Pekin Theatre

About

Established on June 18, 1904, Chicago’s Pekin Theatre was the first black owned musical and vaudeville stock theatre in the United States. Between 1904 and around 1915, the Pekin Club and its Pekin Theatre served as a training ground and showcase for Black theatrical talent, vaudeville acts, and musical comedies. Additionally, the theatre allowed “African-American theatre artists with an opportunity to master theater craft and contribute significantly to the development of an emerging Black theater tradition”. It was known by various names.

The Pekin became "renowned for its all-black stock company and school for actors, an orchestra able to play ragtime and opera with equal brilliance, and a repertoire of original musical comedies." Robert T Motts, founded the theatre, and brought it to prominence by presenting an all black company, seeking out an affluent interracial audience, and using his establishment for social causes. Mott died in 1911, and after that the theater faded but he had established a new pattern of successful black enterprise.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.