The Purple Flower, which first appeared in Crisis magazine in January 1928, is the second of three plays published by Bonner. The first, The Pot Maker, appeared in Opportunity magazine in 1927, and the third, Exit-An Illusion, was published in The Crisis in 1929. Bonner received first prize in the 1927 Crisis Contest Awards for The Purple Flower, as well as for Exit Joyce Flynn comments in Frye Street and Environs that Bonner's dramas are all "morality plays," which "continue her exploration of the black American as Everyman/Everywoman."

Flynn refers to The Purple Flower as "Bonner's allegory of the black quest for freedom and happiness in post-Emancipation North America." She goes on to state, "The Purple Flower deals, on one level, with black aspiration and the relevance of the myth of the American melting pot. On another level, the drama seems to assume the inevitability of violent racial revolution...