Mission Accomplished (1967), Riot Sale, or Dollar
Psyche Fake-Out (1968), Top Secret, or A Few Mil-
lion After B.C. (1968), The Fanatic (1968), Recog-
nition (1968), Unpresidented (1968), Hypnotism
(1969), Family Portrait (or My Son the Black Na-
tionalist) (1969), The King of Soul, or the Devil and
Otis Redding (1969), Runaround (1970), All White
Castle (1971), and Rights and Reasons (1973).
In 1982, Caldwell’s collection of skits and
monologues, The World of Ben Caldwell: A Drama-
tized Examination of the Absurdity of the American
Dream and Subsequent Reality, was produced off-
Broadway by the New Federal Theatre (NFT), fea-
turing Reginald Vel Johnson, Garrett Morris, and
Morgan Freeman. While Mel Gussow of the New
York Times reported that Caldwell showed such
deftness and caustic cleverness in these sketches
that he might well consider writing material for
Richard Pryor (13), Stanley Crouch noted that
“Caldwell’s strong suit is a great ability to stitch
together fabrics of rhetoric ranging from bureau-
cratic to black bottom barber shop” (104).
In addition to drama, Caldwell has written
essays and poetry; he served as a contributing
editor of the short-lived periodical Black The-
ater, published intermittently by the New La-
fayette Theatre in Harlem. Since the early 1980s,
Caldwell has turned his interest to the visual arts,
participating in New York’s Kenkeleba Gallery
exhibit in 1983, connecting the media of paint-
ing and jazz with such talented artists as Camille
Billops, FAITH RINGGOLD, Romare Bearden, and
Norman Lewis. Though a fire swept through
Caldwell’s Harlem apartment in 1991, destroying
more than four decades’ worth of manuscripts,
paintings, and memorabilia, he has returned to
writing monologues and sketches and has com-
pleted a series of portraits on African-American
men and women.
Labeling Caldwell a gifted playwright, DARWIN
T. TURNER credits him, along with ALICE CHILDRESS,
LORRAINE HANSBERRY, JAMES BALDWIN, DOUGLAS
WARD, ADRIENNE KENNEDY, and many others, with
bringing Afro-American drama “from minstrelsy,
apology, and defense to awareness and assertion”
(23). Caldwell’s short satirical plays, though not
in vogue today, delivered a powerful message that
reflected the nationalistic fervor that prevailed
among the architects of the Black Arts Movement
and many of his contemporaries.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crouch, Stanley. “Satireprop.” Village Voice, 27 April
1982, p. 104.
Grant, Nathan L. “Caldwell, Ben.” In The Oxford
Companion to African American Literature, edited
by William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and
Trudier Harris, 116–117. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1997.
Gussow, Mel. “Federal Office ‘World of Ben Caldwell.’ ”
New York Times, 10 April 1982, p. 13.
Turner, Darwin T., ed. Black Drama in America: An
Anthology. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1971.
Loretta G. WoodardCallaloo: A Journal of African American
Diaspora Art and Letters
Callaloo has continually served as one of the pre-
mier publications for African Americans and
people of African descent throughout the African
diaspora. It is impossible to consider black artis-
tic concerns without referring to works published
in this acclaimed journal. CHARLES JOHNSON has
called Callaloo “a resource scholars and creators
will find crucial for understanding contemporary
black literary practice,” and THOMAS GLAVE sees
the journal “propelling our traditions into bril-
liancies far beyond the easy, the simple, [and] the
not-brave.”
Callaloo was founded in 1976 at Southern Uni-
versity at Baton Rouge by Charles Henry Rowell,
Jr., as a vehicle for raising artistic, critical, and
theoretical issues of the experience of blacks in
the South. Rowell writes in the inaugural issue,
“[Black South experiences] have meanings. And
as such they merit creative attention. They are
rich material for today’s Black South writers, who
more than our brothers and sisters in the North,
are closely fixed to our roots.” In 1977, the journal
became quarterly and moved to the University of
Kentucky, where it broadened its scope to include
a more comprehensive focus on African-American88 Callaloo: A Journal of African American Diaspora Art and Letters