In a 1982 advertisement in The Chicago Metro News (Issue 13, Volume 16, June 12, 1982), I came across this intriguing summary of a play:

“The play tells about a sterility bomb that has been dropped on the whole wide world, sterilizing all but one male human being, and he is a Black man, and has to repopulate the entire world.¹”

The Chicago Metro News (Issue 13, Volume 16, June 12, 1982)

This play, titled A New Race, was written by Alice C. Browning and presented at the 12th annual International Black Writers’ Conference. I was curious to learn more about the play’s plot and reception, and to my surprise, I found little to no information about it beyond that newspaper mention. However, I did learn more about Alice C. Browning and her important contributions to African American literature and the arts.

In 1970, nearing retirement from teaching, Browning met with fellow leaders in the African American community, including Judge Sidney Jones and Leo Sparks, at the Washington Park Community Fieldhouse to plan the first annual International Black Writers Conference.

Alice C. Browning (1907–1985) was an educator, writer, and publisher. While studying at Columbia University, she developed an interest in writing short stories but faced rejection when submitting her work to magazines. This experience led her to create an outlet for African Americans to publish their stories, which resulted in the founding of Negro Story magazine, a publication that ran for nine issues. She continued exploring new ventures in publishing and eventually became one of the founding organizers of the International Black Writers’ Conference, established in 1970, around the time of her retirement.²

With so little information available about A New Race, I started thinking about how theater and performance spaces had changed by 1982. Theaters were no longer exclusively for white audiences, yet the fact that the play’s advertisement mentioned an interracial cast of actors and actresses feels significant. The fact that this detail needed to be highlighted suggests it was still uncommon. Additionally, the play itself, a science fiction comedy that critiqued nuclear warfare, seems bold for its time. The 1980s were marked by Cold War tensions, which makes me wonder how audiences received a play with themes like this at the time.

As we’ve discussed with minstrelsy, comedy on stage has often been used to mask deeper issues, sometimes as a way to caricature Black people for white audiences.³ This makes me wonder about Browning’s intent in casting a Black man as the last fertile male left to repopulate the world, in a satirical play. She was clearly passionate about getting African American voices out there, and I think there is something to say about the name of the theater that was going to be presenting this play, the Sankofa Inc. Theate. The play’s use of comedy to touch on Cold War anxieties, alongside an interracial cast and a Black lead, could easily have made some audiences uncomfortable. This  discomfort may have contributed to the lack of information about the play today. Perhaps it was underattended or underreported, which is why information on it is limited.

It’s interesting to think about how all these elements, nuclear warfare satire, race, and comedy, came together on stage in A New Race. And while I wasn’t able to uncover more about the play itself, it leaves me wondering about its impact and how it might have been received at the time.