Content area
Full text
WHITE PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW HOW TO BEHAVE AT ENTERTAINMENTS DESIGNED FOR LADIES & GENTLEMEN OF COLOUR. By Marvin McAllister. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003; pp. χ + 239. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.
The extraordinarily lengthy title of Marvin McAllister's new book draws its inspiration from a placard that, according to rumor, William Brown, the former ship's steward turned theatre impresario, placed in the window of his vandalized American Theatre shortly after the August 1823 riot that had erupted there. The riot, created by fifteen white employees of a nearby circus, not only prompted Brown to assert, in print, that "White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies St Gentlemen of Colour," but also bankrupted him, thus forcing him into retirement. Although McAllister, the author of this intricately researched and potentially groundbreaking study of William Brown, contends that the sign most likely did not exist, he uses the placard to foreground the central theme of the book: William Brown's ongoing struggle with the white theatre community of New York City.
William Brown, the driving force behind the African Grove, the Minor Theatre, the American Theatre, and the African Company-all black institutions that, like a flashbulb, had a brilliant but short-lived career-sought to create entertainment venues for both black and white audiences. Rather than establish his...