Download e-book for iPad: Willis Richardson, Forgotten Pioneer of African-American by Christine R. Gray

During the Twenties and Nineteen Thirties, Willis Richardson (1889-1977) was once hugely revered as a number one African-American playwright and drama anthologist. His performs have been played via various black highschool, university, and collage drama teams and through theater businesses in Chicago, big apple, Washington D.C., Cleveland, Baltimore, and Atlanta. With the outlet of The Chip Woman's Fortune (1923), he turned the 1st African American to have a play produced on Broadway. a number of of his forty six performs have been released in various magazines, and in his essays, he steered black americans to hunt their dramatic fabric of their personal lives and situations. furthermore, he edited 3 anthologies of performs via African-Americans. yet among 1940 and his loss of life in 1977, Richardson got here to gain that his performs have been interval items and they not mirrored the issues and events of African-Americans. within the years ahead of his demise, he tried vigorously but unsuccessfully to maintain a number of of his performs via book, if now not creation. however the guy who has been known as the daddy of African-American drama and who used to be thought of the wish and promise of African-American drama died in obscurity.

Richardson has even been overlooked by means of the scholarly group. This severe biography, the 1st wide attention of his lifestyles and paintings, firmly reestablishes his pioneering function in American theater. The e-book starts off with a close chronology, by means of a considerate biographical essay. the quantity then examines the character of African-American drama within the Nineteen Twenties, the interval in which Richardson was once most efficient, and it analyzes his method of drama as a method of teaching African-American audiences. It then explores the African-American group because the principal subject matter in Richardson's performs, for Richardson quite often appears on the outcomes of refusals by means of blacks to aid each other. The paintings also considers Richardson's background performs, his anthologies, his dramas meant for black young ones, and his essays. A concluding bankruptcy summarizes his lasting impression; the e-book closes with a list of his performs and an in depth bibliography.