Henrietta Vinton Davis (1860 - 1941)

Born 25 Aug 1860 in Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland

Died 23 Nov 1941 at age 81 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States

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Biography

Henrietta Davis is Notable.

Henrietta Vinton Davis was an African-American elocutionist, dramatist, and impersonator.

Henrietta Vinton Davis was born 25 Aug 1860 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Mary Ann Johnson and musician Mansfield Vinton Davis. Shortly after her birth, her father died. Within six months her mother had remarried to an influential Baltimorean, George Alexander Hackett, a member of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. ^[1]

George Hackett died in April 1870 after a short illness, and Mary Ann Johnson Davis Hackett moved her daughter to Washington, DC where she was able to receive her public school education. At fifteen, Henrietta passed the teacher examination and began teaching in Maryland public schools.

In 1878 at age 18, Henrietta became the first African American woman employed by the Office of the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, DC. Here she met Frederick Douglass who held the position of Recorder of Deeds from 1881 to 1886.

Henrietta's desire for a theatrical career inspired her to study under Miss Marguerite E. Saxton. Henrietta shared her theatrical interests and talents with Frederick Douglass and subsequently began her stage career at the age of twenty-two on April 25, 1883, when she was introduced by Douglass before an integrated theater audience. During the summer of 1883, Davis toured in Boston, Worcester, and New Bedford, Massachusetts; Providence and Newport, Rhode Island; Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut; and New York City and Albany, New York. She proved to be a great actress, elocutionist, dramatic reader, and playwright.

Her performances consisted of a diverse spectrum of works from Paul Lawrence Dunbar's Negro dialects to such works as "Romeo and Juliet"; "As you like it"; "Mary Queen of Scots"; "Cleopatra's Dying Speech"; "The Battle"; by Sciller; and "How Tom Sawyer Got His Fence Whitewashed" by Mark Twain. She is considered the first African American to have made an atttempt at Shakesperean delineations. On January 17, 1884 she appeared before a crowded house in Melodeon Hall, Cincinnati. She also married her manager, an erstwhile singer named Thomas Symmons, though the marriage apparently didn’t last. She and Symmons divorced sometime in 1899.^[2]

She made frequent appearances in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Cleveland, eventually pushing out from the major East Coast cities to include tours of the West and Northwest. She added Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, and others to her Shakespearean repertoire, but also recited Paul Laurence Dunbar’s dialect poem “Little Brown Baby.” She often appeared with other black actors, performing Shakespearean scenes, and starred in full-fledged productions of other works with black theater companies as well. She formed her own company in 1893 in Chicago, to mount a touring production of a contemporary drama about the Haitian revolution entitled Dessalines, and co-wrote and played the lead role in a drama called Our Old Kentucky Home which she collaborated on writing with distinguished journalist and future Garveyite, John Edward Bruce. She also began appearing outside the United States, performing in Cuba, Jamaica, and Central and South America.^[3]

In short, Davis was an international star. Despite occasional mixed reviews, her acting won praise and packed houses wherever she went. As the Buffalo Sunday Truth noted, she was “a singularly beautiful woman, little more than a brunette, certainly no darker than a Spanish or Italian lady in hue.” And yet, her African heritage kept her locked out of the mainstream (read: white) professional theater of the time. As busy as she was, her opportunities were nonetheless limited. For over thirty-five years she was the premier African-American woman of the stage performing “Shakespearean Delineations”, original plays and dramatic readings throughout the USA, Caribbean and Central America.^[4]

Davis’s performances consisted of a diverse spectrum of works from Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Negro dialects to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It, The Battle by Friedrich Schiller, and How Tom Sawyer Got His Fence Whitewashed by Mark Twain. Davis is considered the first African American to have performed Shakespearian plays since Ira Aldridge. In 1893 Davis began her own theatrical company in Chicago and began touring across the U.S., and on one occasion, she and her company traveled the Caribbean to perform. By 1900 Davis began collaborating with leading journalist and future member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, John Edward Bruce. ^[5]

