In Abrahams Bosom

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In Abraham's Bosom, play by Paul Green, produced in 1926 and published in 1927, when it won a Pulitzer Prize. It includes the earlier one‐act plays Your Fiery Furnace (1923) and In Abraham's Bosom (1924).

Abraham McCranie is the son of a black woman by her white master, Colonel McCranie, a North Carolina plantation owner. Raised by his aunt, Muh Mack, who has a typical pessimistic view of her race's status, Abraham is moved to passionate rebellion. His education is meager and his experience limited, but he dreams of wider opportunities for blacks and attempts to found a school. Opposed by both whites and blacks, he is driven from place to place after the death of his well‐meaning father leaves him at the mercy of his cruel white half‐brother, Lonnie. His marriage with Goldie McAllister is unfortunate, and he is disappointed in his son Douglas. Following years of wandering, Abraham returns to the plantation, intending to open a school. His plans are accidentally disclosed by Douglas, just released from prison, and Abraham is beaten and injured by a party of masked white men. Lonnie tells him his farm crop is to be seized, and Abraham, infuriated, kills him, but is shot by a mob as he shouts a defiant prophecy of freedom for his race.

In Abraham's Bosom (1926), a play by Paul Green. [Provincetown Theatre, 277 perf.; Pulitzer Prize.] Near the Turpentine Woods of eastern North Carolina, Abraham McCranie ( Jules Bledsoe) has grown up, the troubled son of white Colonel McCranie ( L. Rufus Hill) and a black woman. He is determined to “rise him up wid eddication” and to become the savior “to lead 'em up out'n ignorance.” But his all‐white half‐brother, the Colonel's vicious son Lonnie ( H. Ben Smith), is just as determined to thwart him, to close the school he would open for African Americans, and to keep him in his place. Only Goldie McAllister ( Rose McClendon) offers him love. As the years pass Lonnie's tormenting becomes too much and in a rage Abraham kills him. He in turn is shot dead by other local white men. The Provincetown Players production was hailed by the Herald Tribune as “so well‐written and so well‐played that even near‐Southerners who applaud Dixie the loudest may be urged to sympathy.” Nevertheless, the play struggled to find an audience and had closed when it won the Pulitzer. It was quickly reopened.