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Playing American: Race and Citizenship in American Theatre and Performance During the Great War, 1917-1919

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Playing American: Race and Citizenship in American Theatre and Performance During the Great War, 1917-1919 PLAYING AMERICAN: RACE AND CITIZENSHIP IN AMERICAN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE DURING THE GREAT WAR, 1917-1919 BY MICHELLE SALERNO DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre with a minor in European Union Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Valleri Robinson, Chair Associate Professor Peter A. Davis Assistant Professor Sandra Ruiz Assistant Professor Joshua Chambers-Letson, Northwestern University ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the intersection of race and citizenship in American theatre and performance during US active engagement in the Great War through focusing on performances by and about German immigrants and African American soldiers. Quickly after President Woodrow Wilson requested a declaration of war against Germany, the American homefront became a site of coercive patriotism supported by an extreme nationalistic rhetoric. A vital aspect of military preparedness would be the conformity of opinion, political expression, and outward signs of loyalty. Those who could or would not fit into the newly defined narrow view of proper American citizenship expression found themselves in the dangerous position of being outsiders. Those of German descent and recent German immigrants were suspected of disloyalty. Through a racialized process of enemization, Germans lost their access to the safety and security provided by White privilege. The performances examined in this dissertation derive from this brief period where the construction of race, and in particular the instability of Whiteness, stands out precisely because Germans were now considered White. Wartime German enemy construction was created through the modes and means of American anti-Black racism connecting xenophobic suspicions with deep-rooted racial ideologies of White supremacy. Against the backdrop of the striking spectacle of violence that was the Great War there were more intimate performances of violence that linked the minority subject to the nation. Through an interdisciplinary analysis rooted in theatre history, performance studies, critical race/ethnic theory, American studies, and utilizing archival research these chapters foreground how performed acts of violence constructed and circulated notions of race and citizenship on the theatrical stage and in everyday performance. The chapters of this dissertation discuss and analyze a theatrical event and a performative event for both German immigrants and African American soldiers including (1) an analysis the play Friendly Enemies (1918) by Aaron Hoffman and Samuel Shipman and its production and critical history, (2) the lynching of German immigrant Robert Prager in Collinsville, IL, (3) the African ii American soldiers charged for mutiny and murder for their participation in the Houston Riot, and (4) an analysis of the play Mine Eyes Have Seen (1918) by Alice Dunbar Nelson and its production history. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate how the hyper-patriotic wartime American landscape offers a productive site for examining the role of violence in racial and citizenship formation. iii For Mom. iv ACKNOWLEGEMENTS I would like to thank the staff, faculty, and students in the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois. My years spent in the cornfield will always hold a special place in my heart and I am honored to have taught and learned many lessons while in Champaign-Urbana. Thank you to Valleri Robinson for guiding this project across the finish line. Thank you to all my Illinois colleagues and friends who have provided support through this process. BJ, Abby, and Carrie – I would have never made it through without our evenings of dinner, games, and bad movies. This project would not have been possible without many conversations with Joshua Chambers- Letson. I am continually honored by your mentorship and your friendship. My family has always been supportive of my work in the theatre and has come to everything I was involved in, even when it was terrible. Their love and support has meant the world. Thanks, Dad, for being a constant advocate for enjoying life to the fullest. Zack – your partnership makes it all possible. If not for you… Marshall, you will never know how much of this project you were involved in – from kicking me in the ribs while I wrote to sitting on my lap while I typed the last of the bibliography. You were and still are a constant reminder that if I want the world to be a better place for you I have fight for it. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 2: FROM ‘HYPHENATED IMMIGRANT’ TO 100% AMERICAN: THE TRANSFORMATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF ASSIMILATION IN FRIENDLY ENEMIES..…………………………………………………………………...26 CHAPTER 3: THE FLAG AND THE NOOSE: ROBERT PRAGER, ACTS OF COERCIVE PATRIOTISM, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF LYNCHING……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….65 CHAPTER 4: THE HOUSTON RIOT: VIOLENCE AND RESISTANCE IN A TIME OF WAR………………….............108 CHAPTER 5: THE THEATRICAL VISION OF ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON’S MINE EYES HAVE SEEN: INTERROGATING THE DILEMMA OF AFRICAN AMERICAN MILITARY SERVICE DURING THE GREAT WAR…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….153 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………202 BIBLIOGRAPHY….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………219 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION American theatre history and performance scholarship is virtually silent on the First World War. There are no comprehensive American volumes that equal the broad scale, depth, and quality of the works on British theatre, L.J. Collins’s Theatre at War 1914-1918 (1997) and Gordon Williams’s British Theatre in the Great War (2003), or address the range of performances in an American context in ways similar to European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914-1918 (2002) edited by Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites. Even the classic The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) by American scholar Paul Fussell focuses solely on British novels and poems. The many American events commemorating the start of the war in Europe in the fall of 2014 demonstrated a desire to re- discover the influence of the war and analyze its connection to the contemporary moment. This dissertation contends that the renewed interest in this period could not come at a better time as many of the socio-political conflicts that haunted the homefront - the role of immigrants and refugees in American society, the justification of police and state violence, and a narrowing of acceptable expressions of American citizenship – are once again highly visible in a nation still fighting on foreign lands. As the centennial of American engagement approaches in 2017, this dissertation is part of a newfound interest in exploring the enduring American legacy of the conflict in Europe and on the American homefront. Quickly after President Woodrow Wilson went to Congress on April 2, 1917 to request a declaration of war against Germany, the American homefront became a site of coercive patriotism supported by an extreme nationalistic rhetoric. Wilson, elected on the platform of keeping Americans out the war, was now proclaiming that the country had no choice but to build a massive military infrastructure, raise an army, and send young men to the bloody battlefields of Europe. To take America on this journey, Wilson and his administration would need to fight a war for the minds and hearts of 1 Americans as much as it needed to wage war against the Central Powers. A vital aspect of military preparedness would be the conformity of opinion, political expression, and outward signs of loyalty. Those who could or would not fit into the newly defined narrow view of proper American citizenship expression found themselves in the dangerous position of being outsiders. Pacifists, socialists, anarchists, suffragettes, and conscious objectors all found themselves at odds with the changing political and social landscape as the government attempted to silence dissent through legal punishment. Local communities also took up the charge of wartime conformity requiring and enforcing declarations of national loyalty, the monitoring of behavior and speech, and the reporting of actions they found suspicious to the authorities (Capozzola 8-10). Those of German descent and African Americans were highly suspected of being disloyal and were vulnerable to extreme acts of violence, each due to a reason that was out of their control – their race. Those of German descent in the US became enemies of the state overnight when the country went to war against their former homeland. While many Whites believed that due to racial oppression, African Americans harbored less allegiance to their country and would be susceptible to the influence of German spies. This study is guided by conceptions of race in this period, the ramifications of racism, and their relationship to American citizenship. How will those who have been historically oppressed reconcile the request for military sacrifice from a nation who has treated them so poorly? What will happen when the home country of the largest ethnic group in the nation becomes the enemy? These questions are not hypothetical ones but historical realities, lived experiences, and fundamental queries about the relationship between the individual and the state. This dissertation takes up these questions through examining American theatre and performance
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