Tempest in Black and White: The 1924 Premiere of Eugene O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings

Abstract

All God's Chillun Got Wings is the third and last play in which Eugene O'Neill featured a black protagonist. With each new drama, by selecting a different aspect of the black experience in America, he widened the discourse, which opened new areas for public dialogue about race. In All God's Chillun Got Wings, he was successful far beyond his expectations, but the controversy became too heated even for O'Neill. The drama, which today is still rarely produced, 1 immediately earned a significant niche in American theater history as a reagent of social attitudes, like the Astor Place riots. Months before the premiere, the black and white communities were alive with debate. The metadrama was created by inflammatory newspaper accounts and back-room meetings. The arguments were repeated in government offices and churches, in living rooms and at community gatherings. It affected the lives of hundreds of people who not only never saw the play, but never read the script. The story exists today in scattered biographical reminiscences, letters, and interviews, as well as biased and unbiased news articles. In fact, the controversy over the play received such coverage that the total bill for the clipping service exceeded the cost of the play's sets (Duberman 59). Disquieted whites contended that the subject matter--interracial marriage--coupled with realistic casting could only create public unrest. The black community, troubled by job discrimination, social restrictions, and retaliatory violence, believed that the "wrong" image would endanger all its members. For decades, African Americans had been a screen on which white America projected its fantasies and taboos while often, as in the minstrel shows, forbidding the black community an actual presence. O'Neill's attempt to calm the tempest only roiled the waters.

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