FLYIN’ WEST
by Pearl Cleage
A Guide for Study
Montclair State University
Theatre Department
Feb 24– 27, 2005
Flyin’ West Study Guide
Prepared by Catherine Rust, Dramaturg
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction …………………………………………………………………1
Play Synopsis ………………………………………………………………..1
Historical Context
A Country Divided ………………………………………………….2
Slave Life ……………………………………………….…...3
Seminole Culture ……………………………………………4
Emancipation Proclamation …………………………………………4
Reconstruction ………………………………………………………5
Memphis, New Orleans and The Black Middle Class ………5
The Black Codes …………………………………………….6
The Civil Rights Acts ………………………………………..7
Reconstruction Ends; Redemption Begins…………………...………7
Jim Crow ………………………………………………….....8
The Memphis Lynchings ………………………………..…...8
The Lure of Kansas …………………………………………………….…….9
Pap Singleton ……………………………………………………….9
Exodusters and The Migration Phenomenon ………………………..10
Rebuilding a Life in Nicodemus …………………………………….11
Women at the Forefront ……………………………………………..12
The End of Civil Rights ………………………………………………….…..13
Inspirational Voices
Paul Laurence Dunbar………………………………………………..14
Ida B. Wells ……………………………………………………….…14
About the Playwright ……………………………………………………..…15
Interview with Pearl Cleage …………………………………………16
Questions for Consideration …………………………………………………17
Flyin’ West Production History ………………………………………...……18
Plays by Pearl Cleage …………………………………………………….….18
Books by Pearl Cleage …………………………………………………….…19
Bibliography …………………………………………………………….…....19
Recommended Trip …………………………………………………………..20
Photo Log …………………………………………………………………….21
Study Guide
Flyin’ West
by Pearl Cleage
“Sometimes I wish I could gather my people in my arms and fly away West.”
Ida B. Wells, 1892
In the late 19th century, more than 60,000
African Americans gathered in Nashville, Tennessee to
embark on a new life in the Western frontier. In an
unprecedented movement that came to be known as
“The Great Migration,” former slaves and free Blacks
began an exodus out of the south and staked their
futures on the promise of a piece of land in the free
state of Kansas. One of the communities that would
form as a result of this great journey was Nicodemus,
Kansas. It is here where the story of our play, Flyin’
West begins.
SYNOPSIS
Set in the all-black town of Nicodemus,
Kansas in 1898, Flyin’ West tell the story of
courageous, Black pioneer women who have come
west to build a new life for themselves, free from the
racism and oppression of the South. Each of the
characters in the play brings a different experience to
the story. Miss Leah (age 73), was born into slavery
and came west with the first settlers of the Great
Migration. Sophie , Fannie and Minnie have been
thrown together by circumstance, and have become
like sisters to each other. They have homesteaded the
piece of property in Kansas together. Born into slavery, Sophie (age 36) is determined to make
Nicodemus a model community, where blacks can enjoy all the benefits of a free life. Fannie
(age 32 and born free), wants to be a writer. She has struck up a relationship with a local black
man, Wil Parrish (age 40), who was born into slavery, lived among the Seminole Indians, and
has come to Kansas by way of Mexico. Trouble begins when Minnie (age 21 and born free)
returns from Europe where she has been living with her husband, Frank (age 36 and born into
slavery), a successful poet in London. Frank, the son of a white slave-owner, is waiting to hear
if he will receive the inheritance his father promised him before he died. A very light-skinned
Black, Frank “passes” for white, and subsequently loses all his money in a card game with white
speculators. When a telegram arrives announcing that his white half-brothers have denounced
him and his right to his inheritance, Frank suddenly sees the value in Minnie’s share of the
homestead.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
It will be helpful to you, in watching and thinking about the play, inspired by a moment
in history, to think also about the context in which the play arises. For that purpose, let us go
back to some of the momentous sociological events that led up to the event.
A COUNTRY DIVIDED
The 19th Century found
a growing divide in America,
philosophically, economically
and finally, physically.
Slavery was not the
least of the differences
separating regions from each
other. By 1818, the 22 states
that made up the Union were
equally divided on the issue of
slavery: 11 were “free states”
and 11 were “slave states,” a
balance which was reflected
in the legislative branches of
the Union government. Missouri’s
petition toCompromise
enter the Union as a state set into motion a
The Missouri
renewed debate on the issue, resulting in the Missouri Compromise, which stated that, with the
exception of Missouri, all land in the Louisiana Territory north of the f 36°30'N latitude line (the
southern boundary of Missouri) would be free states, and land below would remain slave states.
Abolitionists, however, were intent on keeping the debate alive. Famous abolitionists,
such as John Brown, would play an important part in the story
By 1850, conflict had been raging for decades between northern and southern states.
Free states in the North had moved steadily toward an economy based on the entrepreneurial
spirit and growing expansion. Industry thrived and tremendous inroads in transportation were
facilitating the continuous growth of commerce. Southern states, on the other hand, were mired
in an old plantation economy, heavily dependent on the slave labor population for their survival.
A census in 1850 revealed the South falling behind the North in almost every area of
achievement – wealth, productivity, population, literacy and culture.
Abolitionists in the North contended that free labor was intrinsically superior to slave
labor, a theory first raised by Scottish political economist, Adam Smith, and that enslaved people
had neither motivation nor inducements to produce anything beyond what was exacted of them.
Plantation owners in the south argued that African Americans were an inferior race only suited to
agricultural labor, and incapable of an independent existence.
The inhumane conditions of slave life were largely unknown, except anecdotally through
the stories of runaway slaves, as slaves were not allowed an education, and were frequently
punished when they were discovered learning to read and write. It was largely through the
efforts of white women in the north that the stories of slaves first came into print, and received
wide distribution. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin ” (1852), a fictionalized
account of slave life based on “real incidents [and] actions really performed,” (Stowe, xvii)
created a firestorm of controversy, fueling emotional debates about the ethics of slavery not only
amongst the populace, but also in the political arena. “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,”
written in 1858 by freed slave Harriet Jacobs and published with the help of abolitionist friend,
Amy Post, documented first-hand the abuses, especially sexual, that enslaved Black women in
particular were victim to.
NEW YEAR’S DAY was rarely a
day for celebration amongst the
slave populations of the South,
for any outstanding debts of the
slave-master were frequently
settled by the selling of slaves
on that day. Children were sold
away from mothers, fathers
away from families, and
siblings separated, often never
to be seen again.
