Alice Childress

Alice Childress (October 12, 1916[1] – August 14, 1994) was an American novelist, playwright, and actress, acknowledged as "the only African-American woman to have written, produced, and published plays for four decades."[2] Childress described her work as trying to portray the have-nots in a have society,[3] saying: "My writing attempts to interpret the 'ordinary' because they are not ordinary. Each human is uniquely different. Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvellously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne."[4] Childress became involved in social causes, and formed an off-Broadway union for actors.[5]

For the Ben Folds Five song, see Alice Childress (song).
Alice Childress
Born
Alice Herndon

(1916-10-12)October 12, 1916
Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
DiedAugust 14, 1994(1994-08-14) (aged 77)
New York City, U.S.
Other namesLouise Henderson
Occupations
  • Playwright
  • novelist
  • actress
Notable workLike One of the Family (1956); A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich (1973)

Alice Childress's paper archive is held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York.[6]

Early years

Childress (née Herndon) was born in Charleston, South Carolina, but at the age of nine, after her parents separated, she moved to Harlem, New York City, where she lived with her grandmother, Eliza Campbell White, on 118th Street, between Lenox Avenue and Fifth Avenue.[7][8] Though her grandmother, the daughter of a slave,[9] had no formal education, she encouraged Alice to pursue her talents in reading and writing.[10] Alice attended public school in New York for her middle-school education and went on to Wadleigh High School, but had to drop out once her grandmother died.[7] She became involved in theater immediately after her high school and she did not attend college.[11]

Career

Acting

Childress took odd jobs to pay for herself, including domestic worker, photo retoucher, assistant machinist, saleslady, and insurance agent. In 1939, she studied Drama in the American Negro Theatre (ANT), and performed for the company for 11 years. She acted in Abram Hill and John Silvera's On Strivers Row (1940), Theodore Brown's Natural Man (1941), and Philip Yordan's Anna Lucasta (1944).[11] There she won acclaim as an actress in numerous other productions, and moved to Broadway with the transfer of ANT's hit Anna Lucasta, which became the longest-running all-black play in Broadway history[12] among a cast that also included Hilda Simms, Canada Lee, Georgia Burke, Earle Hyman and Frederick O'Neal.[13] Though many biographies list her as having received a Tony award nomination for her starring performance, this information appears to be inaccurate as the Tony Awards did not begin until 1947, some years after the production.[2][4]

Playwriting

In 1949, she began her writing career with the one-act play Florence, which she directed and starred in, and which reflected many of the themes that are characteristic of her later writing, including the empowerment of black women, interracial politics, and working-class life.[3][14] In Florence, a black, Southern, working-class woman, Mama Whitney, decides to travel by train from South Carolina to New York City to retrieve her daughter, Florence, who is a struggling actor. However, after a white woman waiting for the same train offers to help Florence by recommending her for a job as a maid, Mama Whitney decides to send her daughter money instead bringing her home.[8][15] Childress' goal in writing Florence was to "settle an argument with fellow actors (Sidney Poitier among others) who said that in a play about Negroes and whites, only a 'life and death thing' like lynching is interesting on stage."[16]

Her 1950 play, Just a Little Simple, was adapted from the Langston Hughes novel Simple Speaks His Mind and was produced in Harlem at the Club Baron Theatre. Her next play, Gold Through the Trees (1952), gave her the distinction of being one of the first African-American women to have worked professionally produced on the New York stage.[17] The success of these plays enabled her to bring Harlem's first all-union off-Broadway contracts into practice.[18]

Childress's first full-length, dramatic play, Trouble in Mind was produced at Stella Holt's Greenwich Mews Theatre in 1955 and ran for 91 performances.[8] Biographies and her 1994 obituary claim that Trouble in Mind won an Obie award for the best off-Broadway play of the 1955–56 season,[2] which would have made Childress the first African American woman to be awarded the honor.[14] However, Trouble in Mind is not in the American Theatre Wing's records as having won an Obie for the 1955–56 season.[19] Trouble in Mind is about racism in the theater world. In a play-within-a-play, Childress depicts the frustrations of black actors and actresses in mainstream white theater.[8][20] The show's success led to plans for a Broadway transfer, but these plans were nixed when Childress refused to change the play's ending. Had it opened, it would have been the first play by an African American woman to open on Broadway (a title taken by A Raisin in the Sun four years later).[21] An acclaimed revival of Trouble in Mind was presented on Broadway from October 29, 2021, to January 9, 2022, at Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre. It starred LaChanze, Chuck Cooper, Michael Zegen, Danielle Campbell, Jessica Frances Dukes, Brandon Micheal Hall, Don Stephenson, Alex Mickiewicz, and Simon Jones and was directed by Charles Randolph-Wright.[22] The production was nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Play, Best Actress in a Play (LaChanze), Best Featured Actor in a Play (Chuck Cooper), and Best Costume Design in a Play (Emilio Sosa).[23]

