Henrietta Vinton Davis - Dramatic Performances

Dramatic Performances

Within a year Miss Davis began her elocution and dramatic art education under the tutelage of Miss Marguerite E. Saxton of Washington. On April 25, 1883, she was introduced by the Honorable Frederick Douglass before a distinguished integrated audience. She went on to appear in New London, Connecticut, New York state, Boston, and "more than a dozen of the larger cities of the Eastern and Middle States". During the summer of 1883 Miss Davis (under the management of James Monroe Trotter and William H Dupree) made a tour of Boston, Worcester, and New Bedford, Massachusetts; Providence and Newport, Rhode Island; Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut; and New York City, Albany and Saratoga, New York.

During this time she continued perfecting her craft under Professor Edwin Lawrence of New York and Rachael Noah of Boston. She also attended the Boston School of Oratory.

Her performances consisted of a diverse spectrum of works from Paul Lawrence Dunbar's Negro dialects to such works as "Romeo and Juliet"; "As you like it"; "Mary Queen of Scots"; "Cleopatra's Dying Speech"; "The Battle" by Sciller; and "How Tom Sawyer Got His Fence Whitewashed" by Mark Twain. She is considered the first African American to have made an attempt at Shakesperean delineations after Ira Aldridge. On January 17, 1884 she appeared before a crowded house in Melodeon Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1893 she started her own company in Chicago, travelled to the Caribbean, and collaborated on writing Our Old Kentucky Home with distinguished journalist and future Garveyite John Edward Bruce.

During this period she was a supporter of the Populist Party. Later she backed the Socialist Party.