Photo of the 1994 Black Anthology show. (Mike Peter | Student Life Alum)

Although WashU has numerous traditions on campus, the most widely known and attended are the various cultural shows put on each year. While other campus traditions foster community within their organizations, something about the cultural shows instills a sense of pride in the identity of their members. 

For many Black students, that is Black Anthology.

Black Anthology is one of the four main cultural shows at WashU. The others are Diwali, Lunar New Year, and Carnaval. Cultural shows allow students to showcase customs and practices that are important to themselves, their friends, classmates, and fellow WashU students. They give students from diverse backgrounds a community that supports and understands where they’re coming from.

Black Anthology was created by Marcia Hayes-Harris, who started at WashU in 1980 as a Residential Life Coordinator. During her time with ResLife, Hayes-Harris was involved with the program Quest for Success, an initiative that developed programming for African American students and other students from underrepresented backgrounds. She was tasked with creating something during orientation that would bring together Black students on campus.

“One night I was asleep, and this production emerged in my dream,” Hayes-Harris said.

Once she returned to work, she pitched her idea for Black Anthology to Tony Novak, her supervisor, who was on board with the idea. 

“[Tony and I] were thinking it was just gonna be a one-time event,” Hayes-Harris said. But there was such a positive response that they decided to make it an annual event. “It wasn’t just for the residence hall students. It was for all students.”

Black Anthology intended to support students of color as they navigate spaces in predominantly white Institutions. Black Anthology created a space where Black students could be around people who looked like them and engage with their shared culture.

Simultaneously, Black Anthology grew into an event where non-Black students could also learn about Black culture. 

“Black Anthology was a way to introduce the community to culture through literature and performance,” Hayes-Harris said. “[The] script was based on all these different literary works, so it was truly an anthology of work. And then we would infuse the music and the dance.”

Some of the other cultural shows consist of several distinct student groups coming together to create one show. While Black Anthology has connections to the Association of Black Students, they are not the same thing nor connected in any official capacity. Instead, Black Anthology is made up of a cast of people and an executive board after elections are held in the spring and auditions in the fall. 

Black Anthology also intentionally brings together students from WashU’s different schools across campus.

“You’d have the Fine Arts department students working on backdrops … or business [students] would be the ones that have really helped with the business [aspect]… as a way of being inclusive of all the colleges,” Hayes-Harris said.

Although Black Anthology came about in a dream, nothing about it is hazy. Carlos Sneed, a cast member of the original Black Anthology cast and later a Black Anthology advisor, remembered that Novak bought tickets to give away to students, which mirrors a program that ResLife does today, called “Take To” programs.

“[Novak and Hayes-Harris had] social and political capital and investment in Blackness,” Sneed said. 

Since its premiere in 1990, Black Anthology has served as a space for Black students to feel represented and for other students to learn about cultures they don’t identify with. It has also been a space for its members to celebrate art and cultural works that are significant to them.

“People brought in their favorite poets, performers, writers into the work. I remember us sitting around tables with paper, trying to piece together this theme,” Sneed said.

The premiere show was inspired by notable figures in Black history: Ntozake Shange, Langston Hughes, and W.E.B. DuBois. Sneed was not only in the original cast, but the first person to perform in the show. He performed the opening monologue: a dramatic reenactment of “Creation” by James Weldon Johnson while a fellow classmate did an interpretative dance.

Talking with Sneed over three decades later, he easily recalled the names of his castmates and details about the production as though it had happened yesterday.

“Black Anthology brought us together and gave us something to be proud of,” Sneed said.

Over three decades later, I found myself sitting alone at my first Black Anthology performance in 2022 after getting my ticket through the “Take To” program. The title of the show was Asifuye Mvua Imemnyeshea. The title of the show was written in an African language that I did not recognize, so I was concerned that I might be lost. I sat back and opened myself up to the experience.

As an avid theatergoer, I have seen good, bad, and awful productions on varying levels, from high school and church productions put on in gymnasiums to shows on Broadway. What I saw that February was unforgettable, and I left the theater deep in thought. I felt lighter — seen and understood by people I didn’t even know.

Dean Wilmetta Toliver-Diallo, the current faculty advisor for Black Anthology, emphasized that WashU undergraduates are the intended audience of the show. Sneed touched on the importance of centering the WashU community as audience members, especially early on. 

“I [get] the sense that my white peers at the time … weren’t informed, aware, or concerned. That speaks to the climate of the late 80s and the early 90s,” he said.

 Black Anthology has evolved over time both in regard to theme and format. One large change is a shift away from the anthology format towards an original production with one storyline. 

Though Black Anthology has a long history of being adaptable, COVID-19 almost snuffed out the campus tradition’s flame. The show always takes place during Black History Month, in February. With the timing of the pandemic, the show escaped unscathed in 2020, but had to adjust the next year to being online. 

Black Anthology was one of the first major shows to transition to an online format. “[2021] was weird,” said Seth Kleinberg, a recent graduate and lighting designer for Edison Theatre. “We didn’t know if anyone would watch it because it was online. We would walk in, we would film the whole thing, and we would leave … so we never got to feel what the audience was thinking or how they would react.”

Kleinberg joined the behind-the-scenes team for the cultural shows during COVID-19. Originally he was asked to be the lighting designer for Black Anthology, and has since been involved with almost all the cultural shows for the last four years.

When the show transitioned back to in-person performances, “It took some adjustment. It got there because everyone was so excited to be back,” Kleinberg remembered.

Due to COVID, many students did not know what Black Anthology was, or that it was a long-standing campus tradition. Slowly, current students are returning the shows to their pre-pandemic levels of grandeur. 

“I think they’re events that the campus anticipates for the entire year. It’s really the only events in the Edison that get sold out. It’s really exciting to have a full house … When there’s screaming and there’s clapping, you kind of become a part of the energy that is in the room,” Kleinberg said.

Alumni still smile in loving support for the organization that meant so much to them during their years at WashU. Even though Black Anthology looks different than it did 35 years ago, it still speaks to its origins with each new iteration.

“I like the evolution of it,” Sneed said. 

Hayes-Harris has also stayed connected with the Black Anthology community. Toliver-Diallo reached out to her a few years ago so she could meet with students working on the production and share the history of Black Anthology with them. “I’ve been coming back ever since,” Hayes-Harris said.

Black Anthology continues to serve its original purpose as set by Hayes-Harris and Novak: giving Black students an outlet to express themselves and share their lived experiences with others.