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| Graham Brown, Barbara Clarke. |
Originally
done as a work-in-progress at the O’Neill Foundation in Connecticut, Ride a Black Horse was one of several
early 1970s plays that examined the role of the middle-class Black liberal in
an era of revolutionary racial struggle. The central character, Carl Blanks
(Graham Brown), thought by others an advocate of white beliefs, loses his job
as a college professor of sociology for espousing a radical political notion suggested
by local ghetto leader Junior Bonner (David Downing). Carl’s failure to find
support for the notion leads to his being stripped and humiliated by his
radical friends. He refuses to participate in a Black rampage against whites
that follows, thereby being abandoned by the Black support he sought.
Clive
Barnes argued that the play’s premise was hard to accept. He could not swallow the
radical idea being proffered, i.e., that a city's Blacks and whites should switch jobs
and households for a month to drive home the truth of racial inequality. Carl
Blank’s dilemma was effectively enough conveyed; it was merely that “you can’t
hear the play for the clash of symbols.” Walter Kerr asserted, “The play . . .
never quite focuses our attention” because of its flimsy premise, and Martin
Gottfried wrote that “The play is unprofessionally written and unprofessionally
produced.”
Its
cast included respected actors Barbara Clarke, Marilyn Chris, Adolph Caesar, Bill Cobbs, Esther Rolle, Charles
Weldon, and others.
