Florence of America

A Feminist in the Age of McCarthyism

Florence Bean James, Jean Freeman

• Publisher: University of Regina Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780889776470
• eBook ISBN:
  9780889776494
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Born on the Idaho frontier, Florence James was a New York City suffragette. The first to put Jimmy Cagney on stage, she founded both the Negro Repertory Theatre and the Seattle Repertory Playhouse. She worked with Francis Farmer, Paul Robson, and Helen Hayes, but her views on art and politics and her choice of plays led to a clash with the Un-American Activities Committee. In the wake of two Kafkaesque trials, where she condemned her persecutors as liars, she fled to Canada and kick-started professional theatre in Saskatchewan, the home to North America’s first socialist government. 

Vital and inspiring, Florence of America is a story of one woman speaking truth to power.

"An amazing story of achievement, heartbreak, and endurance...But above all, it is a moving and powerful cautionary tale of what can happen, at any time of any age, when, in [Arthur] Miller's words, a whole world begins to cry 'spirits.'" —Moira Day, Department Head of Drama, University of Saskatchewan

Table of contents

• Preface
• Editor’s Introduction
• Prologue
• Opening Night
• Beginnings
• New York
• The Settlement
• A New, Fresh Wind
• Tenuous Rocks
• The Shadow of Victory
• Talons and Clouds
• Off to the USSR
• The Rise and Fall of the Washington State Theatre
• The Meaning of “Theatre”
• The Advent of War
• Recreation for All
• The Cactus
• Convictions Held at an Agonizing Cost
• A Broken Heart
• All Beginnings Come to an End
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1:
• Appendix 2:
• About the Contributors