Artists, Educators, Leaders, Activists

Angelina Weld Grimké, a biracial woman, was born in Boston in 1880 to an activist family. She lived with her aunt and uncle in Washington DC during high school and attended Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. In 1916, she accepted a teaching position at the Dunbar High School for Black students, renowned for its academic excellence. She taught and inspired many playwrights and theatre education practitioners including poet and playwright May Miller. Grimké wrote essays, short stories and poems which were published in The Crisis and Opportunity, and was well known for her play RACHEL. Her work is considered to have helped set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance.

Anita Manley taught at The Ohio State University and worked as a speech and language pathologist with the Columbus City Schools. She conducted workshops, both locally and nationally, on process drama in culturally diverse classrooms and has a particular interest in promoting communicative competence through the arts. Anita co-edited/co-wrote "Dreamseekers: Creative Approaches to the African-American Heritage" (1997) with Cecily O'Neill. Dr. Manley's dissertation (which Cecily O'Neill was on the committee for) was titled, "Unlocking communicative competence in classrooms for students with hearing impairment: Traditional discourse versus process drama discourse". You can locate it under: Manley, Anita Odell.   The Ohio State University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  1995.

Ann K. Flagg, born in Charleston, West Virginia, on April 29, 1924, was an American playwright, stage actress, director, public school teacher, and teaching artist. Outside of her work as an educator, she’s known to have toured with the American Negro Repertory Players as a stage manager and actor in 1947. Flagg is also known for her work as a director at Karamu House in Cleveland, where she integrated children's theatre from 1952 to 1961. Her efforts impacted many well-known Black theatre artists (Moses Gilbert, Rose Lee Scott).

Dorothy Hailparn was a playwright & short story writer during the Federal Theatre Project. Her play, "Horse Play" was part of the Negro Theatre Unit (at the Lafayette Theatre) and was billed as "A play for children and Grown-ups too". "Horse Play" was included in the anthology "Six Plays for Young People from the Federal Theatre Project (1936-1939)". Other plays include "Robin Hood" and (adult theatre) "The Bourbons Got the Blues" which she co-wrote with Carlton Moss.

Evelyn Ellis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 2, 1894 and became known as a "star" with the Lafayette Players (Harlem) in 1919. Her most famous performance was Bess in PORGY, which she performed on Broadway and toured internationally. Evelyn directed HORSE PLAY by Dorothy Hailparn, "a play for children and adults too" with the "Children's Theatre Unit of the Negro Theatre" with the Federal Theatre Project. Evelyn was hired by Sheldon B Hoskins (whom she met when working with the Lafayette Players) to direct a production of LITTLE WOMEN in 1938 with junior department at the Negro Little Theatre.

Gilbert Moses was born in Cleveland, OH. As a child, Moses spent many years in classes and productions at Karamu House, where he worked extensively with Ann K. Flagg. He studied at Oberlin College and at the Sorbonne University in Paris, before leaving college to join the civil rights movement. He became a staff member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and, in the early 1960s, he co-founded the Free Southern Theater with fellow SNCC staff member John O'Neal. The Free Southern Theater toured the South during the 1960s, including during the Freedom Summer of 1964, when it performed the documentary play "In White America" in 16 Mississippi communities. Moses left the group after it received threats from southern whites and some members of the company were arrested.

Gloria Bond Clunie is an award-winning playwright, director and educator. Ms. Clunie is a founding member of the Playwriting Ensemble at Chicago’s Regional Tony Award winning Victory Gardens Theater where her plays North Star, Living Green and Shoes premiered. She is also the founding Artistic Director of Evanston’s Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre where she directed scores of productions including Ain't Misbehavin', Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, Home and Raisin. Her other plays include Sweet Water Taste, SMOKE, Sing, Malindy, Sing!, BLU, Buck Naked, DRIP, Patricia McKissack’s Mirandy and Brother Wind, Bankruptcy, Merry Kwanzaa, Mercy Rising and QUARK. She is published by Dramatic Publishing and in the anthologies Seven Black Plays, Reimagining A Raisin In the Sun and The Bully Plays.

Seen in "The African American Theatre Directory, 1816-1960", Gloria Demby Maddox, “Black Monday’s Children.”

Bernard L. Peterson’s “Early Black American Playwrights and Dramatic Writers” includes an entry on Maddox: “Former student playwright at Fisk University, where she was also a member of the Fisk Stagecrafters. … After graduating from Fisk in the late 1940s, she became director of the Theatre of Wee Folks in Selma, Ala.” According to Peterson, an early version of “Black Monday’s Children” was produced as a one-act play in the 1940s by the Fisk University Stagecrafters. A copyright for “Black Monday’s Children: A Play in Three Acts,” by Gloria Demby Maddox, was filed on Aug. 17, 1959.

