Showcasing: A Timeline on the Emergence of Black Theatre in America
Colored drawing of James Hewlett as Richard the Third, African Grove Theatre, 1821-1831
Courtesy of Blackpast.org
It is believed that the minstrel shows of the 1830’s, which were written by whites and acted in blackface, were the early origins of African American theatre. However, in 1816, William Henry Brown (1815-1884), a retired West Indian steamship steward, acquired a home in New York and offered a variety of instrumental and vocal entertainments on Sunday afternoons, attracting a sizable audience from the different boroughs of New York City. In 1821, Brown moved into a two-story home on Mercer and Bleeker Street and converted the second floor into a 300-seat theatre, creating the African Grove Theatre. The company’s principal actors were James Hewlett (1778-1836), the first African American Shakespearean actor; and, a young teenager, Ira Aldridge (1807-1865). The company lasted for three years before it burned down.[1] Two years later, it is believed that Brown also wrote and staged the first known African American play, The Drama of King Shotaway (1823), a “ historical drama based on the Black Carib war in St. Vincent in 1796 against both English and French settlers.”[2]
In 1858, over thirty years after Brown’s play, the first African American play, The Escape; or A Leap for Freedom (18580), was published by William Wells Brown, an African American anti-slavery lecturer, groundbreaking novelist, playwright, and historian. [3]
By the 1900’s, the first black theatre, The Crescent, was established in Harlem, and the Harlem Theatre Movement, between 1907-1917, provided the emergence of the first dramatic stock company composed entirely of African American actors, the Lafayette Players (est. November 1915).This concept of an entirely black actor’s company originated with Anita Bush, who was the daughter of a Harlem costumer. She presented her idea of a black theatre group to the manager of the Lincoln Theatre at the time, Marie Downs. After her idea was approved, she searched for actors in Harlem, found a group in two days, and these actors became the core of the “Bush Players” Some of the actors included: Charles Gilpin, Carlotta Freeman, Andrew Bishop, and Dooley Wilson. HistoryMaker Sister Francesca Thompson (1932 - ), a religious leader, an associate professor of African and African American studies and Director of Multicultural Programs at Fordham University, and former chairperson of the Drama/Speech Department at Marian College, recalled her parents being actors and members of the Lafayette Players. She remembers some of her dad’s friends, Lawrence Criner, Uncle Monte, Monte Hawley, who had belonged to the Players. She insisted that the Lafayette Players were the original first black theatre group, even though The African Company/African Grove is thought to be the first:
“They say to me, oh but remember, yeah we had the African Grove Theatre in New York [New York] with Ira Aldridge and James Hewlett. Well, listen to everything that I say, it was the first black dramatic stock company. No other group called themselves, or at least I can't find any notation about them, dramatic stock company. When I wrote my dissertation on the Lafayette Players for my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan [Ann Arbor, Michigan], I did 178 years' worth of microfilm reading. So when I finished my 300 pages, I defy anybody to tell me that what I have written is not as accurate as I could make it…”[4]
Whether or not the Lafayette Players are to be regarded at the first dramatic stock company or the first black theatre group in general, does not change the history of their enormous success. The group garnered so much attention from audiences and some theatre critics that Downs attempted to change the group name to “The Marie Downs Players,” but Bush counteracted this attempt by re-locating her company to the other black Harlem theatre, “The Lafayette.” They adopted this name as their moniker. By the early 1930’s, the Lafayette Players, along with many other entertainment groups soon vanished after the emergence of The Great Depression. [5]
(Search Terms: African+grove)
Black theatre during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s and 30’s, prompted the creation of experimental groups and black theatre companies in New York City, Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C.[6] As African American theatres begin to appear, talents like Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee arrived on the scene. By the 1940’s, black theatre had cemented itself in the American Negro Theater and the Negro Playwright’s Company [7]. Black theatre also took a stance on the racial injustices of the 1940’s as remembered by HistoryMaker Ossie Davis, a film director, screenwriter, stage actor, and film actor who established a phenomenal career and remained throughout a strong voice for artists' rights, human dignity, and social justice:
“It was a special moment for the theater on Broadway [theater district in New York]. Paul Robeson was there as we said Lena Horne, you know, and Canada Lee. And they took a leadership position. But consider for a moment what the times were like. We who had fought in World War II, fought with these expectations that the country was going to change its policy toward black folks. But when we got back home, we found that the country had no intention of changing its policy and went out of its way to let us know in many ways that that was not going to happen…And so the theatre was always concerned about these issues.”[8]
Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis by Carl van Vetchen
Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
His wife, actress HistoryMaker Ruby Dee (1924 - 2014) appeared in over fifty movies, including A Raisin In The Sun (1961), Uptight (1968), Buck And The Preacher (1972), Roots (1978), Do The Right Thing (1989), The Delany Sisters: The First Hundred Years (1999) and American Gangster (2007), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
The embedment of black theatre in racial issues continued well into the 1950’s, as plays like A Raisin in the Sun (1959), focused on the actualization of black identity in America. It is also important to remember that this was the decade of the Montgomery bus boycott. Ossie Davis said that the theatre community’s political activism in the 1950’s played an active role in attempting to secure the rights of African Americans after World War II:
“Not only were we involved in that, but we took a serious look at all the issues in the world. I remember having a big rally at Madison Square Garden [convention center], where the theatrical community took it upon itself to tell the United States government that we had no right to have access to the atom bomb on our own, we should share the knowledge with the rest of the world.”[9]
According to Davis, World War II was, for the Africans, a “fight against colonialism.” [10]As all of these fights were there, so was the theatre community, on the streets as well, doing marvelous things. That became one of the causes of the deliberate attempt to stop the theatre community’s influence on government policy. Davis remarked:
“We were the object of their ire and they determined that those actors and Paul Robeson and those people were not going to influence government policy, what the--America did to the colonies in Africa was none of the actors' business…We were supposed to be like children, do the plays, go home and forget about it. And those of us who didn't, they put on a list and they came and they subpoenaed us and they made us stand trial and to defend ourselves as if we were traitors, but there was a pattern to what they did…”[11]
Portrait of Paul Robeson by Carl Van Vetchen
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
By the 1960’s, a new African American theatre movement emerged, with the establishment of the Negro Ensemble Company as the “most productive black theater company in the world”[12] and the Black Arts Movement between 1965-1975. Federal government official and author HistotyMaker A. B. Spellman (1935 - ), was the director of several projects for the National Endowment of the Arts, and stated that there was a plentiful amount of funding for the development of nonprofit art organizations that had not existed before:
“…Basically, the whole 501(c)(3) world exploded during the 1960s…So the Black Arts Movement started developing. You started seeing black theater companies being formed, the Negro Ensemble [Negro Ensemble Company], the New Freedom Theatre--New Federal Theatre in Harlem, [HistoryMaker] Barbara Ann Teer's National Black Theatre [National Black Theatre Inc.] in Harlem, and the same thing was happening in the--in the Hispanic community, the Asian American community, Native American community, all these cultural organizations that were culturally specific, and this was an interesting development.”[13]
(Search terms: harlem+theater+movement)
HistoryMaker, Robert Hooks (1937-), founded The Negro Ensemble Company in New York, NY with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald Krone in 1967 through a grant from the Ford Foundation. However, they began their planning for NEC in 1965. Vice president of the Ford Foundation at the time, McNeil Lowry (1964-1974) was the person that “made this happen”[14] for The Negro Ensemble Company. The initial proposal to fund the NEC was to be executed via a three-year grant, yet the Ford Foundation funded them for several years, although Hooks proclaimed that this was not wanted. He noted:
“…We didn’t want [The Ford Foundation] to fund us forever…We wanted to build an audience. We wanted our box office, our patronage, to take care of our nut, if you will…We did not want the Ford Foundation to be the… great white father on the hill…It was great that they did what they did to get us started…But it was up to us to build the autonomy, and we did.” [15]
The list of artists attached to the NEC, like Denzel Washington, Sam-Art Williams, Samuel L. Jackson, Debbie Allen, Phylicia Rashad, and Esther Frances, prove Hooks right. The list goes on to include directors, choreographers, set designers, and costume designers as well. In fact, Hooks confidently stated that NEC had some of the “best actors, [like] [HM] Arthur [Wellesley] French, Norman Bush, Adolph Caesar, you know [HM] Hattie Winston, [HM] Denise Nicholas.” [16]
(search terms: “black theater”+1960)
Art professor and curator HistoryMaker Ed Spriggs (1934 - ) was the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem and the executive director of the Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta, Georgia and reflected upon the purpose of the Black Arts Movement:
“…The ideology was that we needed to create images and, and information and mechanisms for promoting our art that represented us, that was by us. And to build institutions that would perpetuate that art, okay. So that's why, that's why Baraka [Amiri Baraka] created the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School in Harlem [New York, New York]...The whole of the movement was to counteract some of the…absence of ourselves in the literature in the country and the arts in general. To support theater, support you know, writers, artists, thespians. ”[17]
