Early black Americans on Broadway

doi:10.1017/CCO9781139062107.005

3 - Early black Americans on Broadway

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2012

Monica White Ndounou

Edited by

Harvey Young

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Harvey Young: Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois

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Summary

You put me in Macbeth and Carmen Jones
And all kinds of Swing Mikados
And in everything but what’s about me—
But someday somebody’ll
Stand up and talk about me.
And write about me—
Black and beautiful—
And sing about me.
And put on plays about me!
I reckon it’ll be
Me Myself!
Yes, it’ll be me.
Langston Hughes, “Note on Commercial Theatre” (1940)

Toward the end of the twentieth century, several black theatre artists with Broadway experience articulated conflicting views of “the Great White Way.” In 1972, Woodie King, Jr. and Ron Milner jointly declared, “Broadway … is a contented fat white cow. If you slip in and milk her for a minute – well, then more black power to you, brother … it’s a weird price she’s asking. She wants you to be a singing hyena, dancing on the graves of yourself and everyone you know.” A decade later, Lloyd Richards, the first black director on Broadway (A Raisin in the Sun, 1959), observed that “[Broadway] still has the connotation of Mecca. Who doesn’t want to go to Mecca?” Over the past 200 years, countless black American artists have contributed to the development of American theatre in direct and indirect ways. Those with a Broadway pedigree tend to be more readily remembered than those who also have had a major influence on theatre even in their absence or exclusion from Broadway.

The following analysis considers the presence of early black American artists who paved the path and opened the doors to Broadway for future African Americans. Performers like George W. Walker (1873–1911); his partner, Bert A. Williams (1874–1922); and the prominent Harlem Renaissance poet and Broadway playwright, Langston Hughes (1902–67) were conscious of the limited and often subservient representations of black folk in the theatre. These artists actively challenged what Miles M. Jefferson refers to as the “Eternal Menial” in the migration of their work from the theatrical margins to Broadway.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre , pp. 59 - 84

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCO9781139062107.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2012

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References

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Melvin Van Peebles’s Classified X (1998) and Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2001) also pay homage to the great performer and his legacy

Elam, Harry J., Jr. and Elam, Michele, “Blood Debt: Reparations in Langston Hughes’ Mulatto,” Theatre Journal, 61.1 (March, 2009): 87Google Scholar

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