Angelica Medlin
In 1964, the play Dutchman by Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones, premiered at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York. The play was very successful, showing over the course of several weeks, and even winning an Obie award for best Off-Broadway production of the year (“Jones’s ‘Dutchman’ Wins Drama Award”). In a time when segregation was still a scar over the wound of slavery in the United States, a black artist winning such an important award marked a turning point for black entertainment and proved that skin color did not have to be a factor in how great a play was. But that is not to say the play lacked in controversy.
While most reviews spoke to the talent and genius of Baraka as a playwright and praised his production, the reviews were also quick to label the play as nothing short of ‘angry,’ which marks at least part of the scandal surrounding the play. New York Post writer Richard Watts Jr. pinpoints in a review titled “A New Playwright and Two Others” that “there can be no doubt which [of the three plays shown at the Cherry Lane that night] displayed the greatest power” in reference to Dutchman. But in the same article, he says that the play “snarls with eloquent fury” and “hurls ugly epithets with angry violence.” In a separate review he wrote titled “Two New Dramas on Race Conflict,” he says that the word ‘angry’ is “far too tame to describe the embittered hatred that Mr. Jones poured forth.” William Glover, who wrote for the Bridgeport Telegram and a few other periodicals, said that Amiri Baraka had “A talent for raw, explosive violence.” There again is the emphasis on talent, but with an undertone of aggression. Howard Taubman, a writer for the New York Times, remarked that Dutchman “bespeaks a promising, unsettling talent.” Yet, he also describes Dutchman as “an explosion of hatred rather than a play.” All in all, Jones’s talent is highlighted across reviews. But this praise comes with a challenge to the integrity of that talent. Within these reviews are words like “violence,” “fury,” “hatred,” and “angry.” These half-congratulatory, half-condemning reviews truly highlight a cognitive dissonance amid the audience. Even with an award under its belt, the play did not lack judging eyes, and created quite the sensation.
In 1965, the play moved to Los Angeles, and was met by much the same sort of reviews as the New York production the year prior. Cecil Smith, a writer for the Los Angeles Times said in a review titled “Jones Hits With Nightmares” that Baraka’s plays were “Raw and naked and abrasive. Revolting in their language, ugly, dirty, obscene.” He then goes on to say that despite this, Dutchman (and another Baraka play The Toilet) “are also absolutely brilliant in execution.” George Goodman, a writer for the Los Angeles Sentinel, said that Baraka “strives to accomplish destruction in two works invariably called morbid and depraved by some, but superb and brilliant by others.” The assumption could easily be made that the Los Angeles production was almost a copy of the New York production, producing a balanced mix of both praise and condemnation for Dutchman. But the Los Angeles production of 1965 was wrought with more outrage than could have been anticipated by the reception it had in New York. Not only were ads for the production stopped entirely before the play opened and afterwards, but the Los Angeles Police Department became involved in nearly shutting the entire production down within its opening days, stating that the “exhibitors had failed to secure police commission permits” that were needed to show anything in the city despite the police commission commenting later that the issuing of permits usually did not depend on the content of a production (“Disputed Plays Resume After Temporary Halt”). In other words, the way the play was being treated by the local authorities was strange at best, malicious at worst. But why was the play treated this way in Los Angeles and not in New York?
Both the reviews and the treatment by the LAPD are direct responses to the anger exhibited in the play, an anger that is misunderstood and misinterpreted by audiences as they
miss the message of a nationalist black identity that Amiri Baraka was trying to create for his community through art and entertainment. And while part of the controversy surrounding the 1965 Los Angeles production of Dutchman is over these half-celebratory, half-condemning reviews the play received, the larger part of this controversy surrounds the ill-treatment of the play by the Los Angeles Police Department due to its misinterpretation as a violent tirade against white people, rather than that message of nationalist and black identity.
To better understand Baraka’s intended message and the backlash its misinterpretation received, this essay will break the controversy of the production down into four parts: the black identity Baraka advocated for, the interpretation audiences got out of it, the Los Angeles Police Department’s feelings towards civil rights, and the consequences of both that misinterpretation and bias from the LAPD.
