African American theatre music dates back to as early as the 1830’s. A lot of people thought to believe that whites were the ones who initially wrote African American Musical Theatre due to their blackface productions. After the Civil War had passed there was a change to black theatre. The difference between before and now is that the black musicals had all black actors and/or actresses instead of whites trying to portray as such. The first known black play was “Leap for Freedom”. During the time of the Harlem Renaissance black plays started to migrate to Chicago and Washington, D.C. One of the most famous BLACK plays of all time is The Wiz.
