The cover of the theater program was a little off-putting, but the photo tucked inside was adorable. The cover showed a caricature of a male dancer with red lips and black face mimicking the look…
Category: theater
Some years ago, a friend and I were visiting a nostalgia convention when we came upon a vendor who was actually selling vintage items. He was one of the few; there were mostly tables with DVDs…
The publicity photo of a young African American woman seemed out of place in the box. The large photo was lying at the bottom, hidden by a stack of smaller-sized cabinet cards of African Americans from…
Artifacts tell their own story of Martin Luther King’s life
Posted in Black history, civil rights movement, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Photos, and theater
One artifact was a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, two men who sought freedom for African Americans in their own ways. Another was a large pinback button from the Southern Christian…
In Paul Robeson’s day, Russia was the enemy
Posted in Black history, Music, Performers, Politics, and theater
Paul Robeson must be turning over in his grave. That’s what we say in the South when something unbelievable happens that a now-deceased person had fought/spoken for or against. That saying keeps coming to my…
Alvin Ailey Dance Theater still “feels” my soul
Posted in Culture, Performers, and theater
I’ll never be able to listen to a Duke Ellington tune again without seeing the acrobatically graceful dancers of the Alvin Ailey company. Duke’s music is all over Ailey’s “Night Creature,” and principal dancer Hope…
Leftovers from a theater show
Posted in theater
The first thing I saw was a cow’s head and then a horse’s head, and the items reminded me of Halloween. Looking closer, I saw that they were likely props from a theater. Here they…
The last house where Paul Robeson lived
Posted in Art, history, Music, Performers, Plays, Sports, and theater
Arcenia McClendon was telling a story about the time she met Paul Robeson: She was a young school teacher in her early 20s and she passed the house at 50th and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia on her…
As I sat in the theater, I tried to summon their excitement and anxiety. It wasn’t often that they could sit anywhere they wanted in a Broadway theater, much less watch black performers sing and…
A few weeks ago, I took a bus trip to New York to see James Earl Jones play a crotchety elderly man and Cicely Tyson an enduring woman in the Broadway production of “The Gin…