Flyin' West

Flyin’ West, a play by Pearl Cleage, was first commissioned and produced by Alliance Theatre Company in 1992. The play is a work of historical fiction set in the real town of Nicodemus, Kansas, in 1898. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States pushed west, forcefully removing indigenous tribes from their native lands. By the mid-1800s, westward expansion into unsettled, uncolonized territory had increased the US land mass. The pioneer narrative is central to American national identity, romanticizing the strength and fortitude required to make a life on the wild frontier. The Homestead Act, passed in 1862, offered 320 acres of land in the western states to citizens (including Black people and women) who were willing to cultivate it for five years.

The play reveals the lesser-known history of African American pioneers. After slavery was abolished in 1865, southern states immediately implemented Jim Crow laws to formally legalize segregation and racial discrimination. To escape racial violence, many African Americans moved west, taking advantage of the Homestead Act and forming all-Black communities. After the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877, conditions in the South became even more dangerous and racially volatile. A former slave named Benjamin “Pap” Singleton organized what became known as the Exodus of 1879, when about 26,000 African Americans migrated to Kansas to become homesteaders.

Flyin’ West centers on a household of women, emphasizing another rarely told aspect of frontier history. In addition to the traditionally structured families that populated western homesteads, by 1890, about a quarter of a million widowed or unmarried women set out on their own pioneer journey, forming families and working together to cultivate their land. In the all-Black town of Nicodemus, Kansas—likely named after a slave who became legendary for buying his own freedom—the women in Flyin’ West seek their freedom both as African Americans and as women. As Cleage states in a preface to the text, “This is a story of some black people who went west” (6).

Plot Summary

It’s 1898 and four African American women have left the racial violence and danger of the southern states and headed west to take their chances as pioneers on the undeveloped frontier in Kansas. Sophie shares her farmhouse with her sisters, Fannie and Minnie, as well as Miss Leah, an elderly neighbor who has moved in and become family. Fannie has become close to Wil Parish, a well-trusted friend of the family, although both are too shy to admit that they’re in love. Minnie’s been away for more than a year since she married an older man in a whirlwind two-week romance and then moved to London, but she and her husband are visiting soon. Sophie focuses her passion on her dream of turning Nicodemus from an all-Black settlement to an all-Black utopia; she’s preparing to make a speech to influence citizens to vote to discourage the selling of land to white speculators.

Minnie arrives with her husband, Frank, after a stop in New Orleans regarding his late father’s estate. At first, Frank seems charming, but Sophie and Miss Leah see through his exterior—and notice the bruises on Minnie’s face. Frank’s father was a white man, and his mother was a slave. While alive, his father acknowledged and treated him as a son. Now, after his death, Frank is fighting his father’s white family to recognize him as family and grant him his inheritance. Frank hates the Black part of himself and feels disdain for people who are fully Black, including his wife, to whom he’s verbally and physically abusive. While in town, he mingles with white people at the land office and discovers that white developers will pay a lot for land in Kansas. Returning to the house drunk, he relays this news. Minnie insists that the women will never sell, and Frank shoves her. Sophie intervenes with her shotgun, but Minnie begs her to stop, confessing that she’s pregnant. Later, Minnie defends Frank and justifies his actions. Fannie, an eternal optimist, supports Minnie’s marriage and forgives Frank.

On Minnie’s 21st birthday, her sisters gift her a deed to the land that bears her name. When Frank receives a telegram denying his claim to his father’s paternity and estate, he becomes violent. He coerces Minnie into adding his name to the deed and then beats her more savagely than ever. When the other women discover what has happened, Sophie devises a plan to send Wil to draw Frank back to the house so that Sophie can shoot him. However, shooting is messy, and Miss Leah intervenes, baking a poisoned apple pie, a recipe given to her by a slave who fed it to a would-be rapist. Wil brings Frank back to the house. Fannie convinces him to eat the pie, and he dies quickly.

Months later, the women dress up to go to a dance. They’re happy and healthy, and Fannie and Wil are engaged. Sophie’s vote to discourage Black people from selling their land to white speculators has passed, suggesting brighter days for the town. Miss Leah stays behind to watch Minnie’s infant daughter. She holds the baby and promises to tell her all the stories of the generations of strong Black women who persevered to make a place for her in the world.