Plays and Pageants from the Life of the Negro

Here in a facsimile of the 1930 edition is Willis Richardson’s collection of twelve plays and pageants that playwrights of the era wrote expressly for black audiences, mainly students and other young black people who staged them. Not available in any other source, this is the important work of nine significant dramatists who helped to lay the foundations of African American drama.Included are Thelma Myrtle Duncan’sSacrifice, Maud Cuney-Hare’sAntar of Araby, John Matheus’sTi Yette, May Miller’sGraven ImagesandRiding the Goat, Willis Richardson’sThe Black Horseman,The King’s Dilemma,andThe House of Sham,Inez M. Burke’sTwo Races,Dorothy C. Guinn’sOut of the Dark,Frances Gunner’sThe Light of the Women,and Edward J. McCoo’sEthiopia at the Bar of Justice. This edition also contains Richardson’s introduction from the 1930 edition, not included in later versions.