WHAT WAS SLAVE LIFE LIKE?
Escaped slave, Frederick Douglass was perhaps one
of the best known voices in the struggle for equal rights for
his people. In “Life of an American Slave,” published in
1845, Douglass talked about his life as a slave from his early
youth until his escape. According to his account, slaves in
the plantation economy of the south for the most part lived
in the most rudimentary of conditions. Meager cabins, with
holes between the rough planks, through which the wind and
rain would blow, were standard housing. No beds were
issued to slaves, and bedding at best was a ragged blanket.
Regular issue of clothing for the year might consist of
two course linen shirts, one pair of
trousers for winter and one for
summer, one jacket, one pair of
stockings, one pair of shoes. Slave
children were issued only two linen
shirts per year, and when these failed
them they went naked for the
remainder of the year, regardless of
weather. There was no weather so
foul that work might be suspended.
The work days were long and the
nights too short. Physical abuse was rampant and unchecked. Women were subject to even
further abuses, including frequent sexual abuse by the master or overseer. The deaths of slaves
went uninvestigated and unpunished. It was whispered that Douglass’s own mother was the
victim of the master’s lust, but it was a fact he would never know, as his mother was sent away
when he was barely one year old.
“ The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false,
it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring
odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of
slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too
obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked
desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the
slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and
father.”
Life of an American Slave, Frederick Douglass
While southerners largely disputed works
such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s as the romantic
fiction writing of emotional women, when native
southerner and North Carolinian Hinton Rowan
Helper published his controversial book, “The
Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It” in
1857, the political debate began in earnest. Laden
with statistic after statistic, Helper made the case that
slavery was the only reason that the South had fallen
behind the North in all economic arenas.
Quickly adopted by the Republican party (the
party of Abraham Lincoln), Helper’s eleven-point
plan to end slavery was then widely distributed in
100,000 copies of the book printed by the party in
1859 as a campaign document.
“My dear white lady, in your pleasant home
made joyous by the tender love of husband and
children all your own, you can never
understand the slave mother’s emotions as she
clasps her new-born child, and knows that a
master’s word can at any moment take it from
her embrace; and when, as was mine, that
child is a girl, and from her own experience
she sees it s almost certain doom is to minister
to the unbridled lust of the slave-owner, and
feels that the law holds over her no protecting
arm, it is not strange that I felt all this, and
would have been glad if we could have died
together there and then.”
“The Narrative of Bethany Veney, A
Slave Woman”
THE SEMINOLE CULTURE
During the play, the character Wil talks about his life among the Seminole Indians in
Florida. From the early days of settlement in the county, escaped slaves frequently found
acceptance and refuge in the American Indian community, where they intermarried and often
adopted the Indian lifestyle. Native Americans, free from color prejudice, offered fugitives a
hand of friendship. Although the Seminoles, including black members of the group, finally
became a part of the government’s forced removal of Indians to the West, a small number still
remain in Florida.
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
In 1860, Republican and northerner Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election,
followed by a quick succession of states seceding from the Union. In January of 1861,
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia seceded from the Union within days of each
other, and by April of 1861, the Civil War was in full swing.
Mounting pressure from
Abolitionists in Congress begin a
persuasive argument for a Federal
Mandate to free all slaves in the
Union, and in 1863 Lincoln issued
the now famous Emancipation
Proclamation (which, incidentally,
applied only to those states which
were in rebellion to the Union;
border states, such as Arkansas,
which were “slave states” but were
not in rebellion, were exempted
Company E – 4th US Colored Infantry
from the mandate initially).
Two hundred thousand Black soldiers soon registered to serve in the Union Army.
In April of 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox signaled
the end of Civil War, and the war was officially at an end by May of that year, leaving the
North jubilant over the protection of the Union, and the South in trepidation over what the
victory of the North would bring.
The Emancipation Proclamation set the stage for further amendments in the interest of
freedom. In 1865 the Federal Government passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery and
involuntary servitude throughout the entire Union. The 14th Amendment, passed three years
later, guaranteed citizenship, and all the protections of the Federal Union, to African Americans.
And finally, the 15th Amendment, passed in 1870, extended the vote to all male citizens,
regardless of race. Women, however, were still a half-century away from gaining the same
privilege.
RECONSTRUCTION
The end of the Civil War signaled the beginning of a massive effort to “reconstruct” the
South in a new image. In March of 1865, the Freedman’s Bureau was established to coordinate
efforts to protect the rights of former slaves and to provide them with education and medical
care. The Bureau stipulated that freed slaves be granted “forty acres and a mule” to begin their
new lives as free men.
The Black community responded to their freedom with extraordinary efforts to reunite
their families, which had been sold and separated with little regard for human feeling. A
northern reporter in 1865 encountered a former slave who had walked more than 600 miles
searching for his wife and children, from whom he had been sold away during slavery. Tens of
thousands of freedpeople registered their marriages with the Freedmen’s Bureau and local
governments. Marriage amongst slaves had been discouraged and rarely formally recognized in
the slave states. Following the war, leaders in the Black community immediately set about
creating opportunities for African Americans. Black-owned businesses began to thrive and
many educational facilities were established for the Black youth.
A period of rapid political advancement also ensued within the African American
community. The right to vote brought with it the first Black senator elected to Congress in 1870
(Hiram Revels of Mississippi). By 1871, the House of Representatives included five Black
members: Benjamin S. Turner of Alabama, Josiah T. Walls of Florida, and Robert Brown Elliot,
Joseph H. Rainey and Robert Carlos DeLarge of South Carolina. In 1872, P.B.S. Pinchback
became the first African American governor of Louisiana.
MEMPHIS AND NEW ORLEANS AND THE
BLACK THE MIDDLE CLASS
The characters of Minnie and Frank in Flyin’
West talk about their former lives in Memphis and
New Orleans. It is interesting to consider the vast
changes that took place in those cities during the 40
years following the Civil War.