She completed her next dramatic work, Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, in 1962. Its setting is South Carolina during World War I and deals with a forbidden interracial love affair. Due to the scandalous nature of the show and the stark realism it presented, it was impossible for Childress to persuade any theatre in New York to stage it. The show premiered in 1966 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and was also produced in Chicago. It was not until 1972 that it played in New York at the New York Shakespeare Festival, starring Ruby Dee.[2] It was later filmed and shown on TV, but many stations refused to screen it.[24] A production was staged at Theatre for a New Audience from April 23 to May 15, 2022, directed by Awoye Timpo and featuring Thomas Sadoski and Veanne Cox.[25] In the summer of 2023, it was produced at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, starring Antonette Rudder and Cyrus Lane, directed by Sam White.[26]

In 1965, Childress was featured in the BBC presentation The Negro in the American Theatre. From 1966 to 1968, she was a scholar-in-residence at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.[27][28]

In conjunction with her composer husband, Nathan Woodard, she wrote musical plays, including Young Martin Luther King (originally entitled The Freedom Drum) in 1968 and Sea Island Song (1977).[3]

Newspaper columns

Childress published more than thirty columns in the Paul Robeson-associated newspaper, Freedom. The tabloid monthly ran from 1950 through 1955, and in 1956 she published a collection of them in her novel Like One of the Family. The ones in the book are not always identical with the originals in the newspaper, as the latter often explored a theme discussed elsewhere in the issue.[29] As an example of Childress' approach here, when the unconsciously racist employer asks for a health card from the book's protagonist Mildred, a Black domestic worker, Mildred pretends to be relieved, saying she'd wondered how to ask for their own health cards from the family whose laundry she handles and whose beds she makes. The embarrassed employer backs off.[30]

Also in association with Freedom, in 1952 Childress collaborated with Lorraine Hansberry, who had recently relocated to New York City and begun working at the paper. They co-wrote a pageant for Freedom's Negro History Festival, with Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Douglas Turner Ward and John O. Killens providing narration. Childress, sixteen years older than Hansberry, introduced the latter to the Black theatrical community of New York.[31] This was Hansberry's earliest surviving theatrical work.[32]

Young adult books

Alice Childress is also known for her young adult novels, among which are Those Other People (1989) and A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich (1973). She adapted the latter as a screenplay for the 1977 feature film also entitled A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich, starring Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield.[12]

Personal life

She had used the names Louise Henderson and Alice Herndon[33] before her marriage in 1934 to actor Alvin Childress. The couple had a daughter together, Jean R. Childress, and divorced in 1957,[34] when musician Nathan Woodard became her second husband.[3][14]

She died of cancer, aged 77, at Astoria General Hospital in Queens, New York.[18][33] At the time of her death she was working on a story about her African great-grandmother, Ani-Campbell, who had been a slave,[35][8] and her Scots-Irish great-grandmother.[36]

Awards

Major works

Plays
  • Florence (1949)
  • Just a Little Simple (1950)
  • Gold Through the Trees (1952)
  • Trouble in Mind (1955)
  • Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White (1966)
  • The Freedom Dream, later retitled Young Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)
  • String (1969)
  • Wine in the Wilderness (1969)
  • Mojo: A Black Love Story (1970)
  • When the Rattlesnake Sounds (1975)
  • Let's Hear It for the Queen (1976)
  • Sea Island Song, later retitled Gullah (1977)
  • Moms: A Praise Play for a Black Comedienne (1987)

Novels

Trivia

The song "Alice Childress" by the Ben Folds Five is not related to her. It is a coincidence that there was a woman with the same name that poured water on Ben Folds' wife at the time, Anna Goodman.[38]

Childress was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho sorority.[39]

