Friday, June 23, 2023
From Open Segregation to absolute killing rejection
King’s Dream in the Black
Working Class
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/kings-dream-in-the-black-working-class-3d46a2eec95a
Dates
are essential. In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry, three years before M.L. King, depicts
in rather raw terms the dream of a hard-working black working-class family who
wants to climb a couple of rungs on the social ladder. The Father of the first
generation dies at work and gets some small compensation for the accident. His
daughter wants to become a doctor but she is lured by Africa and goes back
there after marrying a Nigerian man she met on campus.
They
are all living in a too-small apartment, what’s more not exactly in good condition,
three generations packed in a two-bedroom apartment with the bathroom shared
with neighbors on the landing. The son, who is married to Ruth, wants to quit
his chauffeurdom and buy a liquor store. He is the fool of the family and to
rush up the licensing process, he uses a white go-between that gets the money
and runs away. That’s when this scam is not completely folded up, that the
grandmother buys a house in an exclusively white neighborhood. The residents of
this neighborhood contact the Younger family and suggest the Younger family accept
to sell the house to them, with a profit. The menace is some violence if they
do not accept it. Segregational blackmailing. But when the money the son,
Walter Lee, has wasted in his foolish dealing is gone, he changes his mind and decides
not to yield and to move into the new house.
In
1959, that was practically impossible and it would have ended up with a bomb
and the whole family cremated in the house. The author is thus producing in
1959 a dreamlike play that is sweet and sour like life, but a life that did not
exist yet for the Blacks. What can be the meaning of this play being reproduced
on Broadway in 2022 or 2023? To pacify the white audience: you see things have
changed a lot. To patronize the blacks: you see things are getting better. And
you can then think of George Floyd: Things are really getting better since a
few of the killers are convicted and sent to prison for some time. Can you hear
the grandfather, killed at work, rummaging in his tomb? Me, Yes I Can! But I
ain’t Black.
Éditions La Dondaine, Medium.com, 2023
