began their studies at the Alabama institute. Stu-
dents who attended included GEORGE WYLIE
HENDERSON,CLAUDEMCKAY, and RALPHELLI-
SON, who left in 1936, after his junior year, to pur-
sue opportunities in New York City.
The school was invoked in several Harlem Re-
naissance works including QUICKSAND(1928) by
NELLALARSENand THEYTHATSIT INDARKNESS
(1919) by MARYBURRILL.
Bibliography
Thrasher, Max Bennett. Tuskegee: Its Story and Its Work.
Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1900.
Verney, Kevern. The Art of the Possible: Booker T. Wash-
ington and Black Leadership in the United States,
1881–1925.New York: Routledge, 2001.
Walker, Anne Kendrick. Tuskegee and the Black Belt: A
Portrait of a Race.Richmond, Va.: The Dietz Press,
Inc., 1944.
Washington, Booker T., ed. Tuskegee & Its People: Their
Ideals and Achievements.1905; reprint, New York:
Negro Universities Press, 1969.
Twelve Negro Spirituals Ruby Berkley
Goodwin(1937)
A multi-genre work by Ruby Berkley Goodwin that
included Goodwin’s stories about African-Ameri-
can life and songs and spirituals by acclaimed com-
poser and musician William Grant Still. The New
York–based Handy Brothers Music Company pub-
lished the work.
Two Gods: A Minaret Doris Price(1932)
A provocative play by DORISPRICEthat suggests
the inflexibility of the church and the survival
strategies that might empower traumatized believ-
ers. Published in the December 1932 issue of OP-
PORTUNITY, the one-act play focuses on the
tension between a bereft woman and her watchful,
but unsupportive, local and church communities.
Corinne Barber is a widow and the lone living
member of her immediate family. The play opens
as she prepares an apple pie with fruit harvested
from the tree cultivated by her recently deceased
husband. When Amy Grey, a well-meaning but
somewhat insensitive friend, stops by, the two talk
about Corinne’s lasting anguish about her losses.
The arrival of the local minister intensifies the
conversation about Corinne’s unwillingness to re-
sume regular church attendance and participation
in the choir. The minister’s chiding and his empha-
sis on God’s unwillingness to accommodate back-
sliders ultimately drives Corinne to deny God’s
existence. “Dare ain no God! Yer heah me—Dere
ain no God!” she declares with a “wild distraught
expression” upon her face. Moments after the emo-
tional outburst, a friend named Virginia Kelton ar-
rives. Her headdress, a green scarf bound around
her head, is similar to the one that Corinne now
wears. When Kelton leaves, the minister accosts
Corinne one last time and, in a violent gesture,
snatches at the scarf on her head. It unfurls and re-
veals the widow’s shaved and reddened scalp. The
sight of it forces the minister into an “awed and
trembling silence,” but that gives way to a final vi-
olent set of condemnations and curses. The play
closes as the minister curses his former parishioner
and renders her, for all intents and purposes, to a
vexed exile from what should be a nurturing, lov-
ing community.
Price’s presentation of unrewarding domestic-
ity and unfulfilled female longing for kindness is
evocative of the pain that female protagonists ex-
perience in works by NELLALARSEN, ZORANEALE
HURSTON, and MARITABONNER. Price challenges
her audiences to cultivate greater compassion
and tolerance in the face of overwhelming loss
and despair.Bibliography
Burton, Jennifer, ed. Zora Neale Hurston, Eulalie Spence,
Marita Bonner and Others: The Prize Plays and Other
One-Acts Published in Periodicals.New York: G. K.
Hall & Co., 1996.“Typewriter, The”Dorothy West(1926)
A prizewinning short story and the second work that
DOROTHYWESTpublished in a major Harlem Re-
naissance periodical. The nameless protagonist is a
southerner living in Boston. An “abject little man of
fifty-odd years” who works as a janitor in the heart
of Boston’s business district, he is quietly frustrated
by the limited opportunities for people of color in
the North. His home life is not entirely rewarding;
his wife Net shows little domestic ingenuity, and his“Typewriter, The” 531