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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2018
In the early twentieth century, African Americans waged a propaganda war against the scourge of lynching. Theater was a vital element of this effort, and over two dozen plays were written with the intent of depicting the horror that accompanied these brutal acts of violence. These plays, though largely neglected by historians, have been studied as elements of an effort to promote antilynching legislation. Until now, however, their testimony to important religious currents in African American culture has been ignored. A closer look at these texts reveals them to be engaged in theological discourse that examines the role of God and the church in the face of evil. These plays reflect a burgeoning humanism in African American culture, particularly among the intelligentsia. By creating characters and constructing plot lines that explicitly challenged the goodness of God in light of African American suffering, or by exposing the hypocrisy and impotence of the church to bring about an end to violence and oppression, these playwrights were engaged in a form of vernacular theology. By observing their efforts, we add a fresh layer to our understanding of African American life during this time period.
I wish to acknowledge the generous assistance of a research grant from the American Academy of Religion and a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. I also wish to thank, especially, Judith Weisenfeld, Anthony Pinn, and Bill Stancil for their insightful criticisms of earlier drafts.
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4. Mathews, “The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice,” esp. part III.
5. Statistics listed in Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, Revolt against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 134–35Google Scholar; Hall cites NAACP, Thirty Years of Lynching (New York: NAACP, 1919) and Supplements (1919–1928); Hall also cites Word, Monroe, ed., The Negro Year Book: Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro, 1931–1932 (Tuskegee: Negro Yearbook Publishing Co., 1931), 293 Google Scholar. See also Stephens, Judith L., “Lynching Dramas and Women: History and Critical Context,” in Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women, ed. Perkins, Kathy A. and Stephens, Judith L. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 8 Google Scholar. On change in proportion of black and white lynching victims, see Shay, Frank, Judge Lynch: His First Hundred Years (Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1969), vi Google Scholar.
6. See especially Perkins and Stephens, Strange Fruit; Stephens, Judith L., “Anti-Lynch Plays by African American Women: Race, Gender, and Social Protest in American Drama,” African American Review 26, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 329–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stephens, Judith L., “The Anti-Lynch Play: Toward an Interracial Feminist Dialogue in Theatre,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 2, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 59–60 Google Scholar; and Stephens, Judith L., “Lynching, American Theatre History, and the Preservation of a Tradition,” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 9 (Winter 1997): 54–65 Google Scholar.
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8. I do not include simple expressions of “Lord,” or “Dear God,” as constituting “religious material.” At a minimum, lines devoted to prayer or some form of reflection upon God or the church would be necessary to be included in my list of eighteen plays with religious material.
9. For example, see Stephens, Judith L., “‘And Yet They Paused’ and ‘A Bill to Be Passed’: Newly Recovered Lynching Dramas by Georgia Douglas Johnson,” African American Review 33, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 521 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stephens cites Sydné Mahone, ed., Moon Marked and Touched by Sun: Plays by African-American Women (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994), xxxi–xxxii; Stephens, Judith L., “Art, Activism, and Uncompromising Attitude in Georgia Douglas Johnson's Lynching Plays,” African American Review 29, nos. 1 and 2 (Spring–Summer 2005): 92–94 Google Scholar; Stephens, “Anti- Lynch Plays by African American Women,” esp. 336; and Meier, Joyce, “The Refusal of Motherhood in African American Women's Theatre,” MELUS 25, nos. 3 and 4 (Autumn–Winter 2000): esp. 124 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10. On the Christianization of the African American people, see Raboteau, Albert J., Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. He notes that, by 1890, 33 percent of African Americans were church members and, by 1936, the number had grown to 44 percent (79, 144). Also on evangelization of African Americans, see Baer, Hans A. and Singer, Merrill, eds., African American Religion: Varieties of Protest and Accomodation, 2d ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 5–26 Google Scholar. On the importance of the Exodus theme and the sense of being a “chosen people,” see Raboteau, Albert J., A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 17–56 Google Scholar; Sernett, Milton C., Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 57–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Glaude, Eddie S. Jr., Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth Century Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), esp. 34–43, 79–81, 83–84, 92–100Google Scholar. On the significance of the black church, see Woodson, Carter G., The History of the Negro Church, 3d ed. (1921; repr., Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1972), esp. 242–75Google Scholar; Mays, Benjamin Elijay and Nicholson, Joseph, The Negro's Church (New York: Russell and Russell, 1933), esp. 1–19, 278–92Google Scholar; and Franklin Frazier, E., The Negro Church in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), esp. 35–90 Google Scholar.
