Joe turner's Come and Gone - Center Stage

Next Stage Resource Guide
Joe turner’s
Come and Gone
by August Wilson
Directed by Derrick Sanders
Dec 7, 2007–Jan 13, 2008
The Pearlstone Theater

Contents
Setting the Stage 3
Cast/Foreword 4
Call and Response 5
A Show of Hands 6
Seeing the Inconceivable 8
Staging a “Mistake” 10
Hot Biscuits and Coffee 11
The Blues Story of “Joe Turner” 13
Glossary 14
Bibliography 16
Joe Turner’s
Come and Gone
by August Wilson
Derrick Sanders Director
Neil Patel Scenic Designer
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Christine Pascual Costume Designer
Thom Weaver Lighting Designer
Ray Nardelli Sound Designer/Composer
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Eli Dawson Casting Director
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Set ting the STage
Joe Turner’s Come and gone
by Shannon M. Davis, New Media Manager
Characters:
Seth Holly, a boarding house owner
Bertha Holly, his wife
Bynum Walker, a conjure man and rootworker
Jeremy Furlow, a young musician recently arrived from North Carolina
Herald Loomis, a former prisoner on a chain gang
Zonia Loomis, his eleven-year-old daughter
Mattie Campbell, a young woman recently arrived from Texas
Molly Cunningham, a young woman on her way to Cincinnati
Rutherford Selig, a traveling tinker and People Finder
Reuben Mercer, a young neighbor boy
Martha Pentecost, a friend of the Hollys
Setting:
The Hollys’ boarding house in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, August 1911.
Herald Loomis has lost something. Not only his wife, though he’s looking for her when he turns up
at Seth Holly’s boarding house with his young daughter in tow. It’s obvious to everyone who meets
Loomis that he’s a man diminished, but only conjure man Bynum Walker can name it: “Now I can look
at you, Mr. Loomis, and see you a man who done forgot his song. Forgot how to sing it. A fellow forget that
and he forget who he is.” That should come as no surprise after seven years unjustly imprisoned on a chain
gang; but since his release, Loomis has been working doggedly to care for his daughter, Zonia, and track down
Martha, the wife left behind when he was kidnapped.
Loomis’ search goes deeper than the desire to rebuild his family: he’s a man without purpose, struggling to
readjust to a world he was stolen from and to his uncertain place within it. His literal and figurative odysseys
are the driving force behind Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, chronologically the second installment of August
Wilson’s epic cycle. Loomis isn’t alone, however—the Hollys’ rooming house is bustling with the wayfarers
of the Great Migration, as the children of new-found freedom travel North to opportunity. Their journeys
intersect with Loomis’ as they form their own impromptu family. Guitar-playing country boy Jeremy romances
heartbroken Mattie as well as cosmopolitan Molly. Bynum the rootworker uses his Binding Song to help bring
lost people back together. Bertha Holly mothers them all from the kitchen, while her husband, Seth, keeps an
eye on their comings and goings, supplementing his income by working metal for Rutherford Selig, a White
peddler dabbling as a People Finder.
But when Loomis—at his darkest and struggling to find his way—suffers a terrifying vision of the Middle
Passage, it is only Bynum who is able to help guide him through. Bynum’s conviction that loss can be a
gain—that Loomis’ search for his wife may lead him back to himself and his missing “song” of purpose—is the
catalyst for Loomis’ transformation from a lost wanderer to someone who just may have the Secret of Life.
Join our continuing engagement with August Wilson and the journey of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. This
was the first Wilson play produced at CENTERSTAGE, illuminating our 1988–89 Season and featuring then-
Baltimore School for the Arts student Jada Pinkett Smith. As with many of Wilson’s plays, Joe Turner has fast
become a modern classic, and its central questions of identity, healing, and the meaning of family resonate as
strongly as ever.•
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone |

The Cast
(in order of appearance)
James A. Williams*
Seth Holly
Myra Lucretia Taylor*
Bertha Holly
Cedric Young*
Bynum Walker
Michael Medeiros*
Rutherford Selig
Rob Riley*
Jeremy Furlow
Javon Johnson*
Herald Loomis
Reign Edwards or
Miah Marie Patterson
Zonia Loomis
Roslyn Ruff*
Mattie Campbell
Marquis D. Moody or
Neiman A. Outlen
Reuben Mercer
Bakesta King*
Molly Cunningham
Donnetta Lavinia Grays*
Martha Pentecost
Mike Schleifer*
Stage Manager
Laura Smith*
Stage Manager
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association
There will be one
15-minute intermission.
It is August in Pittsburgh, 1911.
The sun falls out of heaven like a stone.
