Gilbert Moses
Director, Actor, Facilitor, Activist, Educator, Theatre Founder
1942-1995
Years:
Affiliations:
Free Southern Theatre, Karamu House, Broadway, Oberlin College
New York, Cleveland, Ohio, Mississippi
Locations:
Connections:
Ann K Flagg, Ossie Davis, Langston Hughs
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.
His 1971 Broadway debut, Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death, won him a Tony Award nomination and the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Director. Moses' off-Broadway work as a director won him an Obie Award for Amiri Baraka's Slave Ship (1969) and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for The Taking of Miss Janie (1975). Among Moses' television credits are Benson, Ghostwriter, The Paper Chase, Law & Order, several episodes of the mini-series Roots, and several television movies.
Moses was married three times to actress Denise Nicholas, Wilma Butler, and singer Dee Dee Bridgewater and had two daughters, Tsia and China. Gilbert Moses died of multiple myeloma in New York City on April 15, 1995. He was 52 years old.
(Bio Credits: https://whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu/interviewee/gilbert-moses & https://aaregistry.org/story/gilbert-moses-stage-and-media-artist-born/)
