ABSTRACT
In August 1822, a group of circus performers and associates were viciously attacked at William Brown’s new theatre in Greenwich Village, ripping his all-Negro company, and scenery, to shreds. As a newcomer to the Village, manager Brown was not only competing with seasonal circus entertainments but also battling the rural area’s growing reputation as a destination for disorder. This chapter examines how Brown’s groundbreaking African American theatre emerged as a target for representational and physical assault. These assaults were the culmination of a racialization process, engineered by white New Yorkers, which marked Black bodies as political, cultural, and criminal threats.
