talented performer Ethel Waters. When it opened
at the Empire Theatre in New York City, the play
had historic significance. Waters became the first
African-American actress cast in a leading role in
a BROADWAYplay.
Heyward built on his successful collaborations
with his wife, Dorothy, and pursued additional op-
portunities to write for film and for the stage. In
1933, he completed the film script for THEEM-
PERORJONES(1933), the well-known play by EU-
GENEO’NEILLthat featured PAULROBESONin its
London and New York City productions during the
1920s. In 1934 Heyward wrote the script for The
Good Earth(1934), based on the novel by Pearl S.
Buck.
In 1939 Heyward returned to Charleston as
the resident dramatist at the Dock Street Theatre.
His tenure there was cut short when he died of a
massive heart attack in Tryon, North Carolina, on
16 June 1940.
Bibliography
Dorothy and DuBose Heyward Papers, South Carolina
Historical Society, Charleston.
Hutchisson, James M. DuBose Heyward: A Charleston
Gentleman and the World of Porgy and Bess.Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
Slavick, William H. DuBose Heyward.Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1981.
“High Ball”Claude McKay(1927)
A pointed short story about interracial relation-
ships, hypocrisy, and self assertion by CLAUDE
MCKAY. “High Ball” was the only story featured in
the May 1927 and June 1927 issues of OPPORTU-
NITY. McKay published “High Ball” in 1927,
shortly before HOME TOHARLEM,his controversial
first novel, appeared in 1928.
The protagonist of this five-part story is Na-
tion Roe, a talented southerner from Baltimore
who has experienced a meteoric rise to acclaim on
BROADWAY. A blues singer, he is much sought
after for his compositions that included “The Dixie
blues; the Charleston blues, the Alabama blues,
the Tennessee blues. The honeystick blues, the
brown boy blues, the fair chile blues, the beautiful
blues, the Harlem blues, blues, blues!” Nation’s ap-
parent expertise with the blues seems to contrast
sharply with his success and celebrity in New York.
As McKay makes all too clear, however, this blues
singer is hardly immune from the melancholy, be-
trayal, and lost love that are frequently featured
subjects in blues songs.
Nation Roe’s successes as a performer do not
protect him from racism within and beyond his
home. He is married to Myra, a “bloated coarse-
fleshed woman, with freckled hands, beet colored
elbows, dull-blue eyes and lumpy hair of the color
of varnish.” She is Nation’s second wife, and the
woman whom he chose over a mild-mannered
“walnut-brown” woman with “simple charm.” He
prefers her worldliness and believes that Myra
“brought the alien white world closer to him. The
commonplace in her turned his head because to
him the commonplace had always been strange.”
Myra is a steady drinker, addicted to highballs, and
prone to hysterics when her whiskey and ginger ale
are not readily available.
The plot revolves around Myra’s conviction
that she is being discriminated against because
she is a white woman in an interracial relation-
ship. Nation, determined to uncover the truth
about this, turns to George Lieberman, a longtime
friend. It is highly ironic that Lieberman, an actor
who has made a successful career as a blackface
performer, is the one who reveals the quiet an-
tipathy that Nation’s friends have for Myra. As
the story unfolds, Nation weathers a series of un-
comfortable social situations that remind him of
his inability to move about freely in American so-
ciety. Ultimately, he realizes that Myra has been
deliberately excluded from the Stunts Annual
Dinner, a celebrated social affair that Lieberman
helps to organize. Instead of offering a toast, Roe
blasts the white audience for their patronizing
overtures to him and hurries home to his wife.
On the threshold, he finds her having her own party
with friends. Before he enters the apartment, he
overhears Myra’s obnoxious friend Dinah proposing
a toast to him. It is a racist toast, however, one that
refers to Nation as a “prune, our nation... al
prune.” Angered by his wife’s betrayal, he evicts
her from the premises. The story closes with the
awful image of Nation “knelt down against the
liquor stained piano... bellow[ing] like a
wounded bull.” The story offers no uplifting mes-
sage about assimilation or interracial alliances.“High Ball” 237