The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School DEFIANT: AFRICAN AMERICAN LEGAL AND CULTURAL RESPONSES TO NORTHERN WHITE SUPREMACY, 1865-1915 A Dissertation in History & African American and Diaspora Studies by Tyler Daniel Sperrazza © 2020 Tyler Daniel Sperrazza Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2020 ii The dissertation of Tyler Sperrazza was reviewed and approved by the following: William A. Blair Walter L. and Helen P. Ferree Emeritus Professor of American History Dissertation Co-Advisor Co-Chair of Committee Shirley Moody-Turner Associate Professor of English and African American Studies Dissertation Co-Advisor Co-Chair of Committee Amira R. Davis Assistant Professor of History, African American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Gregory Eghigian Professor of History William J. Doan Professor of Theatre Michael Kulikowski Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Classics Head, Department of History iii ABSTRACT This dissertation argues for the central place of theaters and places of amusement in the story of the African American fight for citizenship in the northern United States from 1865 to 1915. The 1875 Civil Rights Act explicitly mentions “theaters” as public accommodations that could not be segregated under federal law. Despite this and other state laws preventing segregation, northern African Americans were still subjected to segregation, harassment, and violence in these spaces. This study tells the stories of African American litigants throughout the northern United States who brought the fight for citizenship and equal rights to municipal, state, and federal courts. Their cries for justice and equality reveal that the system known as Jim Crow segregation—most often recognized as a southern phenomenon—was actually conceived in the North. Parallel to the court battles, this study explores the growing movement among African American theater artists to create new styles of entertainment and build new venues outside of white-owned and dominated spaces. These simultaneous movements challenge our traditional understandings of the post-bellum pre-Harlem Renaissance moment in American and African American history. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements…………………..……………………………………………………………………………v Introduction…………………..………………………………………………………………………………….…. 1 Chapter 1 Setting the Stage: Race, American Theaters, and the Law 1820-1866…….…. 16 Chapter 2 The Curtain Rises: Reconstruction Offers Hope, 1866-1882……………………. 54 Chapter 3 The Tragedy Begins—The Civil Rights Cases to Plessy, 1883-1900………….. 93 Chapter 4 The Curtain Falls: Life After Plessy v. Ferguson, 1900-1920……………………131 Chapter 5 The Hidden Lives of America’s Forgotten Black Artists, 1896-1946………… 165 Afterword………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 202 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..………………………… 210 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I did not write this dissertation in a vacuum. The next two-hundred or so pages are the culmination of many years of work on the parts of others to get this document to print despite me kicking, screaming, and doing everything possible to delay that day. First and foremost, my advisors, Bill Blair and Shirley Moody-Turner, deserve all the credit for this dissertation becoming a reality. They both suffered through numerous drafts of present-tense prose, passive voice, and thinly argued narrative, while constantly reminding me to think bigger and encouraging me that the project had much larger legs than I ever believed it could. Their work was picked up in recent months by my committee. Thank you to Greg Eghigian for your steadfast encouragement that I was on the right track, Amira Rose Davis for your scholarly mentorship, friendship, and distracting discussions of the current Broadway season, and Bill Doan for the road trips, Frozen performances, and tattoo sketches that pushed me over the finish line. Thank you to my faculty at Penn State in both History and African American Studies for working with me throughout my six and a half years as a graduate student. Crystal Sanders, Nan Woodruff, Lori Ginzberg, Dan Letwin, Tony Kaye, and Andrew Sandovál-Strausz all offered guidance and lessons that helped this project along. Kate Merkel-Hess and Bryan McDonald were early sounding boards for my work, and could seemingly always tell when I needed to hear that the work I was doing was important. In African American Studies, Courtney Morris, Keith Gilyard, Paul Taylor, and Kevin Bell all provided invaluable knowledge of their fields and honest critiques of my work that helped shape this project from its earliest days. vi The seeds of this project began at Le Moyne College under my advisors Doug Egerton and Holly Rine. Their hands are all over this dissertation; if you squint you can even see faint tracings of Doug’s red pen. They, along