Davis first learned of the work of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA while traveling the Caribbean in 1917 and 1918. In 1919 her career took a dramatic turn when Lady Davis joined the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League headed by Marcus Garvey. She was so impressed with the Garveyites that in 1920, at the age of sixty, she gave up her stage career to work full-time for the UNIA. Initially chosen as International Organizer, she eventually held positions as Assistant President-General and Vice-President of the Black Star Line. On the maiden voyage Black Star Line flagship SS Frederick Douglass, she was the ranking member of the UNIA and the Black Star Line as it carried its cargo worth upwards of $5,000,000.

Henrietta was the second vice-president of the Negro Factories Corporation. She was also one of the signatories of the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World at the UNIA-ACL Convention in New York City in August 1920. Among its 54 declarations are resolutions designating Red, Black, and Green the symbolic colors of African people. By 1921 Davis had become the fourth assistant president-general of the UNIA after she established UNIA divisions (branches) in Cuba, Guadeloupe, the Virgin Islands, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica.

In 1929 two years after Garvey was deported to Jamaica, Davis was selected UNIA Secretary General.

In 2009, Mayor Sheila Dixon designated August 25, 2009 “Henrietta Vinton Davis Day” in Baltimore, Maryland

Proclamation by Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon

Henrietta Vinton Davis Day

Three years later, in 1932, she broke away from the declining organization and became first assistant president general of the rival UNIA, Inc. In 1934 she was elected the president of the organization. After leaving Jamaica where she continued supporting Garvey, she returned to the USA in 1938. There she joined the UNIA, Inc. headquartered in NY city. After some time she was elected President-General of that group.

Lady Henrietta Vinton Davis died on November 23, 1941, in Washington, DC at the age of eighty-one. Having been divorced, without children of her own and livicating her life to bettering the condition of her people, she was buried in Harmony Cemetery in Washington, D.C. without a marker for her grave. On July 20, 2013, a grave maker was finally placed on her grave in National Harmony Memorial Park.

Despite not one, but two historically significant careers and her widespread fame at one point, Davis died in proverbial obscurity and was soon all but forgotten. The handful of scholars and amateur historians who have researched her life and legacy have discovered no living family members.

Sources

1. ↑ BlackPast (https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/davis-henrietta-vinton-1860-1941/)
2. ↑ Henrietta Vinton Davis:Lady Commander Order of the Nile (https://kentakepage.com/henrietta-vinton-davis-lady-commander-order-of-the-nile
3. ↑ The Lady Vanishes, By Lee Gardner, 8/4/2010
4. ↑ Henrietta Vinton Davis Weblog (https://henriettavintondavis.wordpress.com/)
5. ↑ Black Then/Henrietta Vinton Davis (https://blackthen.com/henrietta-vinton-davis-diplomat/)

• "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XM2M-FNM : accessed 2 August 2021), Henrietta V Davis, Washington, Washington, District of Columbia, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 255, sheet 14B, line 86, family 274, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 299; FHL microfilm 2,340,034.
• Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/10192529/henrietta-vinton-davis) : accessed 27 August 2020, memorial page for Henrietta Vinton Davis (15 Aug 1860–23 Nov 1941), Find A Grave: Memorial #10192529, citing National Harmony Memorial Park Cemetery, Hyattsville, Prince George's County, Maryland, USA ; Maintained by Nnamdi Azikiwe (contributor 46772969) .

• Women in American Theatre edited by Helen Krich Chinoy, Linda Walsh Jenkins page 83

• Who's who of the Colored Race: A General Biographical Dictionary of Men and Women of African Descent, Frank Lincoln Mather, Volume One 1915, page 87.

See Also:

• Wikipedia: Henrietta_Vinton_Davis
• Wikidata: Item Q5716052, en:Wikipedia