The Shifting Definitions of Blackness in the 1960s
Black Americans were shifting the definition of what it meant to be black, and in the 1960s this was highlighted by the divide between those who believed in desegregation and those who believed in separation. This shifting of definitions, however, started with creating a viable label for the black community.
Between the mid to late nineteenth century, the popularity of the term ‘negro’ overtook the dominating terminology of ‘colored,’ as it was considered less inclusive in the sense that ‘colored’ could refer to other non-white ethnicities, while ‘negro’ was easier to interpret (Smith 497-498). But towards the 1950s, the term “Black” entered the conversation, a term that was, according to Tom Smith, “favored by radical and militant Blacks in such groups as the Black Muslims and Black Panthers” (499). Later in the 70s and 80s, the dominating terminology shifted to “African American,” but it is the shift from “negro” to “black” in the 60s that we will be focusing on in this essay. It is here that the ideals of ‘radical and militant Blacks’ really shines through in contrast to the integrationist ideals that other black activists held. These ‘radical and militant Blacks’ were just that: black.
Born from the increasing violence used in retaliation to peaceful civil rights demonstrations, the black separatist movement, related to the black nationalist movement, was born, and took strong hold of the black community in the 60s (“Black Nationalism”). Robert Brown and Todd Shaw posit that the “reason why Black Nationalism [could] win the sympathies of broad though seemingly dissimilar black subgroups is due to the elasticity of” their core values like racial pride among the black community (23). The movement thus appealed to quite a few of the black community all at once. Yet the appeal of traditional civil rights movements remained, especially with figures like Martin Luther King Jr. at the head. King disparaged the nationalist movement at that, saying that it rejected “the one thing that keeps the fire of revolutions burning: the ever-present flame of hope” in his book Where Do We Go from Here? (47). Despite this, black separatism remained, with figures like Malcom X at the head who proclaimed that “If you’re afraid of black nationalism, you’re afraid of revolution. And if you love revolution, you love black nationalism” in his 1963 speech Message to the Grassroots. Indeed, the black community had internal decisions to contend with about the appropriate form of civil rights, a decision that was heavily influenced by the lens of the dominating white society around them.
While both desegregationists and separationists wanted a voice for black people, there was an intrinsic difference in the way that voice could be made clear; separationists wanted their own spaces for the black community away from the gaze of white society, sometimes resorting to aggressive and even dangerous means to do so, while desegregationists wanted an equality that involved integration into the dominating white society through peaceful protest and demonstration. That meant that desegregationists envisioned a world constructed by the white dominating society, a construction whose roots began with the enslavement and emancipation, segregation, and (later) integration of Black Americans. Groups like The Crusade for Voters in Richmond formed in the 1950s and 60s to promote full integration, especially in spaces like public schools (Haugeberg 6). Author Ta-Nehisi Coates, speaking about the forms of black identity that had formed in the 1960s and 1970s, remarked that “Integrationists [held] that if black people push hard enough then surely some critical mass of white people will recognize our humanity” (qtd. in Haugeberg 1). Integrationists were therefore fully ready to push for the white dominating society to lift them up to their goals for equality. Segregationists, on the other hand, wanted to force the white dominating society to view them as their own peoples.
Due to the less aggressive nature of integrationist ideals, they were viewed as somewhat problematic and unfulfilling by those vying for black nationalism, believing that a black identity that could truly uplift the community could only be formed through complete political, economic, and cultural autonomy (Brown and Shaw 24). And while these ideologies clashed within the black community, they also clashed for white America, who certainly leaned more towards traditional civil rights and integration more so than the idea of black people creating their own black nation (and using force to do so). After all, with the continued resistance towards peaceful integration, which did cause a few civil rights activists to shift to nationalist views, the pushback against nationalism was much greater (“Black Nationalism”). Even then, white America was only so supportive of integration, with Gallup revealing that even those who voted in favor of desegregation were uncomfortable with how fast and in what ways it would happen (O’Keefe). It seemed that even in the fight for equality, white America was still functioning as a hindrance, adding to the divide the black community felt in how they would achieve that equality. After all, it was white America who could vote in the polls, who could vote things like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law. As much as the black community wanted a strong, black voice for their people, it seemed that they would not achieve it without the permission of the white community, and it was this conundrum of civil rights which rightfully angered Amiri Baraka – a black nationalist.
