James Hewlett
unknown-1839
Actor
In 1821, six years before slavery was finally abolished in New York, two Black men – James Hewlett and William Alexander Brown – co-founded America’s first Black theater company, the African Grove Theatre in New York City. Hewlett went on to make more history by being the first Black actor to play William Shakespeare’s most demanding tragedies: “Othello,” “King Lear” and “Richard III” produced by the African Grove Theatre and performed by the Black actors in the affiliated African Company.
Historians report that although the troupe played to “all sorts of Black New Yorkers – free and slave, middle-class and working-class” the performances were popular with white New Yorkers, as well. At one point the theater built a separate whites-only section to accommodate white audiences. There, segregation was enforced by management because “whites do not know how to conduct themselves at entertainments for ladies and gentlemen of color.”
Because the company endured endless racism, harassment and interruptions from the police, and from white theater owners who considered them competition, the theater was forced to relocate several times. The African Grove Theatre was shut down in 1823 (and, by many reports, burned down) after it mounted a production of “Richard III” in direct competition with a white production at the neighboring Park Theatre.
Undaunted, Hewlett began to tour performing excerpts from plays. He was very popular and is described by one historian as “the best known Black New Yorker” around 1831.
Now, 100 years later, James Hewlett is known for being the first Black actor of record to play the lead in “Othello” and, as the man who opened the doors for Black actors in classical European theater.
