The Negro Ensemble Company and Blacks in the Military

A SoldierÕs Play by Charles Fuller was written in 1981 and was one of the most successful plays produced by the Negro Ensemble Company. The play tells the story of African American soldiers fighting in World War II under the leadership of an African American sergeant. World War II was the first time that African Americans were able to participate in combat in an integrated army. Many tensions surrounded the use of interracial units during the war.

After the Civil Rights movement some African Americans participated in the Black Revolutionary Arts Movement that we discussed last week. Others took a more middle- of Ðthe-road position and tried to create opportunities for African American participation in the professional theater circuit.

Company members recall it's beginnings. (2:05)

Douglas Turner Ward, a theater director and playwright, published an article in the New York Times in 1966 that challenged the American theater to expand the limited definition of community theater and cited the need for the creation of an autonomous professional Black theater. He envisioned a theater in which Blacks were to be the primary, but not the only audiences who attended the shows and participated in production administration. The Ford Foundation met his challenge and awarded him a $1,200,000 three-year grant to start a fully professional theater company. Ward hired actors and began his season by offering plays written by European and African American authors. He offered tuition-free workshops to African American performers and writers in voice, dance, and the technical aspects of theater.

The company premiered several important plays including Song of the Lusitanian Bogey by Peter Weiss, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men by Lonnie Elder III, Day of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward, and The Dream on Monkey Mountain by Derek Walcott, The River Niger by Joseph Walker which played on Broadway, and The First Breeze of Summer by Leslie Lee. The Negro Ensemble Company productions were well publicized, and several were filmed for broadcast on PBS. The company, during its ten-year existence, was a unique opportunity for the full participation of African Americans in a professional, Black theater company. A SoldierÕs Play was one of the later productions sponsored by this organization.

The African American community did not unanimously support the Negro Ensemble Company. In an article titled "Is The Negro Ensemble Company Really Black" (Negro Digest 1968) Peter Bailey expressed the sentiments of many African Americans when he questioned the companyÕs commitment to Black Theater. Blacks were particularly concerned about the lack of revolutionary content during a time when revolutionary politics was the rage. They felt that the Negro Ensemble Company had "sold out" to the establishment by accepting white money, hiring white administrators, and producing white authors. Bailey writes:

The Negro Ensemble Company, despite its claims, is not Black Theater. It may be interesting theater; it may be good theater; but to call it Black theater would be considerably stretching the definition. (19).

Ignoring his critics, Douglas Turner Ward persisted with his company, which later came to be recognized as one of the most influential institutions for developing and disseminating African American drama.

African Americans in World War II

Company E Soldiers during World War II

Read the introduction to the play A SoldierÕs Play in your Black Theatre U.S.A anthology.

The introduction states that Black combat soldiers during World War II were tolerated by their white officers and openly resented by whites in those Southern states where they were trained. Many whites believed that Blacks were incapable of battle.

African Americans enlisted in all branches of the military, yet they were held to a quota of 10% in all units. Two Black army divisions, the Ninety Ðsecond and the Ninety-third were reactivated from World War I. Although both divisions were viewed negatively by a segregated and racist army, the soldiers of the Ninety-second won more than twelve thousand decorations and citations. Members of this regiment, stationed in the Mediterranean, were awarded at least two Distinguished Service Crosses, sixteen Legion of Merit Awards, ninety-five Silver Stars, and nearly eleven hundred Purple Hearts. The divisions suffered more than three hundred casualties in six months of fighting. Other all-black units (like the unit described in the play) saw little combat or never fought as a whole unit. (Christian, Charles. Black Saga, Washington D.C.: Civitas, 1999, pp. 367-368)

The unit that fights in the play that we are reading is struggling for recognition as an effective fighting unit. Instead, the unit members are forced to dig ditches and play baseball in military games. The unit tensions within the training camp are the canvas upon which playwright Fuller paints his story of racial relations. The central conflict of the story however, is not black/white race relations, but rather, the self-hatred of African Americans, which are complicated by regional, and class tensions within African American society. An unsolved murder within the military compound is the inciting incident that moves the reader through the action of the play. The Sergeant is both the African American role model and the unitÕs villain.

While the plays of Charles Fuller, like those of other African American writers, explore the tensions in a society where the African American ins constantly exploited and repressed by the white majority, Fuller has set his sights on changing the way Western civilization perceives black people. At the same time he attempts to avoid stereotyping whites, insisting that groups are formed of individuals, and all are different, some good, some bad.

The play is a mixture of fact and fiction. It depicts an actual unit of Black soldiers in the 1940Õs, stationed in a small Southern town while awaiting transfer to Europe. One of the ironies of the situation is the fact that while they are fighting fro freedom abroad, they are still segregated at home. (Magill, Frank, editor. Critical survey of Drama, vol.3 Pasadena: Salem Press, 1994, 880 and 882.)

1) How does the Captain Davenport conduct his investigation? Who does he interview and why?

2) What brings about the downfall of the Sergeant and how does he view the soldiers who work under him? How does he express self-hatred?

3) What quality does the character C.J. Memphis possess that infuriates the Sergeant?

4) Do you think that the Negro Ensemble Company was justified in their approach to producing Black Theater? Why or why not?

Copyrighted 2001, United States of America
Anita Gonzalez & Ian Granick