Consequently, it was this conundrum of civil rights which rightfully angered black people in the first place, an anger which Baraka sought to mold through Dutchman. But that message, despite its talented execution, was lost in the notion of aggression towards white people.
Amiri Baraka’s Message Misrepresented
Scholars like Nita Kumar have argued in favor of more complex readings of Dutchman where, rather than Baraka creating a fine binary between blackness and whiteness, he is instead “combating the forms of representation/perception that become forms of persecution by denying blackness any possibility of viable existence” (277). In other words, Baraka is setting the record straight about blackness and black identities existing on their own, away from the white gaze where they can be weaponized to misunderstand black people. These feelings of persecution, therefore, already existed in the black community, as well as the frustration that came with such persecution. Other scholars like Soyica Diggs Colbert believe much the same as Kumar, and that in Clay’s final speech, the focus of most play reviews, he argues that “the insistence on seeing and hearing blackness in relationship to white normativity creates a glaring blind spot” in the ability to see black people as people (344). Even David Krasner notes that during this time, those considered black intellectuals such as Clay would have faced the challenge of being told blackness and intellectuality were mutually exclusive, as intellectualism was often reserved for the white community (56). Indeed, blackness deserved a chance to shine on its own, an idea that Baraka could clearly see was not happening.
All in all, Baraka was not advocating for black people to get angrier than they already were. Rather, he was advocating for black people to channel the anger and frustration they
already felt in response to the systems that oppressed them into action – into casting away any traces of whiteness still lingering in their hearts and embracing themselves rather than accepting the misconceptions of the white gaze which still hailed to the times of slavery. He does this by molding Clay into a representation of black identity that needs to be killed, and molds Lula into a representation of the ignorance and violence plaguing the black community from the white dominating society of the United States.
Clay has many defining moments, but three very clear ones are at the beginning of the play during the scene directions, his allowing Lula to assume things about him, and when he compares himself to Baudelaire. From the beginning, Clay makes himself stand out to the audience and to Lula. When he notices her staring at him through the train window, he “smiles too, for a moment, without a trace of self-consciousness” (4). And while he catches himself a few lines later, this bold behavior only continues as he and Lula keep talking and having a conversation with one another. With cases like Emmett Till happening within ten years of the play, and miscegenation laws expanding into 1967, this behavior is risky as best, deadly at worse (“Laws That Banned Mixed Marriages”). Clay is already setting himself up as kind of black man who shirks off the status quo, but in dangerous ways, rather than progressive ones. Then, despite Lula telling him that she is a liar, he allows the white woman to make assumption after assumption about him which he acknowledges as fact. Lula assumes Clay is from New Jersey, that he is trying to grow a beard, that he has a skinny English friend named Warren, and that he is going to a party (8-13). She is quite literally defining who he is through her guesswork and lies, and Clay agrees with her, rather than ignoring her or telling her to mind her business. He is encouraging a white reading and characterization of himself, a black man. Then finally, Clay asserts himself through a white lens, comparing himself to Baudelaire, a white artist and one considered effeminate at that (19). In fact, as noted by Matthew Rebhorn, who speaks extensively about the gender dynamics between Clay and Lula, Baraka was known for building “an image of potent and aggressive machismo underscored by and continent on its asserted distance from other more passive and ‘effeminized’ subjects” (800). Essentially, masculinity could only stand out apart from femininity. Clay therefore sees himself through a lens which Baraka found problematic, that of an effeminate white man, and with the slaying of Clay at the end of the play, it is clear that Baraka was rejecting all forms of Clay’s identity. Whatever anger Clay feels is left to vanish into the night without a trace of advancement for black identity.
