Pekin Theatre
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Pekin Theatre
Established on June 18, 1905, Chicago’s Pekin Theatre was the first black owned musical and vaudeville stock theatre in the United States. Between 1905 and around 1915, the Pekin Club and its Pekin Theatre served as a training ground and showcase for Black theatrical talent, vaudeville acts, and musical comedies. Additionally, the theatre allowed “African-American theatre artists with an opportunity to master theater craft and contribute significantly to the development of an emerging Black theater tradition”. The Pekin became "renowned for its all-black stock company and school for actors, an orchestra able to play ragtime and opera with equal brilliance, and a repertoire of original musical comedies."Bauman, TThe Pekin: The Rise and Fall of Chicago's First Black-Owned Theater Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2014. at Project MUSE Robert T Motts, founded the theatre, and brought it to prominence by presenting an all black company, seeking out an affluent interracia ...
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Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_type2 = Counties , subdivision_name1 = Illinois , subdivision_name2 = Cook and DuPage , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title2 = Incorporated (city) , established_date2 = , founder = Jean Baptiste Point du Sable , government_type = Mayor–council , governing_body = Chicago City Council , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Lori Lightfoot ( D) , leader_title1 = City Clerk , leader_name1 = Anna Valencia ( D) , unit_pref = Imperial , area_footnotes = , area_total ...
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Robert T
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honour, praise, renown" and ''berht'' "bright, light, shining"). It is the second most frequently used given name of ancient Germanic origin. It is also in use as a surname. Another commonly used form of the name is Rupert. After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form ''Robert'', where an Old English cognate form (''Hrēodbēorht'', ''Hrodberht'', ''Hrēodbēorð'', ''Hrœdbœrð'', ''Hrœdberð'', ''Hrōðberχtŕ'') had existed before the Norman Conquest. The feminine version is Roberta. The Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish form is Roberto. Robert is also a common name in many Germanic languages, including English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Danish, and Icelandic. It can be ...
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Charles Sidney Gilpin
Charles Sidney Gilpin (November 20, 1878 – May 6, 1930) was one of the most highly regarded stage actors of the 1920s. He played in critical debuts in New York City: the 1919 premier of John Drinkwater's ''Abraham Lincoln'' and the lead role of Brutus Jones in the 1920 premiere of Eugene O'Neill's ''The Emperor Jones'', also touring with the play. In 1920, he was the first black American to receive The Drama League's annual award as one of the 10 people who had done the most that year for American theatre. Early life and education Gilpin was born in Richmond, Virginia, to Peter Gilpin (a factory worker) and Caroline White (a nurse);"Charles Gilpin Buried After Simple Services in Trenton Baptist Church." ''Amsterdam (NY) News'', May 14, 1930, p. 1. he attended St. Francis School for Colored Children in that city. He started work as an apprentice in the '' Richmond Planet'' print shop before finding his career in theater. He first performed on stage as a singer at the age of ...
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Jesse A
Jesse may refer to: People and fictional characters * Jesse (biblical figure), father of David in the Bible. * Jesse (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Jesse (surname), a list of people Music * ''Jesse'' (album), a 2003 album by Jesse Powell * "Jesse", a 1973 song by Roberta Flack - see Roberta Flack discography * "Jesse", a song from the album ''Valotte'' by Julian Lennon * "Jesse", a song from the album ''The People Tree'' by Mother Earth * "Jesse" (Carly Simon song), a 1980 song * "Jesse", a song from the album ''The Drift'' by Scott Walker * "Jesse", a song from the album '' If I Were Your Woman'' by Stephanie Mills Other * ''Jesse'' (film), a 1988 American television film * ''Jesse'' (TV series), a sitcom starring Christina Applegate * ''Jesse'' (novel), a 1994 novel by Gary Soto * ''Jesse'' (picture book), a 1988 children's book by Tim Winton * Jesse, West Virginia, an unincorporated community * Jesse Hall, University of Missour ...
