Playbill.com: May 23, 1904 'The Southerners' 'with a score by black composer Will Marion Cook'

Will Marion Cook

PLAYBILL VAULT'S Today In Theatre History: MAY 23

By Anne Bradley

and Ernio Hernandez

23 May 2012 

1904 The Southerners, with a score by black composer Will Marion Cook, is the first time an entire black chorus is used in a show with a white cast. Lead Eddie Leonard appears in blackface in this musical about the antebellum South. The New York Times is more impressed by the fact the white members of the cast "mingled" with the black performers and that only some audience members trembled in their seats during the curtain call, than the production itself.