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Black Drama: Reflections of Class and Class Consciousness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Helene Keyssar
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Extract

Just before the words and subway of Imamu Amiri Baraka's (LeRoi Jones') Dutchman rush to their violent climax, Lula, the Eve-emissary of the white middle-class, shrieks at Clay:

Come on, Clay … let's do the thing. Uhh! Uhh! Clay! Clay! You middle-class black bastard. Forget your social-working mother for a few seconds and let's knock stomachs. Clay, you liver-lipped white man. You would-be Christian. You ain't no nigger, you're just a dirty white man. Get up, Clay. Dance with me, Clay.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 3 , October 1978 , pp. 263 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

NOTES

1. Jones, LeRoi (Imamu Amiri Baraka), Dutchman (New York: William Morrow, 1964), p. 31Google Scholar. All subsequent references to Dutchman are from this text: page numbers hereafter are included in the body of the article.

2. Sennett, Richard and Cobb, Jonathan, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Vintage Press, 1973), pp. 250–51Google Scholar. These are central arguments made throughout the book.

3. Riley, Clayton, “On Black Theater,” in The Black Aesthetic, ed., Gayle, Addison Jr., (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1972), p. 308.Google Scholar

4. Neal, Larry, “The Black Arts Movement,”Google Scholar in Gayle, , The Black Aesthetic, p. 263.Google Scholar

5. DuBois, W. E. B., The Seventh Son: The Thought and Writings of W. E. B. DuBois, ed. with an introduction by Lester, Julius (New York: Random House, 1971), II, p. 319.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., I, p. 99.

7. Ibid., II, p. 311.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. A Raisin in the Sun won the Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play in 1958–59. It went on to play 530 performances in New York City and had countless other presentations on stages both in this country and abroad. The film version won a Cannes film festival award in 1961 and since has been seen by millions of viewers in movie theaters and on television.

11. Hansberry, Lorraine, A Raisin in the Sun, in Black Theater, compiled with an introduction by Patterson, Lindsay (New York: New American Library, 1971), p. 393.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., p. 387.

13. Ibid., p. 361.

14. Cruse, Harold, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: William Morrow, 1967), pp. 267–84Google Scholar. Also cited in Hatch, James V. and Shine, Ted, Black Theater, U.S.A. (New York: Free Press, 1974), p. 473.Google Scholar

15. Ginzberg, Eli and Associates, The Middle-Class Negro in the White Man's World (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1967), p. 5.Google Scholar

16. Hansberry, , A Raisin in the Sun, p. 419.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., p. 472.

18. Lukacs, Georg, Studies in European Realism (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), p. 21.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 45.

20. Peterson, Louis, Take a Giant StepGoogle Scholar, in Patterson, , Black Theater, pp. 136–37.Google Scholar

21. Wright, Richard, Native Son, in Black Drama: An Anthology, eds, Brasmer, William and Console, Dominick (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1970), p. 170.Google Scholar

22. Ward, Theodore, Big White FogGoogle Scholar in Hatch, and Shine, , Black Theater, U.S.A., p. 286.Google Scholar

23. DuBois, , The Seventh Son, II, pp. 59–60Google Scholar. Despite DuBois' dismissal of color differences as a source for class distinctions, a number of plays in addition to Big White Fog suggest class divisions based on color. Among the most emphatic of such dramas are Langston Hughes' Emperor of Haiti and his Mulatto, both plays of the 1930s.

24. DuBois, , The Seventh Son, II, pp. 60–62.Google Scholar

25. Dollard, John, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1937), pp. 83, 200.Google Scholar

26. Frazier, E. Franklin, Black Bourgeoisie (New York: Free Press, 1957), p. 237Google Scholar. Also cited in Pinkney, Alphonso, Black Americans, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975), p. 67.Google Scholar

27. Pinkney, , Black Americans, p. 67Google Scholar and “The Black Community,” pp. 54–71.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., p. 66.

29. Ibid., p. 67.

30. Lukacs, , European Realism, p. 8.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 11.

32. Ibid.

33. Grotowski, Jerry, Towards a Poor Theater (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968).Google Scholar

34. Baraka, Imamu Amiri, “Symposium on We Righteous Bombers,” Black Theater, 4 (04 1970), 19.Google Scholar

35. My thanks, in the end, to Tracy B. Strong who helped me to know what I meant to say, and to Barry O'Connell whose own work encouraged my efforts here.