Re-Racing the Nation: From Cuba—A Drama of Freedom to the Cultural Performance of Negro History Week

In November 1898, shortly after the end of the War, the American Law Enforcement League of Minnesota organized what may be the first Afro-American pageant in the USA: the large-scale four-act spectacle, Cuba—A Drama of Freedom. (Cora Pope, “Cuba—a Drama of Freedom” (unpublished pageant manuscript (nonextant), 1898). On the performance, “‘Cuba’—a Drama of Freedom Presented by Local Talent,” The Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper, November 5 1898; “‘Cuba’ Notes,” Globe, November 9 1898; “Cuba an Ornate Success,” The Daily Pioneer Press, November 11 1898; “‘Cuba’ a Drama of Freedom Presented by Local Talent,” The Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper, November 12 1898; “‘Cuba’ Repeated at the Grand—Popular Prices,” The Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper, November 19 1898; “‘Cuba’ Echoes,” The Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper, November 19 1898. See also Abram L. Harris, “Historic Background of the Negro Population in Minnesota,” in The Negro Population in Minneapolis: A Study of Race Relations (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Urban League and the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House, 1927), 8; Dave Riehle, “‘300 Afro-American Performers’: The Great Cuba Pageant of 1898 and the Struggle for Civil Rights,” Ramsey County History (1999); Paul D. Nelson, Fredrick L. Mcghee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861–1912 (Minneapolis: Minnesota Historial Society Press, 2002), 61–62; Errol G. Hill et al., A History of African American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 200–01.) The pageant’s purpose was to raise funds for the League, a Negro organization that spoke out against lynching in the USA and aligned its cause with US intervention in Cuba, which it felt supported the struggle for freedom by Cubans of African descent. (Lynching escalated after Reconstruction. “Lynchings: By Year and Race,” University of Missouri, Kansas City Law School, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html.) Written and supervised by Cora Pope, whose husband, Sergeant ZA Pope, had fought in one of the US Colored Troops at the battle of Santiago, the pageant was performed for integrated audiences at the Lyceum Theater in Minneapolis and the St. Paul Metropolitan Opera House. (The four regiments that comprised the United States Colored Troops, or “Buffalo Soldiers,” were the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments and the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments. The pageant ran at the Lyceum Theater on November 3rd and 4th and the Opera House on the 10th. Riehle, “‘300 Afro-American Performers’,” 17.) Historical reviews note that “the theater was packed to the doors with a fashionable audience,” which numbered more than 2000 at the Opera House alone and that the performance was “given entirely” by a cast of “300 colored performers.” (“‘Cuba’ a Drama of Freedom Presented by Local Talent.” “‘Cuba’ Notes.”; “‘Cuba’ a Drama of Freedom…. Benefit of American League of Minnesota to Be Presented at Metropolitan Opera House, St. Paul by ‘300 Afro-American Performers’,” The Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper, November 5. The article from the Globe dated Nov. 9 refers to “300 colored performers”; the ad in The Appeal refers to “300 Afro-American Performers.”) Indeed, many more people organized the pageant and managed off-stage activity, making the production a community-wide event that touched many of the Negro families in the Twin Cities area. (Nelson, Fredrick L. Mcghee, 62.) A review in The Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper called it the “most notable dramatic event ever produced by the Afro-Americans of the Twin Cities,” while historian Paul D. Nelson describes it as “one of the most spectacular demonstrations of patriotic enthusiasm ever witnessed in Minnesota.” (“‘Cuba’ a Drama of Freedom Presented by Local Talent.”; ———, Fredrick L. Mcghee, 61.) Yet where much of the patriotic spectacle in white popular culture justified the war effort through its focus on remembering the USS Maine, this production did so by focusing loosely on the cause of Cuban freedom and independence from slavery and Spain. Public response was so positive, there were several encore performances later in the month. (“‘Cuba’ Repeated—with Great Artistic Success at the Grand Opera House, St. Paul,” The Appeal: A National Afro-American Newspaper, December 3 1898; “‘Cuba’ Repeated at the Grand—Popular Prices.”; “‘Cuba’ Echoes.”)