As critic, editor, director, teacher, and playwright, Paul Carter Harrison has stressed the Africanisms in black American culture. His study The Drama of Nommo (1972) not only established many correlations between the African world view and life-styles and those of "African/Americans" but also cogently argued that awareness and application of these correlations crucially aid artistic practice and critical judgments in black theater. His seminal collection, Kuntu Drama: Plays of the African Continuum (1974), demonstrated the long-reaching effect of African traditions in the works of such playwrights as Jean Toomer, Amiri Baraka, and the Afro-Caribbean Aime Cesaire. But his best arguments for this continuum are his plays Tabernacle (produced in 1969), and The Great MacDaddy (produced in 1972). The latter is one of the most effective and brilliant dramas embodying African sensibilities in an American context and ensures his place in Afro-American literary history.

Harrison was born into a lower-middle-class family in...