On the other side of this coin is Lula’s characterization, making her the representation of whiteness that Baraka, quite literally, wanted dead but could not kill. Without looking at the play, it is obvious Lula holds power. She is a white woman, and despite women having fewer rights than men in the 1960s, her skin color would have been a clear indication that she was still in a class above Clay, a man, but a black man. This also positions her as a representation of white society, as she possesses a privilege that Clay does not just due to the color of her skin. From there, she asserts her power over Clay, defining different aspects about his life, friends, and person. She even tells Clay that though he defines himself through a white lens, he is still black, and should remember that fact, otherwise he is “corny” (19). As white society continues to remind black people that they are black, without full representation, without full citizenship, without full rights, so Lula reminds Clay that he is black. Even before that exchange, Lula makes an interesting remark when she admits to Clay that she “[lies] a lot” because “it helps [her] control the world” (9). Before the real interaction begins, Lula is already hinting to Clay at the kind of power she has, the kind of power that white America has: the power to misinterpret and mis-define the black identity on purpose. After all, how can a white woman know the black experience better than the actual black man she is talking to? But she certainly tries, by admitting she’s a liar, but continuing to define Clay for himself, and by reminding him that he’s only a black man and needs to remember that. Continuing Kumar’s argument, “The play does not so much posit an authentic black sense of selfhood as explore the processes and modes of misrepresentation concerning it” (274). When it really comes down to it, that is the power that the white dominating society had: to try and define blackness in a way that would never be beneficial, fair, or equitable towards black people.
Despite this gravity of this message, it was not the message audiences, or at the very least that critics, received. Once again, it is important to remember the mixed content of the reviews. Even Cecil Smith, who had many beaming words to write for Dutchman titled one of his pieces “Angry Young Playwright Seeks Reality.” In another piece titled “Jones Hits With Nightmares,” he describes Dutchman (and The Toilet) as “two black furies” that were “a searing, devastating, horrifying and incredibly effective evening of theatrical force.” And in a third piece titled “Furor Surrounds Jones Productions,” he admits that despite the realism exhibited, the language was “raw and ugly, even repulsive” even while praising the use of this language. The use of “angry,” “searing,” “raw” and even “repulsive” suggest that there is a profound, deep-rooted emotion that is difficult to miss in the play. Repeatedly, between the 1964 and 1965 productions, these words are noted, and nearly always in reference to Clay when discussing Dutchman.
Clay is angry, and with good reason. Not only is he a black man at the mercy of the white dominating society which runs the United States, but he is being taunted, mocked, poked, and prodded by Lula for several pages of the play. At first, he even tries not to get angry. When Lula begins her song and dance, Clay’s stage directions simply say that he “Waves his hands to refuse” her offer to dance, a refusal he attempts again a few lines later (30). He then moves on to try and verbally reason with her, telling her to “Sit down, now. Be cool” (31). But Lula carries on. Clay becomes more and more agitated as the scene continues, finally telling Lula to “sit the fuck down” and later moving to restrain her physically, then slapher, two actio
ld-up that we arrive at Clay’s speech, and by then, it is clear he is already quite angry.
It is here that Baraka’s message is lost, not just at the notion of an angry black man, but at the notion of a black man angry enough to kill white people. Clay does admit he could murder Lula right there, and finally lashes out that she does not truly understand black people:
CLAY. Not the pure heart, the pumping black heart. You don’t ever know that. And I sit
here, in this buttoned-up suit, to keep myself from cutting all your throats.
It is therefore not so much the anger that has audiences, critics, and the police, stunned, it is the potential violence that could come their way because of that anger. And while we can only speculate this is not what Baraka truly wanted, it is clear whatever message he was trying to convey was not received in a way that would purely uplift the black voice. After all, according to Colbert, the reviews and reception truly highlight “the inability of white observers to understand black rage” (334-335). Instead, the play scared white people, and it was this fear and misunderstanding of Baraka’s intentions and artistic talent that prompetd the response from the LAPD that the play stirred in 1965. After all, the Los Angeles Police Department was already experiencing its fair share of racial tensions, tensions that were made worse by infamous Police Chief William H. Parker.