11. Mays, Benjamin, The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature (1938; repr., New York: Russell and Russell, 1968 Google Scholar).
12. Pinn, Anthony B., Why Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1995), 18–19 Google Scholar.
13. Pinn, Anthony B., African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14. Morrison, Toni, Beloved (1987; repr., New York: Vintage, 2004)Google Scholar; for more on this theme, see Meier, “The Refusal of Motherhood in African American Women's Theater,” 117–39.
15. Citations from Rachel taken from Angelina Weld Grimké, “Rachel,” in Black Theatre U.S.A.: Plays by African Americans, The Early Period, 1847–1938, rev. ed., ed. Hatch, James V. and Shine, Ted (New York: Free Press, 1996), 133–68Google Scholar.
16. Hay, Samuel A., African American Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hill, Errol G. and Hatch, James V., A History of African American Theatre (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 220 Google Scholar.
17. Hill, and Hatch, , A History of African American Theatre, 220 Google Scholar.
18. Grimké's very choice of the name, Rachel, was likely an allusion to the “barren” Rachel in Genesis who envied Leah for bearing Jacob many children before she eventually gave birth to Joseph (Genesis 29: 31–30:24). Moreover, embedded in the story of King Herod killing the children of Bethlehem, Matthew 2:18 invokes Jeremiah 31:15 describing “Rachel weeping for her children … because they are no more.” I am deeply indebted to Bill Stancil for drawing my attention to these biblical parallels. Citations come from The New Oxford Annotated Bible: with the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
19. Hull, Gloria T., Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 155 Google Scholar.
20. Most recently, Stephens, Judith published The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson: From the New Negro Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
21. Georgia Douglas Johnson Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, box 162, folders 25, 26, 29; Hull, Color, Sex, and Poetry, 185–86.
22. Citations from Safe taken from Georgia Douglas Johnson, “Safe,” in Strange Fruit, ed. Stephens and Perkins, 110–15; Angelina Weld Grimké, “The Closing Door,” Birth Control Review (September 1919): 10–14, found in Angelina Weld Grimké Collection, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, box 38-11, folder 186; also found in Herron, Carolivia, Selected Works of Angelina Weld Grimké (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 252–81Google Scholar.
23. Miller, May, “Nails and Thorns,” in Strange Fruit, ed. Stephens, and Perkins, , 177–88Google Scholar.
24. Letter from Walter White to Georgia Douglas Johnson, January 18, 1937, box C-299, “Anti-Lynching Bill Play 1936–1938,” NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress; see also Stephens, , The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson, 36 Google Scholar; letter from Juanita E. Jackson to Georgia Douglas Johnson, January 12, 1938, box C-299, “Anti- Lynching Bill Play, Jan. 12, 1937–Dec. 8, 1938,” NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress.
25. Juanita Jackson commented on Morrow's writing skills in a memorandum to Roy Wilkins, April 22, 1938, box C-299, “Anti-Lynching Bill Play, Jan. 12, 1937–Dec. 8, 1938,” NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress.
26. Memorandum from E. Frederic Morrow to Juanita E. Jackson, January 25, 1938, box C-299, “Anti-Lynching Bill Play, Jan. 12, 1937–Dec. 8, 1938,” NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress.
27. A Bill to Be Passed was first recovered by Judith Stephens from the files of the Library of Congress. Beyond references to spirituals and “helplessly” praying to God, Morrow's mention of “our inability to hold meetings on time” is a clear response to the second line of the play when Deacon Brown remarks, “Oh you know how ‘tis with our folks— they’re always late.” Citations from A Bill to Be Passed from Georgia Douglas Johnson, A Bill to Be Passed, box I:C-299, folder 11, “Anti- Lynching Bill Play, Jan. 12, 1937–Dec. 8, 1938,” NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress; Stephens, The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson, 37.