During the early French colonial era in New
Orleans, a tradition of “placage” or “placing” existed,
where “Fancy Girl” slaves, noted for their grace,
beauty and light skins, were placed in the homes of
Creole Night at the French Opera, 1866,
186666.
male, French settlers, who depended on their female slaves for domestic companionship. The
“fens de couleur libres” (free people of color) who were born of these relationships were well
educated and cultured. The sons were taught a trade and the daughters were trained to be the
belles of future ‘quadroon balls,’ where they, like their mothers, would be courted by white
French settlers, and protected and cared for in the ensuing relationships, which sometimes lasted
a life-time (Sterling, 27).
By the time of the Civil War, a vibrant middle class Black community existed in New
Orleans, populated by a class of light-skinned Blacks now called Creoles, who were descended
from French and Spanish Settlers and African slaves. Living free and apart from the Black
community, Creoles were well educated and had developed an active cultural life, complete with
literary societies, opera and concert performances.
Memphis also offered a surprising number of educational opportunities for the generation
of Blacks who were growing up free. Plays, concerts and revival meetings were open to all,
(with segregated seating) and the Black community had its own lyceums, lectures and dramatic
groups. Author and activist Ida B. Wells came to Memphis to become a teacher, and
subsequently became a journalist and part-owner in a paper called the “The Free Speech and
Headlight.” During her time in Memphis, she took summer courses at Fisk University and
Lemoyne Institute (institutions dedicated to the education of African Americans), took elocution
lessons and studied for a principal’s certificate.
The emergence of a thriving Black community and Black commerce would soon become
a source of friction which would ignite scenes of great violence, a condition which contributed
not a little to the great migration.
The advent of Jim Crow era would change everything once again for the Black
community of the region, when Creoles and “free people of color” were immediately reclassified
as “Black” and were suddenly subject to the same “unwritten law” of discrimination and
segregation which former slaves now were.
The character of Frank has “a war inside.” Cleage creates in Frank a complex emotional
character who embodies the internal conflict that Blacks, and especially light-skinned Blacks
were subject to in a society where only the white complexion and things of white culture were
valued. Blacks were conditioned in ways that would put them at war with their own race.
Light-skinned Blacks who chose to “pass” for white were often faced with denying their own
families in order to enjoy the benefits of a “white” life. In Frederick Douglas’ Paper, William
Wilson wrote in 1853, “We despise, we almost hate ourselves… we scoff at black skins and
wooly heads, since every model set before us for admiration has a pallid face and flaxen head.
(Sterling, 214). In 1859, Martin H. Freeman would write in Anglo-African Magazine “The
child is taught directly or indirectly that he or she is pretty, just in proportion as the features
approximate the Anglo-Saxon standard.”
THE BLACK CODES
By 1865, angry southerners intimidated by the emergence of the Black community, began
to enact “Black Codes” in ex-Confederate states. The codes were legal stipulations which
prohibited African Americans from purchasing land, from bearing arms, and from marrying
whites, among other things. Vagrancy laws allowed authorities to arrest Blacks who might be
perceived to be “in idleness,” and to send them to a chain gang or to work on a plantation. A
white person’s interpretation of an “insulting gesture” or “malicious mischief” might also land a
fee Black in jail.
While Black Codes were short-lived and overridden by acts of the Federal government ,
they were important for their influence on the subsequent “Jim Crow” laws, which would play a
substantial role in the imminent migration of Blacks out of the south.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS
First passed in 1866, over the veto of Pres. Johnson, the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1866
stated that all persons born in the United States, regardless of race, would be deemed citizens of
the Union. As citizens Blacks could legally make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, give
evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.
Persons who denied these rights to former slaves were guilty of a misdemeanor and upon
conviction faced a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both.
Weakly enforced, the Act would fail to stand up to the activities of counter-organizations, such
as the Ku Klux Klan, in protecting the rights of African Americans.
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 would represent the last congressional effort to protect the
civil rights of African Americans for more than half a century. It sought to protect all
Americans, regardless of race, in their access to public accommodations and facilities such as
restaurants, theaters, trains and other public transportation, as well as the right to serve on juries.
It is essential to just government we recognize the equality of all men before the
law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its dealings with the people to
mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or
persuasion, religious or political; and it being the appropriate object of
legislation to enact great fundamental principles into law.
The Act was largely ignored and fell completely in 1896 when challenged in Plessy v.
Ferguson.
RECONSTRUCTION ENDS; “REDEMPTION” BEGINS
The federal will began to wane with the administration of Andrew Johnson, following
Lincoln’s assassination. Johnson admitted former Confederate states back into the Union, even
without their commitment to the principals of the Union, which had been part of the original
criteria for rejoining the Union. He then gave southern states a free hand in reconstructing their
states, winning him enemies among Northerners, and threatening the rights of Blacks. Although
large tracts of land had been originally appropriated by the Union Army for redistribution among
freedmen and loyalists (The Federal Freedman’s Bureau Act of 1865) , the land was slowly
given back to plantation owners who returned to the South, trespasses were forgiven, and the
Union declared whole again, such as it was.
By 1870 Reconstruction had ended in the South, troups withdrawn, and with that, most of
the Federal protections that freed slaves had enjoyed.
“Redemption” was the term southerners used when they talked about a return to their
former values, not the least of which included the insurance of white supremacy. States began
to impose their own set of laws and regulations, which were directly in conflict with Federal
protections.
The phenomenon of Jim Crow began to
WHAT
spread throughout the south, dictating rules of
WAS
segregation, and an “unwritten code” of
JIM
CROW?
punishment. In 1890, Mississippi wrote a
disfranchisement provision into the state
constitution heralding the beginning of the legalized Some people
say that the origin of
era of “Jim Crow.” Soon all acts of racial
the term Jim Crow
discrimination towards Blacks were referred to as
came from a traveling
Jim Crow laws and practices. Jim Crow laws, like
minstrel show where
their precursors, the Black codes, regulated all civil
white performer,
and legal rights of Blacks, from the right to hold
Thomas “Daddy” Rice first Blackened his face
and sell property to the type of work available to
and performed his imitation of an elderly,
them. A special license and certificate from a local
crippled Black man dancing and singing a song
judge might be required in order to obtain work in
which included the chorus,
any occupation other than agricultural and
domestic. Blacks were frequently prevented from
"Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
raising their own crops. In Mississippi, for
Eb'ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow."
instance, Blacks were restricted from renting or
leasing any land outside of cities of towns. In
The slave that “Daddy” Rice imitated was
Louisiana, on the other hand, local ordinances made
believed to have been owned by a Mr. Crow,
it almost impossible for Blacks to live within the
hence the name. The ridiculous jig and
towns or cities. In Louisiana, Blacks needed
performance was a popular success in the
permission from their employer to enter the town.
