The River Niger

Joseph A. Walker's The River Niger (1973) is the dramatic emblem of an important era in African American theater and literary history. The renowned Negro Ensemble Company first produced the play, which was to become its biggest hit, Off-Broadway in 1972. The play then moved on to Broadway, continuing to draw large crowds and rave reviews. It won numerous awards, including the Drama Desk Award for best playwright, a Tony Award for best play, an Obie Award, a Burns Mantle Theatre Yearbook selection as best play, and an Audelco Black Theatre Recognition Award. In addition, Douglas Turner Ward and Roxie Roker both won Obies for their performances. In 1976 the play was adapted as a full-length feature film.

Although white viewers and critics received the play warmly, finding a certain “universality” of characters and themes with which to identify, it was the response of African American theatergoers that truly marked and measured the play's significance. For the first time African Americans comprised the majority of the ticket-buying audience, lending unanimous praise and major financial support to the world-class production. What they found unique and satisfying in Walker's play were realistic portrayals of working-class characters struggling with what it meant to be African Americans in contemporary society. And, despite the violence of the plot, Walker's script incorporated a poetry representative of the black aesthetic of the time, which inspired audiences with pride and hope.

Like Walker's previous work, The River Niger addressed the dilemma of “the black man,” a figure struggling to assert his manhood in the face of racism, violence, impending poverty, alcoholism, and the problematic women in his life. Although Walker has said that his own father's ghost haunted all of his work, this realistic play is especially autobiographical. The air force dropout son and the alcoholic poet father in The River Niger are modeled after Walker and his own father, and the stoic, cancer-stricken mother is taken from the playwright's family as well.

In the play, set in Harlem, the two heroic men, surrounded by a predominantly supportive group of women relations and a divided male group, struggle with and against each other to determine the site and means of revolution. John, the father, finds meaning, joy, pride, and resistance primarily through his poetry. The son, Jeff, has tried integration, playing the “Super Culludguy,” but now, turning instead to search for a racially identified integrity and self-possession, he walks the line between his father's artistry and his friends' militancy.

Although The River Niger continues to be viewed as a landmark of African American theater history, it is not without its historical limitations. It has drawn negative criticism more recently for its treatment of gender and sexuality, for instance. It seems that some of the very factors that contributed to its success in the 1970s—the valorization of “the [heterosexual] black man” at the expense of gay and female African Americans—are what might make it somewhat dated and troubling decades later. The play remains significant, however, as a theatrical and cultural icon of African American life in the 1970s.

Bibliography

• Maurice Peterson, “Taking Off With Joseph Walker,” Essence, Apr. 1974, 55, 74, 78, 82.
• Clark Taylor, “In the Theater of Soul,” Essence, Apr. 1975, 48–49.
• Anthony Barthelemy, “Mother, Sister, Wife: A Dramatic Perspective,” Southern Review 21.3 (Summer 1985): 770–785

Sheila Hassell Hughes

River Niger, The (1973), a play by Joseph A. Walker. [ Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 280 perf.; Tony Award.] The African‐American father Johnny Williams (Douglas Turner Ward) is a housepainter by profession and a poet by avocation but seems to have failed as both. He lives in Harlem with his no‐nonsense wife (Roxie Roker) and inebriated mother (Frances Foster), but his pride and joy is his son Jeff (Les Roberts) who has become an officer in the air force. When Jeff returns home and tells his father he is giving up on a military career, Johnny goes on a bender. He writes a long poem that attempts to find meaning in the whole of the black experience just as the police surround the house, looking for Jeff's old gang who have killed a cop. In the melee, Johnny confesses that he shot the officer so that the innocent Jeff will have a future. Originally produced Off Broadway, the play later moved to Broadway where it marked a triumph for Ward who directed and starred in his Negro Ensemble Company's production.

Joseph a Walker 1972

The River Niger, a loosely autobiographical play by Joseph A. Walker, was first performed by the Negro Ensemble Company in New York City in 1972. The play was first published in 1973, and was adapted to the screen by Walker in the 1976 production starring Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones.

The River Niger is about Jeff Williams, a young African-American man returning home to his family in Harlem after several years in the Air Force. His mother, Mattie; father, John; and grandmother eagerly await his arrival. Ann Vanderguild, a nurse from South Africa who met Jeff at a hospital in Canada, unexpectedly arrives at the Williams’ house with her suitcases, intending to convince Jeff to marry her. When Jeff finally arrives, he is greeted by his childhood friend Mo and Mo’s men, a small group of revolutionaries who try to bully Jeff into joining their organization. But Jeff does not agree with their politics and is set on becoming a lawyer. Jeff, however, severely disappoints his father when he informs the family that he has flunked out of the Air Force and never liked it in the first place. Jeff’s father, John, is so enraged by this that he leaves home and doesn’t return until a week later, having gone on a drinking “bender.” After Jeff reluctantly agrees to help Mo and his organization, they all find themselves in the Williams’ house, surrounded by police who have discovered a violent plot planned by the young revolutionaries. Jeff’s father sacrifices his life to save Jeff from being implicated in the crime.

The River Niger focuses on themes common to much of Walker’s work: the struggles of black men in a racist society; the camaraderie between black men; the role of men in the black family; and efforts among African Americans to achieve greater equality.