Search results
The Amen Corner is a three-act play by James Baldwin. It was Baldwin's first work for the stage following the success of his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. The drama was first published in 1954, and inspired a short-lived 1983 Broadway musical adaptation with the slightly truncated title, Amen Corner. [1]
- James Baldwin
- 1954
The Amen Corner is a 1954 play by James Baldwin that critiques Christian religion as a means of oppression and poverty in Black communities. It follows the fall of Margaret, a Black preacher who leaves her husband and son, and the impact of her actions on her congregation.
The Amen Corner is a play by James Baldwin about a pastor of a Harlem church who faces personal and professional crises. The play explores themes of religion, love, hypocrisy, and identity through the characters of Margaret, Luke, David, and others.
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Sources
- Further Reading
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in New York City, to David Baldwin, a factory worker and clergyman, and Emma (Jones) Baldwin. Baldwin was the eldest of nine children, whom he spent much of his childhood helping to raise and care for amidst the poverty of black Harlem. During his high school years, the young Baldwin became a revivalist min...
Act I
Act I takes place “on a Sunday morning in Harlem.” It begins with a church service, led by Margaret Anderson, the pastor of a “corner” church. The singing of hymns, accompanied by Margaret’s eighteen-year-old son, David, on the piano, is an important element of the service. At one point, Mrs. Ida Jackson, a young woman, walks up to the pulpit holding her sick baby; she asks Margaret what she should do to save her baby, and Margaret advises her to leave her husband, but Mrs. Jackson asserts th...
Act II
Act II is set the following Saturday afternoon. In the first scene, Odessa, Sister Boxer, and Sister Moore sit in the kitchen of the apartment, discussing Sister Margaret’s role in the church, given this new information that she had abandoned her own husband. The church elders express some discontent with Margaret’s use of the church funds and with her treatment of the congregation, as well as the hypocrisy they perceive in her years of lying about her relationship with her husband. In the ne...
Act III
Act III takes place the following Sunday morning. In the first scene, Margaret and Mrs. Jackson talk in the church; Mrs. Jackson’s baby has died, but she resists Margaret’s religious advice about the matter and insists that she is more concerned with her husband than with religion. In the kitchen of the apartment, Margaret and her sister Odessa discuss Margaret’s relationship with Luke. Later in the church, Odessa joins the church elders, who are again discussing their plans to oust Margaret...
David Alexander
David is the eighteen-year-old son of Margaret and Luke. David plays the piano in the church during Margaret’s sermons, and his mother wants him to pursue a life of devotion to religion, utilizing his musical talents for that purpose only. David, however, has enrolled in a music school, and has been secretly sneaking out to jazz clubs and playing in a jazz band. One night, he sneaks out to hear his estranged father, Luke, also a musician, play at a jazz club. When Luke arrives at Margaret’s h...
Luke Alexander
Luke is the estranged husband of Margaret, and the father of David. Luke arrives unexpectedly at Margaret’s house and collapses from illness. He confronts Margaret with the fact that she had left him after blaming him for the death of their infant child years earlier. Margaret is unsympathetic to his pleas of love for her, and leaves for a brief trip to Philadelphia, despite the fact that he lies dying in a bed in her home. While Margaret is gone, Luke has an important conversation with their...
Margaret Alexander
Margaret Alexander is the pastor of a church. In the first scene of the play, she gives a sermon. She then prepares to leave for a brief trip to Philadelphia to aid another church. As she is about to leave, her estranged husband, Luke, arrives unexpectedly and collapses from illness. Several members of Margaret’s congregation learn that while she had lead everyone to believe that Luke had abandoned her with their son, David, in fact it was Margaret who left Luke. Despite the fact that Luke li...
Religion
Religion is a central theme in Baldwin’s play. The first seventeen pages of the play are taken up with a Sunday morning church sermon, led by the pastor, Sister Margaret Anderson. Baldwin has noted that this material was in part based on his own experiences as a young minister. Baldwin also wished the theater audience to be swept up in the experience of actually attending a church service. The role of religion in Margaret’s life is examined and questioned by various characters throughout the...
Poverty
Although not one of the play’s most prominent themes, the impact of poverty permeates the play as an underlying condition of the lives of the characters. Margaret berates Brother Boxer for taking a job driving a liquor delivery truck, asserting that it is sinful of him to spend his day providing liquor to people. Sister Boxer, Brother Boxer’s wife, however, complains that Margaret is not taking into account the importance of earning a living and supporting a family. In other words, it is econ...