The fires of the steel mill rage with a combined sense of industry
and progress. Barges loaded with coal and iron ore trudge up
the river to the mill towns that dot the Monongahela and return
with fresh, hard, gleaming steel. The city flexes its muscles. Men
throw countless bridges across the rivers, lay roads and carve
tunnels through the hills sprouting with houses. From the deep
and the near South the sons and daughters of newly freed African
slaves wander into the city. Isolated, cut off from memory, having
forgotten the names of the gods and only guessing at their faces,
they arrive dazed and stunned, their heart kicking in their chest
with a song worth singing. They arrive carrying Bibles and guitars,
their pockets lined with dust and fresh hope, marked men and
women seeking to scrape from the narrow, crooked cobbles and the
fiery blasts of the coke furnace a way of bludgeoning and shaping
the malleable parts of themselves into a new identity as free men
of definite and sincere worth. Foreigners in a strange land, they
carry as part and parcel of their baggage a long line of separation
and dispersement which informs their sensibilities and marks their
conduct as they search for ways to reconnect, to reassemble, to
give clear and luminous meaning to the song which is
both a wail and a whelp of joy.
—August Wilson
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone |

Call and Response:
Q&A with Production Dramaturg Faedra Chatard Carpenter
CENTERSTAGE: What makes August
Wilson’s works relevant today
Faedra Chatard Carpenter: Although Wilson
is often noted for work that addresses
African American culture through a historic
lens (the plays in his “decade-cycle” are set
between the years of 1904 and 1997), his
plays dramatize issues that are still very
relevant to our contemporary moment. The
beauty of Wilson’s dramaturgy is that there
are particular topics and concerns that he
consistently visits (and revisits) throughout
the breadth of his canon. Themes such as
slavery and imprisonment, religion and
spirituality, music and creative expression,
male/female relationships, gentrification
and entrepreneurship, and communal
allegiance and betrayal are filtered
throughout the work, thereby revealing
how much has—and has not—changed in
the course of each succeeding decade. In so
doing, Wilson’s decade cycle offers us the
opportunity to celebrate our progress as
well as consider what issues still demand
our critical attention.
CS: What is August Wilson telling African
Americans about themselves
FCC: While Wilson focuses on African
American characters and cultural
experiences in his plays, I think it’s
important to note that his work isn’t
strictly for African Americans. Rather,
Wilson’s plays carry with them messages
and meaning for those within as well as
outside of the African diaspora. Like the
celebrated African American visual artist
Romare Bearden—whom Wilson often
referred to as a major influence on his own
writing—Wilson’s work reflects the belief
that: 1) African American life and culture
are worthy of attention and affirmation;
and 2) One can explore “the universal”
through the specific, meaning that the
commonalities among all people can be
powerfully articulated through the lens of
a particular community.
With that being said, however, I do
believe that a major message for African
Americans in Wilson’s plays is to “know
thyself.” Part of this is about knowing and
appreciating your past: understanding
the obstacles overcome by those that
came before you as well as recognizing
the wealth of your culture and the
contributions it has made to society-atlarge.
The other part of this, however, is to
really know yourself as an individual within
the community collective. August Wilson’s
work portrays families and communities,
but—like all good drama—he explores the
various worldviews and disparities that
distinguish characters from one another. By
dramatizing these different perspectives,
Wilson often proposes two distinct ways
of thinking, both of which have compelling
points. Although we can usually deduce
which way is “right,” it’s never cut-anddried,
thereby encouraging all audience
members to consider how they would
position themselves within a like situation.
CS: Why do you view him as one of
the most important African American
playwrights of the 20 th Century
FCC: Wilson is certainly acknowledged
as one of the most important African
American playwrights of the 20 th Century,
but—even more significantly—he’s one of
the most important American playwrights
of the 20 th Century. The timelessness of
his plays, their poetic lyricism, memorable
characters, and substantive subject
matter—all of these things make Wilson
an exceptional dramatist. But there’s more:
Wilson’s decade cycle is an unprecedented
and tremendous feat not only because he
actually completed it, but because of the
consistent quality of the work.
Furthermore, Wilson’s work opened the
doors for so many artists—directors,
designers, actors—whose talents were
finally witnessed and acknowledged due to
their exposure through an August Wilson
play. Likewise, innumerable playwrights
of color were finally given a chance at a
“mainstream” theater because Wilson’s
broad acceptance demonstrated that
there would be a wider audience for their
work. So, it’s not an exaggeration to say
that August Wilson changed the landscape
of American Theater: in terms of both
the dramatic literary canon and theater
practice and production.•
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone |

A Show of Hands:
The Imprint of Romare Bearden
on the Works of August Wilson
Romare Bearden, Mill Hand’s Lunch Bucket, 1978.
by Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Production Dramaturg, and
Regina Pisasale, Freelance Dramaturg
In countless interviews throughout his life, Wilson cited
“The Four B’s”—Blues music, Amiri Baraka, Jorge Luis
Borges, and Romare Bearden—as instrumental in the
shaping of his artistic vision. Among these “Four B’s,”
the work of African American artist Romare Bearden
may have had the greatest—or at least the most
obvious—impact. It is frequently noted that Wilson’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson was inspired
by one of two Bearden collages (both depicting a young
girl receiving a “piano lesson” from an older woman). 1
Less known, however, is the fact that Bearden’s direct
influence is also manifested in other Wilson plays:
Continuities (1969), a collage featuring a large man
holding an infant, served as the inspiration for Fences;
while Mill Hand’s Lunch Bucket and Miss Bertha and
Mr. Seth (both 1978) contributed to the creation of Joe
Turner’s Come and Gone.
