She is a playwright of the Harlem Renaissance era and is best known for her allegorical comedy,The Church Fight, written in 1925.

[2] In 1925, when Gaines-Shelton was just a grandmother she submitted her play, The Church Fight, to a playwrighting contest sponsored by The Crisis.

Additionally, her play was performed by The Krigwa Players in the basement of Harlem’s 135th Street Library.

The play was performed alongside another winner of the crisis magazine, The Broken Banjo.

Comedies were not commonly done during the Harlem Renaissance era because of ongoing racial struggles, World War I, and the economic challenges as the depression approached.

The characters in the play symbolize abstract categories: Investigator, Judas, Instigator, Experience, Take-It-Back, and Two-Face.

Gaines-Shelton uses the most valued and highly regarded place to the Black community, the church, and satirizes the most common activity among church members, gossip, to create an experience that Black audience members described as watching a “slice of life”.