User:Lucille.connolly/A Sunday Morning in The South

A Sunday Morning in The South

A Lynching Play written By Gloria Douglas Johnson

Setting

A Small town in the south in 1924. The action of the play takes place in the kitchen of Sue Jones in her small two bedroom couch located next to a church.

Characters

Sue Jones, Grandmother Aged Seventy

Tom Griggs, Her Grandson aged nineteen

Bossie Griggs, Her Grandson aged seven

Liza Twiggs, a Friend, aged sixty

White Girl

First Officer

Second Officer

Plot

A Sunday Morning in the South is Set in Sue Joneses two room house, specifically in her kitchen, she is making breakfast for her grandson Tom. She is making Light Rolls and sausage. Tom takes a long time to get out of bed, and Sue says ) "It’s as hard to git yawll out of the bed on Sunday morning as it is to pull hen’s teeth." They are discussing the events of the previous night, saying that the police are trying to catch a black person who supposedly attacked, possibly raped a white woman near the market. They say that white people are in blackface and they could have done it, also that they only see color and could possibly arrest the wrong man.

Songs

The Show is set next to a church, so throughout the show, there is gospel music heard that interrupts the Dialogue

Let Your Light Shine On Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aRT-59MBqg

Let it shine on me, let it shine on me,

Let the light from your lighthouse shine on me.

Let it shine on me, let it shine on me,

Let the light from your lighthouse shine on (me).

Alas! did my Savior Bleed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8XXrmHo-2I

Alas! and did my Savior bleed,

and did my Sovereign die!

Would he devote that sacred head

for sinners such as I?

I Must Tell Jesus

I must tell Jesus, I cannot bear my burdens alone

In my distress he surely will help me I cannot bear my burdens alone.

I must tell Jesus, I cannot bear my burdens alone

Jesus my Lord he surely will help me Jesus will help me, Jesus alone.

References

Stephens, Judith L. "Art, Activism, and Uncompromising Attitude in Georgia Douglas Johnson's Lynching Plays." African American Review 39.1/2 (2005): 87-102. Web.

Henderson, Dorothy Faye. "Georgia Douglas Johnson: A Study of Her Life and Literature." ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1995. Web

Perkins, Kathy A., 1954. Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Web

Donlon, Jocelyn Hazelwood. “Georgia Douglas Johnson,” Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. No. 1. Ed. Darlene Clark Hines. Brooklyn: Carolson, 1993.

Stephens, Judith L. "Politics and Aesthetics, Race and Gender: Georgia Douglas Johnson's Lynching Dramas as Black Feminist Cultural Performance."Text and Performance Quarterly20.3 (2000): 251. Web.