The N-Word and Other Sticky Issues: Considering Alice Childress’s Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Relationship in Black and White in the Black Lives Matter Era

Abstract Alice Herndon Childress’s 1962 play Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White mines many of the issues that the most recent US race crisis has brought to the forefront, but in the twenty-first century, a long overdue shift in political climate has raised new questions regarding what is acceptable, even in the realm of art. Childress investigates oppressive forces through realistic, compelling characters and setting, and electric dialogue, yet in doing so, she employs the N-word and other disturbing epithets that discomfit contemporary students, actors, and audiences. In a time when use of such words can result in one’s being fired or sued, do the lessons of this play outweigh the turmoil that such terms can cause? This study argues that they do, with an important caveat: just as words’ meanings are contingent on their context, the positive power of the play is contingent on careful treatment of it, suggesting that current US sociopolitical crises, like those of the past, cannot be satisfactorily resolved by simple rules or mandates.