“African company” playing in New York. No
sooner had the Negro become the principal in the
minstrel shows than he began to develop and
uplift the art. This took a long time but eventually there appeared Cole and Johnson, Ernest
Hogan and Williams and Walker. Their development of a new light comedy marked an epoch
and Bert Williams was at his recent death without
doubt the leading comedian on the American stage.
In the legitimate drama there was at first no chance for the Negro in the United States. Ira Aldridge, born in Maryland, had to go to Europe for opportunity. There he became associated with leading actors like Edmund Keene and was regarded in the fifties as one of the two or three greatest actors in the world. He was honored and decorated by the King of Sweden, the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia. He had practically no successor until Charles Gilpin triumphed in “The Emperor Jones” in New York during the season 1920-21.
Efforts to develop a new distinctly racial drama and portray the dramatic struggle of the Negro in America and elsewhere have rapidly been made. Mrs. Emily Hapgood made determined effort to initiate a Negro theatre. She chose the plays of Ridgeley Torrence, a white playwright, who wrote