South, and the character soon became
A separate car was assigned for Blacks on railroad
synonymous with Black or Negro in the white
trains and busses. It was unlawful for Blacks and
vernacular, including, and perhaps because of,
whites to be served in the same room in a
its stereotypical image of Black inferiority.
restaurant, to use the same restroom facilities, to
intermarry, to cohabitate, to play sports together in
amateur teams, or to frequent the same parks.
African Americans who were found to be in violation of Jim Crow could be pursued,
punished and killed at will, and many of them were. Violence against Blacks increased in
reactionary zeal, and mob rule became the norm. The Ku Klux Klan began a “reign of terror,”
murdering and lynching innocent Blacks with little evidence and little justification. Sensational
and biased journalism fanned the flames of the mob, inciting an emotional response to each
incident, with little regard for a search for truth or justice. Guilt of the offender was assumed by
the press. Victims, rarely afforded the benefit of a trial or jury, were seized by mobs and tortured
and killed in most barbaric acts, as reported in The Springfield (Missouri) Weekly Republican in
1899:
“ The Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and other parts of his body. He pleaded
pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on.. before the body was cool, it was
but to pieces, the bones crushed into small bits, the Negro’s heart was cut into several
pieces, as was also his liver.. small pieces of bones went for 25 cents.”
(crimelibrary.com)
Lynchings became the sites of grotesque festivities, with whole towns turning out to watch and
even participate in the violence, while little children played nearby.
Small wonder that Blacks fleeing the South in the late 19th century were said to have felt
like “refugees.”
THE MEMPHIS LYNCHINGS
In 1892, a case that became known as “Lynching at the Curve ” involved three Black
Memphis businessmen, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry Stewart. They had opened
the People’s Grocery Company directly across the street from a white-owned grocery store,
which has previously held a monopoly on trade in the heavily populated Black suburb. Angered
by loss of business, a white mob were determined to run the Black grocers out of town. In the
ensuing confrontation, the Black businessmen, who had been forewarned, wounded three of the
white men who had attacked the store. Newspapers inflamed the situation, printing exaggerated
accounts of the event, and claiming that “Negro desperados” had shot the white men The
sensational account instigated another mob that stormed the jail cells where the Black men were
being held, and killed them (Sterling 78).
Black Journalist and activist Ida B. Wells condemned the vicious deaths of the men who had
been her friends, writing a scathing editorial in her newspaper, The Free Speech, urging Blacks
to leave Memphis:
“There is therefore only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will
neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us
out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.”
Within two month's time, six thousand Black people had left Memphis, many of them in an
exodus to Kansas. In her journals, Wells wrote “Sometimes I wish I could gather my people
in my arms and fly away West.” Wells wrote. (Duster, 9)
THE LURE OF KANSAS
“Bleeding Kansas”
As settlement of the West progressed at a rapid pace, organized territories had petitioned
one after another to be accepted into the Union as states. Each petition provoked the by-nowfamiliar debate over slavery. At the time of their acceptance, state constitutions would include
their designation as either free or slave states. The destiny of Kansas, however, had been tied
up in still another potent political issue – the completion of the trans-continental railroad.
Political leaders knew that in order for the railroad to proceed, Kansas and Nebraska would have
to be admitted to the Union as organized states, and the location of the eastern terminal in
Chicago would require the support of the Southern vote. With this in mind, representative
Stephen A. Douglas (who would later lose his seat in Congress to Abraham Lincoln) proposed
the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) which allowed the residents of those states to decide their own
status on the slavery issue, an act which would substantially override the resolutions of the
Missouri Compromise of 1820.
Kansas found itself in the midst of an accelerating and bloody battle over the issue.
Missourians, on Kansas’s eastern border, were loath to have Kansas admitted as free, and armed
pro-slavery settlers poured over the border to bully their intentions onto the state.
Simultaneously, the growing abolitionist and anti-slavery contingent in the north had
begun an organized movement to the state in order to uphold the Missouri Compromise as well
as their own strong religious beliefs in freedom. Violent attacks against each group grew. “Free
Staters” were tarred, feathered and killed. The battle reached a vicious zenith one bloody night in
1856, when John Brown and a militant force of abolitionists (which included his five sons)
attacked and killed five pro-slavery settlers, dragging the men out of their cabins and butchering
them with swords. The murders sparked a series of murders, thus winning the state the title of
“Bloody Kansas.”
In the end, the abolitionists would win the battle for the territory, and Kansas was finally
admitted to the Union as a Free State in 1860, after Southern states withdrew from the Union.
Kansas would become the first state to allow homesteading for
all, regardless of race or sex.
BENJAMIN “ PAP” SINGLETON
“That crazy Pap Singleton came to the church looking for
people to sign up to go to Kansas. Than man had eyes like hot
coals. He said he was like Moses leading the children of Israel
out of bondage in Egypt.”
Sophie (Flyin’ West)
In 1863, the same year as the Emancipation Proclamation, another noteworthy event
offered hope to the Black Community. The Homestead Act took effect on New Year’s Day,
stating that citizens (except those that fought against the Union) could file claim to 160 acres of
federal land for a mere $10 fee. Now even women and immigrants intending to become
citizens could claim land, and the 14th Amendment would extend that right to African Americans
as well.
A former fugitive slave, Pap Singleton
"….These men would tell all their
probably did more to facilitate the movement of
grievances to me in Tennessee -- the
the Black community than any single man. A
sorrows of their heart. You know I was
cabinet-maker and coffin maker, Singleton saw
an undertaker there in Nashville, and
that African Americans could find no way out of
worked in the shop. Well, actually, I
the debilitating sharecropping system that had
would have to go and bury their fathers
become the to a post-Civil War plantation
and mothers. . . . Well, that man would
economy. Black families, starting with nothing
die, and I would bury him; and the next
in their freedom, were “staked” by the landowner,
morning maybe a woman would go to
who would then require that they purchase all
that man (meaning the landlord), and she
their goods from the landowner’s store at prices
would have six or seven children, and he
two and three times the normal market price.
would say to her, 'Well, your husband
The result was the Black sharecropping family
owed me before he died. . . . You must go
was continuously in debt to the landowner.
to some other place; I cannot take care of
“Only by the slavery of debt can the Negro be
you.' Now, you see, that is something I
kept at work” wrote W.E.B. DuBois in his treatise
would take notice of. That woman had to
on Black life, Souls of Black Folk.
go out, and these little children was left
Singleton believed that Blacks could only
running through the streets, and the next
find stability and economic independence in land
place you would find them in a disorderly
ownership. After trying unsuccessfully to
house, and their children in the State's
purchase land in Tennessee, where whites refused
prison." Pap Singleton
to sell land to Blacks, and where land was
financially out-of-reach to the average freed slave at $60 per acre, Singleton urged fellow Black
people to abandon the inequities of the sharecropping system of the south and claim their
salvation in the promise of the Homestead Act and the opportunity for land ownership in the
frontier states. In a speech at the 1876 National Convention of Colored Men (Nashville),
Singleton helped spark a movement that would be unparalleled in the history of the country.
