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Black Writers and the federal theatre ProJect august 1935–June 1939 angelene Jamison-hall Chicago’s black cultural life in the 1930s and 1940s was as vital as New York’s during the Harlem Renaissance. Literature, art, music, theater, and other creative activities thrived and developed into what has recently been referred to as the Chicago Renaissance. The migration of African Americans during the twenty years before the Depression had contributed to the development of a spirited Black community. By 1930 it was estimated that Chicago’s black population reached 230,000 people, and many of these migrants were generally segregated to the South Side or what became known as “Bronzeville.” Chicago boasted of many organizations that added to the vitality of the African American communities. Rena Fraden notes in her book, Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre, 1935–1939, that there were “167 churches, 47 college clubs, 97 fraternal orders, and over 18 local and national college fraternities and sororities in existence in 1927.”1 In addition to women’s clubs, service organizations, and social networks, there were also business and professional clubs in which Blacks participated and supported. Theater, too, with its vaudeville, minstrels, comedies, dramas, and musical shows represented a rich tradition in African American culture in Chicago. Theater was part of the strong cultural tradition among blacks in Chicago. In 1861, the first stock theater was founded. Robert T. Motts who had traveled in England and seen theater presentations, returned to Chicago to initiate a comparable program. According to Fraden, after opening the Pekin Theater in 1905, which seated twelve hundred people, Mott was successful until 1911, when he found himself in competition with white theaters doing vaudeville. There were, however, other achievements in Chicago’s black theater history. Tony Langston, an actor, was dramatic editor of the historic Chicago Defender. Billy King not only produced shows, but wrote hundreds of plays and sketches, and the list of actors included Evelyn Preer, who began her career with the 414 • angelene JaMison-hall Lafayette Players in Chicago, and Clarence Muse, another member of the Lafayette Players.2 Given the city’s background in black theater, with performers, technicians, and artistic activists, the creative energy that permeated the South Side during the thirties and forties suggested great possibilities for the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). The Federal Theatre Project was one of the four arts projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) developed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the high unemployment among creative artists during the Great Depression. Along with the other arts projects—writing, art, and music—theater suffered greatly during the 1930s. Although it had been in decline prior to the thirties, with the introduction of the motion picture industry and other cheaper forms of entertainment, actors, designers, stagehands, writers, and craftsmen now had little choice but to go on relief. Fraden asserts that the Federal Theatre Project not only intended for these artists to acquire employment, allowing them to continue to develop their skills, it also suggested that theater was an integral part of American culture and should not be allowed to die. As the Federal Theatre sought to provide employment for theater professionals , additional goals became important when Hallie Flanagan became director of the Project. President Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins, deputy administrator of New York’s Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) and later head of the WPA, recruited her from Vassar, where she had been involved in noncommercial theater . Flanagan had revolutionary ideas about the Federal Theatre Project. She wanted the FTP to provide employment opportunities for people with theater experience and to encourage them to expand their talents. Moreover, she wanted the project to bring theater to the people, to use local talent and exercise local control, and to include issues in the plays that exemplified diversity and social significance. In his essay, “The Role of Blacks in the Federal Theatre,” Ronald Ross points out that Flanagan “wanted the forgotten man . . . to be a major concern of the Federal Theatre Project.”3 Flanagan’s commitment to a theater of and for the people led her and Rose McClendon, one of the major black actresses of the time, to come together in 1935 to talk about the establishment of separate units for blacks. McClendon and Flanagan both believed that the only way to achieve equality of opportunity and racial parity was to establish autonomous separate black units. McClendon was highly concerned that as these units acquire autonomy, they also portray Black life...

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