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Mine Eyes Have Seen is a play by Alice Dunbar Nelson the wife of America's first nationally recognized poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.[1] It was published in April 1918 edition of the monthly news magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) entitled The Crisis.[2] Nelson examined the idea that the black man's service to his country and his race required his life as a response to the Selective Service Act of 1917.
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| Written by | Alice Dunbar Nelson |
| Characters |
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| Original language | English |
| Subject | Jingoism, African American rights |
| Genre | Drama |
| Setting | 1918, a manufacturing city in the northern part of the United States |
Plot summary
editChris has been drafted
Lucy and Dan’s dependence on Chris
Father murdered by whites in south so they fled to north
Dan crippled in factory and Mother dies
neighbors offer advice on drafting
Lucy does as well in favor of him going
Chris decides to become a soldier and Battle of the Hymn of the Republic plays
Characters
editCritical approaches
editWritten for a white audience
edittransferring personal experiences to white protagonists
Individual vs group identities
editunifying individual identities
destroying the idea of maintaining categories that separate individual from group along racial lines
Themes
editPatriotism
editAfrican American Masculinity During WWI
military service used to refute racial disparities in the US
Selective Service Act
patriotism enabling justification of 14th amendment rights for black males
establishes similarities between military service and lynching
black male body and use in war, adding value
Inspirations
edit”abolitionist marching song references African American participation in previous wars, as it was originally used to recruit black soldiers in the Civil War” (1)
affirmation of american christian doctrine
Character
edit"Though mostly poor, the characters are decent, respectable, and above-all well-spoken"
elimination of African American dialect
Production history
editThe Crisis
editexemplified patriotism towards WWI and the African American males place in it
Called the nation out in its racist home front
introducing cultural importance of black people through higher arts over minstrel shows
References
edit- ^ Hull, Gloria (1980). "Researching Alice Dunbar-Nelson: A Personal and Literary Perspective". Feminist Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2.
- ^ Wood, Bethany (2010). "War and Reclamation: Alice Dunbar-Nelson's Mine Eyes Have Seen and The Crisis's Campaign to Reclaim Black Masculinity in a Nation at War". New England Theatre Journal.