DRAMATURGE'S NOTES - A LESSON BEFORE DYING
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain…
These words were written by Harlem Renaissance leader, Claude
McKay, in 1919 just after the “red summer,” a time when the epidemic
of lynching in the American South had reached genocidal proportions.
Undoubtedly, the militant tone of the poem, If We Must Die,
was ingrained into the transforming African-American consciousness
of the early to middle 20th century.
Perhaps these words, too, were an inspiration to novelist Earnest
J. Gaines some 70 years later as he penned the story of Jefferson,
an innocent man on death row, who, with the aid of a local teacher,
discovers personal dignity through an act of martyrdom. This private
tutorial is prompted by statements of Jefferson’s defense attorney
who thoughtlessly compares his client’s death sentence to the
killing of a “hog” in an attempt to save his life. Could McKay’s
poem have reverberated in the minds of these characters as well?
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
Gaines sets his story in Bayonne, a fictional town in Southern Louisiana which serves as the mythical backdrop to a number of his other novels as well. Most likely the town was modeled after Oscar, LA where Gaines was raised. A child of the great depression, he lived and worked on the River Lake Plantation where he attended an impoverished plantation school not unlike the one where Grant teaches in our story. During a time when his parents split up, Gaines was raised by a disabled matron aunt who ironically shares the name Jefferson with the prisoner in this piece. She provides the basis for the role of Miss Emma, Jefferson’s primary supporter, and joins a prominent list of strong, elderly female characters – a prevalent archetype in Gaines’ works.In 1948, Gaines made his break from Louisiana to join his remarried mother in California and begin his formal education in high school, continuing on to college. In the 1940s many African Americans saw education as a way to pull themselves out of the mire of Jim Crow subjugation by achieving successful careers. Gaines’ own desire for educational betterment is reflected in the character of Grant Wiggins. His angst at being unable to find a more equitable career, despite his education, was shared by many young men of the generation. His desire to escape the narrowness and ignorance of the plantation community echoes young Earnest J. Gaines’ desire to break free for a better life. Also, like Grant, Gaines focused his career on teaching. At the time this novel was written and to this day, Gaines remains a professor at the University of Louisiana. Ironically, he never entirely escaped the plantation. He bought the old River Lake Plantation where he was raised and now calls it his home once again.
JIM CROW in 1948 & in LOUISIANA
This play takes place during the heart of the Jim Crow era, a time of state-sanctioned racism that extended the notion of “separate but equal” segregation into every aspect of daily life. Schools, businesses and public facilities were segregated, with the African-American version certainly separate, but very seldom equal. Notable to the action of this play, which focuses on the results of a trial, African Americans were excluded from jury service and the all-white justice system in general. A trial by peers was impossible for an African American. People of color were usually sentenced to work camps (basically a kind of pseudo-slavery). Under-investigated and misjudged trials were common events and nearly impossible to oppose.Gaines turns up the racial heat by setting the story in 1948 Louisiana. The date is almost in the dead center between the most heinous era of racial hate crimes in U.S. history and the upcoming federal laws spurred by the civil rights movement that would eventually unhinge the foundations of legalized bigotry in the 60s. Moreover, Louisiana itself had perhaps the most paradoxical race relations of all the states in the South. Louisiana history is distinguished by early positive gains in social rights for African Americans coupled with an abiding and tenacious racism that made it one of the last states to cast off segregation even after federal law mandated it. Current events such as the plight of the Jena 6 reveal that this sensibility is perpetuated even in contemporary times. Likewise, the circumstances surrounding Hurricane Katrina further display that the inequities of material and social opportunity are still intertwined with race in the U.S. to this day.
CREOLE CULTURE
Louisiana was the birthplace of the civil rights movement, primarily due to the prevalence of the uniquely indigenous Creole culture. The Creoles are a distinctly mixed race of people who rose over time to an elite social status in antebellum New Orleans. After the Civil War they were not content with accepting meager rights granted to the freed slaves. They achieved temporary successes, most of which were lost when the Northern troops pulled out after Reconstruction. The Creole people caused the formation of a caste system within the Louisiana African-American community itself. This internal prejudice placed a special importance on subtle variations in skin tone. The phenomenon is referenced in the play by Jefferson’s initial distrust of Vivian on the basis of her lighter complexion.
CIVIL RIGHTS IN LOUISIANA
The civil rights movement was not so much a large nationally organized crusade as it was a series of non-related local protests often led by the individual communities’ preachers. Perhaps it was the centrality of small town clergy to the movement that led to the inclusion of a prominent preacher figure in A Lesson Before Dying in the form of Rev. Ambrose. Also, Baton Rouge, LA was the home of the first bus boycott, though it remains forever in the shadow of Dr. Martin Luther King’s more lauded success in Alabama. Louisiana politics were controlled by the Long family dynasty through much of the mid 20th century. Their populist platform saw more African Americans registered to vote than any other Southern State, and yet 1956 saw the largest case of racial disenfranchisement in U.S history occur in the very same state. It is in this climate of paradox – standing on the precipice of the intensified protests of the 50s, with an attitude of rebellion forged from a desire for greater liberation, that the action of A Lesson Before Dying takes place.