425
R
Rachel Angelina Weld Grimké (1 916 )
ANGELINA WELD GRIMKÉ’s Rachel was the first
full-length drama written in the 20th century
by a black female playwright to be performed by
black actors for a white audience. Sponsored by
the Drama Committee of the NATIONAL ASSOCIA-
TION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE
(NAACP) at the Myrtilla Miner Normal School
in Washington, D.C. (March 3–4, 1916), Grimké’s
groundbreaking first production was intended
to raise the white audience’s awareness of racial
inequality. In describing her own play, Grimké
stated, “This is the first attempt to use the stage
for race propaganda in order to enlighten the
American people relating to the lamentable con-
dition of ten millions of Colored citizens in this
free republic” (Jones, 134).
A social protest play, Grimké’s Rachel, like
GEORGIA DOUGLASS JOHNSON’s A Sunday Morn-
ing in the South (1925) and Mary Burrill’s After-
math (1919), makes a scathing indictment against
lynching and the terrible consequences of living
in a racist society. Set in New York, Rachel focuses
on the aftermath of Mrs. Loving’s revelation to
her children, Rachel and Tom, of the horrible
truth that their father, Mr. Loving, the editor of a
small southern Negro newspaper, and their step-
brother, Tom Loving, had been lynched by a mob
a decade earlier. Following this painful revelation,
both Rachel, a graduate in domestic science, and
Tom, trained as an electrical engineer, experience
racism in the North, where they are unable to
obtain permanent employment. Moreover, Ra-
chel, named for her biblical namesake, learns that
the children in the neighborhood and her own
adopted son, Jimmy, are tormented and called
names at school. Overwhelmed by the injustices
of white oppression, Rachel rejects a proposal of
marriage from John Strong, who also has a college
degree but works as a waiter. She vows to spend
the rest of her life taking care of black children
rather than bringing them into such an insensi-
tive, cruel, cold world.
While some scholars have criticized Rachel’s
sentimentality, melodrama, and awkwardness,
others have praised it for its dramaturgical skills,
honesty, intensity, and historical significance.
Still others have observed how Grimké explores
the problems of institutionalized racism, unem-
ployment, poverty, and various issues centering
on love, marriage, and motherhood, rendering
her play as timely as those of 20th-century play-
wrights ALICE CHILDRESS, LORRAINE HANSBERRY,
and NTOZAKE SHANGE. Although Rachel was pub-
lished in 1920 and later performed in New York
City and Cambridge, Massachusetts, subsequent
productions have been limited to college cam-
puses, including the 1990 production at Spelman
College in Atlanta, Georgia, after more than five
decades of neglect.