The Emperor Jones and the Moral Meanings of the Black Past

Abstract:It’s common in both academic and popular discourse to think of a strong sense of identity as rooted in one’s relationship to a personal and collective past, but what are the pitfalls of this presumption, especially when it comes to the relevance of the Black past for Black (and for white) Americans? This article pursues this question by way of a look back at a hundred-year-old play, Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, alongside its production and reception histories, and in the broader context of early twentieth-century efforts by African American writers to reclaim and rewrite their past. Reading the play in these contexts enables a critique of the contemporary impulse to cordon off the Black past as morally relevant only for Black Americans as well as a discovery of the possibilities and limits of shared recognition and responsibility for that past.