All God's Chillun Got Wings

All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924) is an expressionist play by Eugene O'Neill about miscegenation inspired by the old Negro spiritual.[1] He began developing ideas for the play in 1922, emphasizing its authenticity in his notes: "Base play on his experience as I have seen it intimately."[2] O'Neill wrote the play in the fall of 1923 and revised the text only slightly for its 1924 publication.[3] Arguably one of his most controversial of plays, it starred Paul Robeson in the premiere,[4] in which he portrayed the black husband of an abusive white woman, who, resenting her husband's skin color, destroys his promising career as a lawyer