Eulalie Spence - Writing Career

Writing Career

W. E. B. Du Bois, founder and editor of The Crisis, the monthly journal of the N.A.A.C.P., surmised that Black Drama must be built from scratch, by Blacks for a Black theatre. Through The Crisis, he founded Krigwa (Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists), originally known as Crigwa. Krigwa sponsored a yearly literary contest that included a playwrighting competition and fostered a theatre company, the Krigwa Players, which rehearsed and performed at the 135th St. branch of the New York Public Library. The contest, originally titled "The Amy Spingarn Prizes in Literature and Art", was held in 1925 and 1926, and was funded by Amy Spingarn, wife of Joel Elias Spingarn, who was treasurer of the N.A.A.C.P. at the time, and later served as president. Mrs. Spingarn contributed over $1200.00 to prize winners. Spence finished second in the 1926 Krigwa playwrighting contest for her one act play Foreign Mail, which was possibly her first play. She also won a second place prize for Her, which was entered into a contest held by Opportunity, a magazine published by Charles S. Johnson. In 1927, Fool’s Errand competed in the Fifth Annual International Little Theatre Tournament, a first for Blacks since the finalists competed in a Broadway theatre. The Krigwa Players won one of four $200.00 prizes and the play was published by Samuel French.

However, Spence and Du Bois did not see eye to eye, artistically or politically. Du Bois took the $200.00 prize money and used it to reimburse production expenses and paid neither the actors nor Spence. The Krigwa Players disbanded as a result. Politically, Du Bois felt that theatre should be used as a vehicle for propaganda to advance the cause of the American Negro. Spence, on the other hand, always acutely aware that she was from the West Indies, had a different outlook on the theatre. Spence felt that theatre was a place for people to be entertained and not antagonized by the problems of society: "The white man is cold and unresponsive to this subject and the Negro, himself, is hurt and humiliated by it. We go to the theatre for entertainment, not to have old fires and hates rekindled."

The plays of Eulalie Spence helped to make a name for the Krigwa Players amongst both Black and white critics. Spence's play Her opened the Krigwa Players' second season, and her sisters, Olga and Doralene Spence, acted in the Krigwa Players' productions.

Critic William E. Clarke wrote in the New York Age, “Her…was by far the best of the bill. It was a ghost story and was written with such skill that it rose to the heights of a three-act tragedy that might have been written by a Eugene ." Actually, Spence's only three-act play was her last, The Whipping, a three-act play which was optioned to Paramount Studios, but was never made into a film. Another play by Spence, Being Forty, went unpublished, but was presented publicly on at least two occasions, on October, 1924 at the National Ethiopian Art Theatre, and a presentation in Newark, New Jersey by the Bank Street Players, the first Little Negro Theater in New Jersey, on May 6, 1927.

Although Eulalie Spence’s work has been overshadowed by the male counterparts of her day such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Richard Wright, in recent years scholars have been reconsidering Spence’s work along with other lesser known African American female writers. Other African-American female playwrights whose works are being rediscovered are May Miller and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins.

Eulalie Spence died in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on March 7, 1981.