100 Years of Du Bois: “Principles of a Real Negro Theatre” and “Criteria of Negro Art”

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois is regarded for his astute sociological insights into black life, as reflected in his various publications. His philosophical interventions, through publications such as The Souls of Black Folks (1903), the theory of double consciousness, and the concept of the Talented Tenth—among many others—enrich the sociological, political, and intellectual histories worldwide. His community leadership with organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) and circulation of N.A.A.C.P.’s The Crisis magazine wed his scholarly investments with the Black public intellectual tradition. Negro drama, as it was termed at the time Du Bois wrote, was a particular means of reframing the perception of Black people in America.  

In July 1926, Du Bois published his essay “Krigwa Players Little Negro Theatre: The Story of a Little Theatre Movement.” In it, he codified his vision for “four fundamental principles” of a “real Negro Theatre”: it must be about Black life, written by Black authors, performed for Black audiences, and situated within Black communities. These principles challenged prevailing theatrical norms and directly confronted the commercialization and racial gatekeeping of the broader American stage. According to Tejumola Olaniyan, Du Bois’s manifesto “challenged the reigning fashion of ‘Negro Theater’” written and packaged by whites, and also the idea of audience and related theatrical success defined merely commercially, within the asphyxiating parameters of Broadway” (Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance 21). 

Later that year in October, Du Bois published a second critical article titled “Criteria of Negro Art” in which he insisted that “all Art [i.e., true art] is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists ... I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.”¹ By establishing himself as a progenitor of a Black aesthetic centered on the social responsibility of Black art, especially during the height of the New Negro period, Du Bois would inspire theatre scholars, critics, educators, and playwrights to consider the role and function of theatre in the decades that followed.  

Du Bois’s activism and scholarship offer an opportunity to center the conditions of Black life and the afterlives of the New Negro era. Although Du Bois died on August 27, 1963, his words continue to illuminate and resonate with artists, scholars, and activists today. For example, Clark Atlanta University and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution online newspaper recently reenvisioned Du Bois’s “Exhibit of American Negroes.” In 1900, at the World’s Fair in Paris, Du Bois, along with Daniel Murray and Thomas J. Calloway, compiled photographs of Black people and visual data in the wake of the Civil War. In 2026, the university’s exhibit and the Atlanta newspaper reproduced images from the exhibit alongside contemporary photographs of Black folks and current racial demographics. These photographs, alongside sociological data, visualize and collapse the boundaries between art and sociology. We’d argue that theatre, during the turn of the twentieth century and today, also stitches these two disciplines together as a continuation of Du Bois’s cultural investments.  

Du Bois’s four principles on Negro theatre are arguably the most significant and often cited assertion that this theatre is “About us, By us, For us, and Near us.” Du Bois’s proposition repositions caricatures as subjects, passive spectators as playwrights and performers, displaced voyeurs as patrons, and distant destinations for neighborhood establishments. We’d be remiss to ignore the repetition of “us” as a rhetorical device. About us. Du Bois is situating himself in a relationship with the reader(s) to affirm community. By us. Du Bois challenges American individualism in favor of collective participation. For us. Du Bois hailed Black communities with his ideologies on race. Near us. Du Bois acknowledges the importance of shared space, proximity, and immediacy. About us. Du Bois reiterates his priority: the souls of black folks. As the Crisis magazine began the 1920s with a monthly circulation of over 100,000 copies, more than a citation for publication, Du Bois penned an edict on Black theatre.  

Du Bois offers us, as editors and contributors, and you, as readers, a moment to consider the space between 1926 and today. While some of Du Bois’s evocations are firmly rooted in the early twentieth century, much of his work redirects our attention to pressing concerns for Black theatre today. Although we focus on Du Bois, we also position his works as mediators alongside Alain Locke, Thomas Montgomery Gregory, and countless contributors and patrons of Black theatre and drama in the 1920s. Unlike several of his contemporaries, including Locke and Gregory, Du Bois held a more radical Black philosophy, recognizing the potential of theatre and drama to reshape perceptions of Black people in America. 

There have been many shifts since Du Bois wrote in 1926. Just as Negro has been refashioned in title and subjectivity to African American and Black, theatrical genres, sensibilities, and genealogies have shifted and multiplied as well. Race and propaganda drama propelled an urgent response to minstrelsy, as post-Black drama built on and pressed beyond the Black Arts Movement. In 1926, Du Bois advocated for a regional theatre movement, through the Krigwa Players’ Little Negro Theatre, to expand across the nation. After over five decades since the end of the Great Migration, when approximately six million people moved across multiple regional destinations to develop a national culture, we can investigate the profile of Black theatre across America.      

Returning 100 years later to this essential figure and these vital archival documents, this special issue of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre marks the centenary publication of Du Bois’s “Principles of a Real Negro Theatre” and “Criteria of Negro Art.” Across a range of essays, the authors revisit Du Bois’s foundational works and recognize them as theoretical interventions that continue to shape our understanding of Black performance, aesthetics, and cultural politics. Contending with how Du Bois’s essays reverberate today, the articles in this special issue focus on the enduring insistence of his call for art as a bold cultural intervention against an entrenched supremacist order and its pervasive norms.  

