THE PURPLE FLOWER (5)
By:
December 26, 2025
In Margaret B. Wilkerson’s Foreword to the anthology Black Theatre USA: Plays by African Americans, 1847 to Today, we read that Marita Bonner’s 1928 play The Purple Flower is “an allegory that portrays the final revolution when Blacks forcibly claim equality by overthrowing their oppressors.” We are pleased to serialize this story for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5.
YOUNG US — What you suppose to be shaping? A man?
OLD US — I’m the servant. I can do nothing. If I do this, God will shape a new man Himself.
YOUNG MAN — What’s the things in the pot for?
OLD MAN — To show I can do what I’m told.
OLD WOMAN — Why does He want blood?
OLD MAN — You got to give blood! Blood has to be let for births, to give life.
OLD WOMAN — So the dust wasn’t just nothing? Thank God!
YOUTH — Then the books were not just paper leaves? Thank God!
THE MAN OF THE GOLD BAGS — Can the gold mean something?
OLD MAN — Now I need the blood.
FINEST BLOOD — I told you you could take mine.
OLD MAN — Yours!
FINEST BLOOD — Where else could you get it? The New Man must be born. The night is already dark. We cannot stay here forever. Where else could blood come from?
OLD MAN — Think child. When God asked a faithful servant once to do sacrifice, even his only child, where did God put the real meat for sacrifice when the servant had the knife upon the son’s throat?
OLD US — (in a chorus) In the bushes, Lord! In the bushes, Lord! Jehovah put the ram in the bushes!
CORNERSTONE — I understand!
FINEST BLOOD — What do you mean?
CORNERSTONE — Where were you going a little while ago? Where were you going when your sister cried out?
FINEST BLOOD — To the bushes! You want me to get the White Devil? (he seizes the piece of rock and stands to his feet)
OLD MAN — No! No! Not that way. The White Devils are full of tricks. You must go differently. Bring him gifts and offer them to him.
FINEST BLOOD — What have I to give for a gift?
OLD MAN — There are the pipes of Pan that every Us is born with. Play on that. Soothe him — lure him — make him yearn for the pipe. Even a White Devil will soften at music. He’ll come out, and he only comes to try to get the pipe from you.
FINEST BLOOD — And when he comes out, I’m to kill him in the dark before he sees me? That’s a White Devil trick!
OLD MAN — An Old Us will never tell you to play White Devil’s games! No! Do not kill him in the dark. Get him out of the bushes and say to him: “White Devil, God is using me for His instrument. You think that it is I who play on this pipe! You think that it is I who play upon this pipe so that you cannot stay in your bushes. So that you must come out of your bushes. But it is not I who play. It is not I, it is God who plays through me—to you. Will you hear what He says? Will you hear? He says it is almost day, White Devil. The night is far gone. A New Man must be born for the New Day. Blood is needed for birth. Blood is needed for the birth. Come out, White Devil. It may be your blood — it may be mine — but blood must be taken during the night to be given at the birth. It may be my blood — it may be your blood — but everything has been given. The Us toiled to give dust for the body, books to guide the body, gold to clothe the body. Now they need blood for birth so the New Man can live. You have taken blood. You must give blood. Come out! Give it.” And then fight him!
FINEST BLOOD — I’ll go! And if I kill him?
OLD MAN — Blood will be given!
FINEST BLOOD — And if he kills me?
OLD MAN — Blood will be given!
FINEST BLOOD — Can there be no other way — cannot this cup pass?
OLD MAN — No other way. It cannot pass. They always take blood. They built up half their land on our bones. They ripened crops of cotton, watering them with our blood. Finest Blood, this is God’s decree: “You take blood — you give blood. Full measure — flooding full — over — over!”
FINEST BLOOD — I’ll go. (he goes quickly into the shadow. Far off soon you can hear him — his voice lifted, young, sweet, brave and strong.) White Devil! God speaks to you through me! — Hear Him! — Him! You have taken blood; there can be no other way. You will have to give blood! Blood!
(All the US listen. All the valley listens. Nowhere listens. All the WHITE DEVILS listen. Somewhere listens. Let the curtain close leaving all the US, the WHITE DEVILS, Nowhere, Somewhere, listening, listening. It is time?)
(Curtain)
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.