wish him the best, Sergei Eisenstein." Another early role was as Jean-Jacques Dessalines in the 1936 play Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History by C. L. R. James, again alongside Robeson and also other notable actors including Orlando Martins and Harry Andrews. Adams went on to take the lead in a television adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones. The role of Brutus Jones, a Pullman porter who becomes the ruler of a Caribbean island, had already been played by Robeson on stage and screen. The BBC's version was transmitted live from Alexandra Palace on 11 May 1938, and Adams became the first black actor to play a leading dramatic role on British television; another BBC appearance that year was in W. B. Yeats' 1907 play Deirdre. Adams also appeared in Geoffrey Trease's Colony (1939), which was about the exploitation of sugar workers in a Caribbean island. After Robeson returned to the United States at the outbreak of the Second World War, Adams became Britain's leading black actor, and would continue acting on television in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1944, Adams founded the Negro Arts Movement. In the late 1940s, Adams founded the Negro Repertory Arts Theatre, whose productions included O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings, at Colchester in 1944. He also appeared in the Unity Theatre's 1946 production of the play and a BBC television production in 1946. In 1948 he played Bigger Thomas in the play based on Richard Wright's novel Native Son, staged at the Bolton's Theatre Club. Adams subsequently studied law and took a break from acting, returning to London's West End stage in 1958 in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, and appearing on television in Green Pastures (1958) and Errol John's Moon on a Rainbow Shawl in a 1960 ITV production. He eventually returned to British Guiana, where he died in 1965. Filmography References External links Picture of Adams in All God's Chillun Got Wings 4TRi Timeline 1936 – 2008. 1902 births 1965 deaths 20th-century British male actors 20th-century Guyanese male actors Black British male actors British Guiana people British male film actors British male Shakespearean actors British male stage actors British male television actors Guyanese emigrants to England People from Georgetown, Guyana