Harlem cavalcade : story and screen play

American film writer and producer Lew Lipton worked on the ultimately unproduced story and screenplay for “Harlem Cavalcade” from 1935 until his death in 1961. Retitled “Black America” in later drafts, it follows the story of African American life from 1626 to the 1930s.

This script consists of 154 pages of legal-sized original typescript and typescript carbon pages. The second page of the manuscript bears this typed statement: “The idea of Harlem Cavalcade was conceived by the author in 1935. Since then he has devoted most of his time to research, compilation, arrangement and the actual writing.”

The play is an epic history of Black people in America, including the social, political and cultural experience, about which the author writes on page five: “Throughout this entire story, there is not a single white person visible. White participation is illustrated purely by suggestion.” This direction does not appear in the later draft retitled “Black America.”

Lipton's story begins in 1626 on the docks of the Dutch community in what is today New York City. What follows are vignettes of major events and the lives of African Americans as they shaped history until about 1938. Individuals depicted in the story include Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglas, George Washington Carver, Joe Lewis, Satchel Paige, Cab Calloway, and numerous others. The story ends in a classroom in Harlem in the late 1930s with the singing of the “Colored National Anthem."