Broadway'S Black History

Broadway has been giving the world entertainment for over 100 years. With lights, song, dance and high energy performances. When it comes to Broadway productions it can range anywhere from a serious drama, or a whimsical magical world of Dr. Suess. From when Broadway hit New York back in the 1800s to now the stage has gone through a huge transformation, to having an all-white production, to some black performers, to any all production of African Americans. Since the begin of the 19th century, Backs have been wanting to be apart of the Broadway experience, but having to overcome the obstacles on not being wanted in the stage. However, when African Americans were allowed to be a part of the experience, it gave Broadway a new level of soulful and charismatic talent that they had to offer. Ever since Blacks were allowed on the stage, Broadway has never been the same and paved a way for them to be successful. Broadway was run by an all-white production, with white actors, producers, and directors back in the 19th century.

They would put on productions for people to bring them joy and entertainment, some of the more popular productions that have been shown are Hamlet, Macbeth, Our Mrs. Gibbs, and so much more. However, in some of the productions, they would need to portray a black man or woman but would not allow an actual black person to set foot on the stage. So, what people would do is use something that was called blackface, which is where a white actor would color their skin with some dark makeup and would be able to create the character. With some of these productions, it would enhance the stereotypes of black people, making them seem like every black person is foolish, dimwitted, and musical as well (Price, 2013 pg 1). As well as the production team not accepting African Americans, the audience would also refuse to see a production that had an African American in that production. Bert Williams was one of the greatest actors of his time, People would say that he was the funniest man to ever be a part of the film and Broadway industry. He was even funnier than some of the white actors. Along with being a wonderful actor, he was also the greatest comedian that was able to perform for all types of audiences. People loved him, not at first, but as time went on he was able to reach all types of people. Bert Williams was also able to write, direct, and produce his own movies. As well as write and sell some of his own music. George Walker and Bert Williams were known as the “Two Real Coons” of Broadway. They were the dynamic duo that brought laughter and joy to everyone they performed too.

George Walker did not achieve as much as Bert Williams did, but he was able to help Williams along the way. Making them both memorable. Bert Williams and George Walker were able to pave a way for other black performers. However, let’s start at the beginning of both of their lives. Born in Nassau, the Bahamas in 1875 the world welcomed Egbert Austin Williams. He was born with lighter skin because he was Bahamian making him not as dark as other African Americans. His parent’s names were Julia and Fredrick Williams Jr. At the age of 11, he and his parents immigrated from Nassau And moved to New York City and then to California. Bert wasn’t always set on performing and being on the stage, ever since he was in high school he wanted to go to Stanford University. He wanted to study civil engineering and earn his way of living through that. At the age of sixteen, he decided that he was done with high school and wanted to pursue the life of entertainment (Forbes, 2008 pg 4) He then became a barker for a medicine show that was located along the Riverside area. Bert’s father did not always approve of what Bert was doing, Fredrick had a lot of great ambition for his son that he knew he could achieve, and being a barker was not one of them. It wasn’t until Fredrick went and saw Bert perform that he knew that this is what his son was meant to be doing. Fredrick then became Bert’s number one supporter. This medicine show would travel to smaller towns and villages and would give people some sort of entertainment.

They would also try to get your attention in order to tell you what they were selling. Most of the things that they were trying to sell you were worthless (Forbes, 2008 pg 3). Bert was able to draw in a crowd by telling some of his magical stories. He had a way with words that made people want to stop what they were doing and listen to him. He had poise, a lot of creativity, and was a charismatic guy. Some people would even say that he was a mesmerizing talker. It was the barkers job to grab audiences and give them a little show before the actual show was about to start (Forbes, 2008 pg 3). With him being a barker and going out and traveling, he experienced what it was like to be a black man in the entertainment world. He had his first contact with prejudice. While the other people in his troupe would find a place a hotel to sleep in, he was turned away and told that he would not be welcomed there (Woll, 1989 pg 33). After they had finished their tour with the medicine show, Bert decided to leave the group and pursue something different. We are now introduced to George Walker. He was born in Lawerence, Kansas back in 1873 and was the youngest out of three siblings. George first got his start working with at least twelve other black men working for a company of minstrels. Their performances were a huge success. George stated that “ I started out with the idea that it was possible for the black performer to do better.” Then at the age of twelve, he decided to leave his home and join up with a medicine show to expand his performances. He was a true entertainer, he could sing and dance and could capture the attention of other people. Just like Bert, George was the opening act for the medicine show he was traveling with (Forbes, 2008 pg 16). In 1983, Bert met George and the most memorable duo was born.

