ence by a White man.
The play reconstructs the crime and illustrates the ways in which both Whites and Blacks made the death inevitable. The White racism is affirmed when one of the characters, Lyle, states "may every nigger like that nigger end like that nigger û face down in the weeds (Baldwin, 1964, p. 75)."
Critics have stated that this play is a complex drama that demonstrates a need for the relatively conscious Whites and Blacks to insist on or create the consciousness of others (Standley, 1988). While Baldwin's intent was to demonstrate that Whites and Blacks can, if they are people of good conscience, come together, unfortunately, the play ends with a White liberal named Parnell James lacking the courage to testify at the trial of the murderer and Meridian Henry (the embodiment of Black moderation and nonviolence) calling for the union of the Bible and the gun in the pulpit.
It is possible, according to Standley (1988), that the play was written for a White audience and belongs in the general category of traditional drama that stresses the similarities between Blacks and Whites. The play also serves to examine the dilemma that confronts middle class Blacks and uses Black characters who challenge Whites verbally while passively rejecting physical confrontation. Baldwin was clearly writing of the very real sense of externally imposed inferiority and lowered status that many African-Americans felt in the era before the Civil Rights movement.
However, it would be wrong to consider this a play about civil rights, even though its subject matter û the murder of a Black man by a White man, who is neither punished nor imprisoned for his crime û touches on legal
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