husband. When she does arrive, however, she does
so without Lightfoot, the father of her child. Her
sister, shocked at the identity of the child, de-
scribes the infant in her sister’s arms as a “light-
head merlatter.” Sapphie has been seduced by her
white male employer, a man descended from the
murderer of Granny Maumee’s only son.
Sapphie and Pearl are thankful that Granny is
blind and will not be able to see the mixed-race
child and the first male child born into the family
since Sam’s death. The sisters soon realize, how-
ever, that Granny Maumee is intent on restoring
her sight. As she says to Pearl, “Befo’ my las’ houah
deze eyes shill look an’ see ergin.” The girls are also
faced with Granny’s pride in the high morality and
virtue of the family. She reminds them how, even
in the face of enslavement and potentially threat-
ening domestic service arrangements, generations
of women in the family have kept themselves
“clean er de w’ite streak.” She regards this as a
mighty defense since “W’ite blood were ’stroying
tuh my fambly f’um de beginnin’s.”
Torrence links Granny’s intense color con-
sciousness to her unwavering disdain and hatred
for whites. She dons a bright red dress because, as
she announces, “Red’s de fus coloh er baby no-
tice.” Delighted at the prospect of a dark-skinned
great-great-grandson, she makes the ominous
declaration that “red allers goes wif black. Red
neveh go wif w’ite.” Her meditation on primary
colors and race quickly lead to upsetting recollec-
tions of Sam. “I use allers tuh wrop my Sam in
red,” she notes as, according to the script, her
voice grows more and more shrill, “an red’s de las’
way I seen ’im.”
Much to the girls’ dismay, Granny does restore
her sight. She uses the charred wood from the
lynching fire and earnest prayers to beseech
heaven for this precious gift. Once she realizes that
her request has been granted, though, she is
shocked to behold the light-skinned child in her
arms. Within moments, she learns of Sapphie’s se-
duction and the father’s identity. In a powerful
scene that borders on stereotypical folk presenta-
tion and evocative human angst, Granny Maumee
hypnotizes the girls as she prepares a spell that will
ensnare young Lightfoot, who is coming to pay his
respects to Granny Maumee and to assure her of
his continued financial support of Sapphie. She
plans to use the chains that bound Sam and the
wood from his lynching fire to reenact the murder
as she kills Lightfoot. As he knocks at the cabin
door, Granny Maumee, intent on revenge for her
son’s death and her great-granddaughter’s viola-
tion, is halted by an ethereal contact with Sam.
She is steadied by his ghostly counsel, which urges
her to forgive her enemies so that she can be re-
united with her own loved ones. After tense mo-
ments of deliberation, Granny Maumee agrees to
forgive. The girls wake from their spell-induced
stupor just in time to see the figure of Granny
Maumee on the floor. The sisters flee in terror, and
the play closes with the figure of Granny Maumee
alone on the floor of the cabin.
Granny Maumee was part of a significant
canon of antilynching plays written during the
Harlem Renaissance. Its setting in Louisiana called
attention to the awful history of mob and racial vi-
olence in that state. Between 1882 and the 1930s,
there were almost 300 lynchings of African Ameri-
cans by whites. The state was ranked third among
Southern states; the states of Mississippi and Geor-
gia were first and second, respectively.
Torrence was among the critically acclaimed
white writers, like PAULGREENand John William
Rogers, who addressed racial violence in their
works. Despite the political relevance of his work,
however, critics such as Benjamin Brawley have
proposed that Torrence and other white writers of
the Harlem Renaissance era unable to appreciate
or explore fully the African-American experience.
Yet, the intensified political aesthetic in antilynch-
ing plays did succeed in drawing attention to the
brutal social violence.
Torrence’s subject matter also corresponded
to the antilynching dramas that were calling at-
tention to the traumatic American history of mob
violence and racial hatred as shown in works such
as RACHELby ANGELINAGRIMKÉ,Mine Eyes Have
Seen(1917) by ALICEDUNBARNELSON, and Af-
termath(1919) by MARYBURRILL. In an April 15,
1917, interview published in THE NEW YORK
TIMES,Torrence described the source of inspira-
tion for his pioneering plays on African-American
life and experiences: “I got my knowledge of the
negro when I lived in Southern Ohio. I spent my
boyhood in Xenia, Ohio. Xenia is a focal point for
negro immigration, and it really is more Southern194 Granny Maumee