Within the bucolic and protective walls of the Mecca, Howard students diligently pursued the kind of upward mobility that was the promise of higher education. Although music and art classes were formal course offerings and sources of cultural expression on the campus from as early as 1868, many students were dissatisfied with the standard classical centered curriculum of the day and specifically the absence of theatrical performance as both a form of study and cultural exploration and expression. 

Students in the early 1900’s are really no different than students of today, as students are inclined to do, they did something about it. In 1909, students in the College of Arts and Sciences organized the first student run drama organization at an HBCU. They named it the College Dramatic Club.

During the late 1800’s the American theatre’s portrayal of human expression primarily focused on slapstick, minstrelsy and exaggerated vaudevillian performance. Regardless of race, theatre was excluded from American higher education until 1884 when the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City opened its doors. Although not a formal college or university, the school is an important institution in the genealogy of theatre in higher education due to its codification of the study of acting/theatre and drama. The first graduating class of 118 students signaled to the public and educational institutions around the world the vast possibility for training students in theatrical arts.

Whether they were mimicking their white counterparts or not, Howard students were hungry to perform in plays. In Howard University, The Capstone of Negro History, historian Walter Dyson states “by 1880 so much interest had been aroused among the students for dramatic exercises that they were taking part in dramas given in the city. Such an opportunity did not exist at the University. George William Cook that year was permitted to take part in a drama to be given in the city called the Exodus. Four years later William H. H. Hart was permitted to take part in theatricals in the city."

However, in examining the archives at Howard University’s Moorland Spingarn Research Center, specifically, the HU Journal, which began publication November 1903, it’s clear that prior to the College Dramatic Club's 1909 appearance, Howard students sought opportunities to engage in theatrical performance on the campus that would advance their cultural placement in the world as early as 1904.

In the December 1904 Howard Journal an anonymous notice is placed with the heading “Teachers’ College Notes”. This notice documents the first publicly distributed written aspiration to codify drama/theatre on the campus:

Efforts are being put forward for the organization of a dramatic club. The matter is in the hands of a committee which will be able to make a report very soon. If such an organization is established, as it is hoped will be, it will be the first of its kind to exist at Howard.

The Teachers’ College was a training college on Howard's campus. By 1910 it afforded special opportunities for preparation of teachers, including courses in music, manual arts like art and architecture, and domestic sciences. The anonymous note in the HU Journal is serious in tone and evokes earnestness . The writer clearly wants the powers that be to approve the establishment of a dramatic club on the campus. 

When considering the role of theatre in American higher education in the 19th century it’s equally clear that similar to their white-centric educational counterparts like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, etc., the Howard University administration did not view drama/theatrical arts to be central to a student’s education.

Most American colleges and universities mimicked a European and eventually German curriculum structure and Howard, which patterned itself to be the “Harvard of the south” followed suit. Additionally, from its founding in 1867 to 1925, the institution was under the leadership of ten consecutive white presidents all congregationalist ministers who led with a heavy paternalistic leadership style which created tension between faculty and the administration, between faculty members themselves and between students and the administration. Needless to say, progressivism from students or faculty was not often celebrated on the campus and more often than not it wasn't tolerated.

By 1904 when the Teacher’s College expresses the desire for the establishment of a dramatic club, segregation and racial oppression in the United States had begun to escalate. The Ku Klux Klan saw a resurgence in membership activity in 1915 that coincides with the release of the film, Birth of a Nation, by W. D. Griffith, which is based on the play Clansman and the book The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, written by Thomas Dixon Jr.

Nine years before the release of the film, Birth of a Nation, in September 1905 the Clansman opens 200 miles south of Howard University in Norfolk VA and toured the south with great commercial success before heading north and captivating that market as well. Critics stated that the play was written to excite the passions and prejudices of southern audiences while some journalists labeled the play a “riot breeder”.

