All God's Chillun Got Wings is a play by Eugene O'Neill written in 1924. It deals with the relationship between a Black man and a white woman in a society that has taught them not to accept themselves or each other. Due to social stresses, their relationship deteriorates until, fatally exhausted and mentally unstable, they sit playing marbles in their apartment until they die. The play caused a great deal of controversy for its portrayal of an interracial couple onstage, particularly that a Black man was to be the romantic opposite of a white woman.

All God's Chillun Got Wings

A Play by Eugene O'Neill

1924

History

• Opened at the Provincetown Players' playhouse, NY in 1924
• Directed by James Light

Criticism

This play sparked a major controversy over the fact that it centered around an interracial couple; a Black man and a white woman, to be precise. Historically, that has been (and continues to be in some areas) the most feared and hated pairing of interracial couples. White men have typically paired with Black women in secret (with female slaves, for instance), but riots, lynchings and murder have been committed over even the suggestion that a Black man might relate carnally with a white woman.

When word got out in the newspapers that a Black man and white woman would appear onstage as a couple, the Provincetown Players were inundated with threats, hate mail, and letters of concern. Sensationalist papers warned that the Mayor's office would shut the production down (though they had no power to disband a private club such as the Provincetown Players). City officials did go so far as to deny the Players a permit to use children in the production, thinking to eliminate the entire first scene and therefore cripple the play, but director James Light got around this by reading out the first scene himself, and then letting the play proceed.

Eugene O'Neill urged the public to read the play for themselves, rather than reading the sensationalist reports of the newspapers, and published various materials by Black artists (including a poem by Langston Hughes and an essay by W.E.B. Du Bois) in the program.

Characters

• Jim Harris

• Ella Downey

A white woman fallen on hard times

• Mrs. Harris

• Hattie

Jims' sister, an educated Black woman

• Shorty

• Joe

A Black hoodlum

• Mickey

• Whites and Negroes

Society

Plot Summary

Jim Harris and Ella Downey become friends as children, owing to the fact that they both live in an area where a Black neighborhood and a white neighborhood border one another. On the day of their high school graduation, however, Jim discovers that Ella has changed; she now seems to hate all Black people, and rejects Jim. Jim is crushed by this, and for the first time in his life admits to being a "nigger."

Ella falls on hard times a few years later, and is more accepting of Jim who has always been kind to her, or "white" to her, as she puts it. Jim, who has been studying to pass the Bar Exam and become a lawyer (but failing consistently) proposes marriage to Ella, and she accepts.

On their wedding day, Jim and Ella must walk down a street lined on one side by angry whites, and on the other by angry Blacks. They make it down the street and head for the docks, where a ship waits to take them to Paris, where society is more accepting of Blacks and of interracial marriage.

Jim and Ella return some time later to an awkward welcome from Mrs. Harris and Hattie. Ella has been unwell--she has developed a paranoid mania and cannot bear to be around anyone but Jim. Taking care of her has taken a noticeable toll on Jim, who is beginning also to shut out society in favor of Ella. Ella has a violent reaction to the sight of a Congo mask in their new apartment, a gift to Jim from his sister Hattie.

Ella's mania develops further into a splitting of personalities. Some of the time she behaves like a sweet little child, sometimes like a paranoid, clinging woman, and occasionally like a madwoman, shrieking racial slurs at Jim and running away laughing derisively. Her abuse hurts Jim so much he cannot even cry, but he endeavors nevertheless to pass the Bar so that she will be proud of him.

Ella begins to frighten Jim by carrying a knife around the house and heckling him constantly when he is trying to study. She has also taken to yelling at the Congo mask when she is alone. Jim is exhausted and worn from looking after her, and her own health is failing as well.

Jim returns from taking the Bar exam again, and Ella greets him apprehensively. When he reveals that he has again failed (and will likely give up) she becomes exultant, revealing that she has tried her hardest to make it impossible for him to study. Her reason for this, as she gives it, is that she was afraid that if he passed the "devil" (that is, the Congo mask) would be inside him, and she would have to kill him. She kills the mask instead, plunging her knife into it, and becomes entirely her child personality, urging Jim to come play marbles with her. Knowing that they will both die soon, Jim agrees to play with her until the end.

Brief Analysis

This play deals largely with issues of race; specifically, with the moral and social connotations of race and race language, and with the fears associated with these. Ella is the chief commentator on this, labeling people and their actions "white" or "black;" Jim, she says, is white because his actions toward her are white--he is kind and good to her when no one else will be. Jim agrees to this assessment by declaring that all love is white. The actions of people with white skin are, in Ella's mind, black, because they are mean, cruel, and selfish. At the same time, Ella, being a white woman of incredibly low standing in society's eyes, cannot bear the idea of Jim, a Black man, becoming superior to her. She therefore attempts to thwart his efforts to rise in society as a lawyer. Her equal commitment to both these ideas--that Jim's actions are white and superior, but his skin black and, societally, inferior--tear her, resulting in her mental health lapse.