"It is simply inevitable that I should end up on
the stage," Adrienne stated in 1904 just before her Boston debut
as a dramatic reader. "The footlights have beckoned me since I
was a little child and I simply must respond. It has always been my
dream
to portray all the heroic feminine characters of Shakespeare." (
Boston
Traveler, January 25, 1904). From her childhood in Savannah, through
her drama studies in Boston and New
York, Adrienne held on to this dream of a career on the legitimate theater
stage. The harsh realities of race and gender in America, however, doomed
the realization of this dream. Except for
vaudeville,
minstrelsy,
and all-Black dramatic productions, there was no place for Blacks on
the
American theater stage. As the daughter of light-skinned, slave-born
house servants with considerable White ancestry, Adrienne's skin was
white.
She identified herself as a Creole, a racially ambiguous term by which
she was neither admitting nor denying her race.
Passing for White, she made her debut in Boston. That January afternoon,
Adrienne Herndon, under the stage name of Anne Du Bignon, performed
in
Steinert
Hall, reciting the twenty-two parts of Shakespeare's
Antony
and Cleopatra.
Having thoroughly promoted her debut through advertisements and well-placed
references, Adrienne succeeded in gaining the attention of more than
ten
Boston area newspapers. For the most part, the reviews were glowing. "She
has a remarkable gift and unusual aptitude," wrote Henry Clapp,
the
Boston Herald drama critic. (
Boston Herald, January
29, 1904). Prior to the debut, Clapp had introduced her to David Belasco,
America's
leading
theater
manager,
who
had seen
her
work in New York and confirmed her talent. "You will undoubtedly
make a fine character actress," he had written (Belasco
1904). To sustain the momentum of her critical acclaim, Herndon hired
the George Britt
Company,
a lecture and musical agency, to arrange for platform appearances.
With an engagement secured in Lynn, Massachusetts, it seemed that Adrienne
Herndon was on her way to a stage career. But only one more appearance
came: a
reading in Bellow Falls, Vermont, and miles away from Boston. A talent
that had so roundly been applauded was in a few months time met with
a
chilled silence. Something had gone dreadfully wrong. The possibilities
of a platform career were evaporating. Herndon tried to rescue her
efforts,
appealing to David Belasco. But in spite of her repeated attempts to
schedule a meeting, Belasco was unavailable.
Had he changed his mind about her talent? Or had he and others discovered
her race? It would not have been difficult to find out that Anne Du
Bignon
had been known as Adrienne Herndon while a student at the School of Expression.
Samuel Curry, the founder/director of the school knew that she was the
wife of
Alonzo
Herndon,
Atlanta's leading barber and wealthiest Black. (Herndon at that time
was just a little over a year away from launching his greatest venture:
Atlanta
Life Insurance Company.) To circumvent racial restriction in the
American theater, Curry had counseled Adrienne Herndon to establish
a career first in London
before an American debut. Knowledge of her race was just a short
step away from Clapp and the theater world.
Placing her dream on hold, Herndon threw herself into her work as head
of the department of drama and elocution at Atlanta University. Unable
to perform Shakespeare in the North, she brought him South, presenting
the University's first Shakespearean production,
The Merchant of Venice,
in 1905. From then until her untimely death in 1910, Adrienne Herndon
directed the University's theater offerings and gave Atlanta's African
American community access to serious drama with professional stage sets
and costumes. Moreover, she opened the university community to the American
theater world, hosting the William Gillette Theater Company of New York
in a performance of Sherlock Holmes in the
Adventure of the Second
Stain. Excluded by race from the American theater, she proceeded
to make Atlanta a regional center for the dramatic arts. She engaged others
at the University in her work.
W.
E. B. Du Bois, her colleague on the faculty, served as the stage manager
for the Gillette production.
Adrienne Herndon experienced the frustrations of gender prejudice as well
as the exclusions of racism. As a child who excelled at oratory in grade
school, her family was discouraging.
"When as a girl I gained honors at school for my work in expression," she
recalled,
"instead of hearing praise at home for these distinctions my mother would
exclaim 'Why could you not have been born a boy? . . . Then you could
make us proud by your oratory.'"
(
Boston Traveler, January 25, 1904).
Many African American women who pursued careers in teaching earned respect and status for
providing a critical service to a community in dire need. And working wives and mothers were
characteristic of Black households. But there was no tolerance for women pursuing artistic
careers away from home and family. Alonzo Herndon, atypical for the men of his day, had
promised before their marriage to allow Adrienne to pursue her drama studies. He probably
had no idea, however, how demanding of time and resources that pursuit would be. Nor would
he have fully appreciated at the time that any serious career on the stage would mean
extended absences from home. Ironically, it was the exclusion from the theater that
returned Adrienne full time to her home and family.
In one last desperate grab for the stage, Adrienne studied at the American
Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She was furthering her drama studies
and was also escaping Atlanta, a city that had just undergone the worst
racial violence in Georgia. In the
Atlanta
Race Riot of 1906, mobs of White men numbering in the thousands chased,
beat, and massacred Blacks on the streets of downtown Atlanta. This was
the bloody response to erroneous reports of Black men assaulting White
women. In fear and disgust, Adrienne moved her young son Norris to Philadelphia
to live with relatives. She enrolled at the Academy which was not far
away in New York, leaving Alonzo Herndon alone in distant in Atlanta.
The riot had overturned their household, dividing the family into three
parts.
After two terms at the American Academy as a
second-class student who was excluded from the stock theater productions,
the message finally reached Adrienne. The goal of performing on the legitimate
theater stage was for her, as a Black
person, unattainable. While racism in the North did not generally match
the violent extremes of racism in the South, it was no less destructive.
Adrienne Herndon returned to Atlanta
with her son, and became absorbed in a domestic project that would be one
of her most significant contributions.
Nearly two years after the Atlanta Riot, the Herndons began construction
of the new house they had been planning for some time. With Adrienne
Herndon as
architect and husband Alonzo as builder/contractor, a two-story
Beaux
Arts Classical house was erected adjacent to
Atlanta
University. Within three months of its completion, however, Adrienne
died of
Addison's
disease, her struggles with race and gender prejudice only partially
resolved. Denied the American Academy stage, she developed one in
her own neighborhood.
Frustrated by her efforts to be an artist outside of the home, she made
her home the focus of her artistic talent, designing a landmark
that would
memorialize her work and that of her family.
