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Georgia Douglas Johnson and Eulalie Spence As Figures Who Fostered Community in the Midst of Debate

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Georgia Douglas Johnson and Eulalie Spence As Figures Who Fostered Community in the Midst of Debate Art versus Propaganda?: Georgia Douglas Johnson and Eulalie Spence as Figures who Fostered Community in the Midst of Debate Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Caroline Roberta Hill, B.A. Graduate Program in Theatre The Ohio State University 2019 Thesis Committee: Jennifer Schlueter, Adviser Beth Kattelman Copyright by Caroline Roberta Hill 2019 Abstract The Harlem Renaissance and New Negro Movement is a well-documented period in which artistic output by the black community in Harlem, New York, and beyond, surged. On the heels of Reconstruction, a generation of black artists and intellectuals—often the first in their families born after the thirteenth amendment—spearheaded the movement. Using art as a means by which to comprehend and to reclaim aspects of their identity which had been stolen during the Middle Passage, these artists were also living in a time marked by the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation. It stands to reason, then, that the work that has survived from this period is often rife with political and personal motivations. Male figureheads of the movement are often remembered for their divisive debate as to whether or not black art should be politically charged. The public debates between men like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke often overshadow the actual artistic outputs, many of which are relegated to relative obscurity. Black female artists in particular are overshadowed by their male peers despite their significant interventions. Two pioneers of this period, Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966) and Eulalie Spence (1894-1981), will be the subject of my thesis. Both artists, whose work is in close conversation, were innovators in their field. In this thesis I will argue that black women like Johnson and Spence were true innovators during the Harlem Renaissance/New Negro Movement despite the fact that men like Locke and Du Bois are often seen as its figureheads. Johnson and Spence are salient examples for two key reasons. First, their work represents a false dichotomy—art vs. propaganda—which I will endeavor to refute. Second, their work, despite its differences, engages with many of the same themes related to feminism and intersectionality. ii While there has been an influx of research into the lives and work of such women as Johnson and Spence in recent years, my aim is to further contribute to such important work and further contextualize it as an integral part of the Western canon through a more explicitly feminist lens. This thesis will be an addition to the ongoing research that is beginning to fill this gap in scholarship. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank to my adviser, Dr. Jennifer Schlueter, for her continued encouragement and guidance throughout my writing process. Without her support and insights, this project would not have been possible, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked with her. I would also like to thank Dr. Beth Kattelman for providing invaluable resources which laid the groundwork for much of my research, as well as engaging and thought-provoking discussions throughout our independent study. Finally, I cannot express enough thanks for my parents for their unwavering love and support, and without whom I would not be where I am today. iv Vita June 2011 ……………………………………...….…. Hoover High School December 2013 ……………………………………… B.A. History, Miami University August 2017 to present ……………………………… Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Theatre, The Ohio State University Publications Hill, Caroline. “Rage Against Miscegenation: The Controversy of Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun’ Got Wings.” Laconics 9, (2014). Fields of Study Major Field: Theatre Minor Field: Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies v Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………...… ii Acknowledgements…..…..…………………………………........ iv Vita………………………………………………….………..…... v Chapter 1: Introduction.………………………………………….. 1 Chapter 2: Women and the Harlem Renaissance.………………. 11 Chapter 3: Common Themes…………………..……......…..….. 26 Chapter 4: Art versus Propaganda versus Patriarchy..………….. 46 Chapter 5: Conclusion…………………………………………... 62 References………………………………………………………. 67 Appendix A: Chronology…………………......………………… 72 vi Chapter 1: Introduction Following the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and concurrent with the rise of Jim Crow in the United States, black female artists began to assert their cultural presence, the results of which laid the foundation for future generations. The first black female playwright in the United States, Pauline Hopkins (1859-1930) paved the way in creating a space for black female playwrights. Though she is more known for her novels, Hopkins wrote musicals in the 1870s and several were staged by the Hyers Sisters—two African American sisters who travelled and performed across the country.1 The Underground Railroad (1879) is her most complete extant script today, but there is evidence of other plays by Hopkins, including Aristocracy (1877) and Urlina African Princess (date unknown). Hopkins was no doubt confined by the conventions of the day, which relegated black characters to harmful stereotypes which were performed in minstrel shows. However, her plays illustrate an attempt to upend the minstrel tradition while keeping audiences engaged. Although on the surface, Hopkins’s plays follow a very similar formula to that of a minstrel show, Carol Allen notes several significant differences between them: “no one wears burnt cork; women take roughly half the key roles; the scenes, except for the first, migrate out from the plantation; and dialect, while employed as the drama advances, is abandoned by curtain fall.”2 Furthermore, Hopkins’s play replaces the simple, “childlike” music of minstrel shows with music that contains more uplifting messaging.3 Although her musicals are certainly dated when viewed through a contemporary lens, her work opened the door for her successors in the twentieth century. 1 Carol Allen, Peculiar Passages (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 34. 2 Ibid., 33. 3 Ibid. 1 Angelina Weld Grimké is the most prominent black female playwright to have emerged following Hopkins’s venture into the world of musical theatre. She began circulating drafts of her play Rachel in 1914.4 Considered the first lynching drama, Rachel helped to inspire an outpouring of art by black women writers. Also referred to as “anti-lynching dramas,” lynching dramas are short plays which examine the disastrous effects of lynching on communities and families. Often, as was the case with Rachel, lynching dramas were written with white audiences in mind, as a means by which to garner sympathy. Others were most commonly distributed in periodicals like the Crisis to be read in church groups and other community gatherings. Lynching dramas never present the act of lynching onstage, instead focusing on its effects on the characters; further, they commonly rely on a strong female presence and perspective. More broadly, “problem play” may be used to denote a play with political intent, whether or not a lynching occurs. Furthermore, Rachel helped catalyze an earnest interest in fostering playwrights in the Harlem Renaissance. Following Grimké were dramatists Mary P. Burrill, Zora Neale Hurston, May Miller, Marita Bonner, Shirley Graham, Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eulalie Spence, and myriad other black women inspired to create snapshots of their lives, experiences, and communities to disseminate across the nation. Because of the realities of being a black female playwright in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, production was not likely and a great deal of these artists’ outputs can be classified as closet dramas. Originating in Early Modern Europe, closet dramas are plays written without the intention of performance or production.5 Harlem Renaissance writers were not the first black 4 While there is no consensus as to when Rachel was first written, Koritha Mitchell has traced the play in some form back to 1914 in Living with Lynching. 5 Catherine Burroughs, “Introduction,” in Closet Drama: History, Theory, Form, ed. Catherine Burroughs (New York: Routledge, 2019), 1. 2 Americans to utilize the closet drama however, as William Wells Brown’s The Escape; or The Leap for Freedom (1858) was an early closet drama with political intentions; an abolitionist lecturer, Brown read his play aloud across the nation as a means by which to advance anti- slavery activism.6 Black playwrights during the Harlem Renaissance often relied on magazines like Opportunity and Crisis to publish their closet dramas, thus opening them to an audience nationwide. While there were certainly political motivations behind lynching dramas, these playwrights were also creating profound portraits reflecting their values and feelings. Given the circumstances of the period, these dramatists were not likely to make a comfortable living by writing alone. As Allen notes, “So, this period is typified by an odd phenomenon: While actual playwriting by African American women increased, the financial compensation for these works decreased as did the dramatists’ expectations that they could make a living from their art.”7 Allen’s observation of an “odd phenomenon” is evidence of the white supremacist patriarchal system in which these women were writing. Just as theatre in the United States was becoming a more respected and lucrative industry, the black women who took part found themselves in the shadows of
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