Mississippi: A Yiddish Play about the Scottsboro Affair (Yiddish Voices)

This book provides the first ever English translation of the Yiddish play, Mississippi.Penned in 1935 by Leyb Malakh, it was commissioned for production by a Warsaw-based experimental Yiddish theatre company and was focused on the racial injustice of the Scottsboro Boys case which began with the wrongful arrest of nine African-American youths in Alabama, 1931.The book includes a detailed, multifaceted scholarly introduction which ranges widely and effectively across the various historical and literary contexts in which the play can be appreciated. As our volume shows, both the writer and the director, Michal Weichert, were keen to depict a dramatic episode from contemporary life that reflected the leftist goals and ideas to which they were devoted.Alyssa Quint examines the fact that while the plight of the Scottsboro Boys lasted throughout the 1930s and inspired works of Communist or leftist struggle by a substantial number of artists and writers in the United States, few beyond Americ