Inez Burke was a teacher at the primarily African American Charles Young School in Washington, D.C. She wrote "Two Races" to celebrate Negro History Week in the 1920s, originally performed by 5th grade students, and later published in "Plays and Pageants from the Life of a Negro" by Willis Richardson in 1930.

Irene C. Edmonds (1908-1968) was an assistant professor of humanities, speech and drama at FAMU (1948—1968). Edmonds was one of the early pioneers in educational children’s theatre and worked in that arena for 28 years. She established the first children’s theatre in any Historically Black College or University at Dillard University in 1935 where it flourished under her direction for twelve (12) years. She organized and directed the FAMU Creative Children’s Theatre (1948-1960) which grew to great prominence. Her work with the FAMU Playmakers Verse Choir also received wide national acclaim.

Irvin Turner founded Arena Player's “Youtheatre” program in 1974. He was an actor and teacher at Douglass High School. He was one of the Founders of Arena Theatre in 1953 on the campus of Coppin University.

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John was born June 24, 1947, in Lewiston, ID. He was one of seven children, the eldest, and the son. When his family moved from the Nez Perce reservation to Seattle, WA, John attended and graduated from Cleveland High School. In 1970, John became one of the first graduates of the University of Washington’s prestigious Professional Actor Training Program, earning him a Master of Fine Arts degree from U.W. After graduating from U.W., John co-formed the Red Earth Performing Arts Company, featuring productions of Native American works and performances.

Johnny Saldaña is Professor Emeritus from Arizona State University’s (ASU) School of Film, Dance, and Theatre (now the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre) in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where he taught from 1981 to 2014. He received his BFA in Drama and English Education in 1976, and MFA in Drama Education in 1979 from the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Saldaña is the author of "Drama of Color: Improvisation with Multiethnic Folklore" (Heinemann, 1995), a teacher's resource text and recipient of the 1996 Distinguished Book Award from the American Alliance for Theatre & Education (AATE).

Dr. Kelsey Collie is Professor Emeritus of Theater Arts at Howard University where he also served as Assistant Dean of Fine Arts. He taught English prior to joining the Theater Department faculty, where he founded the internationally renowned Howard University Children’s Theater (HUCT) in 1973. In only one year of operation, the HUCT became the premier African American children’s theater and was named the “Most Outstanding New Children’s Theater in the USA” by the Children’s Theater Association. Dr. Collie also developed a major concentration in children’s theater, which was only one of two HBCU programs accredited by the National Association of Schools of Theater. He taught drama at Barnard and Minor Elementary Schools in the District of Columbia. He conducted workshops in several public schools in the District of Columbia.

Langston Hughs was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. An early innovator of jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston worked as the playwright and author with Karamu House, the Federal Theatre Project, Harlem Shakespeare, The Crisis, The Brownies' Book, Skyloft Players and many more organizations and projects. In addition to his expansive amount of works for adults, including "Not Without Laughter", Langston wrote plays including, "Soul Gone Home" (1937) which was also published in "TYA Around the World in 21 Plays" by Lowell Swortzell, "Black Nativity" (1961, commissioned by Karamu House) and "The Gold Piece: A Children's Play"(Published in the 1949 publication of SADSA Encore).

Mary Powell Burrill was born in August 1881 in Washington, D.C. and attended M Street (Dunbar) High School and graduated from Emerson College. Burrill was an early 20th-century African-American playwright of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote plays about racism and gender inequality (They that Sat in Darkness and Aftermath). She became the second Black woman produced on Broadway when her play Aftermath competed against Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, and J.M. Barrie in the 1928 Little Theater Tournament at The Frolic Theatre. In 1907 she became the Director of the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression, and later returned to her alma-mater, Dunbar High School, where she remained until her retirement in 1944. As an educator, she inspired many students, including Willis Richardson and May Miller. Burrill also gave dramatic readings and directed plays and musical productions at Dunbar and throughout Washington, D.C.

Born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of a Howard University sociologist, Miller grew up in an intellectual household where W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were frequent guests. Miller attended Dunbar High School in DC, where she studied under famous playwrights Mary P. Burrill and Angelina Weld Grimké. She attended Howard University as a drama major were she directed, acted, and produced plays while collaborating with Alain Locke and Montgomery Gregory in the founding of a Black drama movement. Miller was the most widely published female playwright of the Harlem Renaissance. Miller spent twenty years teaching Speech, English, Theater, and Dance at Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, Maryland. While in Baltimore, she worked with the Krigwa Players (a multi-city theatre company, co-founded by W.E.B. Du Bois and Regina M. Anderson).

