As the 1920s dawned, Chicago reckoned with a recent race riot and the squalor and devastation wrought by the 1918 influenza pandemic. One hundred years later, as the 2020s began, history would nearly repeat itself when COVID-19 swept through town and George Floyd’s murder sparked worldwide outcry for racial justice and police reform. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, penned by playwright August Wilson in the early 1980s, depicts a Chicago recording studio in March of 1927, when Black musical artists blossomed yet faced systemic discrimination as slavery’s shadow still loomed large. The story resonates today as we grapple, a century later, with that shadow.
On July 27, 1919, temperatures in Chicago soared to 96 degrees. Since air conditioners wouldn’t become common in homes for another few decades, thousands of citizens went to the beach to find relief from the heat. Among them was 17-year-old Eugene Williams, who paddled with friends on a makeshift raft. When Williams and his friends, who were Black, inadvertently crossed an invisible line into “white” waters, a 24-year-old white man named George Stauber threw rocks at the boys, causing Williams to fall into Lake Michigan and drown. Eight days of racial violence ensued, leaving 38 people–23 Black and 15 white–dead.
In the decade prior, Chicago’s Black population had more than doubled to nearly 110,000. Migrating from the rural South, these hopeful citizens aimed to escape poverty and lack of opportunity. While some did find economic opportunities, they did not fully escape the racial tensions that had plagued them in the South. Unwritten rules confined Black citizens to small areas of the city, and tensions erupted with neighboring white areas. White laborers resented having to compete with Blacks for jobs. And when Black veterans returned from World War I, they arrived with a renewed vigor to fight for equal treatment in the country for which they had fought.
Just a year before the race riot, the 1918 influenza pandemic had swept through Chicago. The city closed schools, theaters and churches, but without the benefit of Zoom, daily business could not easily be conducted remotely, and leaders had to choose between economic hardship and viral spread. The flu spread widely, killing 8,500 Chicagoans during an eight-week span (and among the dead was 35-year-old Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, whose parents would later found the Goodman Theatre in his memory).
When Wilson wrote Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, he could not have known what problems would befall Chicago and the world in the 2020s. But his play now feels remarkably prescient. Wilson’s life spanned just 60 years, between 1945 and 2005, so he never lived in either the 1920s or the 2020s. But his depiction of the Black experience in America applies to both decades, and all the ones in between.
Of course, with his Century Cycle, Wilson aimed to show us a panoramic view of Black life in America, and it’s not surprising that this playwright—who studied history both by reading books and listening to stories told by his elders—created a body of work that echoes long after his footsteps have faded. Each of his 10 plays takes place in a different decade of the 20th century, depicting the changes—and lack thereof—of the Black experience over the course of 100 years. Dealing with everything from spiritual matters to the historical trauma of slavery and migration to the effects of gentrification, Wilson’s characters bring the 20th century to vibrant life. Between 1986 and 2007, The Goodman produced all 10 plays in the Cycle, becoming the first theater to do so. Now, as the 20th century slides further into the past and a new generation comes of age, Wilson’s words resonate as much as ever.
While nine of the 10 plays take place in Pittsburgh, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago. In the script, Wilson briefly describes the city: “Chicago in 1927 is a rough city, a bruising city, a city of millionaires and derelicts, gangsters and roughhouse dandies, whores and Irish grandmothers who move through the streets fingering long black rosaries. Somewhere a man is wrestling with the taste of a woman in his cheek. Somewhere a dog is barking. Somewhere the moon has fallen through a window and broken into thirty pieces of silver.”
A hundred years ago, people bemoaned the hardships of everyday life, whatever their race. They tried, often unsuccessfully, to cope with their differences. They bundled up to protect themselves from the harsh Chicago wind. Some of them attended performances at The Goodman, settling in for a few hours with a new play or a classic that would invite them to consider the flaws and triumphs of the society in which they lived. And outside, just as now, the city hummed.
Neena Arndt is the Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Dramaturg.
