In the following essay excerpt, Abramson gives an overview of The Purple Flower and calls it "a paradigm for later plays" treating racial issues.

Angelina Weld Grimke, Mary T. Burrill, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Manta O. Bonner were all educated members of the middle class in a country that allowed them an education, hinted at assimilation, and jealously kept them from the prize of full participation in a society dominated by white males. They taught at the famous Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C Grimke taught English and history and in the 1925 yearbook she wrote a poem for the graduating class in which she referred to "quick' Ding youth whose eyes have seen the gleam; /. . .youth between whose tears and laughter stream/ Bright bows of hope." Mary Burrill taught in the same department. Marita Bonner taught at Dunbar briefly and at Armstrong High School in the...