From the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the McCarthy era (1945–1950), the American professional theatre produced twenty shows on civil rights, nine of them on Broadway.
Off-Broadway and out of town shows displayed a wider array of moral stances, ranging from gentle persuasion of Florence (1949) by Alice Childress and the religious fervor of Trial by Fire (1947) by George Dunne to the activism of Earth and Stars (1946) by Randolph Edmonds.
[1] John Houseman and Orson Welles preferred Wright's original concepts and discarded the modifications made by Green, which had softened Bigger's character.
On Whitman Avenue (1946), a civil rights drama on discrimination in the renting and sale of housing, starred Canada Lee, this time playing a decorated war hero trying to move his family into a white neighborhood.
In response to unenthusiastic reviews, Eleanor Roosevelt observed in her weekly column that the American people were in a period of retrogression and did not want to be reminded of their shortcomings.