Wilson first discovered the art of Romare Bearden in 1977,
when his friend, the director Claude Purdy, introduced him
to Bearden’s book, The Prevalence of Ritual:
[The Prevalence of Ritual] lay open on the table…I looked.
What for me had been so difficult, Bearden made seem so
simple, so easy. What I saw was black life presented on its
own terms, on a grand and epic scale, with all its richness
and fullness, in a language that was vibrant and which,
made attendant to everyday life, ennobled it, affirmed its
value, and exalted its presence…I was looking at myself in
ways I hadn’t thought of before and have never ceased to
think of since. 2
A year later, Wilson saw a picture of Mill Hand’s Lunch
Bucket in a magazine and was immediately struck by the
melancholy figure in the center of the collage:
In the center of this painting was this man sitting in a
chair with his coat and hat on, in this posture of abject
defeat, and there is a man reaching for his lunch bucket.
There is a child who is drinking a glass of milk, and there
is a woman standing with a purse as if she is about to
go shopping. And I looked at that, and I said, “Everyone is
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone |

“[T]hat’s my workshed. I go out there…
take these hands and make something
out of nothing. Take that metal and
bend and twist it whatever way I want.”
—Seth, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
“All my life I been looking for somebody
to stop and stay with me…I take Jack
Carper’s hand and it feel so rough and
strong. Seem like he’s the strongest
man in the world the way he hold me.
Like he’s bigger than the whole world
and can’t nothing bad get to me.”
— Mattie, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
“I looked over and seen my daddy
standing there. He was the same size
he always was, except for his hands
and his mouth…his hands were as big
as hams. Look like they was too big to
carry around.”
—Bynum, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
going to leave. The man is going to work, and the woman
is going shopping, and the kid is going to drink the milk
and go out, and this man is going to be left in there in
this posture. And what he needs most is human contact.”
And then I began to wonder who he was and why he was
sitting there like that, and I said, “I am going to animate
this boarding house and make the boarding house come
alive and give these characters names and find out who
this guy is and what is his story.” 3
At this same time, Wilson was working on a collection
of poems, “Restoring the House.” In this series, Wilson
chronicled the story of a freed man searching for his
enslaved wife who had been sold from Mississippi to a
plantation in Georgia a few years before Emancipation.
Struck by the idea of characters searching for one another,
and the need for someone to “heal them and bind them
together,” the storyline for Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
began to crystallize.
A true Bearden aficionado, Wilson was not only influenced
by the artist’s collages but also derived inspiration from
Bearden’s life experiences. In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,
for example, Wilson’s vision of the Holly boarding house
was partly formed by memories of his grandmother’s
boarding house, but it was also informed by the drawings
Bearden had made of his grandmother’s Pennsylvania
boarding house. Furthermore, Wilson pays homage to
Bearden’s life by actually representing Bearden through
the young character of Reuben in Joe Turner. Like Reuben,
Bearden had a sickly, childhood friend named Eugene who
collected pigeons. The terminally ill Eugene made young
Bearden promise that when Eugene died Bearden would set
his pigeons free—a promise kept in Wilson’s play as it was
in real life.
While Bearden’s influence appears in the broad strokes of
Wilson’s dramaturgy and inspiration, common elements
can also be found in the finer details. For example, both
artists are known for embracing—and repeatedly returning
to—a particular set of motifs and images. These include the
Blues, migration, trains, guitars, and out-of-scale physicality.
As noted by Wilson scholar Joan Herrington, both men use
“simple images and symbols, but [endow them] with great
significance.” 4 Wilson himself observed that Bearden’s
work often depicts “a huge oversized hand on a small
body,” 5 and his plays follow suit, repeatedly emphasizing
the skills, strength, and size of their characters’ hands. In
Fences, for instance, Wilson describes Troy as having “thick
heavy hands;” in The Piano Lesson, Boy Willie remarks on his
father’s “big old hands;” in Gem of the Ocean, Aunt
Ester recalls that her son, Junebug, “Had big hands;” and
in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Reuben tells Zonia about
seeing a ghost who “just had on that white dress and
them big hands.”
Of course, it would be erroneous to suggest that the
fullness of Wilson’s characters or plays could be gleaned
merely from a textual study of hands. Nevertheless, we
can certainly gain a more nuanced understanding of
Wilson’s playwriting by examining how he uses the
imagery of hands—and, more broadly, draws on the life and
artistic vision of Romare Bearden—to enrich his dramatic
explorations of labor, love, and legacy within the African
American experience. Finding in Bearden’s work a world
that depicts “men with huge hands and hearts, pressing
on life until it gave back something in kinship,” 6 August
Wilson also found his own inspiration: he, too, animates
characters who press on through life’s hardships, held
together by their sense of community and guided by the
hands of their ancestors. •
1
Many scholars and artists, including Wilson himself, cite the
Bearden collage Piano Lesson (1983) as the inspiration for
Wilson’s play of the same name. Others, however, credit the
strikingly similar lithograph Homage to Mary Lou (1984) as
the original inspiration.
