State College. She joined the COMMUNISTPARTY
USA following the death of her son Robert. She
was prompted to make the political commitment
in large part because of the devastating racial prej-
udice that she and her sick son had received in
New York City. Robert was denied treatment by
three city hospitals because of his race; by the time
Shirley Graham had forced a fourth hospital to
admit her son, it was too late.
Graham DuBois traveled with her husband to
Beijing for a highly controversial visit and then
with him to Ghana, where he applied for citizen-
ship status. Following his death in 1963, Graham
DuBois lived in Accra until 1967 and then relo-
cated to Cairo, Egypt. The U.S. government barred
her return to America, citing her links to the Com-
munist Party. Graham DuBois, suffering from can-
cer, traveled to Beijing, China, for treatment. She
died there in 1977.
Bibliography
Horne, Gerald. The Lives of Shirley Graham DuBois.New
York: New York University Press, 2000.
Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois: The Fight for
Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963.New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000.
New York Timesobituary, 5 April 1977.
Peterson, Bernard. “Shirley Graham DuBois: Composer
and Playwright,” Crisis(May 1977).
Granny MaumeeRidgely Torrence(1914)
One of the three one-act dramas included in the
influential work entitled Plays for a Negro Theatre
by playwright, poet, editor, and teacher RIDGELY
TORRENCE. The collection included Granny
Maumee, SIMON THECYRENIAN,and THERIDER
OFDREAMS.Many critics hailed Torrence, a white
Ohio playwright, for presenting the first set of
sober dramas on African-American life. His works
have been regarded as instrumental in facilitating
the access of African-American actors to broader
mainstream American audiences.
In March 1914 Granny Maumee,billed as a
“Negro Tragedy,” was performed at the Lyceum
Theatre on BROADWAY. The play was performed as
part of a double bill with A Woman Killed with
Kindness,by Mark Heywood. This run was pre-
sented by the Stage Society of New York and in-
cluded one public performance to benefit the
Actor’s Fund.
Three years later, in 1917, the Macmillan
Company published Plays for a Negro Theatre.
Granny Maumeeand its companion pieces from
Plays for a Negro Theatrewere staged at the Gar-
den Theatre and at the Garrick Theatre in NEW
YORKCITYthroughout April 1917. The producer
for these shows was EMILIEBIGELOWHAPGOOD,
a respected theater producer and designer. She
also was the founder of the EMILIEHAPGOOD
PLAYERS, the African-American theater group
that provided the first African-American cast for
Granny Maumee.The opening cast in the April
1914 production of Granny Maumee included
Lola Clifton, Dorothy Donnelly, and June Mathis.
In 1917 the three leading actresses from the Hap-
good Players in the opening night cast were
Blanche Deas, Marie Jackson-Stuart, and Fannie
Tarkington.
The play was included in PLAYS OFNEGRO
LIFE: A SOURCE-BOOK OF NATIVE AMERICAN
DRAMA(1927) edited by Alain Locke and Mont-
gomery Gregory. The edition note states that
Granny Maumeewas performed first by the Stage
Society in New York City. It also indicates that the
first performance with an African-American cast
occurred on April 5, 1917, and featured members
of the Hapgood Players.
The play, set in a southern Louisiana cabin in
the late 19th century, features three women.
Granny Maumee, described plainly as “an old
Negro woman,” and her two great-granddaughters,
Pearl and Sapphie, are haunted by the traumatic
lynching death of Sam, who was Granny Maumee’s
son and the girls’ grandfather. Granny Maumee
rushed into the fire to save her son but was unable
to prevent his death. Pulled from the fire, she sus-
tained terrible burns and was blinded when the fire
that had been set to kill an innocent man scorched
her eyes. The desperate mother did pull away two
pieces of burning wood, and she has saved these as
awful and powerful reminders of the violence that
was wrought upon her family.
The drama, which uses a vivid southern di-
alect throughout, turns on the imminent arrival of
Sapphie, a character whose name suggests the
powerful Sapphira as well as the precious stone.
Sapphie is due to appear with her newborn son andGranny Maumee 193