Amiri Baraka (center) with musicians and actors of the Black Arts Movement
Courtesy of Howard University Digital Collections (1966)
(Search Terms: harlem+theater+movement)
By 1968, civil rights activist and city council member, [HistoryMaker]Sala Udin (1943-), started the Black Horizon Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA, as he realized that “the power of poetry and culture was a very effective organizing tool.”[18] On the conceptualization of the Black Horizon Theatre, Udin stated:
“…It was a kind of reconvening of Rob Penny and August Wilson, and some other poets who called themselves poets in the Centre Avenue [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania] tradition, urban poets. And we had the Souls of Ebony who worked with us that I mentioned earlier…with Phyllis Hyman, who was the lead singer…We made frequent trips to Newark to learn how to put together a theater. And so, many of the poets became playwrights.” [19]
Udin was a political leader in the community with various committees and soon became a lead actor even though he didn’t have any training or interest in theatre prior to the Black Horizons Theatre. However, this was not a limiting factor for the theatre because producing professional actors was not the primary concern for Black Horizons Theatre:
“…We used it purely as a means of educating and mobilizing the community. That was the purpose of it, and it didn't matter to us that we were not good actors. It only mattered that people came out to see it and that they grew in terms of their own consciousness from having done so, so there was no desire to become professional actors… (Udin 2008)”[20]
The Black Horizons Theatre ran all the way up until 1974. Around the same time, similar institutions were formed among the same foundations of the BHT like the Chicago Afro-Arts Theatre, located in Chicago, Illinois. This phenomenon was not surprising to Udin, as he noted, “…We learned from other communities and adapted it to here, to the local situation here.” [21]
Presenting: A Student Ambassador Update
This week, we were directed to examine the history of black theatre from its emergence up until the 1960’s. In our weekly meeting, we went over how to find more nuanced quotes and accounts in the digital archive. I focused on black theatre development in America and was floored by how much I was able to find on the subject. I particularly enjoyed reading about the role of the Black Arts Movement of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s in the advancement of a more radicalized and poetic black theatre.
Notes
[1] https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/african-company-african-grove-theatre/
[2] from blackpast.org
[3] https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/brown-william-wells-1814-1884/
[4] Sister Francesca Thompson (The HistoryMakers A2006.107), interviewed by Shawn Wilson, October 3, 2006, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 4, Sister Francesca Thompson recalls researching her parents' acting careers, pt. 1
[5] https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/lafayette-players-1915-1932/#:~:text=The%20Lafayette%20Players%20were%20a,range%20than%20previously%20considered%20possible.
[6] https://www.britannica.com/art/black-theatre
[7] from britannica.com
[8] Ruby Dee (The HistoryMakers A2001.024), interviewed by Angela Davis, October 18, 2002, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 8, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee talk about the New York theater scene's efforts against racial injustices in the 1940s
[9] Ruby Dee (The HistoryMakers A2001.024), interviewed by Angela Davis, October 18, 2002, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 10, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis talk about the theatrical community's political activism in the 1950s
[10] Ruby Dee (The HistoryMakers A2001.024), interviewed by Angela Davis, October 18, 2002, The HistoryMakers Digital Archives.
[11] Ruby Dee (The HistoryMakers A2001.024), interviewed by Angela Davis.
[12] Robert Hooks (The HistoryMakers A2005.270), interviewed by Paul Brock, March 30, 2006, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 6, story 6, Robert Hooks talks about the success of the Negro Ensemble Company.
[13] A. B. Spellman (The HistoryMakers A2004.251), interviewed by Racine Tucker-Hamilton, December 7, 2004, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 2, tape 5, story 1, A. B. Spellman describes the Black Arts Movement in New York City.
[14] Robert Hooks on the formation of the Negro Ensemble Company.
[15] Hooks on the funding of the Negro Ensemble Company.
[16] Hooks on the successes of the NEC.
[17] Ed Spriggs (The HistoryMakers A2011.024), interviewed by Denise Gines, April 21, 2011, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 3, story 8, Ed Spriggs talks about the Black Arts Movement.
[18] Sala Udin (The HistoryMakers A2008.104), interviewed by Larry Crowe, August 12, 2008, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 7, story 4, Sala Udin describes August Wilson and Rob Penny's Black Horizon Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
[19] Sala Udin on the formation of the Black Horizons Theatre.
[20] Udin on the purpose of the Black Horizons Theatre.
[21] Udin on the formation institutions like the Black Horizon’s Theatre.
