When I first read Safe and Blue-Eyed Black Boy, I had gotten the sense that Douglas views racial violence as something that Black women experience through Black men. I didn’t really view the experiences of any of the Black women in these texts to be at the center. However, as I ruminate and digest my notes, I think that I’m getting a clearer view of Douglas’s argument. Lynching isn’t just an attack on one person, it permanently severs families and relationships. In both Safe and Blue-Eyed Black Boy, Douglas perfectly captures the pain that comes with the uncertainty of not knowing whether or not if the Black men in your life will return home safely. When I was reading Safe, I found myself incredibly anxious when Tom was offstage because I was so sure that something could happen to him. I knew just as well as Mandy and Liza that lynchings were not a matter of justice or punishment but an establishment of the power that white folk possess. I lamented alongside these characters, fearful of how interchangeable Black men can be in these circumstances. This is the pain that Douglas is conveying. The two endings of these plays emphasize a Black woman’s overwhelming responsibility to save and protect Black men. In Safe, Liza is sure that she could never protect her son from the world’s brutality. She’d rather him be safe back into the arms of God than for his body to be an accessory to the festivities of the white “morally correct” mobs. Pauline in Blue-Eyed Black Boy is able to recognize that she has armed her son with blue eyes, making it possible for him to survive anti-Blackness. The swiftness of Pauline’s plan and the ring that she must’ve held on to for years showcase a sense of preparedness. This wasn’t something she just thought about but it was something she knew she had to prepare for. The lynchings in these plays instantly disrupt the joys of life that these Black women should be celebrating (pregnancy and marriage). I do believe that I initially underestimated the strenuous position that Black women, specifically the characters in these plays, are in. Sometimes violence presents itself as the inability to rest.

Throughout the two plays we see lynching as a weapon wielded by the racist society against black men for acting in ways that whites would find improper, and ensuring that their fellows spirit’s are crushed. In Safe, a black man is lynched for slapping his white boss, frankly for even daring to lift a finger to someone that in a the racist heirarchy wasn’t his equal but his superior. In Blue Eyed Black Boy, a mob wishes to lynch a young man for allegedly brushing up against a white woman, or deviously wishing to sexually take advantage of a white woman, which is not only against moral rules but also out of line for any black man to even dream of of a white woman in such a way. In Safe, after hearing the mob attack Liza is such dismay, that she decides it is better off for her son to be dead than have to live in this world under constant threat of being lynched for any perceived infraction. “Dr. Jenkins: And I said, “No, child, it’s a fine boy,” and then I turned my back a minute to wash in the basin. When I looked around again she had her hands about the baby’s throat choking it. I tried to stop her, but its little tongue was already hanging from its mouth. It was dead! Then she began, she kept muttering over and over again: ‘Now he’s safe—safe from the lynchers! Safe!’ ” (Douglas pg. 6 Safe) While killing a child seeems to be an inconcievable act, in a world where racism with it’s great tool of lynching, prevailed over general human deceny, is there any excusing Liza’s act as one to spare her child instead of that of  a deranged women driven to the brink by trauma? 

Throughout the two Georgia Douglass plays that we read, we can see that lynching is very impactful to all parties. It will evidently affected the person who going through the act of lynching but it can be detrimental to one’s family. The entire experience is harmful to families as a whole. Safe by Georgia Douglass is a perfect example of the negative impact that lynching can have on a family. One of the main characters, Liza, hopes for her unborn child to be a girl because she does not want “no boy baby to be hounded down and kicked ’round” (Safe, Georgia Douglass). She makes it clear to audiences that she absolutely does not want her child to be a boy. In the end of the play Liza has her worst nightmare come true － a son. Being that she was so certain and fearful of the life that her son would have to experience, she killed him instead. She freed him from the dangerous world that she lived in because she assumed that he would never be safe from lynching due to everything that went on around her. Liza killing her child also comments on how black women are affected from the lynchings. Her character was so protective and scared that she may have believed that killing her child was the only one to protect him from anyone else doing it later on in his life. This play is just one example of how black mothers are protective over their children. It is unfair that people had to subdue to this cruel punishment. One question I have is: By Georgia Douglass having the character Liza choke her son to death, purposely used to allude to what lynching does to those who experience it? 

One way lynching affects characters is how it was a fear tactic towards mostly black people. The historical context behind lynching is that it was a brutal, violent act of hanging notably black people by their necks and this is something the family already knows to fear due to the harsh treatment of mostly people of similar skin color. The Pettigrew family and Liza in particular underwent trauma and horror as aforementioned. According to “Safe”, “Liza: (plaintively) I wonder where John is—

Mandy: He oughter been back here before now. {she goes to the window and
peeps cautiously outfrom behind [the] shade. Hannah follows and then Liza.)

Hannah: You stay back, Liza. You oughtenter see sich things—not in your
delicate state.

Liza: But what they doing? Where they goin to?

Mandy: Yes, go back, Liza, and set down. Let us watch, {a confusion o f many
footsteps a nd tramping horses as the roar becomes louder)

Liza: (beginning to walk up and down the room restlessly) Ma, Ma, do you think
they got him—do you think they’ll hang him . .. ? (Douglas Johnson, Georgia 113)

As exhibited, even though Liza is not being lynched but someone else is instead, she’s psychologically affected and negatively; Liza is worried about her husband and fears that something has happened to him considering that he’s not back at the house yet.

Based on both “Safe” and “Blue-eyed Black Boy”, Douglas conveys the violence against black women about how they gravely worry about losing one of them to lynching or at least fear the act itself.

At the end of “Safe”, there was loss of life in which a baby was choked to death, resulting in a sad ending. “Blue-eyed Black Boy” concludes more happily as Dr. Grey, Rebecca, Pauline, and Hester are relieved that Tom is still alive.

As a black man, the very thought of lynching is extremely  troubling to me. To think at some point in time, an ancestor of mine had most likely  experienced some sort of abuse just because they were black. I believe this is why the two plays are so striking to me, although the two plays are fiction there is still a shared pain that most blacks experience thorough lynching and it seen in the characters of the plays.

In “Safe” the character named Liza experiences the pain of another black person being lynched. The impact is so profound it drives her mad and she murders her infant in efforts to protect it from the world. Although the lynching wasn’t done to her or a family member, the idea that at some moment, her child could experience the same faith as the man lynched is too much to bear. Although dramatized in the play, this was a real moment for black women across America. At any moment the life you gave birth to could be taken by the most evil of scum. The last few lines of the play shows just how haunting the experience is.

In this last line, Douglas aims to show just how the pain of lynching was shared across all black communities. That painful moment,  that your family member could be next was shared by millions of blacks across America at the time. A lynching is never an individual experience, when one black person dies from a lynching or brutality, we all feel it and we still do to this very day.