Richard Wrights' Collaboration with Paul Green
Playwright and professor Paul Green had a strong interest in Black folk culture and improving race relations. His play on Black life, In Abraham's Bosom, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927. The Black novelist Richard Wright asked Green to collaborate on adapting his novel Native Son (1940) for the stage.

In 1941, Green invited Wright to Chapel Hill for that purpose. They worked together at Green's home and in his office in Bynum Hall. Because of segregation laws, Wright could not stay in Chapel Hill hotels, so he boarded with a Black family in Carrboro. When the play opened on Broadway, it was a critical and commercial success.
Narrative source: Museum Virtual UNCEDU

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paul Green, standing, is seen with best-selling author Richard Wright in Chapel Hill as they work on a dramatization of Wright's novel, Native Son, 26 July 1940.
Native Son debuted on Broadway 24 March 1941 and was directed by Orson Welles. While controversial, the play was met with generally high acclaim and was adapted for the stage two more times.
Wright went on to publish numerous other short stories and novels including his best-selling memoir, Black Boy, which details his poverty-stricken upbringing in the oppressive American south and his eventual move to Chicago.

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Excerpt from The Paul Green Story by Allison Johnson - Names in Brick and Stone: Histories from UNC's Built Landscape
History/American Studies 671: Introduction to Public History, UNC-Chapel Hill

Green displayed his progressive spirit through his work. Many of Green’s works included storylines of African Americans. In 1940, Green worked with an African American author, Richard Wright to dramatize his novel Native Son. Not only was the play itself controversial as it was a story of an African American accidentally killing a white woman, but the fact Green was working with an African American playwright was controversial as well.

Yet, Green did not care what critics had to say. Green invited Wright to Chapel Hill. While Wright was in Chapel Hill, angry citizens approached Green about Wright’s presence with white girls at a racially mixed party. That same night, Green slept in the building next to Wright just in case the mob decided to come back.

However, Green never alerted his guest of what had happened. As Green’s daughter said, her dad “let him go on believing that Chapel Hill in 1941 was a haven of racial tolerance”.[vi]

As stated earlier, Green was a humanist, not only in the stories he told through his plays, but in the way he lived his life. As his daughter said, “He was passionately involved in life.”[vii] Although her father was among the Hollywood elite, he most certainly did not live the stereotypical party lifestyle of Hollywood’s finest. Instead, Green held education as an utmost importance in his life.

He truly valued learning and the idea of books over booze. He advocated for numerous platforms including: education, prison reform, abolition of capital punishment, labor unions, United Nations, and racial equality. Green was bold, and not afraid to stand-up for his beliefs in life. Green’s daughter tells of an episode where her father stood up to UNC officials. She believes this episode is just an indication on the type of person her dad was when it came to his personal agenda of equality.[viii]

Paul Green’s Remarks to UNC Officials in 1930s:
“You are mistaken, you are wrong. You have black laborers laying these brick walks, and you will not let them into the building to get a book. Why are they good enough to build it, but not good enough to use it?” – Paul Green[ix]

Green made this statement in the 1930s, to put this into perspective, UNC did not let African Americans enroll as freshmen until 1955 and the peak of the civil rights movement would not begin until the 1960s.[x]

Meanwhile, Green was making these observations and statements some 25-30 years prior.

Green was an activist within the prison system as well. He visited the North Carolina State Penitentiary in Raleigh regularly to visit death row. During those times, death row was usually full of African Americans, mostly adolescent boys, sometimes as young as 14 years old. Green tried to fight the system for putting people on death row merely because of the color of their skin. To help, he would hire lawyers for the boys, all on his own dime.[xi]

Green also believed in enhancing cultural experiences for North Carolinians. He was one of the founders of the North Carolina Symphony and aided in the establishment of North Carolina’s School of the Arts. Green wanted everyone to have the opportunity to experience culture.[xii]

“I think his character was his most supreme achievement, greater even than his art.” –Green’s daughter, Janet.[xiii]

Green’s Death & Legacy
On May 4, 1981, Green died at the age of 89 in his Chapel Hill home. He was loved and respected by so many that his legacy lived on. Established in his honor in 1982 is the Paul Green Foundation. The mission of the foundation is to: “perpetuate the vision of playwright and activist Paul Green, whose commitment to the arts and human rights continues today through the mission of the Foundation.”[xiv]

The foundation has long provided grants to those who shared Green’s values, but due to the reconstructing of the foundation at the moment, funding is temporarily suspended.

The foundation has an informative website with biographies, pictures, and information about Green’s works.[xv] To visit the site, click here.

One of his most notable legacies, and one more important to this narrative, is the naming of the Paul Green Theatre on the campus of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.