Chapter 3 - Early Black Americans on Broadway

Summary

Monica White Ndounou focuses on Bert Williams, George Walker, and Langston Hughes. Through a close reading of their seminal productions, she reveals how the artists attempted to challenge existing theatrical stereotypes and caricatures of Blackness. Ndounou reads these figures as trailblazers, paving the path for future artists who were able to present more accurate depictions of African American life on the Broadway stage. The author covers more than fifty years of theatre history, from the emergence of Williams and Walker in the late nineteenth century to the premiere of Hughes’s The Barrier on the Great White Way in 1950.