Race Relations between the Black Community and the LAPD in the 60s
William H. Parker was the chief of police during the 1950s and most of the 1960s, and he vowed to clean up corruption within the department (Shaw). He was a force to be reckoned with, and during the “Bloody Christmas” scandal of 1951, 54 officers were transferred, 39 others were suspended for misconduct, 8 were indicted on felony assault, and 5 were convicted. For all appearance’s sake, it seemed Parker was holding true to his ideas of reform inside the LAPD. But Parker had certain ideas about reforming the LAPD that were detrimental to minority communities, especially black communities. According to Max Felker-Kantor, Parker’s model for policing centered on proactive crime prevention, in which LAPD officers were sent out onto the streets to look for trouble before it could occur. It was a kind of policing which was “guided by a masculine and aggressive strategy of seeking out crime on the streets” (1029). While this was seen by many as a novel way to prevent crime, it placed a large target on many backs, as this new proactive style of policing was based on being able to “spot criminals by their appearance and their demeanor” which was a catalyst for racial profiling (Shaw). The LAPD’s tactics were therefore a breeding ground for over-policing and arresting, and increasingly aggressive racial interactions between officers and civilians.
In 1995, Glenn Souza, who was an LAPD officer during Parker’s reign, spoke out about the kind of policing Parker advocated for in an article for the Los Angeles Times, and the generally tense relations that existed between not only the LAPD and civilian minorities, but black officers as well (as the LAPD was still segregated in these days). He recalls that “We were a mercenary army unofficially empowered to arrest anyone at any time for any cause,” and “officers were required to record in their notebooks a string of recent robbery or burglary reports in which suspects were usually described as male Negroes…any report could describe half of the men in the division’s area.” He notes several instances of riots in 1962 and 1963 just due to the intermingling of black citizens with white citizens, and how “Black people could not venture north of Beverly or much west of La Brea” – which is, ironically, where the Warner Playhouse was located – “after dark without a strongly documented purpose” or risk a shake down by the police. The turning point in these racist traditions came in 1960, when John F. Kennedy promised equality, and “White officers would walk up to the lieutenant’s desk and throw down their badges rather than work with a Negro.” There is no mistaking the deliberate and ill-hid racism that ran through the police force in those days.
Within Souza’s piece are some interesting observations as well, not ones that Souza makes himself, but rather observations that can be made from the readers point of view. At one point, Souza points out that “More fuel for the fires came from the black Muslims, who believed that they were God’s chosen people and were as racist toward whites as George Wallace was toward blacks…Their neat black suits and close-shaven heads were a direct challenge to racist cops – and even to fairer-minded officers.” While Souza, representative of the LAPD, spends plenty of time dissecting the racist nature of the organization he was once a part of, he continues to tote rather prejudiced ideas about black people. He never directly talks about clashes between the LAPD and nationalist organizations, yet the mire felt towards these organizations is tangible through his words. Souza insists that the black Muslims believed “they were God’s chosen people,” making it obvious that he believed nationalists placed themselves on some sort of pedestal of superiority. He calls them as racist as George Wallace too, pointing out a systematic disparity: the oppressed class, when looking at systematic racism, cannot be racist towards their oppressors. Yet Souza plays along these lines, calling black Muslims racists when they are part of a system that they cannot be racist towards. And to continue this barrage of ill-thought, he goes on to seemingly mock the attire of black Muslims as a “direct challenge to racist cops.” Everything about the black Muslims is, therefore, an insult to the racist LAPD. And this means anyone who believed black Islam and nationalism would be targeted by this police force.
Souza ends his piece by saying that “Naïve arrogance in high places was blind to racism but contributed much to the worship of a ‘50s chief who usually referred to black people as ‘nigras’.” Even though Souza admits to the racism, prejudice, and profiling that was being done by cops against black citizens during this period, there is still a distain for certain ideologies held by the black community. And to top this off, the LAPD had a sort of control over the media as well. According to David Shaw, the media was enamored with Parker and this new LAPD, and “treated him – and his department – like heroes.” With ads for Dutchman being prevented from running during the play’s Los Angeles production, it is only further testament to the power of the LAPD in the 1960s, and really frames the resistance they held toward the play.
