Charles Sidney Gilpin was born on November 20, 1878, to Peter Gilpin and Caroline White. He was the youngest of the fourteen children. His father was a laborer in a steel-rolling-mill, and his mother was a trained nurse in the Richmond City Hospital.
Until he was twelve, Gilpin attended the St. Francis School for Catholic colored children, then went into the office of the Richmond Planet as printer’s devil.
Although Gilpin appeared on the stage as early as October 1890, for many years he was unable to make a living as an actor and supported himself by printing, with only intermittent participation as a song and dance man in restaurants, in variety theatres, and in fairs.
From time to time, he also appeared in vaudeville as a minstrel. He did not definitely become an actor until 1903, when he signed with the Canadian Jubilee Singers of Hamilton, Ontario. From that time he played continually. In 1905 and 1906, he was with Williams and Walker’s Abyssinia Company and Gus Hill’s Smart Set, and in 1907, became a member of the Pekin Stock Company of Chicago, which offered him his first opportunity as a dramatic actor.
From 1911 to 1913, he toured again, this time with the Pan-American Octette, then joined the Old Man’s Boy Company, in which he played until the latter part of 1914 when he went into vaudeville. In 1916, he settled in New York and became manager of the Lafayette Theatre Company in Harlem, the first negro dramatic stock company in the city of New York.
Gilpin’s first appearance in a Broadway cast was as William Custis, the negro clergyman, in the American production of John Drinkwater’s Abraham Lincoln, which opened December 15, 1919. This was followed by his selection for the role of Brutus Jones in Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones, a part for which he was obliged to compete with white actors.
The play opened at the Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street November 1, 1920, was taken up-town to the Princess Theatre, January 29, 1921, and ran almost continually until 1924, with many subsequent revivals. It offered Gilpin the greatest emotional part of his life.
In the character of an ex-convict ruler, pursued through the jungle by his island tribe, he carried six of the eight scenes entirely alone, his fright increasing with the crescendo of the approaching tom-tom. He played with all the eloquence and power of his race, and “provided one of the major theatrical sensations of the season”.
In 1926, Gilpin lost his voice and was forced to retire from the stage, reappearing only occasionally for revivals of Emperor Jones.
In June 1929, while playing in Woodstock, he suffered a breakdown. He died the following year in Eldridge Park, a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey, and was quietly buried in Lambertville. Friends in New York, hearing of his death, conducted a second funeral on a lavish scale, June 1, 1930, and had him buried with full honors in Woodlawn Cemetery.
Gilpin was one of ten to receive Drama League awards on March 6, 1921, for the greatest contributions to the theatre during the preceding year, and in the same year was given a Spingarn medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Gilpin was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Gilpin was married to Florence Howard in February 1897.
