African American engagement with Shakespeare goes back a long way—maybe even farther than you’d imagine. And like so much else surrounding American race relations, African American performance of Shakespeare is inextricably linked to the experiences of…
We talk with scholars Marvin MacAllister and Ayanna Thompson about Black Americans and Shakespeare in the period between the end of the Civil War and the 1950s: from Reconstruction, through the period of Jim Crow segregation; and into the Civil Rights Era.
