In an essay entitled "A Criticism of the Negro Drama" (1928), Eulalie Spence named Paul Robeson, Rose McClendon, Florence Mills, and others as performers who had reached an undeniable place of prominence in the theater. She could name no black dramatists of comparable status. Garland Anderson and Willis Richardson had appeared briefly on the scene in the early 1920s, but neither had established himself as a professional playwright. If black playwrights were to emerge and provide plays for blacks to perform, Spence suggested, they must "portray the life of their people, their foibles, their sorrows, ambitions, and defeats; that these portrayals be told with tenderness and skill and a knowledge of the theatre and the technique of the times." Even as she offered her challenge, S. Randolph Edmonds was making his first excursions into playwriting.

Edmonds, considered the dean of black educational theater in America, contributed more than any...