Courthouse
CHARACTERS: Narrator, Joe Brown Jr., Bertha (Joe’s wife), Mrs. Williams (Joe’s teacher), Dr. Brayboy (a black psychiatrist), Mr. Andrews (Joe’s boss), Mrs. Brown (Joe’s mother), Mr. Brown (Joe’s father), James Roberts (Joe’s friend), Mr. Spaulding (anti-poverty program administrator), Chief of Police.
SETTING: New Orleans.
TIME: Now. It is important that the actors make their speeches in rhythm to the background music.
Narrator: Last summer, Joe Brown Jr., black youth of New Orleans, LA, committed murder. Play a special “Summertime” for him and play the same “Summertime” for his friend James Roberts who he knifed to death. [We hear “Summertime” under the narrator’s voice.] In every black community of America; in the ghettos and neighborhood clubs where we gather to hear our music, we play “Summertime”; and in each community the bands play it differently. In no community does it sound like the “Summertime” of George Gershwin. It is blusier, darker, with its own beat and logic, its joys unknown to the white world. It is day now. The routine events of life have passed under the bridge. Joe Brown Jr. has been arrested, indicted, and formally charged with murder. It happened... it happened in a Ninth Ward bar — we need not name it for the purposes of this presentation. The stabbing was the culmination of an argument Joe Brown had with his friend. We have learned this, but the Louisiana Weekly only reported, “James Roberts is said to have made insulting remarks to Joe Brown, whereupon Brown pulled out a switchblade knife and stabbed Roberts three times in the chest before he could be subdued.” The story received front page play in the Louisiana Weekly, and a lead in the crime-of-the-day section in the white Times-Picayune. After that, it received only minor news play, since there are other crimes to report in New Orleans. Play “Summertime” for Joe Brown Jr., and play the same “Summertime” for his friend James Roberts who he knifed to death. [The music dies out.] Why did this murder happen? No one really knows. The people who know Joe Brown best have ideas.
[We see Bertha looking at TV. The sound is off, only the picture shows. Bertha is young, about twenty. She is Joe’s wife. She is ironing while looking at the set — ironing baby things.]
Bertha: Joe just didn’t have any sense. He is smart, oh yes, has a good brain, but didn’t have good sense. The important thing was to settle down, get a good job, and take care of his three children. We been in the Florida Avenue project now for almost a year, and we never have enough money. Look at the people on TV, they make out okay. They fight, but they never let their fights destroy them. Joe didn’t have control of his temper. He was a dreamer, he wanted things. But he wouldn’t work to get them. Oh, he would take jobs in oyster houses, and he’d worked on boats ever since he was a kid. But he wouldn’t come in at night, and sometimes he wouldn’t get up in the morning to go to work. Sometimes he would come in and snap off the TV and say it was driving him crazy. It’s not his TV — my father bought it, and besides, I like it, it’s the only thing I have. This is just a seventeen-inch set, but I want a twenty-one-inch set. Now I’ll never get one because he had to go out and do something foolish. You ask me why he killed that boy? I don’t know. But I think he killed him because he had a bad temper and wouldn’t settle down. Joe was a mild person, but he carried knives and guns — that’s the way his family is. I used to tell him about it all the time. Once I asked him, When are you gonna get a better job and make more money? He said, When I get rid of you and those snotty kids. He could have done something if he had tried, if he had only tried; but instead, he wanted to take it out on us. I’ll go see him, but now look; I have to do everything in this house myself: iron the clothes, cook the meals, buy the food, apply for relief, and get some help from my parents — and my father ain’t working right now. Joe didn’t want to have our last baby, Cynthia, but we couldn’t murder her before she was even born and now I got to take care of her too. Joe knifed that boy because he was foolish, wouldn’t settle down and accept things as they are, and because he didn’t have common sense.
Narrator: Mrs. Williams, could you comment on your former student, Joe Brown Jr.?
Mrs. Williams: I don’t remember Joe Brown Jr. very well. I have so many children to try to remember. I had him three or four years ago just before he dropped out of school. I was his homeroom teacher. Joe was like all the others from the Ninth Ward, not interested in doing anything for themselves. You can’t teach them anything. They don’t want to learn, they never study, they won’t sit still and pay attention in class. It’s no surprise to me that he’s in trouble. I try to do my best here, but I have only so much patience. I tell you, you don’t know the things a teacher goes through with these kids. They come to class improperly dressed, from homes where they don’t get any home training, which is why they are so ill-mannered. We try to teach them about America — about the opportunities America has to offer. We try to prepare them to get the best jobs they can — and you know a Negro child has to work harder. I teach History, Arithmetic, English, and Civics every day, and it goes in one ear and comes out the other. It gives me a terrible gas pain to have to go through it every day, and the noise these kids make is too, too hard on my ears. I’ve worked for ten years in this school, and I don’t get paid much at all. But next month my husband and I will have saved enough money to buy a new Oldsmobile, which I’m happy to say will be the smartest, slickest, smoothest thing McDonough No. 81 has ever seen. Two boys got into a fight in the yard the other day and it was horrible. It pains me to hear the names they call each other — irritates my gas. Some of them even bring knives and guns to school. It’s just terrible. I’m only relieved when I get home, turn on my TV, take my hair down and face off, drink a nice strong cup of coffee, look out at my lawn in Pontchartrain Park, and forget the day. You ask me why Joe Brown murdered his friend in a Negro bar on a Saturday night and I tell you it is because he was headed that way in the beginning. These kids just won’t listen, and don’t want to learn, and that’s all there is to it.
[Lights on Joe Brown Jr. He is wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. He is seated. He faces the audience. There is a table in front of him. On the table is a small transistor radio, but the music we hear is Gil Evans’s “Barbara Song.”]
Narrator: Here is Joe Brown Jr.
Joe Brown Jr.: Once I saw a feature about surfing on TV. Surfing on beautiful waves on a beach in Hawaii, or somewhere...
[The lights shift to another man who is seated on the opposite side of the stage. He is a much older man, dressed in a business suit. He is a Negro. He is Dr. Brayboy, a psychiatrist. His chair does not face the audience; it faces Joe Brown Jr.]
Narrator: A black psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas L. Brayboy.
Dr. Brayboy: At the core of Joe Brown’s personality is a history of frustrations. Psychological, sociological, economic...
Joe Brown Jr.:... and I wanted to do that... surf. It was a dream I kept to myself. Because it would have been foolish to say it aloud. Nobody wants to be laughed at. And then I thought, I never see black people surfing...
Dr. Brayboy: We might call Joe Brown’s homocidal act an act of ritual murder. When murder occurs for no apparant reason but happens all the time, as in our race on Saturday nights, it is ritual murder. When I worked in Harlem Hospital in the emergency ward, I saw us coming in bleeding, blood seeping from the doors of the taxicabs... icepicks and knives...