2
Mark William Rocha: “August Wilson and the
Four B’s: Influences,” in August Wilson: A Case Study, ed.
Marilyn Elkins, pp. 10-11.
3
August Wilson, Conversations With August Wilson, p. 111.
4
Joan Herrington, I Ain’t Sorry for Nothin’ I Done, p. 24.
5
Rocha, p. 11.
6
August Wilson, “Foreword,” in Romare Bearden: His Life & Art,
ed. Myron Schwartzman, p. 9.
Top left: Two details from Romare Bearden’s Miss Bertha and Mr. Seth
(1978). Upper right: Details from Bearden’s The Family Dinner (1968) and
Evening Meal of the Prophet Peterson (1964).
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone |

Seeing the
Inconceivable:
Visions of the
Middle Passage
Compiled by Faedra Chatard Carpenter,
Production Dramaturg
The shrieks of the women,
and the groans of the dying,
rendered a scene of horror
almost inconceivable.
—Olaudah Equiano,
The Life of Olaudah Equiano
A woman pitched her baby
overboard into the waters
below us. At least two men
tried to follow, straining
against their chains….
—Charles Johnson, Middle Passage
The air soon became unfit for
respiration…. This wretched
situation was again aggravated by
the galling of the chains, now become
insupportable; and the filth of the
tubs, into which the children fell….
—Olaudah Equiano,
The Life of Olaudah Equiano
BYNUM
What you done seen, Herald Loomis
LOOMIS
I done seen bones rise up out the water.
Rise up and walk across the water.
Bones walking on top
of the water.
BYNUM
Tell me about them bones, Herald
Loomis. Tell me what you seen.
LOOMIS
I come to this place…to this water that
was bigger than the whole world. And I
looked out…and I seen these bones rise
up out the water. Rise up and begin to
walk on top of it.
BYNUM
What happened, Herald Loomis
What happened to the bones
LOOMIS
They just walking across the water…
and then…they sunk down.
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone |

LOOMIS
When they sink down they made a big
splash and this here wave come up…
BYNUM
A big wave, Herald Loomis. A big
wave washed over the land.
LOOMIS
It washed them out of the water and
up on the land. Only…only…
BYNUM
Only they ain’t bones no more.
LOOMIS
They got flesh on them!
Just like you and me!
BYNUM
Everywhere you look the waves is
washing them up on the land right on
top of one another.
LOOMIS
They black. Just like you and me.
Ain’t no difference.
Some throw themselves
into the sea, others hit
their heads against the
ship, others hold their
breath to try and smother
themselves, others still
try to die of hunger
from not eating.
—Jacques Savory, Le Parfait Négociant
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone |

Staging a “Mistake”
August Wilson on the Great Migration
by Dr. Sandra G. Shannon, Howard University
The Great Migration refers to a period [beginning in the
early 20 th Century] when millions of African Americans
moved out of the rural South to large industrial cities—
such as New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago,
St. Louis, and Los Angeles—as well as to many smaller ones.
Whether traveling by foot, by wagon, or by rail; whether
moving in the safety of small groups or entire families; or
whether risking the trip alone, streams of men, women, and
children left the South in huge numbers on their way to the
supposed “Promised Land” of the North.
August Wilson regarded this mass exodus of African
Americans from the cotton and tobacco fields of the
South as a huge mistake. In the wake of the South’s
failing economy, deceptive advertising campaigns fueled
wild rumors about the North having plentiful and better
paying jobs as well as excellent opportunities for an overall
improvement in the quality of life. Such lies enticed hordes
of skilled and unskilled laborers to
join the human highway going North.
Unfortunately, many would wind up
homeless, poor, hungry, and out of work.
Wilson told one journalist,
We came to the North, and we’re still
victims of discrimination and oppression in
the North. The real reason that the people left
was a search for jobs, because the agriculture, cotton
agriculture in particular, could no longer support us. But
the move to the cities has not been a good move. Today…
we still don’t have jobs. The last time blacks in America
were working was during the Second World War, when
there was a need for labor, and it did not matter what
color you were. 1
To some extent, each installment of Wilson’s ten-play cycle
underscores lingering ramifications of this mistake. Many
of his transplanted Southern characters are tormented,
restless nomads who desperately try to escape their
traumatic past, only to make their way North—where
they suffer from a host of psychic and physical wounds,
even death. Set in either Pittsburgh or Chicago, each play
captures the bluesy impulses of the Southern Negro’s
initiation into the Northern way of life.
NorthSouth
A close examination of these plays reveals that Wilson’s
migrants who commit the unforgivable mistake of leaving
their Southern homes suffer from an extensive catalogue
of physical and psychological maladies: propensities toward
self-mutilation and scarring; unexplained convulsions;
muted speech; recurring nightmarish visions; kidnapping
and prolonged periods of incarceration; insurmountable
family strife caused by infidelity, abuse, and abandonment;
splintering and dissolution of the nuclear family structure;
deferred dreams; and various manifestations of mental
trauma, such as schizophrenia, incoherent speech, or
dementia. Wilson described the afflicted ones as “foreigners
in a strange land,” as “the sons and daughters of newly
freed slaves,” and as “marked men and
women seeking to scrape from the
narrow, crooked cobbles…a way of
bludgeoning and shaping the
malleable parts of themselves
into a new identity as free men
of definite and sincere worth.” 2
In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
in particular, the impact of the
Great Migration is pervasive.
