The Chicago Negro Unit's Role in Performing Cultural Modernism and Political Radicalism

The Chicago Negro Unit (CNU), a specialty unit of the Chicago Federal Theatre Project, worked to revitalize black expressive arts in Chicago and transform the city's racial and social conditions in the throes of the Great Depression. The productions, people, and fortunes of the CNU comprise the subject of this dissertation, which is framed as both a performance history and a cultural history of the CNU. As a performance history, I analyze the CNU's stylizations of black music, dance, and theatre aesthetics in Big White Fog, L'Ag'Ya, Little Black Sambo , and the Swing Mikado (its last four productions in 1938 and 1939) by way of developing trends of "Negro music," "Negro dance," and "Negro drama." I argue that a heterogeneous black cultural aesthetic emerged from the crucible of the CNU stage and cross-fertilized aspects of commercial, community, and leftist entertainment. The CNU's blending of performance styles and traditions not only accommodated its broad and diverse audience in downtown Chicago, but also steeped its productions with vital racial and social meaning.;As a cultural history, this dissertation queries the CNU's production and reception in Chicago's cultural, geographic, political, racial, and social contexts. I detail the CNU's symbiotic relationship with Chicago's popular and cultural fronts---encompassing civic and cultural institutions such as the South Side Writers' Group, the Illinois Writers' Project of the Federal Writers' Project, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the Cube Theatre, and the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Many of the CNU's artists participated in these organizations throughout the 1930s, which have been identified as central to the Chicago Black Renaissance. Although this cultural movement has been posited primarily as a literary movement with Richard Wright as a linchpin, I contribute to the work of recent scholars across a number of fields in extending its scope to include the black expressive arts---music, dance, and theatre. Taken together, this study positions the CNU as a venue of local community activism alongside these and other civic and cultural institutions, while simultaneously exploring its staging and performance of a national discourse on racial representation in the late 1930s.