Singleton scouted land in Kansas. In 1874 Singleton and his associates formed the
Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association, which ultimately steered more than 20,000
Black migrants to Kansas between 1877 and 1879. African Americans who left for the West
called themselves “Exodusters” because they felt they were on an “Exodus” from slavery and a
journey to freedom. In the largest exodus to Kansas, more than 60,000 African Americans
gathered in Nashville, Tennessee in 1880 to begin a new life in the West.
EXODUSTERS AND THE MIGRATION PHENOMENON
The irony of the settlement of Kansas would be that the opportunity of the Black community
would come at the expense of another race’s displacement and discrimination. Much of the
new land available in Kansas had formerly been the Kansa Indian Reservation. In order to make
way for the new homesteaders, the reservation was reduced in 1859 from 256,000 acres to
80,000 acres, and by 1872, all Indians had been removed from the land to make way for the
incoming settlers.
In 1870, the Black
population of Kansas was listed as
16,300. By 1880 it had swelled to
43,110.
“[The exodus] started among
the Black people themselves,
how or when nobody know,
and the Negroes keep their
own counsel about it…The
migration of Blacks having
begun, it is not easy to tell
where it will end. Something
much like panic seems to
have set in.” Anonymous
(Library of Congress)
Women were a driving force
behind the exodus. Louisiana state
senator John Burch stated, “The
women have had more to do with it
than all the politics and the men,”
(Sterling, 357). Women delegates in New Orleans Convention in 1875 began to plan and to form
a grass roots movement for the exodus. Many of their husbands had been slain by racists. Wives
threatened to leave the South even if their husbands didn’t.
Furious whites tried to block the exodus, fearing the loss of their cheap labor force. They
tried to close the Mississippi, and threatened to sink the Exodusters’ boats, but the movement
could not be stopped.
REBUILDING A LIFE IN NICODEMUS
In 1878, thirty one year old Willianna Hickman arrived in
the “Promised Land” of Kansas with her husband, the
Reverend Daniel Hickman and 200 members of their
congregation of freed slaves. After a grueling trek from
Kentucky by rail and then by horse and wagon across
road-less plains marked with little more than deer trails
and watering holes,
Hickman was dismayed at what she saw:
“ When we got in sight of
Nicodemus, the men shouted,
“There is Nicodemus.” Being
very sick, I hailed this news
with gladness. I looked with all
the eyes I had. ‘Where is
Nicodemus? I don’t see it.’ My
husband pointed out various
smokes coming out of the
ground and said, “That is
Nicodemus.” The families
there lived in dugouts…The
scenery was not at all inviting,
and I began to cry,” ( Chu, 7).
Black Family in their ‘Dugout’ Home, 1889
What was it like for the settlers to carve a life out the frontier in this new land? The
whole of Graham County (where Nicodemus now sits) had all of 75 residents when the first
colonists arrived in 1877. The high plains were flat, barren and windswept. It was a country so
flat “that you can see what your neighbors are
doing in the next township (Taylor, 139).” The
plains were known for blazing summer heat and
bitter winter cold, and were better suited to
growing cactus than corn and wheat. Settlers
had little farm equipment, so many of them
broke ground (“sod busters”) with their hands,
and with spades and hoes. They hitched their milk cows to plows when they had them. Neverthe-less, by 1881, most settlers in Nicodemus had planted 10-15 acres of crops. They had faced
drought, prairie fires, crop failures and grasshopper swarms, but they were a tenacious group.
Education was a priority for the settlers, and the first schoolhouse was built in 1879. By 1886,
Nicodemus had 4 general stores, 3 groceries, 4 hotels, 3 pharmacies, 2 millineries, 2 liveries, 2
barber shops, a two-story schoolhouse, 2 agricultural implement stores, 2 newspapers and more.
“When I landed on the soil, I looked on the ground and I says this is free ground. Then I looked
on the heavens, and I says them is free and beautiful heavens. Then I looked within my heart,
and I says to myself I wonder why I never was free before?” John Solomon Lewis, on his
arrival in Kansas. (Taylor, 139)
WOMEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF COMMUNITY
Women were at the forefront of building community in the new West. According to
historian Lawrence DeGraaf (Taylor, 125), women of the West separated cleanly from cultural
patterns of the South and viewed themselves as an elite class, able and willing to break with their
past. Black women took the opportunity to create, in the new black communities, a culture
unique to the West. They became significant forces in local economies and community building
.
In Kansas, where African American women had been
founding new settlements since the middle of the century,
freedwomen employed all the skills and strength gained in their
former bondage, and tenaciously sought all the available
employment in their new homes. They became agricultural
workers, sometimes helping nearby white farmers with harvests,
and worked as domestics, washerwomen, housekeepers, servants
and cooks while raising money for their own independence. In his
book on African American women in the West, Quintard Taylor
Jenny Smith Fletcher writes, “Despite their humble occupations and meager incomes,
first school teacher in
these early black women in Kansas helped to establish the first
Nicodemus.
churches in the state and offered aid and comfort to former slaves
who came later. African American women in Lawrence organized the Ladies Refugee Aid
Society to collect food, clothing, and money to assist destitute freedpeople. The society
foreshadowed the Kansas Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, providing a model of self-help
activities that extended well into the twentieth century,” (Taylor, 9). By 1890 a quarter of a
million unmarried or widowed women were running their own farms and ranches in the newly
settled territories of the West.
