dom’s Children on the March(1943), was performed
at that year’s graduation ceremony at Douglass
High School. Additional later works included vol-
umes of poetry entitled Into the Clearing(1959),
Not That Far(1973), Dust of an Uncertain Journey
(1975), The Ransomed Wait(1983), and Collected
Poems(1989). She also maintained close ties to
academia and accepted invitations to become
poet-in-residence at schools such as the University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Phillips-Exeter Academy,
and Monmouth College.
Sullivan enjoyed a most productive literary ca-
reer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her influence
on the movement testifies to the mentoring that
she received and bestowed, and to the power of
collaborative enterprise with fellow writers.
Bibliography
Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth, ed. Wines in the Wilderness:
Plays by African-American Women from the Harlem
Renaissance to the Present. Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood Press, 1990.
Gray, Christine Rauchfuss. Willis Richardson: Forgotten Pi-
oneer of African-American Drama.Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1999.
Richardson, Willis, ed. Plays and Pageants from the Life of
the Negro.Washington, D.C.: Associated Publish-
ers, 1930.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies
of 100 Black Women Writers.Boston: G. K. Hall &
Co., 1990.
“Summer Tragedy, A”Arna Bontemps
(1932)
A moving tale of love and desperation by ARNA
BONTEMPS. Judges FANNIE HURST,STERLING
BROWN, and Richard Walsh named Bontemps the
winner in the 1932 OPPORTUNITYliterary contest.
His story was chosen over four other works
awarded honorable mention, among them fiction
by EUGENEGORDONand MARITABONNER.“A
Summer Tragedy” became one of Bontemps’s most
frequently anthologized works.
The story is set in the South on Greenbriar
Plantation, an estate that now profits from the
labors of African-American sharecroppers. Jeff and
Jennie Patton, an elderly couple, have been on the
land for four and half decades. Facing sickness and
death brought on by their years of hard labor and
minimal profits at the hands of Major Stevenson,
their employer, the couple consider how best to
preserve their dignity and domestic stability. After
much consideration, the two decide to kill them-
selves and proceed with the plan that allows them
to die together, much as they have lived in a loving
and supportive fashion together.
Bontemps’s stirring tale was inspired by his
own ties to the South, a region from which his fa-
ther moved the family in light of its violence and
several specific intolerable racist incidents.Bibliography
Bontemps, Arna. The Old South: “A Summer Tragedy”
and Other Stories of the Thirties.New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1973.
Jones, Kirkland C. Renaissance Man from Louisiana: A Bi-
ography of Arna Wendell Bontemps.Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1992.Sunday Morning in the South, A
Georgia Douglas Johnson(1925)
A chilling antilynching drama by GEORGIADOU-
GLASJOHNSONthat illuminated the devastating
effects of racial hysteria and violence upon
African-American families. Set in a generic “town
in the South” in 1924, the drama opens on the
home of Sue Jones, a grandmother who is caring
for her two grandsons, aged 19 and seven. Tom,
the oldest, is a hardworking and respectful young
man who slept soundly on Saturday evening hav-
ing exhausted himself working. The Jones’s prepa-
rations for Sunday morning services are upset,
however, when a contingent of police officers ar-
rive with a victim of an alleged attack. After impa-
tient and pointed directions from the police, the
victim suggests that Tom resembles the man who
assaulted her. Despite the protestations of his fam-
ily, Tom is hauled away. Sue Jones, counseled by
her neighbor Liza, hopes to alert the white woman
whom she nursed and took care of for years. She
hopes in vain, however, that “Miss Vilet” and her
father, who is a judge, will be able to intervene. It
is only a matter of moments, however, before the
shaken grandmother receives the news that her in-
nocent grandson has been lynched. The play closesSunday Morning in the South, A 503