Rachel by Angelina Weld Grimké was the first play written by an African American with a fully African American cast produced by a theater for a mixed-race audience in the United States. First performed over one-hundred-years ago, this deeply powerful work by Grimké— a journalist, poet, and educator— was written as a response to D.W. Griffith’s filmic celebration of the Ku Klux Klan, “The Birth of a Nation.”

The play examines the life of a young African American woman, Rachel Loving, as she comes to realize the dreadful reality of racism in her community and the harm that may come to the black children she brings into this world.

The presentation of this marvelous piece in 1916 marked the first time theater was used to enlighten the white community as to the tragic conditions of African American life in the United States.

WHAT: Rachel by Angelina Weld Grimké