Freedom and Equality Now! Contextualizing the Nexus between the Civil Rights Movement and Drama
type: CreativeWork
description: During the second half of the twentieth century, the concepts of racial exclusion and inequality were impugned when the Civil Rights Movement undertook the challenge to bring about social and racial egalitarianism. The success of the Movement depended on contributions from many sources. This study focuses on the cultural entity of theatre to examine the contributions of selected plays to the Movement. It investigates key theatre-related issues that framed the ethnopolitical debate between white supremacists, Black Nationalists, and racial integrationists to show how the Movement gained from those groups. The thematic premise supports the clause that theatre, as a didactic instrument for change, championed prime Civil Rights Movement goals (public education, housing, and voting) while ascertaining how these goals were integrated in plays to help audiences internalize the political and social ideologies of the Movement. When the Movement brought about an increase in black voting, progress in school desegregation, and enhanced housing opportunities for African Americans, the profound changes ushered in a significant shift in sensibilities, attitudes, and outlooks, which had political ramifications around the world. Thus theatre played a progressive role in the amelioration of race problems through its dramatists. This study argues that this was the era when artists, particularly black theatre artists, fought for equality in American theatre, which resulted in the increased visibility of African-American performers, a proliferation of black theatre productions, a major rise in African-American dramatists, and most important, an explosion in black plays. African-American playwrights, using their dramatic voices to become cultural arbiters and myth-makers while simultaneously voicing their advocacy of the Civil Rights Movement's principles, set forth to elucidate and sanction the politics that characterized black grievances. As the Movement was a catalyst for cultural aut…
abstract: During the second half of the twentieth century, the concepts of racial exclusion and inequality were impugned when the Civil Rights Movement undertook the challenge to bring about social and racial egalitarianism. The success of the Movement depended on contributions from many sources. This study focuses on the cultural entity of theatre to examine the contributions of selected plays to the Movement. It investigates key theatre-related issues that framed the ethnopolitical debate between white supremacists, Black Nationalists, and racial integrationists to show how the Movement gained from those groups. The thematic premise supports the clause that theatre, as a didactic instrument for change, championed prime Civil Rights Movement goals (public education, housing, and voting) while ascertaining how these goals were integrated in plays to help audiences internalize the political and social ideologies of the Movement. When the Movement brought about an increase in black voting, progress in school desegregation, and enhanced housing opportunities for African Americans, the profound changes ushered in a significant shift in sensibilities, attitudes, and outlooks, which had political ramifications around the world. Thus theatre played a progressive role in the amelioration of race problems through its dramatists. This study argues that this was the era when artists, particularly black theatre artists, fought for equality in American theatre, which resulted in the increased visibility of African-American performers, a proliferation of black theatre productions, a major rise in African-American dramatists, and most important, an explosion in black plays. African-American playwrights, using their dramatic voices to become cultural arbiters and myth-makers while simultaneously voicing their advocacy of the Civil Rights Movement's principles, set forth to elucidate and sanction the politics that characterized black grievances. As the Movement was a catalyst for cultural aut…
author: Nesmith, Nathaniel Graham
language: English
keywords: Theater, History, African American--Civil rights, Civil rights movements, African American theater, Black nationalism, Black militant organizations, Hansberry, Lorraine, 1930-1965, Mitchell, Loften, Davis, Ossie, Baraka, Amiri, 1934-2014, Sklar, George, 1908-1988, Raisin in the sun (Hansberry, Lorraine), Purlie victorious (Davis, Ossie), Dutchman (Baraka, Amiri)
date published: 2012
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:44:32Z
provider: Columbia University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Columbia University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7916/D8GM8FPZ