The economic survival of Nicodemus was closely tied to the coming railroad, which
residents hoped would pass through their town. Many of them even gathered together the
enormous sum of $16,000 to purchase railroad bonds, in an effort to win the bid. But it was not
to be. In 1888, the railroad bypassed Nicodemus, and the once thriving town would
subsequently go into a gradual decline. What in 1880 a vibrant community with 500 residents in
1880, had shrunk by 1920 to a population of 200 citizens.
All in all, however, by the end of the century, African Americans in the West were better
off economically than their Southern counterparts, enjoying the privileges of land ownership,
political activity, voting rights and elective office. Nicodemus itself was home to some notable
residents, including Edwin P. McCabe, who became the first African American to hold state
office in Kansas (State Auditor, 1881), and legendary scientist George Washington Carver, who
spent some of his early years in Nicodemus. An account of settler R.B. Scrubbs, who was by
his own description an ‘ole green boy, never way from home ( Taylor, 139),’ tells how he
parlayed his 120 acres of land into a 720 acre farm with hard work and the supplemental income
of his work as a freight hand.
Today Nicodemus, a designated National Historic Landmark in the Kansas Register,
bills itself as “the only remaining all Black town west of the Mississippi.”
THE END OF CIVIL RIGHTS:
PLESSY vs. FERGUSSEN
In 1896 Louisiana’s ruling that there be separate but equal railway coaches for Blacks
and whites was contested by Homer Plessey, a Black carpenter who rode in a “white“ railroad
car. In the now-famous case that went to the Supreme Court, the higher court upheld the lower
court’s ruling, arguing that “laws permitting and even requiring their separation, in places where
they are liable to be brought into contact, do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to
the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the
state legislatures in the exercise of their police power.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was effectively declared unconstitutional and almost 100
years would pass before the Federal Government would act again on behalf of the rights of
people of color.
INSPIRATIONAL VOICES
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
In the play, Flyin’ West, the character of
Frank quotes the work of an actual
historical figure of the time, African
American poet and author, Paul Laurence
Dunbar (1872-1906), often referred to as
the “poet laureate” of the African
American race. Dunbar gained
international prominence in the latter part
of the 19th century for a prolific body of
work that included poetry, novels, short
stories and song lyrics. The child of
former slaves, Dunbar rose to national
prominence through a diligence and
perseverance, as well as the encouragement of his mother. Like
Sophie in Flyin’ West, Dunbar’s mother had also taken in
washing to help keep food on the table, and Dunbar supported
himself early in his career working as an elevator operator in
Dayton, Ohio.
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them see only us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
“We Wear the Mask” P. Dunbar, 1895
His career included a recitation tour in England, recitation for the 1893 World’s Fair, and an
invitation to ride in President William McKinley’s inaugural parade. Dunbar was later criticized
for writing predominantly for a white audience, but one might argue that it was within his
writing that he expressed the conflicts and unrelenting challenges of being Black in a racially
charged society.
Dunbar wrote eloquently and often in the slave vernacular about the trials of his race, and died
at the age of 33 from Tuberculosis.
IDA B. WELLS
Champion of social and political justice, real-life African American
journalist and suffragist, Ida B. Wells provided genuine inspiration for many
aspects of Cleage’s determined and dauntless women in Flyin’ West. Wells
was born a slave in Mississippi in 1862, but her determined parents would
build a life of opportunity for their family following emancipation. Well’s
father was a successful carpenter and her mother a noted cook. With a strong
belief in the value of education, Wells and her family would attend Rust
College, a freemen’s high school and industrial school. “Our job was to go to school and learn all
we could, “ Wells wrote in her journal. She is reported to have read every book in the school
library, from Louisa May Alcott to Charles Dickens.
When an epidemic of Yellow fever took the lives of both her parents and her baby
brother, Wells became the sole provider for her five younger siblings Only 16 at the time, Wells
made herself up to look older and landed a teaching position in a country school. She later
moved to Memphis at the urging of her aunt Fanny, who promised opportunities for employment
in the larger city, and who offered to care for Well’s two younger siblings.
An intelligent and indefatigable young woman, Wells continued her education in
Memphis, and began to make a name for her self writing essays for church publications on the
injustices and social conditions of Blacks. While still teaching, she was offered a job as a
reporter for the Memphis Free Press and Headlight, of which she later became the owner.
When Well’s close friends were the victims of the Memphis lynching in 1892, she
wrote a series of editorials in her newspaper, Free Speech, urging Negroes to pack up and leave
the South, with it’s code of “Jim Crow” and the unwritten law of the Lynch-mob. Angry whites
in Memphis stormed and destroyed the offices of Well’s newspaper, and she was forced to flee
in the night to the safety of the North, where she continued her anti-lynching campaign, writing
under an assumed name for some time.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Pearl Cleage
Daughter of a Midwestern minister, Pearl Cleage was born in
1948 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Growing up in Detroit,
Michigan, the civil rights movement of the early 60’s was a prominent
feature of Cleage’s childhood, with many of the leaders of the movement passing through the
Cleage household on their way to rallies and demonstrations in the region.
Cleage attended Howard University in Washington D.C., where she majored in
playwriting and dramatic literature. She moved to Atlanta in 1969 and there received her
bachelor’s degree in drama from Spellman College, where she later joined the faculty as a
playwright in residence. During her first marriage, to Atlanta politician Michael Lomax, Cleage
was also serving as Director of Communications for the city of Atlanta and press secretary and
speechwriter for Maynard Jackson, the first Black mayor elected in the South after the Civil War.
Cleage and Lomax had one daughter, Deignan Njeri. The marriage ended in divorce, and Cleage
later married writer and director, Zaron (Zeke) W. Burnett, Jr.
Cleage is the author of seven plays and several books. She has been a regular contributor
to several Atlanta newspapers, including the Tribune, the Gazette, and the JournalConstitution. She is the co-founder and editor of the literary journal, Catalyst, and her essays
have appeared in national magazines such as Essence, the New York Times Book Review, Ms.,
and Black World.
Cleage is known for her willingness to address difficult issues. She wrote about her
‘mission’ in her introduction to one of her essays, Mad at Miles:
“I am writing to expose and explore the point where racism and sexism meet. I am
writing to help understand the full effects of being Black and female in a culture that is
both racist and sexist. I am writing to try and communicate that information to my sisters
first and then to any brothers of good will and honest intent who will take time to
listen…I am writing to allow myself to feel the anger. I am writing to keep from running
toward it or away from it or into anybody’s arms…I am writing, writing, writing, for my
life.”
