Looking White, Acting Black: Cast(e)ing Fredi Washington
2004; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 45; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0040557404000031
ISSN1475-4533
Autores Tópico(s)Theater, Performance, and Music History
ResumoIn October 1926 a leading African-American newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier , featured adjacent photographs of two young women with a provocative caption: “White Actresses Who Open with Robeson and Bledsoe on Broadway during Week.” The actresses featured were Lottice Howell, starring with Jules Bledsoe in the musical play Deep River , and Edith Warren, starring with Paul Robeson in the drama Black Boy . In reporting this latest bit of integrated casting, however, the Courier was wrong on two counts. First, they misidentified the photographs, identifying Howell as Warren and Warren as Howell; and second, they misidentified Warren, whose real name was Fredi Washington, as “white.” Washington (who dropped the stage name during previews) was, by self-identification, Negro, or, in the language of the Savannah official who recorded her birth in 1903, “colored.”
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