Charles Sidney Gilpin

Who was Charles Sidney Gilpin?

Charles Sidney Gilpin became one of the most highly regarded actors of the 1920s. He played in critical debuts in New York: in the 1919 premier of John Drinkwater’s Abraham Lincoln and played the lead role of Brutus Jones in the 1920 premier of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, also touring with the play. In 1920 he was the first black American to receive the Drama League of New York's annual award, as one of the ten people who had done the most that year for American theater.