both men are • Society is a powerful force in American life; chauffeurs, but we see Hoke the sense of belonging can be potent and Prejudice largely from the outside (we the ability to include or exclude heady. • What causes prejudice? What is the best are never in his home), but What are the lines between the individual way to deal with it? Are bombings or we are in Walter Lee's home and society? Does all of society see the counting our silverware our only options? and know his family—what world the same way? Or do we have —On page 2 Uhry talks about the shame of difference does that make? separate societies within a larger society? being Jewish. How is that feeling like and/ Is it as simple as a white What are our "groups" and what is one's or unlike racial prejudice? male playwright and a black place within or despite them? —Uhry comments that "it’s not so much female playwright? what you do as how you do it." Is that true in terms of prejudice? Driving Miss Daisy

by Alfred Uhry 2015-2016 SchoolFest Sponsors

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