03:56 PM Friday, November 20, 2009
Little-Known Black History Fact: 'A Soldier's Play'
Date: Friday, November 06, 2009, 5:17 am
By: Erica Taylor, The Tom Joyner Morning Show
Next week marks the anniversary of the Negro Ensemble Company's acclaimed 1981 stage production of “A Soldier's Play,” by Charles Fuller. The original cast included Adolph Caesar as Sgt. Vernon Waters, Denzel Washington as Private Peterson, Samuel L. Jackson as Private Louis Henson and Peter Friedman as Captain Charles Taylor.
With the plot of a murder mystery, “A Soldier's Play” was written to explore the topic of intra-racial discrimination in the black community.
Set in the 1940’s, the story takes place in Fort Neal, Louisiana. During those years, the military was racially segregated on and off the battlefield.
Sgt. Waters, the African-American murder victim in the play, speaks his final words in Act One, Scene One. “They still hate you!” was the phrase that set the tone and switched the focus from murder to race relations in america.
With a natural and timely desire to investigate hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, “A Soldier's Play” pulls a racial twist when the crime's black investigator, Captain Richard Davenport, discovers the killer was actually one of the black soldiers under the victims' command. The sergeant was killed by the very men he hated himself – Southern black men with cultural characteristics that he considered lazy and shiftless. It was at his moment of death that the victim renounced his hatred and realized no matter how he tried to conform to whites, they still felt the same about blacks.
“A Soldier’s Play” ran for 468 performances and won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
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Hey Dkg315, what time frame are you speaking of that military blacks won't eat in restaurants owned and operated by blacks in the poorer areas??? I've served 20 years in the Navy , my shipmates and I always went to black restaurants and stores regardless of where they were because we could find what we wanted.
by
SALTMAN
November 6, 2009, 10:19 am
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outstanding movie, never read the book. I see this kind of intraracial discrimination all the time. For example, military blacks will not eat in restaurants owned and operated by blacks especially if the store is in the poorer area of town. Me, I'm paid in full. and everytime I go somewhere, I'm like bernie mac used to say, point me to the ghetto so I can get some ribs!
by
Dkg316
November 6, 2009, 9:46 am
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The cast of the 1981 production of "A Soldier's Play," which includes Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson, is shown.
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