Ira Aldridge (1807-67) was one of the best Shakespearean actors of all time of any race, and one of the few Black Shakespearean actors in the 1800s that White people saw. He mainly played Othello but he sometimes played White characters too, like Macbeth, Richard III and Shylock, putting on white make-up and a wig. He left the US in 1824 to make it big in Europe and lies buried in Poland. Black Britain, where he lived most of his life, claims him as one of their own.
Not your minstrel: Aldridge, and other Black actors like him, such as Elizabeth Greenfield (the Black Swan), were the flip side of the blackface minstrel shows. He showed that Black people had all the same thoughts and feelings as White people, that they were not the brainless buffoons beloved by the minstrel shows. But while he never made it big in London, where the moneyed interests were dependent on Black slave labour overseas, he did pack theatres in “the provinces” (the rest of Britain) and won honours from European heads of state.
“Jump Jim Crow”: He even turned minstrel songs themselves on their head. As PBS tells it:
‘Aldridge … sometimes ended an evening’s performance with a rendition of “Opossum up a Gum Tree” or “Jump Jim Crow,” which he delivered with pathos rather than humor before offering a plea for the abolition of slavery.’
He was born free in New York City, the son of a pastor. He went to the African Free School, where Henry Highland Garnet was a classmate, and acted at the African Grove Theatre, a Black-owned, all-Black theatre.
In 1824 he left the US and moved to Britain. He saw no future for himself in the US where many Whites were against him playing fully human characters written by Shakespeare and other White playwrights. He ran into the same racist attitude in London, but not everywhere. Plenty of people saw his talent and loved it. He told them he was the descendant of a Senegalese prince.
His London critics: In 1825, The Times, by far the biggest newspaper in Britain, said he could not pronounce English properly “owing to the shape of his lips”. Not even remotely true. In 1833, the Athenceum thought it “impossible that Mr. Aldridge should fully comprehend the meaning and force of even the words he utters” and did not like that (White) actress Miss Ellen Tree was being “pawed about” by him, a Black man. And so on.
He toured continental Europe, what is now Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia. He received:
- the Prussian Gold Medal for Arts and Sciences from King Frederick,
- the Golden Cross of Leopold from the Tsar of Russia,
- the Maltese Cross from Berne, Switzerland.
He was knighted in the kingdom of Saxony.
He married a Swedish opera singer, his second wife. Their daughter Amanda (aka Montague Ring) gave elocution lessons in 1930 to an up-and-coming actor preparing to play Othello on the London stage: Paul Robeson.
– Abagond, 2021.
Sources: mainly PBS, blackpast.org (2007), “Staying Power: The history of black people in Britain” (2018) by Peter Fryer.
See also:
- Paul Robeson
- African Free School
- Black New York: a brief history
- Henry Highland Garnet
- Black Britain
- minstrel show
- Language myth #13: Black children are verbally deprived – more on the lip thing
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Interesting. I’d love to know how his father, grandparents, great-grands, etc. came to this country and where they were originally from? And where along the lines they became free (assuming they were either indentured or enslaved at some point)? Also, where did the Aldridge name come from? I wonder if the Senegalese prince bit was complete fiction or if there was some element of truth to it? I appreciate the curiosity you’ve sparked and his history is on my list of things to investigate when time permits. Thanks, Abagond!
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