Charles Smith is a graduate of the University of Iowa Playwriting Program and is currently head of the Professional Playwriting Program at Ohio University. He is a member of at Playwrights Ensemble at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre.
From the description of Charles Smith Collection 1986-2004. (DePaul University). WorldCat record id: 706137722
The play Free Man of Color was written by Ohio University professor Charles Smith and was performed for the school's bicentennial in 2004. In 1824 John Newton Templeton, a freed slave, came to Ohio University under the guidance of university president Reverend Robert Wilson. As the first African American to attend the university, Templeton had to live with the Wilsons and serve as their student servant because many of the students refused to live under the same roof as him. He remained with the Wilsons for four years and earned his board by performing odd jobs around the house. The play focuses on Templeton's relationship with both Wilson and Wilson's wife Jane during his time at the university. Wilson and Templeton have many discussions about politics in the play, and Wilson expresses his belief that Templeton was the man God had chosen to govern the newly formed country of Liberia, which he and other members of the American Colonization Society felt that African Americans should live. Jane shows her distaste for Templeton throughout the majority of the play, displaying her resentment that a former slave has the opportunity to earn a college degree while she, the wife of the university president, is not even allowed to enter.
From the guide to the Free Man of Color collection, 2004, (Ohio University)