In her essay “My American Herstory,” Cleage discussed her work in the theatre:
“As an African American theatre artist… I am about the business of bringing into focus
all those faceless, nameless, nonspecific, usually asexual Black folks who are presented
as our ancestors, moving stealthily through history, identified in our collective Black
consciousness as much maligned beasts of burden, victims of tragic circumstance, and an
isolated role model or two…
I want to make history more real, more alive, and , ultimately more useful, by making it
personal. (Bell-Scott, 155)
Inspired not a little by the stories of the indomitable activist and journalist, Ida B. Wells,
Cleage has set about the business of writing African American women’s stories into the history,
or “herstory,” of our culture.
INTERVIEW WITH PEARL CLEAGE (Exerpts)
Insights for Teachers ~
Director Suzanne Trauth and dramaturg Catherine Rust recently spoke with Pearl Cleage,
and asked her talk about her inspiration for her play, Flyin’ West.
Cleage: “I was driving down the freeway and I heard Miss Leah’s voice… it was a very old
woman and it sounded like she was sitting in the back seat of my car. And I’m not a writer who
had these kind of experiences where characters talk to you …So I was driving down the freeway
and I heard her saying the speech that actually made its way into the play, almost exactly as I
heard it that day, talking about her children being sold away and wanting to go west after her
husband died- if she had wings she’d set out flying west. And I was so startled at how present
the voice was with just that little bit of dialogue actually that I drove off the freeway and wrote
down what she was saying. And that was actually the impetus for the play, because it was such
a dramatic kind of moment, (because I’ve never before or since had that kind of thing happen to
me), that I said, “Who is this, what is this that I’m supposed to be saying?” I realized that I had
to start thinking about Black people going west, about Black pioneers going west, and I didn’t
really have any kind of information about that. I had to start really thinking about doing some
research.
The thing that struck me when I started reading all these journals from women who had
gone west, and letters home and all those things that are available once you start looking for
them, was that I was really struck by how similar their experiences are to the experiences of
women today. They were talking about family, they were talking about childbirth, they were
talking about isolation and how to really make a place for themselves in a very male
environment. And it was wonderful for me as a playwright, because it meant that although I was
writing about a very different time period, I was still writing about the same kinds of issues, the
same kinds of questions. [It]was one of those perfect moments where you say, ‘Wow this is
great, I get to talk about something that I didn’t know much about and probably many people
that come to see the play don’t have much feeling or information about - Black people,
especially Black women going west, and also to continue to look at the things that drive the
work that I do in my contemporary kind of exploration.’ I love “Flyin’ West.” It was really a
play that continues to mean a lot to me.
The play really is about a lot of things, but it really has a lot to do with family, with
rebuilding family after the trauma of slavery. Miss Leah represents the oldest ancestor,
represents a generation of Black people that had lived through so much. She’s the ancestor who
connects them and makes them a family. And [she is ] also the one who is most able to defend
them effectively. She is the one most qualified to make that kind of serious moral decision, that,
‘ in order to defend ourselves we’re going to have to do something that we wouldn’t necessarily
want to do, and this is the way we’re going to do it.’
It also implies that women have had to protect themselves in that way. [It was] the idea that
these Black women who were living through horrendous circumstances did sometimes have ways
of protecting themselves that were unknown to people outside of that small sisterhood of Black
women.”
Ms. Cleage also talked about of the character of Frank and the complexities of his
personality.
Cleage: “What I was really trying to do with him was to talk about the self-hate that he has and
about the fact that it manifests itself in domestic violence, which is, I think, a big question that
we look at when we look at domestic violence in the Black community - the fact that race is so
present in such a negative way in the lives of Black men, that they often manifest their rage at
race in domestic violence against Black women and children.
[Frank is] such a bad buy, he’s such a villain, but he also is such a victim of slavery.
The redeeming thing to me about Frank is that he didn’t choose to be born in that most extreme
strange American circumstance, which is [that] his father owned his mother. I don’t know how
you get over that, a lot of people did, but a lot of people didn’t, and Frank is one of those who
didn’t.
Frank for me is very important because we have to acknowledge the full range of the
experience that slavery was. The temptation is to dismiss him and not to acknowledge that he is
as damaged as Miss Leah was. But there should also be that balance where we say, ‘would he
have been different, if he had inherited the money that was due him?’
A lot of Black literature always has the white villain in the room, so we get to not think
about us, because we get to be mad a whoever the evil white male is who’s in the play or in the
book. What I always try to do it to remove that , for us as viewers and as Black artists
participating in the project.
to remove that crutch, to say, let’s not put the villain who’s expected, lets just look at us. How
do we behave as human beings, with all of that baggage that race brings, but also all of that
baggage that human beings bring whatever color they happen to be?
[In the end] the family is guaranteed to go on. They’ve been able to be a strong enough
as a family to reject the danger that was threatening them”
QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION
1) Sophie is involved in a vote which will determine the future of Nicodemus. What is the
significance of this vote, in terms of the life that Sophie and her “family” have left behind in the
South?
2) Miss Leah is a great story-teller. “I don’t remember a time we went to your house when I
didn’t come back with a story,” Minnie says. What role does the oral tradition play in the
sense of heritage for African Americans in the 19th century?
3) Frank is accused of “passing” in Flyin’ West. What do you think this means in the larger
context of African Americans’ attempts to build a new life for themselves?
4) Why does Frank act the way he does? How does the sociological environment affect the way
Frank thinks about himself? Is he evil?
5) Consider what a day would in the life of Sophie and her family would be like. How does it
differ from your day? What conveniences do you think you could do without? Miss Leah
came to her land 20 years earlier with the first settlers. What would she need to do to
“homestead” her land?
6) Cleage notes that in her script that the characters of Fannie and Minnie in Flyin’ West were
not born into slavery. How had this affected their approach to life? How do their opinions and
experiences differ from those of Sophie? From Miss Leah?
7) With Fannie’s return from Europe, the “sisters” of Flyin’ West perform a special ritual.
What role does the ritual play in the lives of these women?
8) Why do the women feel that they are justified in their actions with regard to Frank?
9) Flyin West is set in 1898. What changes have transpired for our characters since the Civil
War? How has racism in this country changed since then?
