Joe Turners Come and Gone

SethBertha Bynum Selig Jeremy Herald Loomis Mattie Rueben Martha Pencoast Joe Turner Zonia Loomis Boardinghouse Molly

Summary Set in 1911 in Pittsburgh Herald Loomis is looking for his wife Martha Pentecost. He lives for a week in the boarding house with his daughter. He contacts Selig and finds Martha. Bynum tells him he can live happy as he found his song.

August Wilson ( ) Parents were a white German baker and African- American cleaning lady. Grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Joined the black aesthetic movement and became leader of Black Horizons Theatre in Pittsburgh. Wrote in cafes and bars to pick characters up into his work.

'Mill Hand's Lunch Bucket,' by Romare Bearden

=ZIXrP9s3WcU W.C. Handy "Joe Turner Blues"

Socio-historical context 1.Rightward Political Shift 2.Employment 3.Education and Housing 4.Representations

‘ Blacks [could] no longer surrender to easy cynicism, despair, and disgust. Nor [ … ] adopt the prevailing and rampant petty-bourgeois narcissistic self-absorbtion ’ — ‘ The1980s: The Black Movement in the Reagan Era ’ in Revolutionary Integration, Richard S. Frazer and Tom Boot, Red Letter Press, Political Shift

2. Employment TABLE 1 Average Log Hourly Wages, White Men and Black Men, 1980–99 Whites Blacks Difference (1) (2) (1)  (2) Men ages 22–64: 1980– – – – Men ages 22–30: 1980– – – –

‘By 1999, over 40% of young black male high school dropouts were in prison or jail compared to 10.3% of young white male dropouts [(1)]. High incarceration rates have the effect of concealing poor young men in conventional labor force statistics.’ — Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, ‘Black-White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration’, American Journal of Sociology: Volume 111 Number 2, University of Chicago, September 2005, pp. 553–78 (1)Western, Bruce “The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality.” American Sociological Review, 67:

3. Education and Housing ‘In the 1980s, equal rights in housing remained the most elusive of civil rights. Despite extensive legislation and regulations aimed at integrating housing, most [African-] American communities remained segregated by the end of the 1980s’ —Lawrence H. Fuchs, The American kaleidoscope: race, ethnicity, and the civic culture, Wesleyan University Press, 1990, p. 416.

4. Representations ‘[S]ince the cable explosion of the 1980s, Black representations […] have multiplied and diversified significantly’

Dramatic Context First performances Wilson’s ‘Century Cycle’ Realism/ Allegory

Bibliography agewanted=all