Green, Paul (Eliot)

Green, Paul [Eliot] (1894–1981), North Carolina playwright, professor at the state university, began his career with the Carolina Playmakers and was the author of many one‐act plays about blacks. Collections have been issued as The Lord's Will and Other Carolina Plays (1925), Lonesome Road (1926), and In the Valley (1928). Perhaps the best known of his one‐act plays is Hymn to the Rising Sun (1936), an indictment of prison‐camp conditions. In Abraham's Bosom (1927, Pulitzer Prize) is a long play about the lives of blacks, based on his earlier play (1924) of this title and Your Fiery Furnace (1932). Other full‐length plays include The Field God (1927), about repressed, deeply religious poor whites; Tread the Green Grass (1929), a folk play; Roll, Sweet Chariot (1934), presenting the tragic spirit and philosophy of black people; The House of Connelly (1931), concerned with the decadence of Southern planters; Johnny Johnson (1937), a musical play written with Kurt Weill; The Lost Colony (1937), produced annually on Roanoke Island, a historical pageant of the early settlement there; Native Son (1941), a stage adaptation with Richard Wright of the latter's novel; and The Highland Call (1941), a historical play of life in the Carolinas using folk music; and other so‐called symphonic dramas, including The Common Glory (1947), Faith of Our Fathers (1950), The Confederacy (1958), and The Stephen Foster Story (1959). Out of the South (1939) is a collection of 15 previously published plays; Wide Fields (1928), Salvation on a String (1946), Home to My Valley (1969), and Land of Nod (1976) collect stories. This Body the Earth (1935) is a novel about the tragic lives of sharecroppers. The Hawthorn Tree (1943), Drama and the Weather (1958), and Plough and Furrow (1963) gather essays.