FLYIN’ WEST PRODUCTION HISTORY
Flyin’ West premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 1992 and has subsequently
been produced at number of regional theatres across the country, including the Kennedy Center
in Washington, D.C. and New Jersey’s own Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick. Cleage’s
play, Blues for an Alabama Sky, was later commissioned by and premiered at the Alliance
Theatre, and was performed as part of the Cultural Olympiad, in conjunction with the Olympic
Games in Atlanta in 1996. Her recent theatrical work includes Burbon at the Border, also
commissioned by the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 1997.
PLAYS BY PEARL CLEAGE
Hospice-1983 . First produced off-Broadway as part of the Women's Series at Henry Street
Settlement's New Federal Theater.
Puppetplay-1981 . First produced at Just Us Theater; opened 17th season of the Negro Ensemble
Company in New York.
Chain and Late Bus to Mecca-1992 . Commissioned and developed by the Women's Project and
Productions and the Southeast Playwrights Project of Atlanta; co-produced by the
Women's Project in New York. The two plays opened at the Judith Anderson Theatre in
New York City under the directorship of Julia Miles and Woodie King Jr.
Flyin' West-1992 . First produced at the Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta, directed by
Kenny Leon;
it was one of the most produced plays in the country during the 1992-1993 season. See
also Dimensions of Pearl Cleage's Flyin' West, published in Theatre Topics.
Blues for an Alabama Sky-1994 . First produced at the Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta,
directed by
Kenny Leon and starring Phyllicia Rashad.
Bourbon at the Border-1997 . First produced at the Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta and
directed
by Kenny Leon.
BOOKS BY PEARL CLEAGE
We Don’t Need No Music (1972)
Mad at Miles: A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth (1990)
The Brass Bed and Other Stories (1991)
Deals with the Devil: And Other Reasons to Riot (1994)
What Looks Like Crazy on An Ordinary Day (1998)
I Wish I Had a Red Dress (2002)
Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do (2004)
Babylon Sisters : A Novel (2005)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell-Scott, Patricia, Ed. Flat Footed Truths: Telling Black Women’s Lives. New York: Henry
Holt and
Company, 1998.
Chu, Daniel and Shaw, Bill. Photo: “The Nicodemus Cyclone” Going Home to Nicodemus:
The Story
of an African American Fontier Town and the Pioneers Who Settled It. Morristown:
Silver Burdett Press, 1994.
Cleage, Pearl. Flyin’ West and Other 19lays. New York: Theater Communications Group, Inc.,
1999
Davis, Angela. Women, Race & Class.
New York: Random House, 1983.
DeGraff, Lawrence. “Race, Sex and Region: Black Women in the American West, 1850-1920.”
Pacific
Historical Review 49 (May 1980): 285-313.
Du Bois, W.E. Burghardt. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A.C.
McClurg &
Co., 1931.
Duster, A., Ed. Crusade for justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells . Chicago: University of
Chicago
Press, 1970.
Katz, William Loren. Black Pioneers: An Untold Story. New York: Atheneum Books for
Young
Readers, 1999
Katz, William Loren. Black Women of the Old West. New York: Atheneum Books for Young
Readers, 1995.
Litwack, Leon F. Been In the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Random
House,
Inc., 1979
Painter, Nell Irvin. Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction. New York:
Afred A.
Knopf, 1976.
Taylor, Quintard and Moore, Shirley Ann Wilson, Editors. African American Women Confront
the
West, 1600 – 2000. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racil Frontier: African Americans in the American West,
1528 1990. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 1998.
Salley, Columbus. The Black 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential African-Americans, Post
and
Present. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1993.
“Passing for White”
Sterling, Dorothy. Black Foremothers. New York: The Feminist Press, 1988.
Sterling, Dorothy, Ed. Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company,
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1952.
WEB RESOURCES
Frederick Douglas National Historic Site; http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/douglass/
Library of Congress. “From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection,
1824 –
1909. Authentic anecdotes of American slavery. http://memory.loc.gov
Public Broadcasting Station. “Reconstruction, The Second Civil War”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/schools/index.html
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html
U.S. Department of the Interior: National Park Service, National Historic Sites.
http://www.nps.gov/nico/
California Newsreel: Film and Video for Social Change.
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/lessonplans/hs_es_passing_for_white.htm
RECOMMENDED TRIP !
Fosterfields Living Historical Farm in Morristown, NJ, is part of the Morris County Park
Commission, and offers visitors (including our cast!) the opportunity for hands-on experiences
with farming and rural life in the late 19th and early 20th Century. 73 Kahdena Road,
Morristown, NJ 973-326-7645. www.morrisparks.net
PHOTO LOG
“Ho for Kansas”
U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, National Historic
Site. http://nps.gov/features/nicodemus/wakenico.htm
“Missouri Compromise”
Annenberg/ Corporation for Public Broadcasting; Lerner.org
www.learner.org/ biographyofamerica/prog09/maps/
“Slave - Bill of Sale”
University of Kansas- Virtual Repository for Territorial Kansas
History
http://lark.cc.ku.edu/cgiwrap/imlskto/index.php?SCREEN=view_image&document_id=101743
&file_name=u002956
“The Narrative of Bethany Veney” University of N. Carolina.
http:docsouth.unc.edu/veney/veney.html
“Company E – 4th US Colored Infantry” University of Houston – Digital History Home.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section1/section1_soldiers.html
“Creole Night at the French Opera” Harpers Weekly, July 21, 1865.
“Jump Jim Crow” U. of Calif, Berkely.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/calheritage/Jimcrow/glossary.htm
“Paul Laurence Dunbar” State University of New York, Buffalo.
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/dunbar/dunbarphotos.html
“Ida B. Wells” Duke University
http://www.duke.edu/~ldbaker/classes/AAIH/caaih/ibwells/ibwbkgrd.html.
“Pap Singleton” Kansas State Historical Society
http://www.kshs.org/tourists/theme/african.html
“Exodusters Steamboat” Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/images/leaders.jpg
“Family ‘Dugout Home” Taylor, Q. In Search of the Racial Frontier.
“Residents of Nicodemus” University of Kansas Library. www.lib.ku.edu
“Jenny Smith Fletcher” Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam010.html
Pearl Cleage” Humanities Tennessee. www.tn-humanities.org.