The play demonstrates the
profound and lasting negative
impact that fragmentation
has had on both African
American culture in general and
on the African American family
in particular. For example, Seth and
Bertha Holly’s 1911 boarding house
serves both as a business establishment
for laborers who find work at nearby steel
mills and as a way station or halfway house for
the seemingly endless flow of tormented, restless, and
Above left: Jacob Lawrence, panel 3 of
the Migration Series, 1940-1941.
Above right: A family just arrived
in Chicago from the rural South.
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | 10

detached transients just up from the South. The traumas
of slavery, dislocation, and migration wreak havoc on this
errant population. For them, this welcoming business
establishment signals much more than a temporary
shelter. The Hollys’ residential business becomes an oasis
that allows them to heal while gaining sustenance and
directions before resuming their separate journeys.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone typifies the debt that Wilson’s
characters have to pay for their irreverent decisions to
abandon the agrarian South in favor of the North’s concrete
jungle. Throughout his entire cycle of plays, Wilson is
consistent in revealing the apocalyptic and tragic results
of what he deems African Americans’ Original Sin. On rare
occasions, his “marked” characters are able to avoid the
inevitable doom of their mistake. A few are able to regain
their footing and find their songs in time to get on with
their lives. Unfortunately, such characters seem to be the
exception rather than the norm. Southern migrants in
August Wilson’s ten plays, as a rule, either perish in the
North or become part of its human refuse.•
1
“August Wilson.” A World of Ideas: Conversations with
Thoughtful Men and Women, pp. 167-80.
2
August Wilson, “The Play,” Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Pittsburgh’s Hill District (location of
the Holly boarding house), ca. 1910.
J. Trent Alexander. “The Great Migration in Comparative
Perspective: Interpreting the Urban Origins of Southern Black
Migrants to Depression-Era Pittsburgh.” Social Science History
22.3 (Autumn 1998): 349-76.
Carole Marks. Farewell—We’re Good and Gone: The Great
Black Migration. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989.
Sandra Shannon. “A Transplant that Did Not Take: August
Wilson’s Views on the Great Migration.” African American
Review 31.4 (Winter 1997): 659-66.
Hot Biscuits
and Coffee:
Bertha Holly
as Cultural Worker
by Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson,
University of Maryland, College Park
Excerpted from “Selling More than Biscuits and Hot Coffee:
Performing Gender and Food in August Wilson’s
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”
In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, new migrants to
Pittsburgh find their way to the Holly boarding house.
There they are greeted by Seth Holly’s declaration that
room and board is $2 a week. They are also greeted
with the gracious hospitality of his wife, Bertha. Boarders
or visitors, guests can be sure that she will offer a cup of
coffee and a biscuit. She nurtures her tenants and seems
genuinely concerned with their well-being. But more than
a caretaker, Bertha is also a cultural worker. As historian
Bernice Johnson Reagon has observed,
Women were the heads of their communities, the keepers
of tradition. The lives of these women were defined by
their culture, the needs of their communities, and the
people they served[;] they accepted the responsibility
when the opportunity was offered—when they were
chosen. There is the element of transformation in all of
their work…. These women, however, became central to
evolving the structure for resolving areas of conflict and
maintaining, sometimes creating, an identity that was
independent of a society organized to exploit natural
resources, people, and land. 1
Often overlooked by critics is the importance of Bertha’s
work. Yet in the opening scene of Joe Turner, as in most of
the subsequent scenes, Bertha is busy helping her guests
to break their morning fast. More than providing a piece of
bread and a cup of drink, Bertha is assisting in the transition
process of new arrivals from the South.
During the periods following slavery, large numbers of
Blacks migrated North, bringing their Southern mores.
Unable to find or afford their accustomed dietary staples,
migrants turned to their fellow African Americans or
enlisted the assistance of mutual aid societies to help them
adapt. Bertha consistently offers her Northern hospitality
in the form of food: some “good biscuits,” along with gravy,
grits, and fried chicken—all foods associated with the
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | 11

American South. As
Sarah Belk states,
“eggs fried in bacon
drippings, escorted
by country ham,
hot biscuits, grits
with butter and
red-eye gravy, and
a cup of coffee so
hot that the less
acquainted might
term it ‘scalding’—
aren’t merely
the makings
of a Southern
breakfast, they’re
the substance of a Southern lifeblood.” 2 We learn little, if
anything, about Bertha’s origins. But years of operating a
rooming house have made her aware of the ways in which
certain foods help to bring comfort and a touch of the
familiar to weary migrants. Regardless of the assimilation
processes that migrants were forced to undergo, and the
changes that they were encouraged to make, they also
needed something solidly Southern to remain in place.
