Truman Capote – Author and diarist, accompa- nied the Porgy and Bess tour to Russia


“I wish I had a ticket for every night. Powerful! I will never for-


get it. But the question isn’t whether I forget, or what we old folks think. It’s the young people who matter. It matters that they have new seeds planted in their hearts. Tonight, all these young people will stay awake. Tomorrow, they’ll be whistling the music. A nuisance, humming in the classrooms. And in the summer, that’s what you’ll hear: young people whistling along the river. They won’t forget. “


Harold Cruse – Scholar and sociologist


“Porgy and Bess belongs in a museum and no self-respecting African American should want to see it, or be seen in it. … It por-


trays the seamiest side of Negro life… presum- ably the image of black people that white audi- ences want to see.


As a symbol of that deeply ingrained, Ameri- can cultural paternalism practiced on Negroes ever since the first Southern white man blacked his face, the folk-opera Porgy and Bess should be forever banned by all Negro performers in the United States. No Negro singer, actor, or performer should ever submit to a role in this vehicle again. If white producers want to stage this folk-opera it should be performed by white performers made up in blackface, because it is distorted imitation all the way through.”


Sidney Poitier – Film actor who portrayed Porgy in the 1959 film Porgy and Bess


“In my judgment, Porgy and Bess was not material complimentary to black people; and for the most


part, black people responded negatively to that American opera, although they stood ready to acknowledge and applaud the genius in the mu- sic. I decided that the role was not for me and quite possibly injurious to Negroes….


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Duke Ellington – Composer, pianist and bandleader


In 1935: “The times are here to debunk Gershwin’s lampblack Ne- groisms…the music does not hitch with the mood and spirit of the


story. It does not use the Negro musical idiom.”


Ellington later reversed his opinion upon seeing Robert Breen’s revival in 1953: “Your Porgy and Bess the superbest, singing the gonest, acting the craziest, Gershwin the greatest.”


W.E.B. Du Bois – Scholar and civil rights activist


“White artists themselves suffer from this narrowing of their field. They cry for freedom in dealing with Negroes because they have


so little freedom in dealing with whites. DuBose Heywood [sic] writes Porgy and writes beauti- fully of the black Charleston underworld. But why does he do this? Because he cannot do a similar thing for the white people of Charleston, or they would drum him out of town. The only chance he had to tell the truth of pitiful human degradation was to tell it of colored people.”


William Warfield – Porgy in the 1952 European tour of Porgy and Bess


“There was now another feeling in the community about be- ing black – I’m a black man and


proud. And with that attitude came a lot of ne- gation and turning your back on things. … Those of us in Porgy and Bess saw ourselves as play- ing only roles, and in no way did we play them as ordinary black stereotypes. It was art, and we were artists.”


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