ABSTRACT
Howard, like many HBCUs, held fast to the belief that respectability politics, or the presentation of Eurocentric acceptable standards of appearance and behavior, would protect Black people from prejudices and systemic injustices. This chapter examines how the “respectability” framework shaped the plays produced by the Howard Players from 1919 to the mid-1960s; it also reviews how this paradigm of respectability shifted as a result of the Black Power movement of the 1960s into the 1970s.
