Les Blancs

by Lorraine Hansberry

  Each character succumbs to the economic realities of an exploitative system gone wild. Hansberry drives her point home in a climactic moment near the end of the play. The dying Hiram goes to Rissa’s cabin in the slave quarters where she is caring for her blinded son, and says:

  I—I wanted to tell you, Rissa—I wanted to tell you and ask you to believe me, that I had nothing to do with this. I—some things do seem to be out of the power of my hands after all … Other men’s rules are a part of my life.…

  Rissa, angry and embittered, looks up at him and says: “Why ain’t you Marster? How can a man be marster of some men and not at all of others.… ” She turns away from him and continues tending to her son. A dejected, defeated man, Hiram leaves the cabin. Weak from his illness, he falls in the dirt outside of the cabin. Rissa, ignoring his cries for help, closes the door on him as he dies near her doorstep.

  Hiram’s death marks the demise of this world, but Hansberry intimates that the insidious effects of slavery will be far-reaching. In the final words of the play, the Soldier/Narrator says:

  Slavery is beginning to cost this nation a lot. It has become a drag on the great industrial nation we are determined to become; it lags a full century behind the great American notion of one strong federal union which our eighteenth-century founders knew was the only way we could eventually become one of the most powerful nations in the world. And, now, in the nineteenth century, we are determined to hold on to that dream.… And so … we must fight. There is no alternative. It is possible that slavery might destroy itself—but it is more possible that it would destroy these United States first. That it would cost us our political and economic future.… It has already cost us, as a nation, too much of our soul.

  Although Hansberry remains faithful to the parameters of the historical period, she argues that America will continue to pay a high price for its adoption of a slave economy.

  The controversy which this drama sparked in the executive chambers of NBC can be attributed to the myths which Hansberry attacks in this play. She dares to place in the mouth of a black woman slave the words which destroy the genteel illusion of a humane and necessary, though peculiar, institution. She also permits this woman to choose, consciously and without ambivalence, the well-being of her son over the needs of her dying master—an act which belies the dearly held stereotype of the faithful, self-deprecating servant. Hansberry also uses the play as an occasion to debate basic notions that slaves were happy, compliant, and loyal, and that the institution of slavery was not a primary issue in the Civil War.

  Although the play has never stood the test of performance, the script is tight and utilizes the short, intimate scenes characteristic of effective television drama. Hansberry had a sure sense for this medium and, had the play been produced, she would have moved the electronic medium closer to maturity.

  In late 1961, What Use Are Flowers? was conceived as a fantasy for television, in response to contemporary debates about the destruction or survival of the human race. After her experience with The Drinking Gourd, Hansberry began to reconceptualize the play for the stage, but never lived to complete the idea. What survives is the draft of a short play about a hermit who returns from a self-imposed exile to find wild children orphaned by a nuclear holocaust. As he decides to civilize the children and chooses those aspects of civilization worthy of repeating and necessary to their spiritual and intellectual growth, the audience gains a fascinating insight into the priorities of our Western culture.

  Hansberry has a talent for asking the evocative question which goes to the heart of the matter. After teaching the children the meaning of such words as clay, pot, and sun, the Hermit attempts to explain the importance of beauty, using a bouquet of flowers as an example. One of the children asks, “What use are flowers?” and the Hermit is momentarily stymied in his effort to explain this intangible but crucial aspect of a civilized and humanistic view. He finally answers that the uses of flowers are infinite. In that exchange is the crux of the play: the Hermit’s real challenge is to teach these preliterates to control and overcome their habit of violence so that they can learn the uses of love and compassion, cornerstones of civilization.

  Fantasy is an apt term for this play because it lacks the specificity of cultural reference points which is a hallmark of Hansberry’s work. However much one misses the richness, which is typical of her plays, the dramatic situation warrants the treatment of human actions in a more or less abstracted form.

  In 1980, 1982, and 1994, I directed readings of this script at workshops for college professors and administrators. With the threat of nuclear disaster ever present in a post-Cold War era, the devastation described by this play was no idle fantasy or forgotten fear from the past. Because the title question “What use are flowers?” haunts our technological age, this select audience perceived and laughed at its own pretensions, mirrored as they were in the posturings and genuine confusion of the Hermit. Ultimately, the play offers all of us an excellent means of examining what we choose to teach and what we choose to learn. A full production of What Use Are Flowers? premiered at the 1994 National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, under the direction of Harold Scott.

  Les Blancs was a consuming labor of love for Hansberry. Throughout her last year and a half of life, even while Sign struggled toward production, she worked at Les Blancs, carrying it in and out of hospitals, writing and rewriting, polishing and refining. Two years earlier, a scene from the draft work had been staged for the Actors Studio Writers’ Workshop, and Hansberry had been encouraged by its reception. Robert Nemiroff acted as her soundingboard-advocate-critic as she sought what he describes in this volume as a structure “flexible enough to contain and focus the complexity of personalities, social forces and ideas in this world she had created.” After many discussions with him and others, she broke through and outlined the major structural and character developments she wanted. After her death, Nemiroff tells us he continued the work, “synthesizing the scenes already completed throughout the play with those in progress, drawing upon relevant fragments from earlier drafts and creating, as needed, dialogue of my own to bridge gaps, deepen relationships, or tighten the drama along the lines we had explored together.”

