Emma Hamilton Dancing

Sheppard Randolph Edmonds was born in Lawrenceville, Virginia in 1900. He received his bachelor's from Oberlin College in Ohio and his master’s from Columbia University in New York in 1934. Following graduation he was awarded a fellowship to study at the Yale School of Drama, where he spent a year, followed by a year each studying in Dublin and in London.

Edmonds was an important playwright in the Harlem Renaissance and in the “Negro Little Theater” movement, writing plays about the Black working-class experience and the struggles of migration and slavery as a form of cultural and historical education. In 1930 he founded the Intercollegiate Dramatic Association, the first organization dedicated to Black theater education. He taught for periods of time at Morgan College in Baltimore (1926-1934) and Dillard College in New Orleans (1935-1947), both HBCUs. While at Dillard he also organized the Southern Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts in 1935 and served as its president until 1942. He later served as chair of the Department of Speech and Drama at Florida A&M (1948-1968).

Edmonds died in Lawrenceville, Virginia in 1983.