Our podcast aims to illuminate the often-overlooked narratives of African Americans in the United States. We delve into various African American dramas that, while appearing far-fetched, possess deep historical roots and depict real, yet rarely told, stories. Our goal is to enlighten our audience on plays like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Safe by Georgia Douglass, A Raisin in the Sun, Dutchman, and others. We intend to thoroughly analyze these dramas, drawing connections to their real-world historical contexts, to offer a more comprehensive understanding of these significant yet underrepresented experiences.

We open the series with the concept of intergenerational trauma present in African-American families. According to the article published by The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, historical trauma can be defined as “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma experiences”. The study highlights a quintessential element of Levee. The state of the nation from the time he was born to when we get to meet him as a musician is no longer plagued by lynching, however, segregation reaches its peak right around the time of the play, and this could justify Levee’s frail mind as someone who has suffered his entire life. For instance, “a Black family’s presenting concerns may be compounded by the impact of historical, race‐based, and intergenerational trauma”. When we put these three elements in a category, we find that Levee has been thoroughly impacted by all three. Historical being what happened to his family and many others, race-based because he is black and treated unequally by the majority, and intergenerational because he carries the trauma of his parents, especially that of his who died rightfully seeking revenge.

Another theme discussed in the podcast is the centrality of African-American women in the black family. For instance, Douglass depicts black women as the center of her story. In “Safe” for example, by allowing us into Mandy’s kitchen, the mother is introduced as the foundation of the family and the pregnant daughter being the trauma her family was subjected to. “Did you hear him cry for his mother? Did you?” Liza exclaims at the beginning of page 5 in what seems to be the breaking point for her, we experience her despair as she walks into the room. Douglass only allows Liza a couple of lines of dialog, but this is more than enough to convey the idea that both Liza and Mandy lie at the very center of the story and are the entry points of the family being harmed. Both Mitchell’s and Douglass’s work to establish the idea that black citizenship was not particularly claimed by family but instead asserted by the matriarchs who lost their grandsons and sons as well as the plays affirming that their experiences will never be forgotten. The idea of putting black women at the center is key to understanding the genre because it attributes power to the voice of a black woman in the south during these very painful times, it puts women at the center of the family and while they are fighting a mob, it is their kitchen and their living room that makes them a hero and protector of their own.

We must also acknowledge the contribution of Ma Rainey as one of the most prominent blues singers, not only because of her reach and fame but also because her lyrics directly challenged the status quo and what a woman’s desire and behavior should be. This by itself highlights qualities of black modernism as presented in the following excerpt by Angela Davis in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday; “Because women’s blues were not ideologically structured by the assumptions that defined the prominent black women’s organizations of the era as middle-class, they could issue more direct and audacious challenges to male dominance”. As presented in the podcast, Ma Rainey not only represents a strong female voice with power and leverage over every man, black or white in the play. Establishing herself as an icon and ground-breaking figure.

We also dive into the play of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and unpack its captivating characters’ nuanced psychological and behavioral dimensions. This exploration offers a fresh perspective on a timeless classic. The first thing we noticed was about the character named Ruth. On page 94, Ruth exclaims, “BYE GOOD MISERY!” This outburst reveals her complex relationship with money, a necessary evil both desired and resented. The funds, once a source of tension, become celebratory when used to purchase a new home. It underscores the nuanced nature of wealth. It is not inherently evil but can be challenging. This dynamic is reminiscent of the psychological concept of classical conditioning, a process by which an animal or human associates one thing with another, an idea explored in Seligman’s 1967 learned helplessness study. In that experiment, dogs were subjected to electric shocks and initially given no means to escape them. Subsequently, when an escape was made possible, the dogs did not attempt to avoid the shocks due to their learned helplessness. This concept mirrors the oppression experienced by African Americans like Walter, where systemic racism instilled a sense of powerlessness. Ruth’s changing attitude towards money echoes this, highlighting an evolution from constraint to liberation yet maintaining a wary acknowledgment of money’s double-edged nature.

Ms. Johnson and Walter exemplify the “crabs in a bucket” phenomenon. The “crabs in a bucket” analogy refers to the behavior where individuals within a group actively try to hinder the progress or success of a specific individual. Both characters seem to display this in similar thinking where education and self-improvement are associated with whiteness. The previous topic about learned helplessness still connects to what we said about the “crabs in a bucket” analogy. As this observation explores, spreading that infectious disease called learned helplessness to others within their community. We see this example in Walter when he hears about George going to college, and Walter comments negatively on George’s “white shoes,” a symbol of his college status, as Ruth points out it is “the college style.” This phrase subtly hints at a notion that education and self-improvement are associated with whiteness, suggesting a racial bias ingrained in societal norms during that time. As well as it tries to attack George’s Manhood by implying that college can’t teach George Manhood, yet George and his uncle embody those very qualities he seeks. Walter unknowingly links self-improvement with whiteness, revealing his internalized prejudices.