The Consequences of Being a Little Too Loud for the LAPD
Cecil Smith, who once again had a myriad of things to say about Dutchman, also wrote a piece on the 1965 production that was more journalistic than critical detailing how the production was kicked out of their original theater when the owner declared that the production did not have the right permits on March 10 (“Earthy Play: Landlord Doesn’t Dig it”). This was just the beginning of the resistance the play felt, and on March 26, two days after the play premiered in Los Angeles, the LAPD temporarily halted the performance citing the lack of proper police commission permits, as mentioned previously. Due to this apparent lack of permits – which came after the vice squad had already tried to file obscenity charges against the other Jones play The Toilet – the production was told they could not “operate commercially,” and had to resort to asking for donations to keep the production going. Despite all of this, Sargent Dean Knouse made it apparent this situation was highly unusual, and even Deputy City Attorney Arland J. Myhrvold said his office would not move forward with issuing complaints. Smith posits in another of his pieces titled “Furor Surrounds Jones Productions” that “After police brought obscenity complaints to the city attorney’s office and they were summarily rejected, the matter should have been dropped.” It seemed those following the play were of the mind that it should continue and be left alone by the LAPD. To punctuate this, he noted that the theater was continuously filled, and many were turned away, though the production still lost quite a bit of money for not being able to charge admission.
To add fuel to the fire, on April 5, the Los Angeles Times and The Hollywood Citizens-News decided to no longer run ads for the production (“‘Harassment’ Hurts Le Roi Jones Plays”). While protests were organized outside of these newspapers by those involved with the production, nothing came of it, and any revenue that could have been generated by the production ads was rendered impossible. Cy Warner, who was the owner of Warner Playhouse, even said police nudged him towards throwing the productions out before he would see a license to operate commercially again.
On March 29, the police commission did give the playhouse a 60-day permit, though they said they would continue to investigate claims of obscenity. Despite this, producer Rita Fredricks said other forms of “harassment” were still taking place as the LAPD continued to intimidate the production crews.
In Conclusion
While Dutchman is largely heralded as a masterpiece even today, and Amiri Baraka heralded as a genius, there was a lot of misunderstanding and bias that surrounded the play from the beginning. The 1964 production may not have been met with as much resistance as the 1965 production, but it is key to note the shared instances of the word “anger” that continued to surface in review after review. Yes, the play does display a kind of anger, a frustration from the black community at how whiteness not only misunderstands blackness, but how it inserts itself into the black narrative and tries to define black people through a white lens. And despite this frustration being a large part of what Amiri Baraka wanted to highlight in his play, that message of black identity was buried under the fear from white audiences, and a mostly white LAPD, that saw the play, and Clay’s speech, as an aggressive call to violence against all white people.
But with the idea in mind that black people are already justifiably angry when Dutchman premiered in Los Angeles, it is a disservice to the play to vilify it for simply advocating anger
itself. Baraka’s piece is far more complex, a detail that critics largely missed and resulted in the production nearly being shut down by the Los Angeles Police Department. The play does advocate for nationalism, and it does advocate for black people to use the anger they already feel to progress forward as a unique community. But it is not meant to simply be the “angry” play. It is not simply meant to be a reminder to white people that black people are angry. It is a message to the black community, one they could use to build themselves up – especially without the influence of the white gaze.
Works Cited
Baraka, Amiri. “Dutchman.” Dutchman + The Slave, Harper Perennial, 1964, pp. 1-38.
“Black Nationalism.” exhibits, https://digilab.libs.uga.edu/exhibits/exhibits/show/civil-rights-digital-history-p/black-brown-power/black-nationalism. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.
Brown, Robert A., and Todd C. Shaw. “Two Attitudinal Dimensions of Black Nationalism.” The Journal of Politics, vol. 64, no. 1, The University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 22-44. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2691663. Accessed 5 Nov. 2021.
