Racial Violence and Domestic Space in A Sunday Morning in the South

Abstract

One of the most significant anti-lynching plays of the Harlem Renaissance is Georgia Douglas Johnson’s A Sunday Morning in the South (1925). The play delineates the proximity of quotidian African American family life to the pervasive threat of racial violence. Johnson employs the setting of a Black household to underscore the tension between racial oppression, familial traditions, and the imperative of safety. The morning routine of Sue Jones and her grandson serves as a central narrative element within the play, exemplifying how acts of white violence disrupt quotidian activities such as preparing breakfast, getting ready for church, and fostering familial bonds. The domestic space, traditionally characterized as a site of care, stability, and security, becomes tenuous when influenced by the external threat of racial terror. This intrusion underscores the profound psychological ramifications of lynching, engendering pervasive fear that infiltrates spaces ordinarily associated with comfort and communal belonging. Drawing on studies of space, race, and performance, the paper argues that Johnson’s play blurs the line between private and public life. It shows how lynching shaped even the most personal parts of Black existence, making daily life insecure. In the end, Johnson not only criticizes racial injustice but also shows the strength of Black families who endure and resist, even within their most private spaces.