The two first got their start working for a vaudeville, which is a type of performance that was popular back in the 1900s. It was filled with comedy, song, and dance. The two were unstoppable, they started to refer to themselves as the “Two Real Coons” they were some of the most successful teams of that era. THe performed wherever they could, and one of their new acts got some attention to some of the managers that worked for the San Francisco Music Theatre. They were then booked to play for them. In 1896, a man by the name of George Lederer, who was a manager and a produce on Broadway was producing a play The Gold Bug. At first, the play was a disaster and Lederer thought that it needed a new comedic element to make the play stand out better. When he heard about the “Two Real Coons” he thought that it would be a great idea to have them be a part of the play to make it better and maybe even save the play. However, the show business people greeted them very poorly and there were some people that told Lederer that it would be a bad idea to hire them. Some people thought that their act and acting was mediocre, but some people said that it was the color of their skin that would hinder the ability to make the play better (Woll, 1989 pg. 34). It turned out that the play Gold Bug did better when Lederer decided to let Bert and George be a part of the play. There were still people who were against them being on stage but others were starting to warm up to the idea of them and actually began to enjoy watching the men entertain them. Later on, Williams and Walker made up something called the cake walk, “Williams and Walker made the cakewalk dance fashionable, opening up cakewalk contests to big names and making it an international favorite” (Ukpokodu, 200 pg 73). Still, in 1820, there was an opening of a a little garden theater in New York City, it was run by a man of the name of William Brown. In New York City it was hard for black people to find a place where they belonged. Slavery was still a big thing and they would sometimes be sent back into slavery.

So William Brown took it upon himself to create this little theater place for Black people to call a place home. The African Grove Theater was the first black theater company in New York (Ukpokodu, 2000 pg. 78). The first performance that took place in the African Grove was in 1821, with James Hewlett leading the way. This first performance was a big step for African American males in the entertainment and theatrical world in the United States. Along with the first performance came another play that was called King Shotaway which was actually the first play that was produced and played at the African Grove. The African Grove also focused a lot on the Shakespearean aspect of plays as well as performing them they also produced the Shakespearean play as well. Some people got their start to fame by first performing at the African Grove (Ukpokodu, 2000 pg. 78). A man by the name of Ira Aldridge, performed at the Grove and was later said to be “the first truly great African American actor, performed at the African Grove before he went to Europe, where he was acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest Shakespearean tragedians and was awarded royal honors”(Ukpokodu, 2000 pg. 78). Sadly, the African Grove did not last as long as it should’ve people began to create trouble and it caused them to shut the Grove down permanently in 1830. Going a little ahead in time, to the late 1930s into the early 1940s, there was a small group of African American artists would gather together and meet in Harlem. The reason they did this was to start a theatre company for African Americans. Since it was a lot harder for them to perform for other people so they had a group to perform for themselves. “Williams and Walker made the cakewalk dance fashionable, opening up cakewalk contests to big names and making it an international favorite” This was the beginning of the American Negro Theatre or better known as the A.N.T. A Historian by the name of James Hatch wrote that “ANT became the most important, self-contained black theatre troupe between the demise of the African Company in 1823 and the birth of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) in 1967” (Shandell, 2018 pg 1). With the work of this company, it helped transform African Americans as they enter into the United States culture.

The African American Theatre companies took place not just in one building, it first started in library auditoriums, then it moved to churches, community centers, then it moved to universities, and then it got to the point where they would move anywhere where there was a platform where they could perform and people could come and watch. The theatre groups did not perform just to entertain people but to also address important needs from the African American community. They talked about self-expression, political protests, intellectual and artistic development, communal celebration and solidarity. The Negro Little Theatre was a movement that was transformative for African Americans all across the world. It helped give rise to the dramatic literature for black theatre troupes, it also helped bring out a new generation of playwriters, actors, designers, and theatrical administration. For the group, they had set down four main principles that people were aware of(Shandell, 2018 pg. 4). The first one was that it had to be about them, the plots in their performances had to reveal what it was actually like to like the life of a Black person. The second was that it had to be by them, it had to be written by an African American. This way you would get a better understanding of what it was like from birth until today what it was like to be them. The third was it had to be for them, the theatre had to cater to a black audience and be supported by their entertainment and approval. The last one was about how it had to be near them, they decided that the theatre had to be located in a Black neighborhood or community (Shandell, 2018 pg. 4). The American Negro Theatre had three major plays that impacted the Theatre program.

