Bronzeville

The events of Pearl Harbor have just persuaded President FDR to sign an Executive Order 9066, requiring all West Coast Japanese and Japanese Americans to immediately pack and ready their affairs for transport to “re-location” camps. The war’s boom-time economy is drawing Blacks from the Deep South for high-paying jobs and LA has its share of factories hiring. The same ethnic fears shown toward Japanese are manifest in LA’s racial restrictions regarding housing. “No Blacks allowed” clauses in leases and purchase agreements have created a housing shortage. Rather than see Little Tokyo become a ghost town, landlords conveniently ignore the racial restrictions and open Little Tokyo’s shuttered doors for the rapidly growing numbers of Blacks. When the play’s Black family discovers a young Japanese American who has refused to be relocated, the family’s three-generational family members are faced with coming to terms with their own values as they debate and struggle with doing the right thing.