(Kelley, 37). Chuck D promised to deliver 5,000
new, young black leaders, while calling rap the
black CNN.
In 1989, at the height of their popularity and of
a movement toward youth consciousness, Public
Enemy released the single “Fight the Power” for
Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing. However, in
May 1989, in a Washington Times interview, Pro-
fessor Griff ’s anti-Semitic comment that Jews
caused the evils of the world marked the end for
Public Enemy. Chuck D dismissed Griff from the
group, reinstated him, and then disbanded the
group, though it soon reformed. Public Enemy
went on to release singles and albums, including
Fear of a Black Planet and Apocalypse ‘91... The
Enemy Strikes Black. Both albums were filled with
more astute political attacks on racism than ever,
but Public Enemy never fully recovered from ac-
cusations of being anti-Semitic until it was too
late. Much like poets AMIRI BARAKA, HAKI MA-
DHUBUTI, GIL SCOTT-HERON, and NIKKI GIOVANNI,
who sought to use the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT as
a vehicle for black consciousness and liberation,
Public Enemy sought to empower their generation
and the black community through rap lyrics and
hip-hop sounds.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kelley, Robin D. G. Yo Mama’s DisFUNKtional! Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 1997.
Kitwana, Bakari. The Hip Hop Generation: Young
Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture.
New York: Basic Ovitas Books, 2002.
Light Alan. “Public Enemy.” In The Vibe History of
Hip Hop. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999:
165–169.
Matthew Birkhold
Purlie Victorious Ossie Davis (1961)
Purlie Victorious, OSSIE DAVIS’s most lauded the-
atrical work, is a three-act satire examining tradi-
tional southern race relations during the early days
of the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. With irony-laden
humor, Purlie Victorious addresses the perpetua-
tion of slavery through the sharecropping system,
white liberalism, and the ongoing battle between
segregationists and integrationists for control of
the South’s consciousness and conscience. The
play also focuses equally on the interpersonal re-
lationships among African Americans as well as
the making and ultimate deification of African-
American leaders.
Purlie Victorious Judson, the title character, is
an autodidact and preacher who has returned to
the South to purchase a church, which will become
the first integrated church in Georgia’s Cotchipee
County. (A Georgia native, Davis patterns the
fictional setting after his birthplace, Cogdell,
Georgia.) Judson plans to purchase the church,
Big Bethel, with a $500 inheritance bequeathed
to deceased relatives by the wife of Ol’ Cap’n
Cotchipee, the plantation owner. With him is Lu-
tiebelle Gussiemae Jenkins, who will pretend to be
his cousin Bee, one of the original inheritors. Bee,
however, was a college student at the time of her
death, and Lutiebelle is not only uneducated but
also overly obsequious, idolizing her former white
employer to the point of deification. Her character
is Purlie’s polar opposite, and while Purlie pos-
sesses a singular, uncompromising focus toward
the purchase of Big Bethel and the duping of Ol’
Cap’n Cotchipee, Lutiebelle only wants to please
Purlie and eventually become his wife.
Davis rounds out the play with representa-
tive characters, Gitlow and Missy Judson, Purlie’s
cousins. These characters not only represent both
the Old Negroes of the South but also speak to the
continued plantation system in the South in their
roles as sharecroppers, or field hands. Although
Gitlow and Missy also want Big Bethel, they are
emotionally and psychologically unable to request
the money from Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee until Purlie
returns, which allows Davis to comment on Af-
rican-American leaders and leadership as well as
the masses who follow them. Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee,
a die-hard segregationist and supremacist, has
maintained his plantation in much the same man-
ner as existed during slavery. Yet, his son, Charlie,
is an integrationist and liberal who challenges his
father’s system of shares and southern racism and
fights, figuratively and literally, for the equality of
African Americans, much to his father’s chagrin.420 Purlie Victorious