The Emperor Jones tells of an American negro, a Pullman porter, who, by some chance or other, comes to an island in the West Indies, not yet self-determined by white marines. In two years Jones has made himself emperor. When the play begins he has been emperor long enough to amass a fortune by imposing heavy taxes on the islanders and carrying on all sorts of large-scale graft. Rebellion is brewing. The palace is deserted, but from deep in the jungle there comes the sound of the steady beat of a big drum. The islanders are whipping up their courage to the fighting point by calling on the local gods and demons of the forest. Jones, realizing that his reign is over, starts to make his escape to the coast where a French gunboat is anchored. First it is necessary for him to travel through the jungle and as time presses he must go through at night. Emperor Jones either throws off, or loses the trappings of white civilization as he moves through eight scenes back to his African origins, making a personal journey of internal discovery, reliving in reverse his own life and the Black Experience. All God’s Chillun Got Wings is a play about the marriage of a black man to a white woman. The conflict in the play has profound meaning from social and tragic viewpoints. In a society where a man's value is decided not by his inner worth but by his outer appearance human understanding is made and distorted by the color of his skin. In this play by the marriage to Ella a white woman Jim the black hero wants to be compensated to some degree for the humiliation to which his society has subjected him as a member of the so-called “lower” race. He despises any sign of the slave mentality which rises from his racial origin. For him whiteness is the symbol of human dignity. Ella, on her part, is branded as black by the society because of her fallen sexual behaviors. For her the marriage is intended as an attempt to get out of the bondage of her personal past, as for Jim of his racial past. The play dramatizes the tragic failure of Jim to belong either to his white wife or to the white society. It emphasizes the devious ways in which this social prejudices and psychological complexes prevent the true union of black and white persons. The hero and heroine of the play are only pure victims whose tragic catastrophe results mainly from the difference of color and its social and personal oppression in spite of their characteristic flaws.