Abstract
Georgia Douglas Johnson’s play Plumes (1927) dramatizes the story of a black mother forced to decide between giving her dying daughter a beautiful homegoing and paying a white doctor for a procedure that may or may not cure her. A focus on material objects in the play reveals the continued presence of slavery by highlighting the chronically unmet needs and desires of black Americans several decades after Emancipation. A mother’s hankering after funereal feathers can occasion a meaningful discussion about, and analysis of, the complex interrelationships among black motherhood, black humanity, untreated trauma, and deferred rites of mourning in African-American culture.
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