Bertha offers this refuge in her food and in her home.
For a family like the Hollys, taking in boarders provided
a way to augment their income. With that extra income,
though, came extra effort, largely at Bertha’s expense; for
what was not produced at home still had to be prepared.
Chickens from the market had to be killed or plucked, fish
had to be scaled, and hams—for those who could afford
them—had to be soaked to remove the salt. Despite the
availability of mass-produced items, coffee still had to be
ground and roasted, sugar pounded, and flour sifted to
remove particles. Whether from the garden or the market,
the labor-intensive nature of food preparation cannot be
underestimated. No wonder Bertha is glad of the help
young Zonia Loomis can offer.
Hidden in the folds of Bertha’s culinary talents, recipes,
and social graces are the stories of those who used
their domestic skills in an informal market economy to
provide goods and services—legal and illegal—to make
a life for their families, buy their freedom, or simply
provide enough to eat. Faced with difficult economic
circumstances and seeing a niche in the market, many
Blacks turned to the underground economy for security.
With industrial expansion came a need for living spaces
for more mobile populations. For African Americans, the
search for housing was made more difficult by race and
gender considerations. So African American women and
men opened makeshift motels and boarding houses, whose
tenants would otherwise have nowhere to live in the Jim
Crow North. Some found their way to these houses through
advertisements in such Black-owned newspapers as the
Pittsburgh Courier or by using The Negro Motorist Green
Book; 3 but most would have arrived by word-of-mouth.
In exchange for cash and the latest news from the wider
world, they would receive food, bed, and perhaps a touch
of home; providing entertainment and liquor along with
a plate of chicken and collard greens was as much a part
of the exchange as the overnight fee. These Black boarding
houses became part of the network that humanized
the African American travel experience throughout the
Great Migration.
While the meals and domestic skills provided by Bertha
might seem incidental to the larger workings of Joe Turner’s
Come and Gone, they deserve better and closer attention.
The work of Black women like Bertha helped to maintain
Southern traditions and establish continuity for new
migrants in a strange land. Through her biscuits and her
hospitality, Bertha becomes a reminder of the left-behind
Southern culture, a binding agent against the fractures of
the Black diaspora. She affirms her position not only as a
cultural worker, but also as a cultural transmitter.•
1
Bernice Johnson Reagon, “African Diaspora Women: The
Making of Cultural Workers,” in Women in Africa and the
African Diaspora, ed. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, et. al., pp. 168-69.
2
Sarah Belk, Around the Southern Table, p. 335.
3
The Negro Motorist Green Book was a guide or pamphlet
issued by the United States Travel Bureau that contained a list
of designations (bars, service stations, lodgings) which were
amenable to African American patrons.
Above: Romare Bearden’s
schematic drawing of
three floors of his maternal
grandmother’s boarding house
in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania.
Right: Evening Meal of the
Prophet Peterson, 1964.
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | 12

The Blues Story of “Joe Turner”
by Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Production Dramaturg
Known by many as
“The Father of the Blues,”
W. C. Handy (1873–1958)
composed some of the first Blues
songs ever recorded. Among his
most popular and commercially
successful was “Joe Turner Blues,”
inspired by the inequitable
actions of the legendary lawman,
Joe Turney, brother of Tennessee
governor Pete Turney.
Protected by his brother’s
position and aided by the institutionalized racism of the
South, Joe Turney was among those who participated in
the practice of imprisoning Black men in order to profit
from their unpaid labor. As W. C. Handy explained, the
ominous figure of Joe Turney was woven into the tapestry
of Black folklore under the name of “Joe Turner”:
When you speak of the story of the Blues, we can’t tell
it without the story of Joe Turner…Joe Turney was the
brother of Pete Turney, governor of the state of
Tennessee, who pressed Negroes into peonage and took
them down the Mississippi River to the farms. To do
this, they had decoys that lured Negroes in Memphis
to crap games where they were arrested and put into
prison. Women looking for their husbands who were
late coming home would ask, “I wonder where my
husband is” Then they would be told, “Haven’t you
heard about Joe Turner He’s been here and gone. He
had a long chain with 50 links to it where he could
press Negroes in handcuffs and take them away.”
So the Negroes around Memphis made up a song...
They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone.
Oh, Lordy,
Tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone.
Oh, Lordy
Got my man and gone.
Informed by the words and music of Handy as well as the
collage-work of Romare Bearden, August Wilson brilliantly
brings together pieces of African American history, folklore,
and music to create the story behind Herald Loomis’ long
absence. In so doing, Wilson created what he considered
to be his best play: the Blues-induced, “breathing collage”
known as Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. •
By Negro Chain Gangs.
That is How Atlanta is Preparing for
Her Cotton Exposition—Men Thrown Into
Prison and Given Long Sentences Only
to Get Their Labor for Nothing.
An astonishing story of Negro
oppression and injustice was told on
Friday to a Tribune reporter by a man
who recently returned from Atlanta.
Negroes to the number of 500 or more
were taken from the jail at Brunswick
to Atlanta in shackles and put to work.