Love
Many critics have noted that one of the recurring themes throughout Baldwin’s fiction is that of love. Baldwin states in his “Notes” to the published play that the first line he wrote was Margaret’s in Act III: “It’s an awful thing to think about, the way love never dies!” Margaret throughout most of the play has made the mistake of substituting religion for the love of her own husband. Luke insists that he still loves her, and yet she continues to deny her own feelings of love for him. Throu...
Staging
Baldwin wrote this play with a very specific stage set in mind. The two main parts of the set are the church and the adjoining apartment. The positioning of the church in relation to the apartment is symbolic of the role of the church in the life of the family. The stage notes indicate that “The church is on a level above the apartment and should give the impression of dominating the family’s living quarters.” This is meant to symbolize the dominating influence of the church on Margaret’s fam...
Sermons
A central element of Baldwin’s play is the church sermons led by Pastor Margaret. As he has stated in his “Notes” which preface the published edition of the play: “I knew that out of the ritual of the church, historically speaking, comes the act of the theatre, the communion which is the theatre. And I knew that what I wanted to do in the theatre was to recreate moments I remembered, as a boy preacher, to involve the people, even against their will, to shake them up, and, hopefully, to change...
African-American Literary Movements
Twentieth-century African-American literature has been characterized by two important literary movements: the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. The Harlem Renaissance, also referred to as the New Negro Movement, designates a period during the 1920s in which African-American literature flourished among a group of writers concentrated in the Harlem section of New York City. Important writers of the Harlem Renaissance include James Weldon Johnson, who wrote the novel Autobiography...
Black Theater
Dramatic works by African-American writers in the nineteenth century include King Shotaway(1823), by William Henry Brown, the first known play by an African-American writer; The Escape: or, A Leap for Freedom(1858), by William Wells Brown, the first play by an African-American writer to be published; and Rachel(1916), by Anglina W. Grimke, the first successful stage play by an African-American writer. Important literary movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, in...
In his “Notes” for the first publication of The Amen Cornerin 1968, Baldwin recalls that writing the
Liz Brent
Brent has a Ph.D. in American Culture, specializing in film studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in the history of American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses the motif of jazz music in Baldwin’s play. Music plays a central role in expressing key themes within Baldwin’s play. The play is structured thematically around two types of music: church music and jazz music. On one level, church musicand jazz music are symbolic within the...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. Blues for Mr. Charlie(1964), Baldwin’s most noted play, was performed on Broadway in 1964 and received a Foreign Drama Critics Award. “Mr. Charlie” is a name used to refer to the white man. 2. Notes of a Native Son(1955) is Baldwin’s first collection of essays on issues of race in America. 3. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son(1961) is Baldwin’s second collection of essays on racial relations in America. 4. The Fire Next Time(1963) is an essay by Baldwin based on an article p...
Louis H. Pratt
Discussed within this essay is the viewpoint that The Amen Corner is strictly a “religious drama.” Sometimes the phrase “religious drama” is applied by Baldwin’s critics to his first dramatic effort, The Amen Corner. This meaningless and inappropriate epithet reflects a superficial grasp of the more significant aspects of the drama. It is a categorization which precisely points up the reason many critics are unable to analyze the broader philosophical aspects that dominate the play. They cann...
Baldwin, James, “Notes” to The Amen Corner,Dial Press, 1968, pp. xv-xvi. Harris, Trudier, Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin,University of Tennessee Press, 1985, pp. 9-11. Molette, Carlton W., “James Baldwin as Playwright,” in James Baldwin: A Critical Evaluation,edited by Therman B. O’Daniel, Howard University Press, 1977, pp. 184-86. Sta...
Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones), The Dutchman and the Slave Ship: Two Plays,Morrow, 1964. Harris, Trudier, Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin,University of Tennessee Press, 1985. Jones, LeRoi (Imamu Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal, eds., Black Fire: An Anthology of African-American Writing,Morrow, 1968. Leeming, David Adams, James Baldwin: A Biog...
The Amen Corner is a drama by James Baldwin that explores the themes of religion, family, and racial identity in Harlem. It depicts the crisis of Margaret Anderson, a pastor who faces the consequences of her hypocritical and selfish actions.
Summary. After giving a fiery Sunday morning sermon, Harlem pastor Margaret Alexander is confronted by the unexpected arrival of her long-estranged husband Luke, who collapses from illness shortly thereafter.
Learn how director Whitney White and her design team will transform Sidney Harman Hall into a 1950s storefront church in Harlem for Baldwin's play with music. Discover the details of the scenic, lighting, costume and musical design for this American classic.
A play by James Baldwin about a pastor in Harlem who faces her own demons. See why critics praised this production as one of the best in 2020 and enjoy the songs of redemption by a choir of powerhouse singers.
