Singh, Amritjit. The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance:
Twelve Black Writers, 1923–1933.University Park:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976.
Sylvander, Cheryl. Jessie Redmon Fauset, Black American
Writer.Troy, N.Y.: Whitson Pub. Co., 1981.
Come Seven Octavus Roy Cohen(1920)
A comedy by OCTAVUS ROY COHEN, a white
writer who capitalized on the interest in African-
American themes and generated numerous works
that included black stereotypes. His play was in
many respects a modern blackface show; all of the
African-American characters were played by white
actors.
Communist Party
The Communist Party in the United States of
America (CPUSA) was a political organization that
appealed to a number of Harlem Renaissance writ-
ers, activists, and personalities. Based in HARLEM,
the organization promoted assimilationist platforms
in the North and black separatist agendas in the
South. Although it made every effort to marshal
the political potential of Harlem’s black voting pop-
ulation, the CPUSA was a satellite Russian organi-
zation. As a result, CLAUDEMCKAYand others
realized that involvement with the organization
could mark them as agents of a foreign power and
make them vulnerable to federal investigation in an
increasingly nationalistic America. Individuals who
became involved in or associated with the CPUSA
included WILFREDADOLPHUSDOMINGO, editor of
NEGROWORLD;PAULROBESON, who was stripped
of his passport and denied the right to travel; W. E.
B. DUBOIS, who became an official member in
1961; and LANGSTON HUGHES, who eventually
distanced himself from the organization in an effort
to protect himself and his career.
Bibliography
Klehr, Harvey, John Haynes, and Kyrill Anderson. The
Soviet World of American Communism.New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1998.
Paul Mishler. Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical
Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in
the United States.New York: Columbia University
Press, 1999.
Compromise: A Folk PlayWillis Richardson
(1925)
Published in ALAIN LOCKE’s THENEWNEGRO
(1925), this play by WILLISRICHARDSONwas per-
formed by the KRIGWAPLAYERS, a dramatic troupe
organized by W. E. B. DUBOIS. The play is set in
the Maryland home of a widowed woman who
struggles to defend her family’s honor in the wake
of a white man’s murder of her son. Jane Lee has a
bizarre and lengthy interaction with Ben Carter,
the white neighbor who pays off her husband, who
drank himself to death after his son’s accidental
shooting. Mr. Lee’s acceptance of the $100 payoff
constitutes the first compromise of the play. When
she discovers that her daughter is pregnant by
Carter’s son, Jane attempts to broker another deal
with Ben Carter. He reneges on his agreement to
educate her children, however, when one of Jane’s
sons defends his sister’s honor and breaks her
young lover’s arm in the process. Carter, a mur-
derer who has yet to “pay” for the death of Lee’s
son, now threatens to have her son imprisoned for
assault. The play ends as Jane sits at the table, fin-
gering a loaded shotgun, and laments her own
deadly compromise, however honorable and bene-
ficial it may have been, with Carter.Bibliography
Locke, Alain. The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Re-
naissance.1925; reprint, New York: Arno Press,
1968.
Peterson, Bernard. “Willis Richardson: Pioneer Play-
wright.” Black World 24, no. 6 (1975): 40–48,
86–88.“Conjure Man”Octavia Wynbush(1938)
A “weird story of hatred, jealousy, murder and re-
venge from the bayou country in rural Louisiana”
by writer OCTAVIAWYNBUSHthat appeared in the
March 1938 issue of THECRISIS.Published along-
side the Gwendolyn Brooks poem entitled “Little
Brown Boy” and GEORGEPADMORE’s article “Fas-
cism in the West Indies,” “Conjure Man” traced a
tangled history of love and betrayal that culmi-
nated in a tragic and desperate end for a lonely
woman.
“Conjure Man,” like Wynbush’s story “The
Conversion of Harvey,” is set in the bayous of“Conjure Man” 91