Edna Thomas

Edna Lewis Thomas (November 1, 1885 – July 22, 1974) was an American actress. From the 1920s, she was a noted stage actor in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. She acted on Broadway, with the Lafayette Players theater company, and in productions by the Federal Theater Project of the Works Progress Administration. Her portrayal of Lady Macbeth in Orson Welles' all-Black "Voodoo" Macbeth in 1936 was much acclaimed. She was an influential figure in Black theater, and was a member of the Alhambra Players and the Harlem Experimental Theatre. She only appeared on screen once, in the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire. Thomas was born in Virginia and raised in Boston. After moving to New York around 1916, she worked as a social secretary for the beauty entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker. Though she was married to Lloyd Thomas, she started a long-term romantic relationship with British socialite Olivia Wyndham around 1930 and the three lived together for many years in a Harlem co-op. Early life Edna Lewis was born on November 1, 1885, in Lawrenceville, Virginia. Author Saidiya Hartman, in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, wrote that Lewis's father was a white man who raped her Black mother in his household when she was a 12-year-old nursemaid. Edna grew up in Boston where she attended public schools. She married around 1914 and moved with her husband to New York City, possibly in 1916. She worked as a social secretary for the Black beauty entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and through her was introduced to a variety of people in Harlem and Greenwich Village. In New York she became an influential figure in Black theater during the Harlem Renaissance.