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Harrison Stewart
Harrison Stewart (1882 - 1918) was a comedic actor and lyricist in the United States. He performed at the Pekin Theater in Chicago where he became a star and received top billing. He was reported to have been a "plow-hand from a Virginia plantation" who studied at Booker T. Washington Industrial School. After leaving the Pekin Theater in 1908 he took over for the ill Ernest Hogan Ernest Hogan (born Ernest Reuben Crowdus; 1865 – May 20, 1909) was the first African-American entertainer to produce and star in a Broadway show (''The Oyster Man'' in 1907) and helped to popularize the musical genre of ragtime. A native of ... as the lead in ''Oyster Man''. Before leaving the Pekin Theater in 1908, he played comedic roles in 36 uncertain shows and wrote lyrics for several shows. After he went to New York, he was appointed head of Oyster Man company. He worked at OM company until his health started to deteriorate, causing the show to be suspended. A photograph of him in blackf ...
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Lottie Grady
Charlotte Grady Roxborough (September 8, 1887 – 1970) was a singer, dancer, and comedian who performed in theatrical productions and vaudeville as well as films. She was born to Wesley, a white father, and Susan (Kelly) Grady. She performed at the Pekin Theatre in Chicago where she was a star member of its stock company. She starred in William Foster's '' The Pullman Porter'', in 1912, the first black motion picture production. She was born in Chicago. Her photograph ran in a 1909 edition of the ''New York Age ''The New York Age'' was a weekly newspaper established in 1887. It was widely considered one of the most prominent African-American newspapers of its time.
''. She was described as well known and lauded for her performances in reviews. In 1919, she married Ch ...
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Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and ...
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Bronzeville, Chicago
Douglas, on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of Chicago's 77 community areas. The neighborhood is named for Stephen A. Douglas, Illinois politician and Abraham Lincoln's political foe, whose estate included a tract of land given to the federal government. This tract later was developed for use as the Civil War Union training and prison camp, Camp Douglas, located in what is now the eastern portion of the Douglas neighborhood. Douglas gave that part of his estate at Cottage Grove and 35th to the Old University of Chicago. The Chicago 2016 Olympic bid planned for the Olympic Village to be constructed on a truck parking lot, south of McCormick Place, that is mostly in the Douglas community area and partly in the Near South Side. The Douglas community area stretches from 26th Street, south to Pershing Road along the Lake Shore, including parts of the Green Line, along State Street and the Metra Electric and Amtrak passenger railroad tracks, which run parallel to Lak ...
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Chicago Defender
''The Chicago Defender'' is a Chicago-based online African-American newspaper. It was founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott and was once considered the "most important" newspaper of its kind. Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against Jim Crow-era violence and urged black people in the American South to settle in the north in what became the Great Migration. Abbott worked out an informal distribution system with Pullman porters who surreptitiously (and sometimes against southern state laws and mores) took his paper by rail far beyond Chicago, especially to African American readers in the southern United States. Under his nephew and chosen successor, John H. Sengstacke, the paper dealt with racial segregation in the United States, especially in the U.S. military, during World War II. Copies of the paper were passed along in communities, and it is estimated that at its most successful, each copy was read by four to five people. In 1919–1922, the ''Defender'' attracted ...
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African Grove Theatre
The African Grove Theatre opened in New York City in 1821. It was founded and operated by William Alexander Brown,Hatch, James V., and Ted Shine. ''Black Theatre USA: Plays by African Americans: The Early Period, 1847––1938''. New York: Free, 1996. 1. Print. a free black man from the West Indies.Bernard Peterson''Early Black American Playwrights and Dramatic Writers: A Biographical Directory and Catalog of Plays, Films, and Broadcasting Scripts'' Greenwood Publishing, 1990, pp. 37–39. It opened six years before the final abolition of slavery in New York state (gradual abolition brought it to an end in 1827, but young people born to slave mothers had to serve apprenticeships to age 21). The African Grove Theatre was attended by "all types of black New Yorkers -- free and slave, middle-class and working-class" along with others. It was the first place where Ira Aldridge, who would later become an esteemed and renowned Shakespearian actor, first saw a production of a Shakespea ...
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African-American History Of Illinois
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Slavery in the United States, enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West Africa, West/Central Africa, Central African with some European descent; some also have Native Americans in th ...
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