|
Born in Ohio, Sam Lucas moved from his small town to Cincinnati at age 19 and worked as a barber. He enlisted in the Union army, and afterward worked as a teacher in Louisiana.10 After the war, Lucas worked with Lew Johnson's Plantation Minstrels in May 1871. He also worked with Henry Hart's Colored Minstrels and Callendar's Georgia Minstrels.
In the 1870s Lucas married Carrie Melvin, a fellow performer. Lucas was able to give Marie an excellent musical education, and she became a notable band leader in the early twentieth century. The Lucases lived in Boston where he organized the very successful Hub Concert Company. In 1878 he became the first black actor to play the leading role in Uncle Tom; previously black actors had been relegated to minor roles in productions of the play. He published two minstrelsy songbooks in the mid-1870s and early 1880s.
In 1890 Lucas began to perform in important musicals. He suggested the formation of black burlesque company to white producer Sam T. Jack. Lucas was responsible for finding and hiring talent, and the general creative end of the company, while Jack focused on the company's financial business. Lucas's company staged The Creole Show, a production featuring lavishly costumed black women in lead roles, with other men and women in support roles. The Creole Show opened in Haverhill, Massachusetts and traveled to Boston's Howard Theater before moving to New York City. After New York, The Creole Show traveled to vaudeville houses across the country, playing for seven years. The Creole Show had a great influence on black musical theater to come.
Lucas himself was involved in the early vogue of black musical theater. He appeared in Earnest Hogan's Rufus Rastus (1905) and the Cole and Johnson Brothers' Shoo Fly Regiment (1907) and The Red Moon (1909). Although Lucas retired in 1912, he reprised his role as Uncle Tom for the first screen version of the story. One of the scenes in Uncle Tom required Lucas to jump into a river to rescue Little Eva. Before he could finish the film, he died of pneumonia in 1916.11
9 James Weldon Johnson. Black Manhattan. p. 90-91.
[this footnote applies to the quote in the image above]
10 Errol G. Hill and James V. Hatch. A History of African American Theater, p. 112.
11 Errol G. Hill and James V. Hatch. A History of African American Theater, p. 113.
|