It was common talk in the city that a
large number of them had been thrown
into prison for chicken stealing,
disorderly conduct, drunkenness and
various trumped-up charges and were
made to serve out long terms, working
on the exposition grounds. A big
The Cleveland Gazette, September 17, 1902.

Glossary
Abraham Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809–April 15,
1865) was the 16 th President of the United States, serving from
March 4, 1861 until his death on April 15, 1865. As an outspoken
opponent of the expansion of slavery, he won the Republican
Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president later
that year. During his term, he presided over the American
Civil War against the secessionist Confederacy. He introduced
measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing the
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage
of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.
Freedom Papers: Also known as Manumission Papers, Freedom
Papers were documents that proved the freed status of
formerly enslaved African Americans.
Blawknox: Blaw-Knox is one of the most prominent
manufacturers of road paving equipment in the world. It was
formed from two companies (Blaw and Knox) and eventually
purchased by White Consolidated Industries. Located in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Bones People: In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Herald Loomis
experiences a terrifying vision of “Bones walking on top of the
water”—Wilson’s poetic allusion to the enslaved Africans who
died during the Middle Passage. Later in the play, Loomis refers
to Bynum as one of those “bones people” and, in doing so, not
only references Bynum’s spiritual connection to his African
ancestors, but also references the tools used in the conjure
man’s spiritual practices. Of note: In Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean
(set in 1904), the spiritual leader, Aunt Ester, helps Citizen
Barlow journey to the “City of Bones,” where he, too, is privy to
a vision of the Middle Passage and the underwater “city” of his
fallen ancestors.
Brady Street
Bridge: Built over
the Monongahela
River to connect
the mouth of
Brady Street on the
Pittsburgh side with
the South Side’s
South 22 nd Street.
Clodhoppers: Heavy, rustic shoes. Also used as a term to
describe individuals deemed to be lacking in sophistication—
“country bumpkins.”
Curse prayer: A malignant prayer or invocation intended to
bring harm, misfortune, injury, or great evil to another person,
place, thing, clan, or nation. People are also said to be cursed
if harm comes to them regularly or in seeming disproportion
to others.
Middle Passage: A portion of the “triangular” transatlantic
trade route used by English slave traders. Traveling across the
Atlantic Ocean, slave ships went from Britain to Africa, after
which they would take both enslaved Africans and goods to
the West Indies, the Caribbean, and North America before
returning to Britain. Culturally, the Middle Passage carries
the weight of the torturous hardship and inhumane cruelty
inherent in the slave trade and the transportation of its victims.
Great Migration: The migration of thousands of African
Americans fleeing racism and poverty in the South for
(supposedly) better lives in the North. The Great Migration
created the first large, urban Black communities in the
North—with cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York,
and Cleveland experiencing the largest increases. Railroad
companies were so desperate for help that they paid African
Americans’ travel expenses, while labor agents traveled to
the South to encourage Blacks to leave and go find jobs in the
North. Despite the potential of better jobs and better housing
in the North, the challenges remained daunting for many of the
new arrivals. The stream of migrants continued, however, until
the Great Depression and World War II cut into the demand for
workers.
Joe Turner: The unseen yet looming character in Wilson’s
play, inspired by the real-life Joe Turney. Joe Turney was the
brother of Tennessee governor Pete Turney, who, at the end of
the 19 th Century, captured and imprisoned Black men to work
on his plantation. It was not unusual for “convict” and “chain
gang” workers to be captured on the mere premise that they
had been involved in illegal behaviors, rather than in response
to any actual offense. African American men could be, and
often were, imprisoned for minor and innocuous offenses, or
>>>
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strategically lured into gambling to justify their incarceration.
From this systematized neo-slavery, plantations and other
industries benefited from the work of these prisoners.
Jonah and the Whale: In the
Hebrew Bible, the Book of
Jonah is the fifth book in a
series of books called the Minor
Prophets. The plot centers on
a conflict between Jonah and
God. God calls Jonah to proclaim
judgment to Nineveh, but Jonah
resists and attempts to flee. He
goes to Joppa and boards a ship
bound for Tarshish. God calls up
a great storm at sea, and the
ship’s crew cast Jonah overboard
in an attempt to appease God. A great fish (usually thought of
as a whale), sent by God, swallows Jonah. For three days and
three nights Jonah languishes inside the creature’s belly. He
repents his disobedience and calls upon God for mercy. God
speaks to the fish, which vomits out Jonah safely on dry land.
After his rescue, Jonah obeys the call to prophesy against the
people of Nineveh; they repent, and God forgives them.
Juba: A dance of African American slaves, found throughout
the Caribbean and the southern United States. It is danced
by a circle of men around two men who perform various
steps (e.g., the juba, the long dog scratch, the pigeon wing) in
response to a rhythmic call and to the clapping (patting juba)
of the other dancers.
Outhouse: An outhouse
(also known as a privy, kybo,
jakes, or earth-closet) is a type of
toilet, without flush or sewer, in a
small structure separate from the
main building.
