suggest that it is not the product of Spence’s “spir-
ited pen” (295).
The play features five characters, all of whom
are caught up in a devastating domestic drama that
threatens their livelihoods. Leon and Amy are a
young married couple who believe that they have
good prospects. Leon is an inventor and has devel-
oped a shoe-leather stitching device that will dra-
matically increase the output of shoe manufacturers.
Unfortunately, he is an inventor of color and cannot
get anyone in management to meet with him or
take his invention seriously.
He is determined to advance himself without
sacrificing his high moral standards. His wife sug-
gests that he take advantage of his light skin color
and pass. His reaction is swift and seemingly uncom-
promising. “That’s yellow!” he cries. “To get away
from my race. After all it has undergone for me.
And all I owe it. And as much as it needs me. I must
rise or fall with my people. My conscience! My
pride! Honey! Good God! No!” Despite his passion-
ate initial objections, however, Leon does give in to
his wife’s suggestion that he pass for white in order
to get a job and to circulate his invention. Unfortu-
nately, he is discovered during a tense strike and is
badly beaten. His invention is stolen, and Leon is
once again forced to consider demoralizing work as
a day laborer in order to sustain his family.
The scholars James Hatch and Leo Hamalian
call attention to the dated diction of Help Wanted.
They do note, however, that the work has a “sur-
prisingly contemporary ambience” (74).
Bibliography
Hatch, James V., and Leo Hamalian. Lost Plays of the
Harlem Renaissance 1920–1940. Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1996.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies
of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900–1945.Boston: G.
K. Hall & Co., 1990.
“He Must Think It Out” Florida Ruffin Ridley
(1928)
A short story by FLORIDARUFFINRIDLEYabout
the dilemmas of a man who discovers his mixed-
race ancestry. It was published in the June 1928
issue of the SATURDAYEVENINGQUILL,a BOSTON-
based journal edited by EUGENEGORDON. Ruffin
was the daughter of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, a
prominent Bostonian and officer in the NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION OFCOLOREDWOMEN. Florida Ruf-
fin, in her sixties when her writings were pub-
lished, was a Boston schoolteacher and active race
woman.
The story revolves around Henry Fitts, an at-
torney who has lived his life believing that he is a
white man. Fitts is a father to a dynamic young
daughter named Irene, a girl who is “clear-cut
[and] adorable” and who has a “clear responsive
mind” and “cultivated taste.” Her upbringing has
cost him dearly. According to the sympathetic nar-
rator, “It had cost him more than money, and
money had never come easily to him. It had cost
frayed nerves and anxious days.” When Fitts learns
that his longtime desire for wealth will finally be
realized, he is ecstatic. Finally, he will be able to
relax and to recoup his willing, but nevertheless
substantial, investments in his daughter.
There is, of course, a complication that Fitts
must deal with before he can claim the monies
gained from the sale of a valuable piece of land in
the city. His colleague Ephraim Gray, a man whose
name is symbolic of his mixed-race ancestry, has
uncovered the genealogical proof that verifies
Fitts’s claim. Gray also has discovered that he is a
co-heir to the land. When he discovers his link to
Gray and thus to an African heritage, Fitts is dis-
traught and wonders, “Of all persons why should
this curse come upon him,upon him who had al-
ways been tolerant and sympathetic? Why hadn’t
some of those ugly fanatics, Negro haters,—why
hadn’t they been the ones to suffer?”
The terms of the inheritance require that Fitts
reveal his African-American and Native American
background. He is unable to comprehend how this
might affect his daughter, and he is simply over-
whelmed by the prospect of raising the subject
with his wife. The story ends as Fitts descends into
a panic that is fueled by the specter of his family’s
social rejection and loss of upward mobility. “He
must concentrate!” notes the narrator, “He must
think it out. He must think it out alone.”
Ridley’s story was one of several stirring Satur-
day Evening Quillnarratives that dealt innovatively
with issues of racial misconception, racial passing,
and stereotypes.“He Must Think It Out” 231