with Karel Blakeley, Matt Chiorini, Ann Ryan, and Leigh Fought, were some of the earliest champions of my work, and each of them gave a bit of themselves to my scholarly endeavors. When you begin graduate school, no one tells you just how much damn paperwork there is going to be. I am forever grateful to the staff members of the Richards Civil War Era Center, the History & African American Studies Departments, and the Penn State Libraries for helping me navigate the waters of Ph.D. bureaucracy. Special thanks are in order for Barby Singer, Matt Isham, and Eric Novotny, who always went above and beyond. I would have quit years ago if not for my compatriots in graduate studies both at Penn State and elsewhere. I would not have made it through my comprehensive exams or my archival trips without Megan McDonie. Tom Rorke, Ben Herman, Mallory Huard and Sara Kern provided much needed distractions and pep talks at key moments. Cecily Zander and I bounced our dissertations off one another between verses of Hamilton on our road trip from State College to Chattanooga. Rick Daily offered compassion and sunlight. ShaVonte Mills offered empathy and a humanity that is too often lacking in academia. Marc Carpenter was a confidante and early sounding board. The cohorts before me at Penn State and specifically in the Richards Civil War Era Center were filled with talented colleagues who offered wisdom and modeled what young scholars should be: Emily Seitz, Chris Hayashida-Knight, Lauren Golder, Evan Rothera, Antwain Hunter, Sean Trainor, Will Bryan, Kathryn Falvo, and Paul Matzko all helped this project in one way or another. Angela Riotto and Brian Matthew Jordan took me under vii their wings at one of my first conferences, and are two of the best humans currently working in our field. This project was lucky to be supported my numerous grants and funding fellowships that helped shaped the research. The Penn State History Department, Penn State Africana Research Center, Filson Historical Society, and Massachusetts Historical Society via the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium all have my deepest thanks for supporting my archival research trips. State College, Pennsylvania can be a lonely place to work on a dissertation. Thankfully I was able to find “my people” fairly quickly once I moved here in 2013, and the group has been growing ever since. Thank you for everything James McCready, Hailley Fargo, Madeline Biever, Richard and Heidi Biever, Leah Mueller, Roger Tharp, Kris and Tracy Hanahan, Steve and Libby Snyder, and my entire State College theater family. Thanks also to my therapist, Dr. Jess Buckland, who helped me realize why I would have ever agreed to put myself through the dissertating process. In my fifth year of graduate school, just as I was beginning to get into the writing groove, an opportunity came around that I could not pass up. Thanks to my advisors and departmental administrators, I was able to leave my work as a graduate assistant and take on a full-time position in the Department of Student Affairs at Penn State. Michael Blake gave me the opportunity of a lifetime, and I will be forever grateful. He and Mary Edgington allowed me to continue my work towards my Ph.D. while working full-time, and there are a lot of bosses that wouldn’t let that happen. My extended family helped this project in ways they probably don’t even realize. Sam and Eileen Sperrazza hosted me during multiple archival trips to New York, and Uncle Sam drove me to and from the city often on his way into work to help me save on viii travel costs. Don and Dawn Sperrazza constantly checked in on my progress, and Uncle Don took pity on me during the summer before graduate school and allowed me to tag along on some plumbing jobs to make some extra cash to help cover me before my graduate stipend kicked in. My mom, Sara Sheldon, and my dad, Dan Sperrazza, have been my champions for literally as long as I can remember. Thanks for sticking with me every time I came home at the holidays and said “no, I’m not done yet.” I hope this makes some of that stress and anxiety worth it, though, in the current job market, it probably actually just makes it worse. Should’ve gotten a J.D. like you two. My stepmom, Mary Pat Sperrazza, was always proud of the work I did, and consistently checked in on my progress. My sister, Dr. Whitney Sheldon Sperrazza, is the most brilliant person I know. She is the reason I am in academia, mostly because I am always happily following in her giant footsteps. She helped me realize the passion I had for education and scholarly pursuits, and her list of accomplishments in her own field grows longer by the minute. She is my ultimate role model, and my best friend. My brother-in-law, Matt Seidel, is the second-most brilliant person I know. He is a perfect gentleman, scholar, musician, and activist, and he kicks my ass at chess every time.