Agatha Christie's classic mystery novel, And Then There Were None, has sold millions upon millions of copies worldwide. The book has been adapted as high school plays all over the country and even performed on Broadway. It's a classic tale of characters innocently coming to an island-only to be killed one by one according to the verses found in the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme. This novel was one of the first true murder-mystery novels and the story can be found today in dozens of languages. So it comes with no surprise that local Lakota East High School students were planning on performing the story onstage this weekend. Students rehearsed lines for months and prepared their stage for the popular suspense thriller.
Then entered from stage far-left the Grinch of this tale, local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) President Gary Hines. Hines strongly objected to the performance because when Christie's popular novel was originally released in England in 1939, the working title included the highly offensive n-word. When the book was released a year later in the United States, the title had been changed to the now familiar And Then There Were None. But because of that original title in England, Hines labeled the literary work as racist and offensive-at least if Lakota East students performed it.
Such ignorance and feigned indignation is beyond comprehension. The actual story speaks nothing about racism and can hardly be interpreted as offensive at any point. The characters of the story are punished by a mysterious and anonymous murderer for various sins of their past. A judge who ruthlessly and recklessly sentenced scores of criminals to the death penalty and a wealthy man who killed an innocent couple in the midst of driving dangerously are just two of the characters who meet their fate in what the psycho killer feels is justified. The story goes deeper than a simple suspense thriller and presents the reader with the struggle to side with the victims or feel their lethal fate is entirely justified.
Unfortunately, that moral dilemma of the tale is completely lost on Hines. Nowhere in the story is race or ethnicity ever addressed. And Hines readily admits these obvious facts. He does not even object to the play being performed by local theater groups. Yet Hines claims high school students do not know about "diversity" so they are somehow unfit to perform the play. Racial diversity is not an issue in the story. Hines is creating racism and offensive material where none exists.
Perhaps if all the Lakota East students attended a diversity seminar hosted by a local company Hines happens to be an investor of, then he would have no objection.
Hines' line of argumentation only becomes worse with the idea that Christie's story is actually about genocide. The story is a murder-mystery. Christie is not endorsing the deaths of Native Americans, African-Americans or Anglo-Saxons. The story was written to entertain and captivate the mind. And if sales are considered a good measure of success, Christie has succeeded by leaps and bounds in captivating the minds of readers around the globe.
It is understandable that any work even loosely attached to the n-word would generate concern and emotion but Hines is manipulating that connection to oppose the performance. Hines conveniently ignores that the novel was never released in the U.S. under that title precisely because of the negative connotations associated with the word in this country. And as Lakota East senior Alicia Fisher has pointed out, the word was still considered acceptable in Britain through the 1960s. Therefore, it is more than likely that the book was released under that title with no intention of offending or speaking ill of any racial group. With this position as the NAACP, Hines needs to work vigorously to oppose real forms of racism that sadly still persist in society today. He should not be in the business of opposing the performance Agatha Christie. Such gimmicks only make Hines appear foolish and do a disservice to the noble cause of combating racism and discrimination.
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