CHICAGO DEFENDER
Immediate Release

Langston Hughes

HERE TO YONDER
by
Langston Hughes

ON WHITMAN AVENUE

Cut-of-town visitors to New York this summer should put at
the top of their theatre list the new play, "On Whitman Avenue".
It is the most effective play I have ever seen dealing with the
problems of Negro-white relationships in America.

"On Whitman Avenue" is a deeply moving human drama about
today's undemocratic trap in which Americans find themselves. It's
plot concerns the housing problem as it relates to race prejudice
and growing restrictive covenants. But its nuances and implications
reach out into the darkest corners of our "American dilemma." All
of the old hidden, real and stereotyped fears and phobias of the
whites are brought out in this play. And the tragedy of whites of
goodwill and decency, hamstrung by their social environment, is
shown, too.

"On Whitman Avenue" has just about everything in it. For most
of the New York drama critics, it has too much. The critics did
not like the play. But the audiences do. The night I saw it,
people laughed, cried, and applauded all the way through. Negroes
are particularly moved by this play. To us it is almost too real.
We forget it is just a play.

The story concerns a young Negro war veteran whose wife is
about to have a child. They cannot find a home until the college-
girl sister of the white soldier, whose life the Negro has saved,

HERE TO YONDER - 2
"On Whitman Avenue"

rents them the second floor apartment in her parents' two-family
house. When the Negroes move into the formerly all-white neighbor-
hood, then the fireworks begin. These fireworks are enough to
blow up a theatre. No wonder the New York critics had their good
judgment blown right out of their heads when they saw "On Whitman
Avenue", since it faces the major problem of our time more frankly
than any Broadway play of the season.

New York critics seem to think this play is only about our
race problem. But what the play is really about is the inability
of the average American to even try to understand anybody's problem
save his own. If white America cannot deal decently with fellow
black Americans after living with them for three hundred years, how
can American understand Russia, or Korea, or Ethiopia? And the
development of such understanding is the major problem of our time---
since world peace depends on it.

Canada Lee heads a splendid cast which includes Will Geer and
Hilda Vaughn, two of the finest white actors in the American theatre.
Abbie Mitchell, whose distinguished career extends from Chicago's
old Pekin Theatre through Williams and Walker musical comedies, to
Europe and the concert stage and back again to drama, plays the
mother. It is a pleasure to see this grand personality again on
Broadway. Three excellent child actors, one Negro, two white, carry
on the inter-racial conflict on the juvenile level. And Donald
Oenslager has given the drama a beautiful setting, the interior
and exterior of a simple but charming suburban house.

HERE TO YONDER - 3
"On Whitman Avenue"

Maxine Wood's play, "On Whitman Avenue" ranks high in the social drama of our day, and it takes its place in a long line of fine plays---"Uncle Tom's Cabin", "In Abraham's Bosom", "Stevadore", "Big White Fog", "Deep Are The Roots"---that our theatre has given as its contribution toward a solution of our ever dramatic race problem.

"Deep Are The Roots" is still running, and should be put on your summer list if you haven't seen it. It is a bang-up good play. And that much discussed musical, "St. Louis Woman" is in town for your pleasure. It is a charming and colorful folk-song-like version of St. Louis in the gay nineties when Negro jockeys were kings of the turf. That great dancing team, the bounding Nicholas Brothers, and that big boy of stage and screen, Rex Ingram, are in it, along with some new people who are terrific. One is the leading lady, Ruby Hill, who is as pretty as a picture and can put a heart-tug into a song. Another is Pearl Bailly, the nearest thing to Ethel Waters that our present younger generation has produced, and a dynamic comedy personality in her own right. And a third amazing new-comer is Enid William, a pantomime humorist who is a knock-out.

For the Negro, this has been a good season on Broadway. These three shows, I hope, will go on into next season. But there were notable failures this winter whose good intentions cannot be doubted.

**MWMWM** "Strange Fruit" and **MM** "Jeb" didn't come off, although both had good casts and good intentions. And Katherine Dunham's "Carib Song" fell by the wayside, too, in spite of her amazing dancers. For a complete account on "THE NEGRO ON BROADWAY, 1945-1946" read Miles Jefferson's excellent article in the current issue of the Atlanta University Quarterly, PHYLON.