ABSTRACT
To speak of Black Performance is to speak of African roots, of popular Black entertainments; to speak of Black academic theatre is to speak of European roots, of Shakespeare and the Greeks. For the most part, African American Performance History and Academic Theatre History have lived discrete lives, separated by the high wall of class discrimination. Black performers, whether amateurs dancing on shingles for pennies or professionals singing on stages for salaries, rarely obtained venues at universities, at least not until the 1930s and 1940s, and even then, the performer was not Redd Foxx or Ethel Waters, but concert artists Roland Hayes or Marian Anderson singing German lieder. This tradition changed very little until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