28. And Yet They Paused itself included adaptations based upon the recommendations of Juanita Jackson. Jackson's later criticisms appeared to have influenced Johnson's rendition of the final draft of A Bill to Be Passed, which answered “a number of arguments against the antilynching bill” and was structured more thoroughly to “stimulate a desire on the part of listeners or readers to continue the fight for the bill's passage,” two elements that Jackson concluded the earlier draft “does not do.” See memorandum from Juanita E. Jackson to Walter White, March 2, 1938, box C-299, “Anti-Lynching Bill Play, Jan. 12, 1937–Dec. 8, 1938,” NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress.
29. Memorandum from Juanita Jackson to Walter White, February 28, 1928, box C-299, “Anti-Lynching Bill Play, Jan. 12, 1937–Dec. 8, 1938,” NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress.
30. Citations from “Climbing Jacob's Ladder”, taken from Regina Andrews, “Climbing Jacob's Ladder,” in Strange Fruit, ed. Stephens and Perkins, 124–32. A librarian by trade, Andrews was educated at Wilberforce University in Ohio as well as at the University of Chicago and was instrumental in working with W. E. B. Du Bois to create the Krigwa Players, one of the earliest black theater companies in the country. When the Krigwa theater closed in 1928, Andrews helped start the Harlem Experimental Theatre. Perkins and Stephens, eds., Strange Fruit, 121–22; see also Hill, and Hatch, , A History of African American Theatre, 226, 362Google Scholar.
31. See Angelina Weld Grimké Collection, letter from Mamie Burrill to AWG, July 1911, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, box 38-1, folder 2; Burrill eventually lived with her partner, Lucy Slowe, Howard University's Dean of Women, Linda Gordon, “Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women's Welfare Activism, 1890–1945,” Journal of American History 78/2 (September 1991): 575; Gordon cites Lucy D. Slowe Collection, letters in Box 90-1, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
32. Perkins, and Stephens, , eds., Strange Fruit, 79–81 Google Scholar.
33. Citations from Aftermath taken from Burrill, Mary, “Aftermath,” in Black Theatre U.S.A., ed. Hatch, and Shine, , 176–82Google Scholar.
34. When the Krigwa Players performed Aftermath in a 1928 theatrical tournament, they changed the ending to depict John coming back onto the stage after having been shot and dying before the audience, rather melodramatically. Burrill was furious about the change, which had been undertaken without her consent. The effect was to dull the militancy of Burrill's message, perhaps in deference to the white producers of the theatrical tournament. See Perkins, and Stephens, , eds., Strange Fruit, 79–80 Google Scholar; they cite a letter from Mary P. Burrill to W. E. B. Du Bois, May 22, 1928, W. E. B. Du Bois Collection, University of Massachusetts Library Special Collections, Amherst; also Billboard 40 (May 19, 1928): 7.
35. Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth, Their Place on the Stage: Black Women Playwrights in America (New York: Praeger, 1988), 9 Google Scholar; Hatch, and Shine, , Black Theatre U.S.A., 175–76Google Scholar.
36. Peter Mason, “The Fire in the Flint,” box C-299, folder 8, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress.
37. White, Walter F., The Fire in the Flint (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1924), esp. 72, 104–9, 168.Google Scholar
38. Jones, Ida E., “Contacts without Fellowship: Lynching, the Bible and the Christian Community,” Black History Bulletin 65–66 Google Scholar (July 2002–December 2003): 52; White, Jones cites Walter, Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (New York: Knopf, 1929), 40 Google Scholar.
39. Mays, , The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature, 209–11Google Scholar.
40. Letter from Walter White to Blanche Knopf, August 22, 1929, “Films and Plays, Fire in the Flint,” box C-299, folder 5, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Reading Room, Library of Congress; on Frohman, see Rob Betz, et al., “The Lusitania Resource: Mr. Charles Frohman, Saloon Class Passenger,” accessed September 21, 2006 at http://web.rmslusitania.info:81/pages/saloon_class/frohman_charles.html.
41. On Hughes and religion, see Mary Beth Culp, “Religion in the Poetry of Langston Hughes,” Phylon 48 (3d Qtr. 1987): 240–45; Burdine, Warren, “Let the Theatre Say ‘Amen’,” Black American Literature Forum 25 no. 1 (Spring 1991): esp. 74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, Carolyn P., “Liberating Christ: Sargeant's Metamorphosis in Langton Hughes's ‘On the Road,’” Black American Literature Forum 25, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 745–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hughes, Langston, The Big Sea (1940; repr., New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 18–21 Google Scholar.
