Fuller won Pulitzer for A Soldier's Play

Charles Fuller

It is the birthday of playwright Charles Fuller (1939), whose play, A Soldier's Play (1982), won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Fuller's high school had no books by African Americans, a situation that led him to become a writer. A Soldier's Play tells the story of the search by a black Army officer for the murderer of a black sergeant at a base in Louisiana in 1944, when the military was still segregated. The play tackles the position of blacks in white society. It was critically acclaimed but never played on Broadway. Fuller said that was because he refused to cut the last line, "You'll have to get used to black people being in charge." The play was adapted as the film, A Soldiers Story, in 1984. Earlier, Fuller had won an Obie Award for Zooman and the Sign (1980), about the father of a young girl who was killed on her front porch by a black teen and the struggle to prod the neighbors out of their apathy to rise up against the teen and seek justice.