to me,” the silent masculinized force “loosed the
reins on his pale, white horse, / And he clamped
the spurs to his bloodless sides, / And out and
down he rode, / Through heaven’s pearly gates, /
Past suns and moons and stars.” When he appears
at the bedside of the ailing Sister Caroline, “She
saw Old Death. She saw Old Death / Coming like
a falling star. / But Death didn’t frighten Sister
Caroline; He looked to her like a welcome friend.”
The dying woman is taken “up like a baby, / And
she slay in his icy arms / But she didn’t feel no
chill” until she is placed finally “On the loving
breast of Jesus.” Johnson imagines a powerful new
Trinity, one that now represents human creation,
salvation, and death.
Johnson’s deliberate prose and animated
retellings of well-known stories have contributed
to the long-standing popularity of the work. Since
its publication, God’s Tromboneshas been adapted
for the stage and for performance by a variety of
groups. In 1994 James Earl Jones and Dorian
Harewood appeared in a film version of the work.
At Emory University in 1999, the Reverend C. T.
Vivian and other prominent ministers performed
selections in honor of civil rights leader and Con-
gressman John Lewis.
Bibliography
Fleming, Robert. James Weldon Johnson.Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1987.
Johnson, James Weldon. Along This Way: The Autobiog-
raphy of James Weldon Johnson.New York: Penguin
Books, 1990.
Levy, Eugene. James Weldon Johnson: Black Leader, Black
Voice.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Goin’ HomeRansom Rideout(1928)
A prize-winning play by RANSOM RIDEOUTthat
opened on BROADWAYin August 1928 at the Hud-
son Theatre in NEWYORKCITY. The play, which
was produced by Brock Pemberton and required an
enormous cast, was an involved and tragic story set
in World War I–era FRANCEand billed as an “after-
the-war drama.” Before its Broadway debut, the
play received special recognition from the Pasadena
Community Players and was awarded first prize in a
contest cosponsored by the Drama League of
America and the publishing house of Longmans,
Green & Company. The press, which was commit-
ted to publishing new material, balked at publishing
Rideout’s play because it featured a mixed cast and
thus deemed it not easily adaptable by all-white
drama groups. Although one NEWYORKTIMESre-
view proposed that in the play “coincidence strains
credibility,” the drama enjoyed 78 performances in
the late summer and early fall of 1928.
The frustrated protagonist of “Goin’ Home” is
Israel du Bois, a New Orleans-born soldier. He
woos Lise, his white, French wife and a successful
café owner, with exaggerated tales of his military
exploits, and American fortune. Lise learns the
truth about her husband and the plight of African
Americans from Major Edward Powell, a white of-
ficer and former family acquaintance of du Bois.
After Lise and Powell become romantically in-
volved, Samba Saar, a Senegalese friend of du Bois,
is determined to avenge his friend’s honor. In a
painful ironic twist, du Bois kills his best friend
rather than the man who is party to his disenfran-
chisement in America and who contributes to the
erosion of his marriage. The play closes as Powell
escorts du Bois, a character whose manhood is
constantly under siege, back to America.
The play’s conclusion called attention to
problematic American racial dynamics and hierar-
chies. New York Times drama critic J. Brooks
Atkinson was incensed that “the fearless Sene-
galese lies stiff, cold, and unmoored in the ante-
room” while “with some perfunctory muttering
about ‘comrades’ and some abortive military flour-
ish, [Rideout] calls quits all around and joins the
Major and the negro in everlasting liberté, egalité,
and fraternité” (NYT,2 September 1928, 83). This
“moral equality between a white officer and an
emigré New Orleans negro” was recognized as a
potentially powerful example for contemporary
dramatists. Atkinson also praised Rideout’s inclu-
sion of a Senegalese character, a figure with whom
the playwright could “contrast the black African of
fierce pride and ebony gods with the descendants
of American slaves” (NYT,24 August 1928, 5).
The play was promoted in The New York Times
and reviewed extensively by Atkinson. The follow-
ing year, Atkinson included Goin’ Homein his list
of plays by white playwrights about Negroes that
“frequently develop ideas without sacrificing char-
acter” (NYT,3 March 1929, X1). The openingGoin’ Home 187