Louis Peterson
Louis Stamford Peterson, Jr. was an influential African American dramatist born on June 17, 1922, in Hartford, Connecticut. Raised in a predominantly white neighborhood, he experienced a unique sense of isolation from the broader African American community and its struggles, which profoundly shaped his later work. Peterson graduated from Bulkeley High School and earned a B.A. in English from Morehouse College in 1944, where he excelled academically. His early exposure to theater sparked a passion for the stage, leading him to study at Yale and New York University, where he honed his craft under esteemed mentors like Clifford Odets and Lee Strasberg.
His most notable work, "Take a Giant Step," debuted in 1953 and explored the complexities of identity and racial tensions through the lens of a young African American protagonist. Although it had a modest run, the play resonated with audiences and was later adapted into a film. Peterson's career also included significant contributions to television, earning him an Emmy nomination for one of his scripts. After a period working in insurance, he transitioned back to academia, teaching theater arts until his retirement in 1993. Peterson passed away in 1998 due to lung cancer, leaving behind a legacy as a pioneer in addressing racial issues through drama.
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Louis Peterson
Playwright
- Born: June 17, 1922
- Birthplace: Hartford, Connecticut
- Died: April 27, 1998
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Louis Stamford Peterson, Jr., an African American dramatist, was born in a predominately white neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut, on June 17, 1922. His father, Louis Peterson, Sr., was a bank guard and coin roller. In the 1930’s, his mother, Ruth Conover Peterson, worked at the bank’s lunch counter to ensure a college education for her two sons. Peterson later reported that his upbringing among white immigrants somewhat isolated him from members of his race and the issues so many African Americans were facing in the South.
He graduated from Bulkeley High School in 1940, began music studies at Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia, earning his B.A. in English in 1944 and winning the Benjamin Brawley Award for Excellence. Acting in a production of T. S. Eliot’s Murder in a Cathedral so enchanted him that he went on to study stage technique at Yale University’s School of Drama from 1944 to 1945. He earn an M.A. in 1947 from New York University. In 1950, he was accepted into a drama writing class taught by playwright Clifford Odets, who found Peterson so promising that the two once worked on a piece until six in the morning. Peterson also studied with Lee Strasberg, founder of the city’s Actors Studio. He married Margaret Mary Fleury in 1952, divorcing her in 1961.
It was while performing in a production of Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding that he began writing his first dramatic work, Take a Giant Step. Despite a meager seventy-two performances, this play won him recognition as well as inclusion in the Burns Mantle Yearbook for the best plays of 1953-1954. His play, though about a black family trying to function in a white system, touched a chord with audiences who had suffered alienation, misunderstanding, and loneliness.
In this heavily autobiographical account, the main character, Spencer, finds himself the victim of 1950’s thinking about African Americans. His history teacher’s pronouncement about whites having to free slaves because the latter were too dumb to do anything themselves incenses him. He corrects her, storms out, and is suspended from school. His parents, wanting to instill self-respect, but only if it manifests itself in non-incendiary ways, side with the teacher. They fear the ramifications of daring to challenge white authority.
In a highly charged scene his mother warns him that he will be called upon to do things much harder than say he’s sorry: “You’ll laugh at [whites] when you could put knives right into their backs without giving it a second thought—and you’ll never… let them know they’ve hurt you… .” She adds: “You think it’s easy for me to tell my son to crawl when I know he can walk and walk well?” In 1956, Take a Giant Step was reproduced Off-Broadway, this time running for 264 performances, with a film version appearing in 1958.
By then, Peterson had begun to write for major television shows, with one script in 1956 earning him an Emmy nomination. Accusations that he had sold out to a popular audience may have given impetus to his return to theater. In order to write, however, he needed a paying job, so in 1963 he moved to a smaller apartment and worked for an insurance company. In 1972, Peterson began teaching in the department of theater arts at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, retiring in 1993. He died of lung cancer in 1998.