Richardson, Thomas.

Place: America (A Theatre Piece) [Cover title].

New York: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1940. 7¾” x 5 5/8”. Stapled self-wrappers. Pp. 52. Very good: both wraps with a moderate corner dogear and some faint soiling, penciled notation to top edge of front; two leaves with a mild dogear, else internally fresh.

This is a complex and moving theatrical work based on the history of the NAACP. It was written by an African American playwright and community theater organizer, Thomas Richardson, with an informative foreword by noted Black professor, poet and activist Sterling A. Brown.

A professor of African American literature and folklore at Howard for 40 years (and visiting lecturer at myriad institutions), Sterling A. Brown taught the likes of Toni Morrison, Stokely Carmichael and Amiri Baraka. He wrote poetry chronicling the lives of the poor and the enslaved, served on the advisory board of the NAACP and was named the first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia in 1984. In this book's foreword, he introduced Thomas Richardson as a man of “zest and ambition” who had co-founded Washington, D.C.'s Negro Repertory Players and organized the Negro Community Theatre of Richmond, Virginia:

“In spite of disappointments here and there, he has remained dedicated to his task: to bring to American Negroes what they will recognize as a picture of their lives . . . to develop community theatres where producing, acting and playwriting talent will be nurtured, and where Negro audiences, so long pushed away, may partake in some measure at least of the great gifts of the theatre.”

From Richardson's obituary we learned that later, as “international vice president” of the United Federal Workers of America, he was “instrumental in having the Federal Bureau of Printing and Engraving hire its first Negro apprentice.” He was active in desegregation efforts and with the American Peace Crusade, founded a public relations agency in New York and was named one of Ebony magazine's “men of distinction.” He died in 1963.

Both men described the complexity of this play in the book. Brown wrote that it made use of the “multi-scene form, derived from the technique of the Living Newspaper of the Federal Theatre Project.” Richardson reasoned that “if an adequate job was to be done” in dramatizing “the development of such a large and vital organization” as the NAACP, then “the usual boundaries of play construction must be extended.” He deemed the work a “Theatre Piece” and gave detailed production notes. Included in the cast of characters were an African American “citizen,” “college graduate,” mother and child, “teacher,” “singer” and “Negro sharecroppers,” along with a plantation owner, senators and Supreme Court justices, William English Walling and W.E.B. Du Bois. The time was set as “A slice of the past, a bit of the present, and a glimpse of the future,” in “Place: America.”

The play was first staged in 1939 at the 30th annual NAACP conference in Richmond, performed by the Negro Community Theatre under Richardson's direction. This book cites a copyright date of 1940 and notes instructions and royalty charges for future reproductions.

An important work in Black theater history, rich with context from noted African American leaders. OCLC shows eleven holdings over two entries, plus an entry with five holdings for a 1939 printing. very good. Item #8148

Price: $675.00