{"id":51437,"date":"2017-02-08T16:53:33","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T16:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51437"},"modified":"2017-02-08T16:53:33","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T16:53:33","slug":"african-americans-in-atlanta-adrienne-herndon-an-uncommon-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=51437","title":{"rendered":"African Americans in Atlanta: Adrienne Herndon, an Uncommon Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

African Americans in Atlanta: Adrienne Herndon, an Uncommon Woman<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Southern Spaces: A Journal about Real and Imagined Spaces and Places of the US South and their Global Connections<\/a>
\n2004-03-16
\nDOI: 10.18737\/M7XP4B<\/a><\/p>\n

Carole Merritt<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nPortrait of Adrienne Herndon<\/a>, date unknown. (c) The Herndon Home.<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Overview\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ahead of her time and outside of her assigned place, Adrienne Herndon<\/a> achieved acclaim in education, drama, and architecture in turn-of-the-century Atlanta. As head of the drama department at Atlanta University<\/a>, as aspiring dramatic artist, as architect of what would be designated a National Historic Landmark<\/a>, Adrienne Herndon set her own course in a society that rejected such independence in women. She was one of the most highly trained professional women in Atlanta, having graduated from Atlanta University normal school<\/a> in preparation for teaching, and having received degrees from the Boston School of Expression and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts <\/a>in New York<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Adrienne Herndon <\/a>(1869\u20131910)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It is simply inevitable that I should end up on the stage,” Adrienne stated in 1904 just before her Boston<\/a> debut as a dramatic reader. “The footlights have beckoned me since I was a little child and I simply must respond. It has always been my dream to portray all the heroic feminine characters of Shakespeare<\/a>.” (Boston Traveler<\/em>, January 25, 1904). From her childhood in Savannah, through her drama studies in Boston and New York<\/a>, Adrienne held on to this dream of a career on the legitimate theater stage. The harsh realities of race and gender in America, however, doomed the realization of this dream. Except for vaudeville, minstrelsy<\/a>, and all-Black dramatic productions, there was no place for Blacks on the American theater stage. As the daughter of light-skinned, slave-born house servants with considerable White ancestry, Adrienne’s skin was white. She identified herself as a Creole<\/a>, a racially ambiguous term by which she was neither admitting nor denying her race.<\/p>\n

Passing for White, she made her debut in Boston…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

African Americans in Atlanta: Adrienne Herndon, an Uncommon Woman Southern Spaces: A Journal about Real and Imagined Spaces and Places of the US South and their Global Connections 2004-03-16 DOI: 10.18737\/M7XP4B Carole Merritt Portrait of Adrienne Herndon, date unknown. (c) The Herndon Home. Overview\u00a0 Ahead of her time and outside of her assigned place, Adrienne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,459,8,6462,20,25],"tags":[26152,26153,7488,8921,3192,4440],"class_list":["post-51437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-adrienne-herndon","tag-adrienne-mcneil-herndon","tag-atlanta","tag-carole-merritt","tag-georgia","tag-southern-spaces"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51438,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51437\/revisions\/51438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}