All God's Chillun Got Wings (play)

All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924) is an expressionist play by Eugene O'Neill about miscegenation inspired by the old Negro spiritual.

Though integrated, the people separate themselves by race, Black on one end, White on the other except for the kids that are playing marbles between one another in the center.

Scene one begins with an introduction to the main and supporting characters: Jim, Ella, Mickey, Joe, and Shorty.

Jim is pining for Ella's recognition, and Shorty and Joe question his blackness because of his desire to graduate and pass the bar exam.

Act II In scene one, it is two years later, and two new characters are introduced, Jim's mother Mrs. Harris and his sister Hattie.

They continue to talk about the place to which Jim and Ella moved, accept the interracial marriage, and then argue over whether they should stay away or come back.

This infuriates Jim, but he reveals that they indeed moved back so he could face everything that he believed was making his wife sick in addition to taking the bar exam.

Just like with Jim, Ella tries to degrade her accomplishments and uses the failure of her husband to make her feel better about Hattie's success.

Ella exposes her true feelings towards Jim taking the bar exam and Black people succeeding.

[4] As the last play of O'Neill that casts a black lead, All God's Chillun Got Wings discussed the intraracial and interracial issues that plagued American society in the early twentieth century.

O'Neill gave glimpses of the struggle of being black in the time period and what the implications of being in a relationship with someone of the opposite race would entail.

Arnold, one of the founders of the Daughters of the Confederacy, said about the play at the time:“The scene where Miss Blair is called upon to kiss and fondle a Negro’s hand is going too far, even for the stage.

The twenties were also a time where the Ku Klux Klan was at its height, and the talk of integration clashed with a culture practicing segregation.

[11] Trish Van Devere played in the 1975 Broadway revival, along with Robert Earl Jones, Jimmy Baio, and Kathy Rich.

Devin Haqq and Barbra Wengerd appeared in the 2013 production of the show directed by Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr. for Civic Ensemble at JACK in Brooklyn, New York.