SOURCE: A letter regarding the production of Plays for a Negro Theater, in The New York Times, Vol. LXVI, No. 21638, April 22, 1917.

In the following letter to The New York Times, poet and playwright MacKaye praises the Broadway production of Torrence's Plays for a Negro Theater.

In Ford's Theater, Washington, fifty-two years ago, at the climax of his life, the emancipator of the American negro sat watching a play. Last night at a theater in this city I seemed to see Lincoln again in the playhouse—his great spirit brooding there, with infinite satisfaction, upon an event as potentially significant in the art life of the race he set free as his act of emancipation was to their political life. That event was the performance by negro players of three plays by Ridgely Torrence.

All three of Torrence's plays are works of abiding poetry, wrought from themes of our...