Myra Lillian Davis Hemmings, African American suffragist, Delta Sigma Theta founder, teacher, actress, and producer, was born in Gonzales, Texas, on August 30, 1895, to Henry and Susan (Dement) Davis. Myra graduated from Riverside High School for African American students in San Antonio in 1909 and completed undergraduate studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1913. While at Howard University, she was a member of the Alpha Phi Literary Society. Later she received a master's degree in dramatic arts in 1947 at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. On January 13, 1913, she was among the twenty-two women, all students at Howard University, who founded the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, a public-service organization. She served as the first president of the seminal Alpha Chapter.

Author, poet, theatre artist and educator Olivia Ward Bush-Banks celebrated her African-American and Native American Montaukett heritage in her writing. Following a divorce in 1895, she supported herself, her two young daughters and her elderly aunt, who had raised Ward. She published her first book of poetry, Original Poems, in 1899 and her second, Driftwood, in 1914. From 1900 to 1914, she was employed as an assistant theater director at the Robert Gould Shaw Settlement House in Boston. She also served as the Montaukett tribal historian in South Fork, New York, and wrote her first play, Indian Trails: or Trail of the Montauk circa 1920, but it survives only in fragments.

Osceola Adams (Archer) was a director, actor, and educator. She directed, taught, and ran the studio Theatre School of Drama at ANT at the American Negro Theater (ANT) from 1940 to 1949. Her students included Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Sidney Poitier. She served as resident director of the Putnam County Playhouse for 10 years beginning in 1946. As an actress, Osceola performed in many plays for ANT, Putnam County Playhouse, Broadway and many more. She was one of the first Black actresses on Broadway, first appearing in BETWEEN TWO WORLDS in 1934, where she faced discrimination in a segregated acting environment during the early 20th century.

Rose (Rosa) Lee Scott was born in Atlanta, and began her career in theatre as a high school student acting with the Karamu House Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio under the guidance of Ann K. Flagg. Eventually, Rose starting acting in, doing props/costumes and directing productions including props for “Bullfight”; actress in “Death of a Salesman”, “Fairy Tale Wood” (directed by Ann Flagg), “Simply Heavenly”, “Our Town” and “Master Builder” (with Ann Flagg); lighting and costumes for “Gallant Tailor”; and director of “The Knight of the Funny Bone” and “The Princess Who Wanted the Moon”. In 1962, Rose would become a dramatics instructor and the Assistant Director of the Children's Theatre Program at Karamu House.

Born in Baltimore, and brought up in Philadelphia, Sheldon began dancing as a child. He attended Columbia University in New York and became involved with the Lafayette Players. He moved to Baltimore to play a lead in a production of "The Little Whopper" and was the first Black dancer with the Baltimore Ballet.

Sheldon taught classes in "Art, Dancing, Music & Costume Designing, Day and Evening • Private and Class Lessons".

He founded the Negro Little Theatre and was the director of the "Youth Little Theatre", parent of the Arena Players (see Irvin Turner). He became "America's first Black Ballet Master" and performed as the "dancing boxer" in "Carmen Jones" (1943 & 1946).

Shirley Graham Du Bois was a composer, director, playwright, arts leader and activist. She was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1896, and later in life became the second wife to W.E.B. Du Bois in 1951. Graham completed her master’s degree in fine arts and music history at Oberlin College after briefly attending the Sorbonne in France, Columbia University, Howard University and Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland. While she was still a student at Oberlin, she developed a relationship with Karamu House's Rowena Jeliffe. With the help of Rowena, Graham’s three-act, sixteen-scene opera, Tom-Toms: An Epic of Music and The Negro, opened at Cleveland Stadium in 1932, drawing a crowd of ten thousand. Graham became the first African American woman to write and produce an opera with an all-black cast.

Venezella (also spelled Venzuella) Jones was appointed the director of the Negro Youth Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in New York in 1935, the only women in charge of a Federal Theater Unit in New York. She directed Conrad Seiler's SWEET LAND, a play portraying the lives of southern sharecroppers, with a large integrated cast. Sweet Land toured for families throughout New York. The Negro Youth Theatre "aims, above all else to give these performers an opportunity to develop..." Venezella taught many students in the Negro Youth Unit including Butterfly McQueen and Alice Childress who both gave credit to Jones.

According to Christine Rauchfuss Gray, "Richardson is the first African-American playwright to have developed a body of plays explicitly for Black children. Simple, one-act morality tales, their themes are brotherhood and understanding among the races; many of his plays promote racial pride among black children. Published in The Brownies' Book were The King's Dilemma (December 1920); The Gypsy's Finger-Ring (March 1921); The Children's Treasure (June 1921); and The Dragon's Tooth (October 1921)"(Gray).

In 1956, Richardson's collection of plays for children,‎ The King's Dilemma and Other Plays for Children: Episodes of Hope and Dream was published by Exposition Press.‎ This may by the first anthology of Black TYA. The volume included his earlier plays from The Brownies 'Book as well as new plays. "These simple plays have themes that urge equality and kindness to others" (Willis Richardson, Forgotten Pioneer of African-American Drama, 1999.)