No Surrender! No Retreat! African American Pioneer Performers of the Twentieth-Century American Theater. By Glenda E. Gill. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000; pp. 230. $49.95 hardcover

Extract

At the beginning of No Surrender! No Retreat! African American Pioneer Performers of Twentieth-Century American Theater, Glenda E. Gill asks, “What shall the Negro dance about?” She poses the question as a “metaphor for all African American performing artists who faced . . . overwhelming discrimination” and lets it drive her passion and admiration for her chosen subjects. Her admiration for these theatrical heroes began through her early childhood contact with prominent African Americans on the campus of Alabama A. & M. College. Gill's palpable enthusiasm, germinated from the life-altering performances she saw as a youth, is the clear source of the power behind her scholarship and writing style. The chief value of the book lies in the balance Gill achieves between her quests to document and to celebrate these “pioneer performers,” people who have made her “dance” intellectually and inspirationally. She features the stories of Rose McClendon, Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters, Marian Anderson, Canada Lee, Pearl Bailey, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, James Earl Jones, and Morgan Freeman.