  The result of this collaborative effort is a remarkable play which asks an urgent question of the twentieth century: Can the liberation of oppressed peoples be achieved without violent revolution? Les Blancs is the first major work by a black American playwright to focus on Africa and to pose this question in the context of an African liberation struggle.

  Tshembe Matoseh, a black African, has returned to his homeland for his father’s funeral. During his visit, he is caught up in his country’s struggle to oust the white colonialists after many years of peaceful efforts to negotiate their freedom. His family’s tribe urges him to lead the violent struggle, while his older brother, Abioseh, who has converted to the Catholic priesthood, abhors the native effort and in fact betrays one of the leaders to the local police. Tshembe’s dilemma is classic; the parallels to Hamlet are obvious. But Hansberry, instinctively recognizing the inappropriateness of relying only on a Western literary reference point, provides Tshembe with another metaphor—from African lore: Modingo, the wise hyena who lived between the lands of the elephants and the hyenas. Ntali, one of the African insurgents, explains to Tshembe in an effort to engage him in their struggle. Modingo was asked by the hyenas, the earliest inhabitants of the jungle, to settle their territorial quarrel with the elephants who want more space because of their size. Modingo, whose name means “One Who Thinks Carefully Before He Acts,” understands the arguments offered by both and refuses to join either side until he has thought on the matter. While he thinks, the hyenas wait—too long, because the elephants move in and drive the hyenas from the jungle altogether. “That is why the hyena laughs until this day and why it is such terrible laughter: because it was such a bitter joke that was played upon them while they ‘reasoned.’ ”

  Hansberry does not s
hrink from the controversy and desperation implicit in this theme; she does not simplify the situation, as a less courageous playwright might. The question, which is debated from all sides, is complicated by the presence of white characters of good will, kind intent, and proven loyalty. There is the original sin of the whites who raped, pillaged, and colonized the country. Is their guilt expiated by the Christian missionaries and others of good will who build clinics and treat the sick? And what of those missionaries who build substandard clinics in the bush and refuse to use even those modern tools and technology that are available to them? Hansberry interrogates all of her characters in Les Blancs, even the “enlightened” Charlie Morris, the American journalist who wants to understand. Do the years of suffering torture, indignities, and enslavement at the hands of white settlers justify the brutal murder of men, and “innocent” women and children, by the victims of colonialism? Charlie smugly reaches for easy answers, while Tshembe ruthlessly grapples with the pain and complexity of truth. When Charlie tries to reduce Tshembe’s views by accusing him of hating all white men, Tshembe laughs:

  Oh dear God, why? … Why do you all need it so!? This absolute lo-o-onging for my hatred! (A sad smile plays across his lips) I shall be honest with you, Mr. Morris. I do not “hate” all white men—but I desperately wish that I did. It would make everything infinitely easier! But I am afraid that, among other things, I have seen the slums of Liverpool and Dublin and the caves above Naples. I have seen Dachau and Anne Frank’s attic in Amsterdam. I have seen too many raw-knuckled Frenchmen coming out of the Metro at dawn and too many hungry Italian children to believe that those who raided Africa for three centuries ever “loved” the white race either. I would like to be simpleminded for you, but … I cannot. I have … seen.

  When Charlie tries to retreat into that other facile myth which declares race as unimportant because all men are alike under the skin, Tshembe patiently demolishes the innocuous generalization. Through the eloquent words of this character, Hansberry unmasks the myth of race and turns it on its head, showing the political struggles of this century in a new light. As Tshembe says:

  Race—racism—is a device. No more. No less. It explains nothing at all.… It is simply a means. An invention to justify the rule of some men over others.… I am simply saying that a device is a device, but that it also has consequences: once invented it takes on a life, a reality of its own. So, in one century, men invoke the device of religion to cloak their conquests. In another, race. Now in both cases you and I may recognize the fraudulence of the device, but the fact remains that a man who has a sword run through him because he refuses to become a Moslem or a Christian—or who is shot in Zatembe or Mississippi because he is black—is suffering the utter reality of the device. And it is pointless to pretend that it doesn’t exist—merely because it is a lie!

  The lie of racism blinds Charlie to the real causes of revolution as well as to his own culpability. From one encounter with Tshembe to the next, he feints and dodges, stumbling through the morass of his ignorance, all the more ironic because of his presumption of superiority. He means well, but in this play, it is too late for good will. The wheels of violent revolution have already been set in motion by the very first contact between colonizer and native. One mistake has been compounded by another, leading irresistibly to a violent end. Like the inevitability of change predicted by Asagai in A Raisin in the Sun, the moment comes when Tshembe must embrace his destiny and fight the historical intruders. The decision is fraught with pain because he must begin by murdering his own brother, who has turned traitor, and thereby sets off the attack which kills the gentle white woman, his surrogate mother, who has nurtured him from birth. As the play ends, a hyena-like sobbing laughter breaks forth from Tshembe.

