African Grove Theater 297of September, another notice proclaimed that the African
Grove had resumed its performances at Brown’s new loca-
tion at Mercer and Bleeker streets in remote Greenwich
Village. It was this location that became associated with the
theater, although the theater did move several times in its
short history. For a brief period in 1822, Brown rented a
hall next to the Park Th eater in order to attract white pa-
trons and to be more centrally located. However, the Park
Th eater was opposed to the competition and arranged for
a raid on the African Grove. Th e police attacked the Af-
rican Grove Th eater later that year, and the players were
arrested on trumped-up charges of disorderly conduct. To
secure their release, they had to agree to discontinue their
performances next to the Park Th eater. Aft er that episode,
the theater remained at the Mercer Street location until its
apparent closure in 1824, although it continued to emerge
sporadically until 1829.
As was common with pleasure gardens during the pe-
riod, food and drinks were served, and instrumental and
vocal musical entertainment was provided for patrons.
Th e African Grove Th eater company performed a variety
of acts, including musicales, ballets, pantomimes, opera,
and dramatic productions. Although most of the actors
and actresses were amateurs, a couple of the performers,
Ira Aldridge and James Hewlett, went on to have success-
ful professional acting careers. Th e company designed and
produced abbreviated versions of several Shakespeare plays,
including Richard III and Othello. Th ey also performed
their own versions of international plays, such as London’s
comic hit Tom and Jerry, or, Life in London. Another fi rst for
the history of black theater was the production of an origi-
nal drama written by Brown, Th e Drama of King Shotaway,
which was based on the 1795 insurrection of the Black Car-
ibs on St. Vincent’s Island in the West Indies. Although the
African Grove Th eater had a brief existence, its owner and
performers introduced the African American infl uence to
American theater.
See also: Black Folk CultureDonna Smith
Bibliography
Hay, Samuel A. African American Th eater: An Historical and Crit-
ical Analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1994.
McAllister, Marvin Edward. White People Do Not Know How to Be-
have at Entertainments Designed for Ladies & Gentlemen of
Colour. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.and who was to decide what the proper role for blacks would
be in a free society? Confl ict between parents and teachers
or school administrators was common. Once the schools
were absorbed into the public school system, the schools
suff ered decline in educational standards and the quality of
the overall education experience for the black students.
See also: African Dorcas Association; Crummell, Alexan-
der; Garnet, Henry Highland; Smith, James McCune; Wil-
liams, Peter Jr.
Jane M. AldrichBibliography
Berlin, Ira, and Leslie M. Harris, eds. Slavery in New York. New
York: New Press, 2005.
Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in
New York City, 1626–1863. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003.
African Grove Theater
In the early 1820s, William Alexander Brown, a free man of
color from the West Indies and a retired ship’s steward, cre-
ated the African Grove Th eater in New York City to provide
a dinner and entertainment venue for the city’s thriving and
upwardly mobile black community. Until that time, the only
theater that blacks could frequent was the Park Th eater,
where they were obliged to sit in segregated seating in one
of the upper balconies. With many of the free blacks begin-
ning to have disposable income, Brown recognized a need
for a black-owned and operated theater with an all-black
theater company. Th e theater was actually referred to by
many diff erent names. It appears that Mordecai Noah in an
1821 column dubbed the theater the “African Grove” per-
haps because of the black ownership and patrons. Th rough
the years, it would be called the African Th eater, the Minor
Th eater, and the American Th eater.
References to the African Grove appeared mainly
between 1821 and 1823. Th e fi rst mention of the African
Grove was Noah’s announcement of its opening in his 1821
editorial in the National Advocate. At that time, the the-
ater was operating in the backyard of Brown’s house on
Th omas Street. A month later, the National Advocate an-
nounced that the pleasure garden had been shut down be-
cause of neighbors’ complaints of the noise, but by the end