Since Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom went into rehearsal last week, we’ve seen a flood of questions coming for the most fabulous production dramaturg, Dr. Faedra Carpenter. Start thinking about the world of a 1927 recording studio, the world of Ma Rainey and the Blues, the world of African American men and women in the ’20s… You just might start to see how this might happen. Maybe.
Of course, you know what this means, yes? It’s DRAMATURGY DU JOUR time! Yeah.
One of the first queries to come through was made in regards to the reefers rolled and smoked during the show.
Faedra’s response: “In the period from 1915 to 1937, some 27 states passed criminal laws against the use of marijuana.
The first federal law prohibiting marijuana came in the form of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 (among the penalties of violation: a fine of up to $2000 and five years of prison imprisonment).”
She passed along excerpts from Charles Whitebread’s The History of the Use of Non-Medical Drugs in the United States, including the following chunk: “
The first group of states to have marijuana laws were Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana. It is conjectured that marijuana’s criminality in these states was related to the fact white law makers associated marijuana use with the Mexican migrants who had come into those areas.
Other states in the Northeast (such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey) banned marijuana because they feared that the drug users whose addiction had been squelched by the Harrison Act would now turn to marijuana; or, in the case of Utah (in 1915) state legislature met and enacted religious prohibitions against marijuana as a criminal law.”
Faedra’s assistant, Alex Leidy, added the following, from Richard J. Bonnie’s The Alien Weed: “Illinois had no marijuana legislation on the books until 1931, but there was a strong push for legislation beginning in the later years of the 1920s, with the Chicago Tribune calling loudly for a law to be signed. As there was no national legislation until the Tax Act of 1937, it seems like there most likely nothing prohibiting the musicians in the play from lighting up.”
He also found (in Louis Vyhnanek’s article, “‘Muggles,’ ‘Inchy,’ and ‘Mud’: Illegal Drugs in New Orleans during the 1920s”) the following: “In 1927 the Louisiana legislature reviewed the issue and passed a new marijuana law, which provided for a maximum fine of $500 or six months imprisonment or both for posession or sale fo the drug.” Not a note specific to Chicago, true, but certainly indicative of circumstances the musicians might have been encountered while touring.
