Jesse A. Shipp

Jesse Allison Shipp, Sr. (March 24, 1864 – May 1, 1934) was an American actor, playwright, composer, book writer, and theatrical director whose Broadway career spanned from 1898 to 1930. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Shipp is recognized as a pioneer of African American musical theater and is recalled as one of the first, if not the first, African American director of a Broadway performance.

Shipp's parents, Thomas and Ellen Shipp, had both been born in slave states — Thomas in South Carolina around 1821 and Ellen in Kentucky around 1830 — before relocating to Ohio prior to the Civil War. Shipp attended public school in Cincinnati, completing high school at age sixteen and subsequently working as a retail clerk and laundry wagon driver. During this period he formed a musical quartet with three peers, performing evenings in Cincinnati's German district.

His entry into professional entertainment began when he briefly joined a minstrel show based in Indianapolis, departing after three weeks. In 1887 he took his quartet on the road, and the group performed for the next seven years alongside various traveling minstrel companies. After the quartet disbanded in 1894, Shipp pursued acting in traveling black theater productions, including Uncle Tom's Cabin from 1894 to 1895, John William Isham's Oriental America in 1896 and 1897, and A Trip to Coon-Town from 1897 to 1899.

In 1900, Shipp was hired by the vaudeville team of Bert Williams and George Walker as a stage manager, writer, and performer. Working with their troupe, he contributed books for several productions, among them In Dahomey and Abyssinia, works noted for more developed plotting and characterization than had been typical of black theater of the era. His Broadway credits as a performer and book writer include In Dahomey, Abyssinia, Bandanna Land, Mr. Lode of Koal, and A Trip to Coontown, among other productions. The book for In Dahomey has survived only in fragments.

Around 1908, Shipp joined Robert T. Motts's Pekin Stock Company in Chicago as resident playwright. The company's need for a continuous supply of new material led Shipp to draw increasingly on vaudeville forms. Following Motts's death in July 1911 and the decline of the Pekin Stock Company — weakened by competition from Chicago theaters that had begun showing films — Shipp assumed control of the operation, renaming it the Jesse Shipp Stock Company and retaining Sam Corker as permanent stage manager. The reorganized company staged several productions at the Pekin Theatre, including works written by Shipp, before disbanding in 1911. In 1913, Shipp produced and directed a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., featuring contralto Daisy Tapley as Katisha and Dr. Charles Sumner Wormley in the title role.

In 1921, Shipp founded the Dressing Room Club in Harlem, establishing it as the second major African American dramatic club in New York City. Headquartered at the Harlem Community House on 7th Avenue, the organization counted more than 250 members drawn from New York's black theater community, including writers, performers, composers, and musicians. Its stated goals included demonstrating the dignity and economic value of African American theater professionals and preserving the history of Black Americans in the theatrical arts. Shipp was also involved with the Harlem Productions Company in 1925 and 1926, serving as stage manager for Lucky Sambo, a musical farce that debuted on June 6, 1925, and ran for nine performances at Broadway's Colonial Theatre.

Shipp's selected plays include Policy Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1902), Abyssinia (1905), In Bandana Land (1907), No Place Like Home (1910), A Night in New York's Chinatown (1910), and Dr. Herb's Prescription, or, It Happened in a Dream (1911). His son, Jesse A. Shipp, Jr. (1886–1922), also worked in the entertainment industry, founding the Shipp Association, a dramatic booking agency based in Harlem.

Jesse A. Shipp, Sr. died on May 1, 1934, at Jamaica Hospital in Jamaica, Queens, New York. He had resided with his wife in Richmond Hill, Queens, and was buried at St. Michael's Cemetery in Astoria, Queens.