Pentecostal: Often associated
with working-class Blacks, the
African American Pentecostal
faith is distinguished from other
Christian denominations by the
belief that church members must be “sanctified”—that is, they
must live a pure and holy life. The emphasis on The Book of
Acts and its doctrine regarding the “tongues of fire” is unique
to the Pentecostal faith. Pentecostals believe that the presence
of the Holy Spirit (and one’s sanctified status) can be verified
through the “speaking in tongues.” The African American
Pentecostal church has a long history of female leadership.
River Jordan: A river in Southwest Asia flowing through the
Great Rift Valley into the Dead Sea. Historically and religiously,
it is considered one of the world’s most sacred rivers. In the
Bible, crossing the River Jordan was the final step of the
Israelites’ journey out of slavery in Egypt; accordingly, the
Jordan symbolizes freedom from bondage. The river crossing is
also a symbol of death and the passage from life’s sorrows to
heaven.
Rootworkers: Rootworkers hold several tenets in common,
among them: 1) There is One God: most rootworkers believe in
one divinity that we must ultimately answer to for our actions.
Under that Supreme Being, however, there are many forces
(Orisha, Angels, Saints, Ancestors, etc.) that can be called up to
intercede on the behalf of humans. There was no conflict for
Christian rootworkers between the beliefs of the church and
their work. 2) Physical death is not final: the soul of a person
is eternal and can communicate with the living. Spirits of the
dead have extraordinary power to impart wisdom because
they have moved on to a plane where the past, the present,
and the future are one. 3) The use of divination: rootworkers
employ bones, shells, dream interpretation, the ability to
recognize omens in nature, and other forms of reading
truth—past, present, or future—in signs and symbols. This is
connected to a belief in the earth as sacred and connective.
Sharecropping: A
system of agricultural
production in which
a landowner allows a
tenant farmer to work
land in return for a share
of the crop produced.
In Reconstruction-era
America, sharecropping
worked in collaboration
with convict leasing
to keep freed slaves
subjugated in roles little
different than their former subjugation. To avoid becoming
convict laborers, farmers were forced to enter into extremely
disadvantageous sharecrop agreements that generally left
them permanently in debt to the landowner.
Voodoo: Voodoo (or hoodoo) is the American or Caribbean
form of Voudon, a religious practice originating in West Africa
and found throughout the African diaspora. The core functions
of Voodoo are to explain the forces of the universe, influence
those forces, and influence human behavior. Voodoo’s oral
tradition of faith stories carries genealogy, history, and fables
to succeeding generations. Adherents honor deities and
venerate ancient and recent ancestors.
Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | 15

Bibliogr aphy
History
Candaele, Kerry. Bound for Glory, 1919–1930. Philadelphia, 1997.
—From the Milestones in Black American History series, a fairly detailed young adults’ guide to the Great Migration with many
period photographs.
Cooper, Michael L. Bound for the Promised Land: The Great Black Migration. New York, 1995.
—An illustrated survey of the world of the South from which Black migrants fled and the Northern cities to which they flocked,
featuring both opportunities and obstacles; aimed at young adult readers.
Franklin, John Hope and Moss, Jr., Alfred A. From Slavery to Freedom. New York, 2005.
—Wonderfully detailed history and chronology of African Americans, usefully broken down into very specific categories—
including aspects of African culture in the Diaspora and the spectrum of experience geographically—North and South,
continental and Caribbean—over time.
Gottleib, Peter. Making Their Own Way. Chicago, 1987.
—From the Blacks in the New World series, a study of Southern Blacks’ migration to and arrival in Pittsburgh between 1916 and
1930, placed within the larger context of the Great Migration as a whole and the changing American urban landscape.
Sernet, Milton C. Bound for the Promised Land. Durham, NC, 1997.
—A comprehensive, somewhat dense study of the period of and around the Migration, particularly focusing on the role of
religion and spirituality and the exodus’ impact on them.
Trotter, Joe William and Smith, Eric Ledell, eds. African Americans in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg, 1997.
—Chronological overview of Black Pennsylvania, from Colonial to modern times.
August Wilson
Bogumil, Mary L. Understanding August Wilson. Columbia, SC, 1999.
—Useful brief overview of the writer and his works.
Bryer, Jackson R. and Hartig, Mary C., eds. Conversations with August Wilson. Jackson, MS, 2006.
—A wide-ranging and fairly up-to-date array of interviews and conversations with the playwright.
Shannon, Sandra D. The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson. Washington, 1995.
—Critical studies of six of the plays, and perspective on Wilson’s writing as a whole.
Influences
Turner, Elizabeth Hutton, ed. Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series. Washington, 1993.
—Based on the Phillips Collection exhibition of the same title, a gorgeous rendering of some of the landmark images Lawrence
created in response to the Great Migration.
Fine, Ruth. The Art of Romare Bearden. Washington, 2003.
—Illustrated exhibition catalogue from the National Gallery of Art, including biographical material and some incisive critical
essays on the life, art, and impact of Bearden—a major source of inspiration for Joe Turner and Wilson’s work in general.
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Next Stage: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone | 16