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Page i Black Female Playwrights Page ii BLACKS IN THE DIASPORA Darlene Clark Hine, John McCluskey, Jr., and David Barry Gaspar General Editors Page iii Black Female Playwrights An Anthology of Plays before 1950 Kathy A. Perkins Page iv First Midland Book Edition 1990 © 1989 by Kathy A. Perkins All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging­in­Publication Data Black female playwrights: an anthology of plays before 1950 / Kathy A. Perkins, editor. p. cm.—(Blacks in the diaspora) Bibliography: p. ISBN 0­253­34358­5 1. American drama—Afro­American authors. 2. Women and literature—United States. 3. American drama—Women authors. 4. Afro­American women—Drama. 5. Afro­Americans—Drama. I. Perkins, Kathy A. II. Series. PS628.N4B54 1989 88­46040 812'.008'09287—dc 19 CIP ISBN 0­253­20623­5 (pbk.) 4 5 6 01 00 99 98 Page v CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Georgia Douglas Johnson 19 Plumes 24 A Sunday Morning in the South 31 Blue Blood 38 Blue­Eyed Black Boy 47 Mary P. Burrill 53 Aftermath 57 They That Sit in Darkness 67 Zora Neale Hurston 75 The First One 80 Color Struck 89 Eulalie Spence 103 Undertow 107 Fool's Errand 119 Her 132 May Miller 141 Stragglers in the Dust 145 Riding the Goat 153 Christophe's Daughters 166 Harriet Tubman 176 Marita Bonner 187 The Purple Flower 191 Exit: An Illusion 200 Page vi Shirley Graham 207 It's Morning 211 I Gotta Home 225 Plays & Pageants by Black Women before 1950 281 Selected Bibliography 287 Page vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In 1981, with the assistance of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, I began extensive research on the contributions of blacks in the non­performing areas of the American theatre—designers, directors, producers, choreographers, musical directors, technicians and other craftspeople behind the scenes. While researching the life of Shirley Graham (DuBois) during the summer of 1984, for her work as a producer, director, and composer, I became acquainted with her collection of plays. Although it was never my intention to focus on playwrights, Graham's work sparked my interest in other black female playwrights prior to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s. I was fascinated by their interpretation of life through drama. Within a short period, I found myself collecting plays and investigating the lives of these writers. Tremendous gratitude must be expressed to the numerous individuals whose support and assistance have made Black Female Playwrights a reality. Much of the ground work and inspiration for this project is credited to the published works and personal assistance from James V. Hatch of the Hatch­Billops Collection in New York City. I owe appreciation to the scholarly works of Jeanne­Marie A. Miller, John Monroe Gilbert, and Doris Abramson, as well as Nellie McKay and Ted Shine. I am indebted to the assistance of the staff members at the following research centers: Esme E. Bahn, Moorland­Spingarn Research Center of Howard University; Beth Howse, Fisk University Special Collections Library; Rosemary Hogg, Federal Theatre Project Collections, George Mason University; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; The Center for the Study of Women and Center for Afro­American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); Nancy McKinney of the California Afro­American Museum, Los Angeles and Lonnie Bunch, III, of the Smithsonian Institution. I am grateful to Delores Hudson and Pamela Watkins for their editorial assistance, and to the following friends on the East Coast who assisted in gathering information while I was on the West Coast: Michon Boston, Ruby Sales, Nancy Davis, and Patricia Bainer. Thank you to the family members and friends of the writers for sharing material and information: Patricia Hart, Lorenz Graham, David Graham DuBois, Dolores Sheen, and Rowena Jelliffe. To May Miller, the lone survivor of the playwrights presented in this anthology, for allowing me to vicariously relive the Washington, D.C., and Page viii Harlem Renaissance through our infinite hours of conversations in her Washington home. Black Female Playwrights would not have been possible without grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Money For Women/The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Smith College, and the Institute of American Cultures/Center for Afro­American Studies (UCLA). Thanks to my parents, Marion and Minerva Perkins, for their support in all of my endeavors. My greatest gratitude is to my sister, Linda, for encouraging and convincing me that I could take on such a research project. Linda's own scholarly research on early black women has served as a major inspiration for Black Female Playwrights. This book is dedicated to Linda Perkins and May Miller. Page 1 INTRODUCTION The colored woman of today occupies, one may say, a unique position in this country. In a period of itself transitional and unsettled, her status seems one of the least ascertainable and definitive of all the forces which make for our civilization. She is confronted by both a woman question and a race probblem, and is as yet an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in both. —Anna J. Cooper (1892) 1 During the Civil Rights Movement, Lorraine Hansberry emerged as the first black woman to present a drama on Broadway with her 1959 production of A Raisin in the Sun. Never before had a black female playwright commanded such attention in the American theatre. In Raisin, Hansberry was able to realistically address an array of issues such as the strength and survival of the black family, their dreams, racism, abortion, manhood, and womanhood. She defied the stereotypical portrayal of blacks commonly seen on the American stage by substituting realistic images. One of the factors that precipitated Hansberry's writing A Raisin in the Sun is expressed in a 1959 New York Times interview: "One night, after seeing a play I won't mention, I suddenly became disgusted with a whole body of material about Negroes. Cardboard characters. Cute dialect bits. Or hip­swinging musicals from exotic sources."2 While Hansberry and the black women writers of her period must be praised for their courageous and outstanding works, it was the black women during the first half of the twentieth century who set the stage for this new group of writers. Prior to the 1950s, black women published over sixty discovered plays and pageants, as well as numerous unpublished scripts. However, many of these works are rare and hard to find. Overall, blacks in drama did not achieve any significant status in the American theatre, and playwriting, at that time, was considered a profession for men. During the first half of the twentieth century, black women, who had to bear the double burden of racism and sexism, burst upon the scene. However, in this climate, their contributions remained unheralded. Recently, articles and books have been published establishing the tremendous impact that black women have made not only in black theatre, but in American theatre in general. Even with these publications, there is still a paucity of information on the achievements that black women have made as playwrights. Except for the section on plays of early black women writers presented in James Hatch and Ted Shine's Black Theatre U.S.A. (1974), Page 2 there has not been an anthology totally devoted to the works of these pioneer writers. The impetus behind this anthology grew out of a need to acknowledge the works of these black women in a single volume. These plays—most of which were written when blacks were just learning the art of playwriting—represent a historical perspective that reflects the lives of the early black women. It would be unfair to view these plays based on technical and creative writing skills alone. The main objective in presenting these works is to illustrate how these plays conveyed the attitudes of black women—issues which were rarely voiced on the stage at the time. Many of the topics that these women focused on were issues that could only be expressed by a black woman. Neither the white nor the black male playwright could express the intense pain and fear a black woman experienced concerning her children— wondering, for instance, if the child that she carried for nine months would be sold into slavery, or be a son who might one day be lynched. Along with this excruciating pain, black women were also preoccupied with the safety of their husbands. Although the black male and female wrote plays on similar topics, their works also differed in many respects. While many of the male playwrights wrote about life in Harlem and other major cities, black women were more diverse in their geographic location, providing a greater sense of the black community on a national level by setting the action in rural communities throughout the country as well as in large cities. The main characters in plays by black women were usually female. These women were often placed in major decision­making roles. In many instances the husband was dead, or absent from the household—perhaps working in another town. The central focus in these women's plays was usually on the children, with the mother being overly protective because of the times in which they lived. The action for the most part occurred in a domestic setting—the kitchen, dining room, or living room, and the play usually opened with a woman sewing, cooking, cleaning, or praying—rarely outside or far from the home.

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