Colbert, Soyica D. “Black Rage: On Cultivating Black National Belonging.” American Society for Theatre Research, vol. 57, no. 3, Sep. 2016, pp. 336-357. Proquest, doi:10.1017/S0040557416000314. Accessed 24 Oct. 2021.
Felker-Kantor, Max. “Liberal Law-and-Order: The Politics of Police Reform in Los Angeles.” Journal of Urban History, vol. 46, no. 5, 2017, pp. 1026-1049. SAGE Premier, https://doi-org.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/10.1177/0096144217705462. 11 Nov. 2021.
Glover, William. “Raw Play Opens.” Review of Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka. Bridgeport Telegram [Bridgeport, CT], 25 Mar. 1964, p. 36.
Goodman, George. “Jones’ Plays Designed to Offend.” Review of Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka. Los Angeles Sentinel, 27 Mar. 1965, p. d3.
Haugeberg, Karissa. “Rethinking the Taxonomies of Civil Rights Work.” Journal of Urban History, vol. 46, no. 3, 2019, pp. 654-662. SAGE Premier, https://doi-org.lib-proxy.fullerton.edu/10.1177/0096144219872484. 23 Nov. 2021.
“Jones’s ‘Dutchman’ Wins Drama Award.” New York Times, 25 May 1964, p. 42.
King Jr., Martin Luther. “Where Are We?” Where Do We Go From Here?, Beacon Press, 1968, pp. 1-22.
Krasner, David. “Expectation, Melancholy, and Loss: Funnyhouse of a Negro and Dutchman in the Year 1964.” Theatre Journal, vol. 71, no. 1, Mar. 2019, pp. 49-67. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2019.0003. Accessed 3 Oct. 2021.
Kumar, Nita. “The Logic of Retribution: Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman.” African American Review, vol. 37, no. 2-3, 1 Jul. 2003, pp. 271-279. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A110531670/LitRC?u=csuf_main&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=6a409270. Accessed 5 Oct. 2021.
“Laws that Banned Mixed Marriages – May 2020.” Ferris State University, May 2020, https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2010/may.htm. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.
O’Keefe, Shannon M. “Gallup Vault: Americans Narrowly OK’d 1964 Civil Rights Law.” Gallup, 29 Jul. 2020, https://news.gallup.com/vault/316130/gallup-vault-americans-narrowly-1964-civil-rights-law.aspx. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.
Rebhorn, Matthew. “Flaying Dutchman: Masochism, Minstrelsy, and the Gender Politics of Amiri Baraka's “Dutchman.” Callaloo, vol. 26, no. 3, The John Hopkins University
Press, 2003, pp. 796-812. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3300727. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.
Shaw, David. “Chief Parker Molded LAPD Image – Then Came the ‘60s.” Los Angeles Times, 25 May 1992, pp. A1, A26-A27.
Smith, Cecil. “Angry Young Playwright Seeks Reality.” Review of Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka. Los Angeles Times, 21 Mar. 1965, p. B2.
Smith, Cecil. “Earthy Play: Landlord Doesn’t Dig It.” Los Angeles Times, 11 May 1965, p. A1.
Smith, Cecil. “Furor Surrounds Jones Productions.” Los Angeles Times, 1 Apr. 1965, p. C11.
Smith, Cecil. “Jones Hits With Nightmares.” Review of Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka. Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 1965, p. 1-d11.
Smith, Tom. “Changing Racial Labels: From ‘Colored’ to ‘Negro’ to ‘Black’ to ‘African American’.” The Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 4, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 496-514. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2749204. Accessed 1 Oct. 2021.
Taubman, Howard. “New 1-Act Racial Play ‘Shocking’.” Review of Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka. San Antonio Express, 26 Mar. 1964, p. 36.
Watts Jr., Richard. “A New Playwright and Two Others.” Review of Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka. New York Post, 25 Mar. 1964, p. 59.
Watts Jr., Richard. “Two New Dramas on Race Conflict.” Review of Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka. New York Post, 5 Apr. 1964, p. 11.
X, Malcolm. “Message to the Grassroots.” Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference, 10 Dec. 1963, King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit, MI, Keynote Speech.
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