African American Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis", by Samuel A. Hay, is a must for every theatre enthusiast who has long realized that general works on Theater History show an appalling lack in dealing with the contribution of the African American community to theatre (like so many other 'histories'!). The first two chapters of Hay's book provide a very dense history of African American theatre from 1898 to the present and correspond to the two major schools of African American theatre: the Black Experience School of Drama, and the Black Arts School of Drama, the first based on Alain Locke's philosophy, the second on the teachings of sociologist William E. B. DuBois. The classification of the two schools into periods, classes and subclasses gets very confusing very fast, but Hay provides a helpful outline of the divisions at the beginning of his book. I admit that Hay's system of classification presented a problem for me: I have never liked people putting everything into preconceived little boxes. This first part of the book is very informative, but also extremely dense. The last three chapters of Hay's book comprise the 'critical analysis' portion, which simultaneously works as a very passionate appeal to African American theatre enthusiasts/students to persevere and help keep African American theatre alive.

I definitely recommend this book to all African American theatre students and to everyone else who is seriously interested in all aspects of theatre history, and who has long suspected that there might be more to African American theatre than "A Raisin in the Sun". It's not easy reading, but definitely worthwhile.

this is the best social history of pittsburgh i have ever read! i researched a lot of the Pittsburgh books on the market when i was writing my masters thesis in architecture & this was by far the best!

The good point of this book (and the only one) was that it showed how difficult life was in the olden days (1910 to be exact), defting conservative notions of a golden age better than Stephanie Coontz has done. The bad points are that the language is dated ("Slav" is considered a race, as is "Colored") and the book is rather boring. Not much duller than most sociohistorical works but not as informative either. Slightly recommended.

I found this book extremely helpful for a report I was writing. I wouldn't recommend it as a casual read, or for anyone looking to get a comprehensive history. It is part of The Pittsburgh Survey series and, as the name implies, it is a survey- a cross-section of a narrow group of people at a specific time. I'll admit to a fascination with the history of Homestead and therefore a bias, but I liked the book so much I would like to buy a copy for myself.

I can't say I thought it was interesting, but that was mainly due to the fact that I bought it only for a school assignment. I would like to note that it goes in depth into industrialization and I think it was a great learning tool.