Old City Soul: The African Grove Theater

From time to time I'll be writing about people and events from New York City's black history. Sometimes they will be linked to places you can visit; other times those places will be long-gone, but the story will remain. Mostly I'll just try to bring you something fresh.

Next time you find yourself on Mercer Street, particularly between Bleecker and Prince, imagine yourself in early nineteenth-century New York. It was during that time, somewhere along that stretch that a black-owned theater called the African Grove opened in 1821, six years before the last slave was emancipated by the state of New York. Founded by a West Indian ex-ship’s steward named William Brown, the theater was built at great expense; this was no existing building, but brand new. Brown mounted Shakespeare—notably Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Richard III, as well as contemporary plays such as Shotaway, about a slave revolt in Saint Domingue. The last was written by a black man and was no less than a very obvious reference to the Haitian revolution. The audacity of Brown to flaunt the successful uprising of blacks at a time when nearly all blacks in North America were slaves is nothing short of breathtaking.. Not surprisingly, white thugs infiltrated the audiences time and again and started fights, closing down the shows (actors, stage hands, even Brown were often dragged into the melee). Still the African Grove lasted three years and launched the careers of such nineteenth century black actors James Hewlett, and Ira Aldridge , both of whom achieved great acclaim abroad. For more information, click on the links, or read Shane White's book Stories of Freedom in Black New York, a well-researched and readable look into the lives of African-Americans as they moved from slavery to emancipation.

Image of Ira Aldridge as Aaron in Titus Andronicus (above, left) courtesy of the Library of Congress; image of James Hewlett as Richard III (above) courtesy of Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson Theatre Collection.