42. Hughes, Langston, “Mulatto,” 1935, Black Drama (Alexander Street Press, L.L.C., 2005)Google Scholar, http://www.alexanderstreet4.com; originally published in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to the Sun Do Move, ed. Leslie Catherine Sanders (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002).
43. Angelina Weld Grimké, Mara, drafts found in Angelina Weld Grimké Collection, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, box 38-14, folders 229–42.
44. Like the biblical name Rachel, Grimké's use of the name Mara alludes to the Book of Ruth (1:3–20) and the story of Naomi who, after the death of her two sons, says: ”… call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Again I am grateful to Bill Stancil for calling my attention to this biblical parallel.
45. Citations from both versions of A Sunday Morning in the South taken from Georgia Douglas Johnson, “A Sunday Morning in the South: White Church Version,” in The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson, ed. Stephens, 129–136, and “A Sunday Morning in the South: Black Church Version,” ibid., 139–48.
46. Electronic correspondence between the author and Judith Stephens, June 27, 2006. Stephens notes that the original typescript of the “white church version” available at the Library of Congress was marked “First Version.”
47. Hughes, Langston, “Scottsboro, Limited,” 1931, Black Drama (Alexander Street Press, L.L.C., 2005)Google Scholar, http://www.alexanderstreet4.com; originally published in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, ed. Sanders.
48. Hughes, Langston, “Don't You Want to Be Free?” 1937, Black Drama (Alexander Street Press, L.L.C., 2005)Google Scholar, http://www.alexanderstreet4. com; originally published in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, ed. Sanders.
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51. Hill's choice of title may have been a play on the title of Erskine Caldwell's controversial 1933 novel, God's Little Acre, which sympathized with the struggles of the southern working class.
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53. Ward, Theodore, “Sick and Tired,” 1937, Black Drama (Alexander Street Press, L.L.C., 2005)Google Scholar, http://www.alexanderstreet4.com; originally published 1937, copyright Theodore Ward.
54. Peyton, Lew, “A Bitter Pill,” Did Adam Sin? And Other Stories of Negro Life in Comedy and Drama Sketches (Los Angeles: Lew Peyton, 1937), 60–78 Google Scholar.
55. Ralf Coleman, “Swing Song” (1937), unpublished manuscript found in Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library, Emory University, Billops-Hatch Collection #927, box 7, folder 9.
56. Citations from Blue-Eyed Black Boy taken from Georgia Douglas Johnson, “Blue-Eyed Black Boy,” in Strange Fruit, ed. Stephens and Perkins, 116–20.
57. On the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching's play contest, beginning in 1936, see ASWPL Papers, Microfilm Edition, Pattee Library, Pennsylvania State University, micro. A218, reel 4; for more on ASWPL and lynching on behalf of “White womanhood,” see Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry, esp. 218; and Hodes, Martha, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 176–208 Google Scholar.
58. Green, Paul, “In Abraham's Bosom,” The Field God and In Abraham's Bosom (New York: R. M. McBride and Company, 1927)Google Scholar.
59. Paul Peters and George Sklar's 1934 play, Stevedore, does depict the protagonist, Lonnie, being shot and killed by a white mob near the play's end. But Lonnie's death occurs in the context of a successful black uprising in which black workers are joined by white unionists to thwart the racists. Prayers for God's deliverance are made only for the collective “oppressed and troubled [black] people” who are ultimately victorious and not for Lonnie himself (act 3, scene 2). See Peters, Paul and Sklar, George, Stevedore (New York: Covici-Friede Publishers, 1934)Google Scholar; lists of antilynching plays, by both black and white authors, can be found in the back of Stephens and Perkins, eds., Strange Fruit, 411–16. To the list of African Americans, I have added Peter Mason's “Fire in the Flint.” Furthermore, I have moved Conrad Seiler's plays, “Sweet Land” and “Darker Brother: A Satirical Fantasy,” from the list of African American playwrights to the list of white playwrights. I learned from Jim Hatch that he recently discovered Seiler was white and has consistently been wrongly identified as a black playwright. Hatch's own publications have listed Seiler this way until now. Seiler's play “Sweet Land,” shipped to Emory University with a significant portion of the Hatch-Billops Collection, appears to have been temporarily misplaced so I was unable to read it. I was able to read the remaining plays on the Perkins and Stephens list.
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