  Throughout the play, Tshembe’s understanding of the complexities, his ability to see both sides and to love genuinely across color lines, is at war with his native history. His psyche, which is tied to the spirit of Africa, is personified by a woman dancer who constantly calls him to action, back to the struggle of his people.

  The play was first performed at the Longacre Theater in New York City in 1970, and evoked very strong reactions from its reviewers. Just as the audience divided into two camps, cheering for different sides, so the critics seemed unable to avoid such partisanship and criticized the play according to their feelings about its central question.13 Les Blancs is a courageous, well-crafted work, but a challenge to perform for an audience unaccustomed to encountering complex and disturbing questions in the theater. Its existence marks Hansberry as a visionary who accurately read the signs of her times and foreshadowed the impending African struggle for liberation. The play also forces a reassessment of the term “terrorist,” a meaningless label which masks the desperation and sometimes the inevitability of violence.

  Hansberry defined realism as “not only what is but what is possible.”14 Les Blancs in particular fits this definition, for Hansberry did not advocate violent revolution, but used the theater as a medium for a passionate encounter with the consequences of our heroic as well as our foolish actions. Her work has yet to receive the critical attention due her immense talent.

  Behind the vibrant theater of the 1960s and 1970s stand the pioneering figures and themes crafted by Hansberry, who forced the American stage to a new level of excellence and human relevance. In play after play, she sensed the mood of her times and anticipated the future—the importance that African politics and styles would assume, the regeneration of commitment among American intellectuals, the seductiveness of mercenary values for black Americans, the equality of men and women, and the proliferation of liberation struggles throughout the world. The theater was a working laboratory for this brilliant woman, whose sighted eyes and feeling heart caused her to reach out to a world at once cruel and beautiful.

  Most students in my undergraduate seminars on Lorraine Hansberry—young women and men of varied racial/ethnic backgrounds, averaging around nineteen or twenty years of age—have at least heard of Lorraine Hansberry, although only vaguely, and some even remember the film A Raisin in the Sun. Excerpts from the journals they keep as a record of their thoughts during the course measure the intellectual distance that they travel and the profound nature of their encounter with this remarkable playwright. A white student registered his surprise:

  How does talent, genius like this come into the world? How did I get to be twenty years old and know of Hansberry only as the author of A Raisin in the Sun? I don’t want to sound like an unrestrained youth, but I am continually overwhelmed by Hansberry’s work, her plays, her essays, and, most importantly, her crystalline perception of the world. Her ideas predate their realization by years.

  A woman who was struggling with the politics of her world and her own sexuality wrote: “Hansberry’s life and thoughts take on a new meaning since my involvement in progressive struggles, and especially my personal/political growth within the context of the feminist movement.”

  A graduating senior majoring in history exploded: “I feel angry that I wasn’t exposed to Hansberry’s work earlier … and to have never seen a single one of her plays performed on stage!” Later, in a mellower tone, he added: “I think one of the things I love about Lorraine is her ability to have taken her pain and anger and channeled it into energies that provided dreams and promise to change what was wrong and build upon that to make a brighter future.”

  One young black student wrote simply, “I wish I could talk to her.”

  In their youthful candor, these young people indicted and challenged a social and educational system that withholds from the public, intentionally or through neglect, the work of such insightful, evocative artists as Hansberry. The reissuing of this volume of her last collected plays revives the spirit of her life and work for a new generation.

  —MARGARET B. WILKERSON

  1994

  NOTES

  The following essays by Margaret B. Wilkerson were used as the basis for this Introduction: “The Sighte
d Eyes and Feeling Heart of Lorraine Hansberry,” in Essays on Contemporary American Drama, Munich, West Germany: Mex Hueber Verlag, 1981, pp. 91–104; “Lorraine Hansberry: The Complete Feminist,” Freedomways, Volume 19, Number 4, 1979, pp. 235–245.

  1. Lorraine Hansberry, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. Adapted by Robert Nemiroff. New York: New American Library. 1970, p. 45.

  2. Ibid., pp. 99–100.

  3. Ibid., p. 128.

  4. Lorraine Hansberry, “The Negro Writer and His Roots: Toward a New Romanticism,” The Black Scholar, Volume 12, Number 2, March/April, 1981, p. 5.

  5. Ibid., p. 11.

  6. Excerpted from Lorraine Hansberry’s unpublished, untitled notes. New York City, November 16, 1955.

  7. Ibid., pp. 11–12.

  8. Ibid., p. 7.

  9. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p. 143.

  10. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun/The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p. 145.

  11. Ibid., pp. 296–97.

  12. Ibid., pp. 339–40.

  13. Arena Stage Theatre in Washington, D.C., produced Les Blancs, directed by Harold Scott in February of 1988 to a more appreciative audience.

  14. To Be Young, Gifted and Black, p. 236.

  Les Blancs