Louis Peterson; Pioneering Black Playwright

Louis Peterson, 76, whose play “Take a Giant Step” paved the way for other black playwrights on Broadway when it premiered in 1953. “Take a Giant Step,” a play set in the early 1950s about a young black man growing up in a middle-class white neighborhood in New England, established Peterson’s reputation at the Lyceum Theater. After the success of “Take a Giant Step,” he wrote other plays such as “Entertain a Ghost” in 1962 and movie and television scripts such as “Joey” and “The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell.” In New York City on Monday of lung cancer.