Shane White. Stories of Freedom in Black New York.

Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002. 260 pp. $27.95.

In Stories of Freedom in Black New York, Shane White takes as his subject the first African American theater company and the first black actor to star in a one-man show. He delivers much more than advertised, however, granting the reader a fascinating glimpse of post-slavery New York. Filled with anecdotes, snippets from newspapers, and dialogues recorded in court transcripts, Stories of Freedom offers a detailed sociological portrait of a time during which "most whites probably unthinkingly assumed that things would go on much as before, or just hoped that blacks would quietly go away." During the 1820s, black New Yorkers had no intention of fulfilling either of these expectations. As White recounts, they took to the streets in high style, and had a presence that belied their relatively small numbers. Refusing to blend in with their surroundings, blacks established their own forms of entertainment, of which the African Theater was the most daring and creative.

Throughout his book, White maintains a flowing style and compresses a large number of facts into a highly readable history. He discusses little-known aspects of African American life with authority. Claiming to have spent the better part of a decade with his subjects, White has attained a familiarity with them that only heightens the reader's enjoyment. He offers us a tour of cramped tenement slums with buttermilk-sellers crying their wares, takes us to a play in which white actors improvise the script into oblivion and a live elephant's "hydraulic experiment" ends the show, and allows us to witness the horror of a white man who peeks inside a lacy bonnet to see a black face. The author narrates his story with insight, never allowing his dexterity as a writer to overshadow his material. His organization is a bit scattered at times, but the text is so tightly woven that this hardly counts as a flaw.

White gives us some startling facts about New York, a city thought by many to have sustained better racial relations than its Southern counterparts. Not only did a significant number of white families in New York own slaves, they treated them no more kindly than did their peers below the Mason-Dixon line. The author does not belabor the point, but he provides accounts of slaveowner brutality (as well as instances in which slaves bullied their masters) that rival any that might have occurred on a Southern plantation. The end of slavery in New York brought little relief, only augmenting the tension between the races. White portrays post-emancipation New York as a turbulent place in which blacks and whites jostled each other on the streets, each vying for space. The whites scorned the African Americans' fashions and fancy manners, and the blacks treated their peers with derision, often crowding them off the sidewalks.

The author notes the surprising fact that Jim Crow developed in the Northeast. After the passing of slavery, white Americans sought to distance themselves from blacks just as African Americans began to adopt their styles of clothing, modes of speaking, forms of entertainment, and career ambitions. In describing these trends, White opens an interesting discussion on imitation between the races. He observes that, while African Americans took on and modified white behaviors, whites parodied black life in magazines, newspapers, theatrical shows, and other forms of entertainment, betraying a fascination from afar. Despite the contempt that both groups felt for one another, whites regarded blacks with a voyeuristic curiosity. The white practice of copying African American mannerisms became so widespread that actors performing in blackface eventually squeezed black theater out of existence.

In the brief interval between the passing of slavery in New York and the onset of Jim Crow, however, the African Theater provided an exhilarating space for black innovation. Formed in 1821, the Theater gave blacks a venue in which they could hold their own in an increasingly hostile city. The actors took as their first subject Richard III, a choice White finds symbolic. He likens the play's protagonist to the Trickster character of African folklore, as well as to the prototypical black New Yorker who had to rely on his wits to survive. The author also finds the choice of playwright revealing, musing that the production may have served as a black thumbing of the nose at whites who would have considered it an appalling theft of Shakespeare.

The idea of blacks taking on "their" playwright seemed ludicrous to many white Americans, but the African Theater attracted an audience. The actors made many daring decisions, performing their own unwritten dramas and even adding a slave market scene to a popular play, in which lovers lament their impending separation. They interjected romantic ballads into Shakespeare and dealt with their own memory lapses by moving forward in the script, then playing the rest of the scene backwards. In a reversal of racial policies, the managers of the African Theater sectioned off a crowded spot near the roof for white patrons with the claim that such audience members did not know how to behave in a black place of entertainment. During its run, the Theater enjoyed a high degree of success. It also experienced severe financial setbacks, rioting, verbal and physical abuse, and lampoons in city papers. It persisted for about a year until a particularly damaging night of violence caused it to fold.

In describing the African Theater, White delivers a fascinating portrait of the theater scene of nineteenth-century New York. Vastly different from the genteel exhibitions of today, drama productions in the post-emancipation city were rowdy, all-night affairs where spectators caroused to songs, monologues, and full-length plays. Drunken men sometimes mobbed the stage, threw fruit at actors, or fought amongst themselves. The actor James Hewlett suffered a night of violence so extreme that the stage collapsed and fell fifteen feet. In other incidents, inebriated whites tore the clothes off black actors, damaged sets, broke lights, and caused hundreds of dollars worth of damage. The actors themselves, white or black, had no pretensions: They altered scenes, forgot lines, or deviated from their parts until they bore no relation to the written text, and left audience members and playwrights baffled. The actors of the African Theater may even have stolen to support productions.

White devotes much attention to James Hewlett, the African American performer who made a name for himself with his one-man shows and his efforts to introduce opera to New York. Hewlett imitated famous actors such as Edmund Kean, sang, and performed popular monologues. He cut a dapper figure, impressing audience members with his talent while asking front-row patrons how they liked his scenes. Admired by his peers, Hewlett persisted in the face of poverty, squalid touring conditions, and scathing reviews. He took up multiple jobs to support himself, including one hilariously recounted stint on a cruise ship, during which the captain sold most of the food and an overly patriotic American continually harassed his English fellow passenger. Toward the end of his career, Hewlett even joined the criminal underworld, a scene that White depicts with his usual eloquence and eye for detail. Hewlett carried out audacious crimes and, when arrested, dazzled court officials with his Shakespearian wit. Court transcripts show him to have had a sharp intellect and a ready command of theatrical quotes. He was also quick to condemn injustice, nearly instigating a riot by speaking out against racism in an exaggerated black dialect.

In narrating Hewlett's career, White also discusses his nemesis and sometime helper, the newspaper editor Mordecai Noah. A giant in the New York literary world, Noah promoted theater while he maintained a consistently racist attitude. As he jibed at Hewlett and his fellows, however, he occasionally let slip hints of admiration. Other white reporters seemed similarly confused as to how to approach blacks who ventured onto the stage. Apparently fearful of issuing praise, they made remarks about "Othellos" and attempted witticisms regarding the blacks' musical and dancing techniques. They came down especially hard on the actors' pronunciation, lampooning it even while most spectators could find little difference between the speech patterns of black performers and whites.

Hewlett and the other African American players faced many obstacles, including finding a performance space safe from thugs, and attracting a wealthy audience while maintaining their integrity. White does not portray the blacks of nineteenth-century New York as downtrodden victims, however, relating anecdotes such as the one in which African American theater patrons stripped a white man who tried to remove a vocal black woman from the audience. Although the encroachments of vaudeville eventually ran African American performers off the stage, they earned the appreciation of their patrons and contributed much to the development of American theater. White's account is a tribute to his subjects and to the creativity they brought to this little-known endeavor in African American history.

Lauren Hauptman

Princeton, NJ