Lyric Theatre. Robert Rockmore presents "Run, Little Chillun!" by Hall Johnson : program, 1933 March

Run, Little Chillun or Run Little Chillun is a folk opera written by Hall Johnson. According to James Vernon Hatch and Leo Hamalian, it is one of the most successful musical dramas of the Harlem Renaissance. It was the first Broadway show directed by an African-American.

The term "Negro" appears here in the context of a transcription from a 1933 playbill for the first Broadway production written by a Black American. The term was adopted and preferred by members of the Black community starting in the latter half of the nineteenth century, becoming dominant in language in the United States by the 1950s. As the Civil Rights movement developed, the term was criticized for being imposed upon the Black community by white people, and a new term to self-identify was sought. By the mid-1960s, more progressive language shifted to the preference for the word "Black," with some arguing the ""Black"" referred to radical, progressive figures, while "Negro" was used for those who were "established" or more in keeping "with the status quo." (See Citation below.) Black grew in popularity over the latter half of the twentieth century and is the contemporarily preferred term at the time of writing (2024). The inclusion of the term "Negro" in this description is in keeping with the establishment usage throughout the 1950s-1960s, though Cummings was known to use derogatory and prejudicial language as well..

Citation: Smith, Tom W. “Changing Racial Labels: From ‘Colored’ to ‘Negro’ to ‘Black’ to ‘African American.’” The Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 56, no. 4, 1992, pp. 496–514. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2749204. Accessed 16 Jan. 2024.