Isaiah Matthew Wooden opens this special issue with his essay, “‘One Great and Fine Mode of Expression’: On W. E. B. Du Bois and the Exigencies of Black Drama and Theatre.” Focusing on Du Bois’s resignation from the Krigwa Players and his lifelong reflections on theatre, Wooden reconsiders Du Bois not only as a critic of Black representation but also as a devoted practitioner and theorist of Black drama. Through archival letters, manifestos, and essays, Wooden traces how Du Bois understood drama as a vital mode of collective expression grounded in shared memory and struggle.  

In her essay, “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Krigwa Little Negro Theatre Movement in Harlem and Beyond,” Kirsten Lee argues that Du Bois envisioned Black theatre not as a localized Harlem phenomenon but as a movement shaped by the demographic and cultural shifts of the Great Migration. Drawing on archival research, the essay shows how the Krigwa model fostered cross-regional collaboration and the development of Black artistic communities across the United States.  

Kellen Hoxworth’s “An Expansive ‘Us’: W.E.B. Du Bois’s ‘Pan-Negro’ Theatrical Vision” reexamines Du Bois’s theatrical philosophy by placing it within a broader pan-Africanist and internationalist framework. Through close readings of The Star of Ethiopia and of Du Bois’s intellectual influence on figures such as Lorraine Hansberry and Alice Childress, the essay shows how his work articulates a transnational conception of Black identity and performance, arguing that Du Bois’s theatre constructs an “expansive us” that bridges Black American experiences with global Black histories and political struggles.  

In “It Was All a Dream: Shifting Du Boisian Notions in Richard Wesley’s The Talented Tenth,” Kristyl D. Tift examines the evolution and limitations of Du Bois’s “Talented Tenth” theory through a reading of Richard Wesley’s play The Talented Tenth. Tift highlights Wesley’s engagement with intra-racial class tensions and generational divides. In doing so, she traces Du Bois’s ideological shift from elite-driven racial uplift to a more collective, institutional vision of Black cultural production. Ultimately, Tift positions the play as both a dramatization and a revision of Du Boisian thought, revealing the enduring complexities of race, class, and aspiration. 

In Jonathan Shandell’s “Reflections on Fundamental Principles,” he revisits Du Bois’s foundational manifesto on Black theatre. Shandell argues that Du Bois’s formulation—“About us, By us, For us, Near us”—remains a vital analytic framework for understanding the historical and contemporary trajectories of Black theatre. The essay foregrounds the collaborative and communal dimensions of theatrical production, emphasizing the centrality of Black audiences and the spatial politics of performance. At the same time, Shandell interrogates the scholar’s positionality, especially his own, in relation to Du Bois’s conception of “us,” ultimately proposingan expanded, more inclusive revelatory perspective.  

Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green closes this special edition with her article, “Teaching August Wilson in an Age of Democratic Decline: Du Boisian Imperatives and Black Pedagogy Across Campus and Community.” Drawing on Du Bois’s philosophies and August Wilson’s dramaturgy, Green examines the tensions of teaching Wilson’s American Century Cycle at a predominantly white institution. The essay traces how Du Bois’s principles inspired her to extend Wilson’s work beyond the university into a community-based Freedom School model rooted in mutual aid, intergenerational learning, and Black cultural inheritance.  

As we look back on the contents of this special issue, we must acknowledge the peculiar position of Black drama and theatre in 2026. Black theatre is currently sandwiched between national accomplishments—such as the recent recognition of numerous Black playwrights and artists with industry accolades like the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in America and The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre (Tony Awards)—and a conservative shift in which discussions of race, even in theatre spaces, are framed as culturally adversarial. As a continuation of Du Boisian thought in dialogue with August Wilson’s “The Ground on Which I Stand” and Suzan-Lori Parks’ “New Black Math,” we must contend with the current condition of Black theatre in America NOW. We need a cultural response to inequities in funding streams and institutional support for theatre artists, scholars, and Black brick-and-mortar theatre buildings. We need strategies to address labor precarity and the underrecognized, undercompensated racial labor within performance and educational spaces. We require, in addition to representation, that Black theatre cultural producers have autonomy across the various stages of production to advocate for Black artists and contributors as active participants and partners (not just witnesses and patrons). We desire and deserve sustained dialogue about how Black theatre is taken up, especially by predominantly white educational and industry institutions that, due to power imbalances, continue to shape theatrical training and production practices in ways that can inadvertently diminish the integrity and continuity of our vibrant theatrical traditions. 

The articles in this special issue take up that charge in distinct yet resonant and imaginative ways, tracing lineages, interrogating institutions, and imagining alternative modes of practice, critique, and sustainability. Together, the authors remind us that Black theatre has never been merely reflective but integral—actively shaping the conditions of its existence. As such, this special issue stands not only as a commemoration but also as a continuation of Du Bois’s call to think and build through the arts.