These plays were all written by black playwrights, “Between 1940 and 1945, the ANT presented three ambitious original works by black playwrights which remain largely overlooked by scholars: On Striver’s Row by Abram Hill, Natural Man by Theodore Browne, and The Carden of Time by Owen Dodson” (Shandell, 2008 pg. 533) . These were some of the plays that helped put the American Negro Theatre on the map. It is also a big part of African American history with theatre, as well as giving other black entertainers an opportunity to be able to perform in front of people. It was during this time that the world was introduced to Lorraine Hansberry who was the first and youngest African American to write and produce a play. Her play A Rasin in the Sun turned out to be a huge success and it still talked about today. However, let’s go back to the beginning. It was the 1930s when Lorraine Hansberry was born. She was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago Illinois. She was the youngest child and her parents were Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hanberry. To add some background on her family, her father had founded a bank and was actually the first African American to found a bank, and on top of that, he ran a successful real estate business. Her uncle William Leo Hansberry taught African studies at the University of Howard in Washington (Mckissack, 1999 pg 4). Lorraine grew up in a neighborhood that hated black people with a passion, their neighbors would throw bricks through their windows which would barely miss Lorraine. They also had to deal with a white mob that would threaten to cause harm to them. So to say, she did not grow up in a pleasant way. Lorraine went to Englewood High School, and when she graduated that was when she became interested in theatre. However, she went to the University of Wisconson and was studying paintings from Chicago and Mexico. But she felt like that wasn’t what she was supposed to be doing with her life. Before she could finish her degree she dropped out and decided to move to New York and pursue writing ( Sinnott, 1999 pg 26). She first started out writing for a publishing company who was run by Paul Robeson. But because of her starting with Paul it leads her to many more opportunities to write with other literary and political mentors. Some of the people that she wrote with was W.E.B. DuBois, and a Jewish writer by the name of Robert Nemiroff, who shared the same view as she did. They later married and began to work on the progress of A Rasin in the Sun ( McKissack, 1999). In 1957, Lorraine Hansberry began to work on a piece that shed some light of what it was like to be a struggling poor black family that lived in Chicago.

The play also goes over how the family in the story are offered some money in order to move out of that neighborhood, but this was the house that the family had always dreamed about having. The play was loosely based on her and her family and what they had to go through. She used some of her family as characters in her play. She first called the play The Crystal Stair but was later changed to A Raisin in the Sun, which was actually a line from the poem called Langston Hughes ( McKissack, 1999). It is now 1959 March 11, and Lorraine Hansberry has made history with her play A Raisin in the Sun which was now open on Broadway. When it opened, it became one of the world’s most well-known play that is still performed on Broadway to this day. The play had great success and had around 530 performances. This was the first produced on Broadway by an African American woman, as well as being the youngest at the age of 29. She also won a New York Critics’ Circle award for best play of the year (Sinnott, 1999). Lorraine believed that writers should focus on more important topics like social and political issues that were present at their time as well as bring some sort of entertainment to the world. She stated that “ The question is not whether one will make a social statement in one’s work but only what the statement will say, for if it says anything at all, it will be social”( Sinnott, 1999). Her main focus for writing these plays was to get America’s attention on the problems that they were dealing with, and that was the problem of racism and how black people were being treated. It also wasn’t just about race but also about the many other conflicting and complicated topics that people have (Sinnott, 1999). With A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine showed Broadway and the world that everyone struggles with our own dreams, even when we try to do good for others, it may still be an uphill battle. Also, within her play, she shows us that with creating the characters, is a carefully crafted view of what it was like to be a man and a woman and how they define themselves as a human being. She was also able to show the world the connections between Africa and America, Africa and African American ( Sinnott, 1999). Lorraine Hansberry didn’t just make history for Broadway but also gave a voice for the young African woman or just woman in general. Allowing space in the theater for new voices to be heard. She also showed that we can follow our heart and see where it takes us. As well as giving people some insight into the political and historical facts of Africa ( Sinnott, 1999).

Sadly, she did not live a very long life and died at the age of 34 from cancer. Since she died so young many people did not get to witness her work, the other plays that she wrote, which were not produced in time before she died. However, she was on this earth long enough to make a difference and give young people a voice (Sinnott, 1999). African Americans have had a hard time making their way through history especially when it comes to theatre and Broadway. Bert Williams showed people that if you work hard and keep on pursuing your dream of entertainment, you can do anything. With the American Negro Theatre, it was a place for African Americans to go to have a safe place to be and also give people a head start into the world of Theatre. With Lorraine Hansberry, she showed the world that women can do anything men can do and that young African American girls can be just as successful as white men. She brought to light the struggles of living in a world that was racist and had people informed of the damage that they were causing those families. To me, these three topics were all done at different times but helped pave a way to where we are today.

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