There seems to be little clear information on the personal life of A.E. Lichtman. The most detailed and thorough source on Lichtman is Robert K. Headley’s definitive publication Motion Picture Exhibition in Washington, D.C.: An Illustrated History of Parlors, Palaces and Multiplexes in the Metropolitan Area. Headley writes that Lichtman was born in Wichita, Kansas at the turn of the twentieth century, but moved east as a young man.

 By 1923, he had acquired his first theatre, located in Brooklyn. Though he began learning the theatre-management ropes in Brooklyn, the genesis of the Lichtman Theatre Circuit can be traced to his 1926 purchase of the Howard Theatre. The Howard Theatre was a major part of Washington D.C.’s African American cultural community and the grandest theatre in the District open to African Americans.

The Howard was built by the National Amusement Corporation in 1912. It was designed by J. Edward Storck, a Baltimore based architect, in a combination of Beaux-Arts and Neoclassical styles. The Howard opened to great fanfare, with the Washington Bee, D.C.’s largest Black newspaper at the time, writing long articles about the opening night performances and the extremely modern safety precautions, which included over 12 exterior, outward facing doors. Though the Howard was a large theater with high-class aspirations, by the 1920s it had yet to live up to its prospects. Lichtman’s purchase of the Howard, and his success in raising it to its potential, established him as an emerging power player in the world of segregated Black theatres.

(credit: American Theatre Architecture Archive, Theatre Historical Society of America)