American Negro Theater

Hill and O'Neal quickly garnered support for the American Negro Theatre, which they dubbed the ANT to reinforce the idea of a hard-working interdependent community, by assembling several of their theatre friends, including: Howard Augusta, James Jackson, Virgil Richardson, Claire Leyba, Jefferson D. Davis, Vivian Hall, Austin Briggs-Hall, Stanley Green, Fanny McConnell, and Kenneth Manigault. Together, they organized ANT "as a cooperative, and all members shared in the expenses and profits. The theatre's business model was parallel to its artistic policy of ensemble acting in lieu of individual leading roles."

Hill approached librarians at the public library on 135th Street in Harlem, the Harlem Branch of the New York Public Library, to start producing his plays. The librarians granted Hill and the ANT permission to use their 150-seat Little Library Theatre basement stage. The first show they produced Hits, Bits, and Skits opened on July 17, 1940.

The first major play that the ANT put into rehearsal was On Strivers' Row, which Hill put into rehearsal after it had done so well with the Rose McClendon Players, who also held performances in Harlem. On Strivers' Row ran for five months and, in March 1941, Hill moved it to the Apollo Theater, where it ran for a week, as a musical with the lyrics of Don Burley, the music of J. P. Johnson, and the choreography of Leonard Harper.

In 1944, the ANT submitted a proposal to the General Education Board of Rockefeller Center, explaining that their objectives were to develop (1) an Art, (2) a Vital Theatre and (3) Pride and Honor, and requesting funding for the salaries of the company's officers. The proposal resulted in a $22,000 grant-in-aid. These objectives were also printed on programs for ANT productions.

The company's most successful production Anna Lucasta ultimately led to its demise. Anna Lucasta, which was inspired by Eugene O'Neil's Anna Christie, was "originally conceived as the story of a sordid, impoverished Polish family in a small Pennsylvania town," but Yordan could not find a company to perform it, so he rewrote it to feature a Black family, and it was performed by the ANT in 1944.

According to a notice in the Brooklyn Eagle on March 30, 1944, the sets for that initial production were designed by the American realist painter Michael Lenson, but that has not been verified. Five weeks later, the play opened on Broadway where it launched the career of Ruby Dee and scored star Alice Childress the first Tony nomination for a Black actress.

Nine New York newspaper dailies reviewed the show. They all raved and producers instantly started fighting over who would get the rights to the play. Yordan agreed to sign a Dramatists Guild contract that would make Hill the co-author of Anna Lucasta. This gave Hill a five percent author's royalty.

The ANT itself received few royalties for Anna Lucasta, and the next three ANT plays to appear on Broadway were not successful. As a result, divisions developed within the company, with many determined to repeat the success of Anna Lucasta, at the cost of their earlier emphasis on a "people's theatre", and Hill's own break with the company. From then on, the ANT only featured plays from established white playwrights, and young actors viewed the ANT as a means to break into Broadway productions.