SOURCE: An introduction to The Brown Overcoat by Victor Séjour, in Black Theatre USA: Plays by African Americans, 1847 to Today, revised and expanded edition, edited by James V. Hatch and Ted Shine, The Free Press, 1996, pp. 25-6.

In the following essay, first published in 1974, Hatch and Shine stress the historical importance of Séjour's works.

Born in New Orleans on June 2, 1817, of a Creole quadroon mother and a free Black man from Santo Dominigo, Juan Victor Séjour Marcon et Ferrand demonstrated a talent for writing poetry early on, at Saint Barbe Academy. At age seventeen, to complete his education, Victor was sent to Paris to remove him from the humiliation imposed upon men of color, even freed men. For the remaining thirty-eight years of his adult life, Séjour acted in plays and wrote dramas for the Parisian theatre. 'Tall, handsome and distinguished, with sparkling brown...