Immigrants play essential role in America

Reported by The St. Louis American

Douglas Turner Ward (1930-2021) wrote a searing play, “Days of Absence,” that depicted the way life might be like in a small Southern town where all of the Black people disappeared.

Predictably, white people could not boil water, feed their children, nor manage their own feeding. The fictional town just about falls apart in the absence of the Black labor backbone. The play ends when, the next day, one of the missing Black folks reappears and feigns ignorance about the disappearance.

“Days of Absence” won both a Drama Desk Award in 1965 and a Tony Award in 1966. It captured the notice of the Ford Foundation; they awarded Douglas Turner Ward a grant that he used to establish the Negro Ensemble Company.

The sardonic play, with no definitive conclusion, is a metaphor for those who are invisible, the people who serve our food, clean our homes, run the buses and trains, and facilitate lives of people who are seemingly too important to notice them... Read more