by Alice Childress

Alice Childress was born in Charleston, South Carolina, but grew up in the racially segregated Harlem district of New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. By the early 1970s, when Childress's novel takes place, the civil rights movement had improved the political situation of African Americans. Living conditions, however, remained just as squalid in Harlem and other urban areas of the United States as they had been before the movement. Furthermore, opportunities for African Americans were still severely limited by racism. Some of the era's young people, as shown in A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich, escaped from its harsh pressures by turning to heroin.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

Urban blacks in the early 1970s. The gains made by African Americans as a result of the...