when they learn from an African-American
woman, a delicate individual described as a “little
fluttery thin thing, all heart and eyes.” Although
the American child survived his childhood sick-
ness, his perpetual ailments suggest his inability to
become entirely well on American soil. In “El
Tisico,” Coleman considers vital questions of enti-
tlement, patriotism, and national unity.
Bibliography
Coleman, Anita Scott. “El Tisico.” The Crisis(March
1920): 252–253.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies
of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900–1945.Boston: G.
K. Hall & Co., 1990.
Emancipator
The short-lived weekly magazine founded in NEW
YORKCITYby WILFREDA. DOMINGO, a Jamaican
radical with Socialist ties. Domingo started his ca-
reer in publishing in 1919 as editor of the NEGRO
WORLD, the newspaper produced by MARCUS
GARVEY. Domingo and Richard B. Moore, his co-
editor and the colleague who helped to promote
the journal, obtained financial support for the
magazine from several labor unions. The magazine
lasted for less than two months, but during that
time it lodged detailed critiques of Garvey and the
UNIVERSALNEGROIMPROVEMENTASSOCIATION.
Garvey, who fired Domingo because of his contrary
politics, regarded the Emancipatoras a direct im-
pediment to the Black Star Steamship Line, which
would facilitate his program to return African
Americans to Africa and to organize profitable
global economic relationships between peoples of
African descent.
Bibliography
Moore, Richard B. “The Critics and Opponents of Mar-
cus Garvey.” In Marcus Garvey and the Vision of
Africa.John Henrik Clarke, ed. New York: Vintage,
1974.
Turner, W. Burghardt, and Joyce Moore Turner, eds.
Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem: Col-
lected Writings, 1920–1972.Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1988.
Emilie Hapgood Players
The theater group that in April 1917 became the
first to present African-American life to BROADWAY
audiences and the first to use African-American ac-
tors to perform plays about African-American issues
on Broadway. EMILIEBIGELOWHAPGOOD, a promi-
nent NEWYORKCITYphilanthropist, intellectual,
and influential participant in the New York theater
world, founded the Players troupe. The perfor-
mances of Inez Clough and Opal Cooper prompted
George Jean Nathan, a highly regarded drama critic,
to propose that they were among the top 10 actors
of the season.
On 5 April 1917, the day before America
entered World War I, the Players performed
GRANNYMAUMEE,SIMON THECYRENIAN, and
THERIDER OFDREAMSat the Garden Theatre
located in Madison Square Garden. The play-
wright was the white writer RIDGELYTORRENCE.
Emilie Bigelow Hapgood was the producer. The
director was Robert Edmond Jones, a man whom
Hapgood praised in a published letter to THE
NEWYORKTIMESfor having in “play after play,
galvanized [the] stage into a peculiar and electric
and organic life, creating an atmosphere which
lifts both actor and audience into a spirit which
some do not comprehend or even observe, ex-
cept in a half realized feeling like, ‘there is also
present a dream quality which hangs like the
thin veil of softening mist between the audience
and the stage.’”
The writer and activist JAMESWELDONJOHN-
SONasserted in BLACK MANHATTAN, that the
Players’ performances represented the “most im-
portant single event in the entire history of the
Negro in the American Theatre.” According to
Johnson, critics were extremely impressed by the
productions. It appears, however, that the coinci-
dence of the war and the production’s opening and
audience resistance to seeing serious black drama
contributed to the plays’ short-lived run.Bibliography
Curtis, Susan. The First Black Actors on the Great White
Wa y. Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
1998.
Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan.1930, reprint,
New York: Arno Press and The New York Times,
1968.140 Emancipator