Color Struck won second prize in Opportunity Magazine's literary contest for best play.
Color Struck opens on a train in 1900, with members of the black community from Jacksonville, Florida, going to a cakewalk competition in St. Augustine.
Emmaline made John take the last coach, because she felt he was flirting with Effie, a lighter-skinned black woman.
The play's title focuses on colorism, the idea that people in the black community were judged based on the hue of their skin.
At the dance hall, everyone eats their picnic lunches, and Effie offers John a piece of pie.
Her daughter, who we later learn is named Lou Lillian, is in bed, feverishly ill. John knocks on the door, and tells her he missed her.
As the doctor leaves, Emma is left on stage in a rocking chair, staring at the door, "A dry sob now and then."
Her insecurities have adverse effects including, losing John for twenty years and allowing her mulatto daughter to die.
Scene IV Hate/Anger/Animosity Emma displays anger towards John any time a light-skinned woman is in their midst.
Scene I According to Martha Gilman Bower, Emma is an exemplar case of the "damaging consequences of an obsession with skin tone among Blacks."
The consequences of being "color struck" that one sees throughout the play is escalating anger, low self-esteem, paranoia, and schizophrenia.
Because of Emma's "psychotic obsession with color", she is unable to truly be happy, love, overcome oppression, and consequently is "the only miserable character."
Yet, the term "color struck" was popularized by Hurston in at a party after the 1925 Opportunity awards dinner when she comes in and "[triumphantly cries], ‘Calaaaah struuuck."
In effect, the dramatic twist Hurston portrays is twofold: both John and Emma are "color struck," albeit in opposing and unpredictable ways.
Emma is drawn to light skin (notably, after her relationship with John fails, she presumably has a sexual relationship/encounter with a white man, resulting in the birth of a "very white girl"), while John exhibits color-consciousness in his preference for dark-skinned women (after the breakup, he consciously seeks out a darker-skinned wife that "was jus’ as much" like Emma as possible) (348).