Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a film adaptation of August Wilson’s 1984 play, a fictional drama about a real person, and part of a cycle of 10 plays portraying the African-American experience in different decades across the 20th century. The setting is Chicago in 1927, during the Great Migration of black people from the South to the North. Chicago and other Northern industrial cities recruited black people from the Jim Crow South to work in their factories, and as waiters and bellhops. And they left the South in droves with high hopes, as they headed to what was advertised as The Promised Land where they could find jobs and dignity. But Chicago was not much more enlightened than the South was. Newly arrived migrants lived 6 to a room in temporary housing and were only allowed permanent housing in a narrow strip on the South side. Even their presence in white areas brought protests. The director of the Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, George Wolfe, said, “In the South, black people could often support themselves in their own communities. When they came north, if they wanted to achieve, they had to come into contact with the white power structure, which meant that their own power was, in essence, nullified.” The play and the film portray this loss of power with a recording session by Ma Rainey, a black, old-school southern blues singer, and her band for a white record producer. Before ma arrives at the studio, we see the producer and ma’s white agent planning how to keep her in line, but when she does get there, kow towing to her because she is putting money in their pockets. In the south, Ma makes a great living touring as “the mother of the blues,” but in Chicago, she is seen as just another black woman. And Ma knows this. She knows they can barely stand her presence in their space. So, because she can, she makes their day as difficult as possible. She says to one of the band members after demanding that the white men send out for a coca cola for her before she will sing ,“They don’t care nuthin’ about me. All they want is my voice. Well, I done learned that, and they are gonna treat me like I want to be treated no matter how much it hurts them. They are back there now, calling me all kinds of names, everything but a child of God. But they can’t do nothing else. They ain’t got what they wanted yet. As soon as they get my voice down on them recording machines, they ain’t got no use for me.” I read an article recently that is a reminder that the exploitation of black artists continues even today. It was about Shonda Rimes, a black television producer who created and produced 5 mega-hit shows, for ABC , which is owned by Disney, making the network 2 billion dollars. But at every budget meeting, for 15 years, she says, she had to fight for the money to make her shows. And at every contract negotiation, she had to fight for fair pay. As part of her contract, she was given a 154 dollar all-inclusive pass to Disneyland. They aren’t transferable, so she asked for an additional one for her sister. Her request was passed back and forth between executives at Disney, which has a net worth of 190 billion dollars and the last one said to her, “Don’t you have enough?” So Shonda, because she could, left ABC and Disney and moved to Netflix, where her new series Bridgerton is their most watched show ever. Her critics said she was being petty, but for her, this was just the latest example of how little she was valued by a company she had done so much for. And she echoed Ma Rainey when she was asked why she left. She said, “They love to ask you for blood, but when you need a towel, it’s too much. Don’t let any employer treat valuing you as a favor.” The other main character in the play is Levee, a young trumpet player and song writer, also from the south, who witnessed more violence as a child than anyone should ,and who believes his only chance at success here is to fit in in this new world. But unlike Ma, Levee doesn’t know how to navigate the white power structure that is his gatekeeper. He thinks that his confident, cocky manner, the way he dresses, and his new style of blues and jazz will make him famous with the new migrants and cross over to white record buyers. He says, “I don’t need nobody telling me nothing. The white man will respect me when I get my band together.” But his Bravado is mostly a cover for his fear that he can’t make it in this new world. Throughout the play, we see his anger at having to live under the control of white people, just as his parents had to do in the south. In the end, after all the promises made to him by the record producer are broken, Levee comes to represent the tragedy of talented, hopeful young black people who are held back from realizing their dreams no matter how hard they try. There is much more in the play about the history of white supremacy in America, that continues today. It serves as another tool for those of us who want to educate ourselves so that we can help change that. May we always be open to what our Still-Speaking God is saying to us, through movies and books and plays and songs, so that we can become more justice-seeking and more faithful followers of the way of Jesus.
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