Unlike the comedies the forthcoming College Dramatic Club would favor in 1909, Among the Breakers is dramatic in its story arc while melodramatic by genre. The review of the play in the April 1907 HU Journal states that the acting was good, two of the actors played Irish characters and Miss Bessie McKinney played an Irish girl. The laughable role of Scud, the colored servant, was well acted by George W. Overton, who won for himself a reputation as comedian and fun maker.

Although the character Scud, played by Overton, is the only black character written in the play and in most of his scenes his dialogue characterizes him as a dimwitted servant there are two scenes in the play that for the time period can be considered as progressive.

In one scene Scud is down on one knee and takes the hand of the Irish girl Biddy asking for her hand in courtship. Of course, the scene is played for laughs, however, having a black man take the hand of a white woman in a romantic connotation was a risky characterization. The second scene occurs when after a scene where Scud is roughed around by the white character Larry, Scud holds a gun on him and forces Larry to say he’s “a red-headed, meddlin’, pugniferous, Black livered scoundrel and Massa Scud am a gentleman.”

Buried in the dialect of dimwit, the playwright doesn’t shy away from giving Scud real agency and substantial time on stage in moments that move the plot forward and center Scud as the hero of his own narrative. I have no way of knowing how or who choose Among the Breakers to be the student production but in presenting the play the students engage in non-traditional casting and I can only imaging student Overton not only having fun with the role of Scud but also adding an extra dose of intentionality when his character demands that the white character call him “Massa” and “a gentleman.”

Also in April of 1907, the Young Ladies Culture Club increases theatrical production on the campus with their production of the play, Left in Charge. The play is produced in Miner Hall which had a small proscenium arch auditorium sized stage. In the play review in the March 1907 edition of the HU Journal the actors are referred to as amateur but each participant in the drama deserves praise for the excellent and painstaking work evident. For this play, all of the male parts were played by the young women students.

Even before the appearance of Dixon’s Clansman, Howard students were well aware of the power of theatrical performance from America’s infatuation with targeted destructive images presented in minstrel shows performed by both whites and blacks. However, Dixon’s Clansman told a distinctively different story minus the sting of condescension laced humor and race ridicule found in black face performances, Clansman was unapologetically rife with unmasked hatred for black people.

However, all was not lost, as there were black playwrights writing intelligent, race conscious works that might well have been labeled propaganda plays if not for the softening of the race pride aspect of the message. This sentiment is conveyed in the March 1912 HU Journal review of the play, Tallaboo written by N. R. Harper:

The melodrama, Tallaboo, is a history an appeal, a prophecy. As a history it contains reminiscences of the former relationship between master and slave; as an appeal-and it is for this that the play deserves its greatest mention-it emphatically and persistently presents as the typical Negro the true Negro-the Negro as he is and not as he was. Surely, Mr. N.R. Harper’s muse was the muse of Hope and Ambition and only love for and pride in a race could move a man to write such a play. It is the greatest stumbling block yet thrown in the way of the “Clansman.” Like “The Servant in the House” it well serves as a vehicle to preach the doctrine of equity and truth.

Six years after the review of Clansman in the 1906 HU Journal, the Howard student reviewer of Tallaboo asserts the value of the play in large part is its counter message to the vitriol found in the play Clansman. 

Howard students were culturally savvy and aware enough to recognize that the most powerful and socially influential storytelling forms, novels, plays and motion pictures, all had the capacity to send a clear message not just to the black community but to the world, that unfortunately, black intellectual and creative advancement would not be tolerated.

The establishment of the Department of Drama, in 1950 under the leadership of Anne Cook owes much to the ambitious, consistent, progressive work undertaken from 1868-1920 by societies like the Eureka Society, Pestalozzi-Froebel, Young Ladies Culture Club and the Alpha Phi Literary Society.  Without literary societies and clubs the college Dramatic Club's formation under the leadership of English faculty member, Ernest Everett Just in 1909 would likely not have occurred due to the University's focus on disciplines like law, religion and teaching. 

Ultimately, the existence of the College Dramatic Club (1909 - 1919) which becomes the Howard Players in 1919, paves the way for Howard University's significant contribution around the globe to theatre, film, and entertainment made through its illustrious alumni and faculty.