References
  1. "PAL: Perspectives in American Literature-A Research and Reference Guide". Archived from the original on 2006-04-19. Retrieved 2006-02-25.
  2. Mary Helen Washington, "Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, and Claudia Jones: Black Women Write the Popular Front", in Bill Mullen and James Edward Smethurst (eds), Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism, and Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States, Chapel Hill/London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, p. 186.
  3. "Alice Childress", Black History Now.
  4. Busby, Margaret, "Alice Childress", Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent, Vintage, 1993, p. 279.
  5. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, Trudier Harris, "Childress, Alice", The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 72.
  6. "archives.nypl.org – Alice Childress papers". archives.nypl.org. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  7. Biography Today: Author Series. Detroit: Omnigraphics, Inc. 1996. p. 18. ISBN 0-7808-0014-1.
  8. Delois., Jennings, La Vinia (1995). Alice Childress. New York: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0805739637. OCLC 32050492.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. "Alice Childress". Black History Now. June 19, 2014. Retrieved July 15, 2019.
  10. Jennings, La Vinia Delois (1995). Alice Childress (Twayne's United States Author Series). Woodbridge, CT: Twayne Publisher. ISBN 0805739637.
  11. Biography Today, p. 19.
  12. Woodman, Sue (September 14, 1994), "A testimonial to black America" (obituary of Alice Childress), The Guardian.
  13. Stephen Bourne, "Obituary: Alice Childress", The Independent, August 29, 1994.
  14. Michelle Granshaw, "Childress, Alice (1916–1994)", BlackPast.org.
  15. Als, Hilton (October 3, 2011). "Alice Childress, the Last Woman Standing". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  16. E., Abramson, Doris (1969). Negro playwrights in the American theatre, 1925–1959. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 023103248X. OCLC 6324.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. The New York Public Library Performing Arts Desk Reference. New York: Macmillan. 1994. p. 12. ISBN 0-02-861447-X.
  18. Alice Sussman, "Alice Childress 1920–1994", Contemporary Black Biography, 1997, Encyclopedia.com.
  19. "56 – Obie Awards". Obie Awards. Retrieved December 24, 2021.
  20. Sommers, Michael (April 19, 2014). "A Play About a Play Reveals Racial Tensions". The New York Times. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  21. Lunden, Jeff (December 6, 2021). "A prescient play about race in America has its long-overdue Broadway premiere". NPR. Retrieved December 24, 2021.
  22. Green, Jesse (November 18, 2021). "Review: 'Trouble in Mind,' 66 Years Late and Still On Time". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 2, 2021.
  23. Culwell-Block, Logan (May 9, 2022). "2022 Tony Award Nominations: A Strange Loop, MJ, Paradise Square Lead the Pack". Playbill. Retrieved May 9, 2022.
  24. Biography Today, pp. 19–20.
  25. Putnam, Leah (May 8, 2022). "Brittany Bradford, Rosalyn Coleman, and Veanne Cox-Led Wedding Band Opens Off-Broadway May 8". Playbill. Retrieved May 8, 2022.
  26. "2023: Wedding Band" (PDF). Stratford Festival. Retrieved 12 July 2023.
  27. Biography Today, p. 20.
  28. "Notes Taken at Fisk Writers Conference", Negro Digest, June 1966, p. 90.
  29. Washington, Mary Helen (2014). The other blacklist : the African American literary and cultural left of the 1950s. New York New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 140–146. ISBN 978-0-231-15270-9. OCLC 875819059. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  30. Galentine, Cassandra, 'There's nobody with common sense that can look down on the domestic worker': Dirt, Disease, and Hygiene in Alice Childress's Like one of the Family, archived from the original on 2022-06-18, retrieved 2022-11-25
  31. Perry, Imani (2018). Looking for Lorraine : the radiant and radical life of Lorraine Hansberry. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807039830. OCLC 1080274303. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  32. Anderson, Michael (2008). "Lorraine Hansberry's Freedom Family". American Communist History. 7 (2): 265. doi:10.1080/14743890802580131. S2CID 159832248. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  33. "Alice Childress Biography", Bio.
  34. "Trouble in Mind Notes", The Actors Company Theatre.
  35. Fluke, Jen N. (February 28, 2003), Alice Childress Biography, Voices from the Gaps, University of Minnesota.
  36. Rule, Sheila (August 19, 1994), "Alice Childress, 77, a Novelist; Drew Themes From Black Life", The New York Times.
  37. "Nominees". Drama Desk Awards. Retrieved 2022-05-22.
  38. iTunes Originals interview with Ben Folds.
  39. Lakeisha Harding, "Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. (1922– )", BlackPast.org.
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