[1] She collaborated with W. E. B. Dubois on the 1913 production of his historical pageant The Star of Ethiopia, and gave Paul Robeson his first acting roles in the early 1920s.
[14] After the war Dora Cole Norman founded the Colored Players Guild of New York, to produce original plays.
[15] Dora Cole Norman was a friend of Paul Robeson, then an aspiring law student,[16] and in 1920 persuaded him to act in her all-Black troupe, the Amateur Players.
[18] Together with DuBois and NAACP James Weldon Johnson, she served on the executive committee of America's Making, a New York exposition held in October–November 1921 to celebrate the immigrant contribution to American society.
[20] In March 1922 she convinced a reluctant Robeson to return to the stage as a Broadway lead, playing a wandering minstrel in Mary Hoyt Wiborg's debut Taboo, set on a Louisiana plantation.
Though the cast was coached by Charles Gilpin, and included the English actress Margaret Wycherly,[16] the play was weak and closed after a short run.
[22] In 1926 she took a year's leave of absence from the New York Public School System to work as dramatic specialist with the Playground and Recreational Association of America.
[24] On 12 July 1926 an all-Black cast, including a chorus of 800 singers, performed Loyalty's Gift to a mixed-race audience of over 8,000 people as part of the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia.