Welome to Trouble in Mind!!!!
Background Image: Broadway and 49th, 1955.
Hello! Welcome to your neighborhood friendly dramaturgy page!
Director: Ron OJ Parson
Dramaturg: Martine Kei Green-Rogers, PhD
Assoc. Director & Asst. Dramaturg: DeRon S. Williams, PhD
We are super excited to work with you. This resource is a living document that will shift as things come up in the rehearsal process. Always feel free to check back for more information. There is contact info for Martine at the bottom of this site. If you need anything, do not be afraid to reach out.
Alice Childress
Born Oct. 12, 1916 (but this year varies depending on where you look), Charleston, S.C., U.S.—died Aug. 14, 1994, New York, N.Y.
American playwright, novelist, and actress. Childress grew up in Harlem where she acted with the American Negro Theatre in the 1940s. There she wrote, directed, and starred in her first play, Florence (produced 1949), about a black woman who, after meeting an insensitive white actress in a railway station, comes to respect her daughter’s attempts to pursue an acting career. Trouble in Mind (produced 1955; revised and published 1971), Wedding Band(produced 1966), String (produced 1969), and Wine in the Wilderness (produced 1969) all examine racial and social issues. Among Childress’ plays that feature music are Just a Little Simple (produced 1950; based on Langston Hughes’s Simple Speaks His Mind), Gold Through the Trees (produced 1952), The African Garden (produced 1971), Gullah(produced 1984; based on her 1977 play Sea Island Song), and Moms (produced 1987; about the life of comedienne Jackie “Moms” Mabley).
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Alice Childress". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Oct. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alice-Childress. Accessed 7 August 2022.
Start at 6:52. Ms. Childress speaking about her career.
In Her Own Words..
The New Yorker
“From Kathy A. Perkins’s introduction to her recently published landmark edition of Childress’s “Selected Plays,” I learned that Childress, and not Lorraine Hansberry, was the first black woman to have a play produced with Equity actors (the 1952 revue “Gold Through the Trees”)..”
Vulture
“Everyone should be reviving Childress’s work. The dramas are powerful body blows full of beautifully observed human detail, hard swings in several genres..”
Gretchen Hall and E. Faye Butler as actors in conflict in “Trouble in Mind.”Illustration by Owen Smith
Alice Childress Papers at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library
Trouble in Mind
Childress, at left, with actors rehearsing the premiere of “Trouble in Mind” in 1955. Credit...Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
In 1977, actor Clarence Muse, left, ex officio patriarch of the Fourth Annual Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame ceremony, presents the first Paul Robeson award to Alice Childress. (OAT/AP)
Trouble in Mind is a play by Alice Childress, which debuted Off-Broadway at the Greenwich Mews Theatre in 1955. It premiered on Broadway at Roundabout Theatre Company on November 18, 2021
The original Off-Broadway production was produced by Stella Holt, sponsored by the Village Presbyterian Church and the Brotherhood Synagogue. Childress co-directed, alongside Clarice Taylor, who also starred as Willetta. Hal England was featured in the supporting role of Eddie. The sets and lighting were designed by Vincent Sorrentino. The production opened on November 3, 1955, and ran for 91 performances. In 1957, a Broadway transfer had been planned, renamed So Early Monday Morning. The production was cancelled as Childress refused to subdue its content.
Wiletta Mayer walks into the theater already knowing how things will go. Smartly dressed, attractive and middle-aged (don’t ask for a number, because “a woman that’ll tell her age will tell anything”), she is a veteran actress who has played maids and mammies and knows how to cater to white directors and producers. You can call it “Uncle Tomming.” Or you can call it plain common sense. Either way, it’s a living.
Until enough is enough.
Alice Childress created Wiletta Mayer, the protagonist of her 1955 play, “Trouble in Mind,” to paint a realistic portrait of what it was to be Black in the theater industry. Or to be more accurate: She wanted to portray what it is to be Black in theater, because 66 years later, as the play opens on Broadway this month in a Roundabout Theater Company production, the words Childress wrote remain just as relevant.
And yet this author and play, a comedy-drama about an interracial cast rehearsing an anti-lynching play written by a white author and led by a white director, haven’t gotten their proper due in the decades since its premiere. Childress was supposed to be the first Black female playwright on Broadway, with a play critiquing the racism and misogyny of the theater industry.
Thanks to interfering white theatermakers and a Broadway unwelcoming to challenging Black art, things didn’t turn out as planned. But the content of the play, and its troubled production history, prove how rightly “Trouble in Mind” and its author should be celebrated as part of the canon.
In the play, Wiletta arrives for her part in “Chaos in Belleville” alongside a young Black actor named John; an older Black actor named Sheldon; a younger Black actress named Millie; and two white actors, Judy, a well-meaning yet naive Yale graduate, and Bill, a neurotic character actor. The play within the play is about a Black man who dares to vote and is killed for it.
During rehearsals, Wiletta tries to give newcomer John tips on how to survive as a Black actor in the business, but her own advice fails when the white director, Al Manners, pushes her to perpetuate stereotypes.
It’s a familiar scenario, one Childress encountered herself as a young actress in the 1944 Broadway production of “Anna Lucasta.” She based Wiletta on character actress Georgia Burke, who appeared with her in that production. Like Wiletta, Burke had also done her fair share of mammy roles, and she would later appear in the original Broadway “Porgy and Bess.”
Burke had problems with the director of “Anna Lucasta,” but Childress knew her to complain only to her fellow Black actors; when it came to white directors and producers, she kept quiet for the sake of her career.
In “Trouble in Mind,” Childress wrote a version of Burke who finally had to speak up.
“Darling, don’t think. You’re great until you start thinking,” Al Manners says to Wiletta during rehearsals. That kind of condescending treatment may have been par for the course for Black theater performers. Childress, however, was uncompromising.
“She was a woman of amazing integrity,” said Kathy Perkins, Childress’ friend and the editor of a major anthology of her plays. (She is also the lighting designer for Roundabout’s production.) “She hated the saying ‘ahead of your time.’ Her thing was that people aren’t ahead of their time; they’re just choked during their time, they’re not allowed to do what they should be doing.”
It’s this integrity — or, more accurately, the times choking a great writer of integrity — that cost Childress Broadway. In an ironic echo of the play’s plot, Childress found herself at odds with the would-be director when “Trouble in Mind” was slated for its off-Broadway premiere. Unwilling to budge, she took over as co-director, along with actress Clarice Taylor, who starred as Wiletta.
The play premiered Nov. 5, 1955, at Greenwich Mews Theater and ran for 91 performances.
But that version isn’t the version we know today.
The white producers were concerned about the play’s ending, which they thought was too negative. According to Perkins, as a relatively new playwright, Childress was intimidated by these experienced producers.
And then there was the rest of the cast and crew to think about. Childress was a fierce advocate for unions and workers’ rights, and feared that pulling the play would cost everyone their jobs. So she conceded, providing an ending of reconciliation and racial harmony, even though she maintained that it was unrealistic.
The New York Times praised the play as “a fresh, lively and cutting satire” — except for the ending. Childress always regretted the change, and said she’d never compromise her artistic integrity again. So when “Trouble in Mind” was optioned for Broadway with the happy ending and a new title (“So Early Monday Morning”), Childress refused. She would have been the first Black female playwright to see her work there; instead, that honor would go to Lorraine Hansberry four years later, for “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Childress, who died in 1994, never had the financial success nor popular recognition that her work merited in her lifetime. It’s unfortunate because her plays are works of merit.
Many of her works — such as “Florence” (1949), “Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White” (1966) and “Wine in the Wilderness” (1969) — are confrontational without being pandering or preachy. Not simply about race, they are also about gender and class and artistry, and challenge their audiences to look at their own prejudices and misconceptions. (Theater for a New Audience is reviving “Wedding Band,” a tale of interracial love set amid the 1918 flu pandemic, off-Broadway this spring.)
And they’re clever. The meta structure of “Trouble in Mind” makes Childress’ satire especially poignant; it’s both explicitly biting and subtly searing.
One reason Childress is often left out of conversations about the American canon is her style. In an essay in “The Cambridge Companion to African-American Theater,” historian and dramaturge Adrienne Macki Braconi calls Childress a “transitional” writer, unheralded because her work reflects “the conventions of dramatic realism.”
“Critics often overlook their subtle variations on the form, including such innovations as bold thematic content; assertive, complex female characters; and a focus on lower-class and middle-class blacks,” Macki Braconi wrote of Childress and writer Eulalie Spence.
Sandra Shannon, a scholar of Black theater and emeritus professor of African American literature at Howard University, maintained that Childress’ blend of naturalistic dialogue and social commentary put her “at the top of her game” among playwrights in the late ’40s and early ’50s. Her plays, Shannon said, “raise awareness, stop short of just getting out and marching in the streets.”
And La Vinia Delois Jennings, author of the 1995 book “Alice Childress” and a distinguished professor in the humanities at the University of Tennessee, pointed out the “dynamism” of Childress’ works, which so often feature Black women taking agency. The stereotypical trope of the angry Black woman gets turned on its head, Jennings said, proving that anger can be “liberating — a force that brings about change.”
But for all of Childress’ dynamism, it still took over 60 years to get her work to a Broadway stage.
Charles Randolph-Wright, who will be directing the Broadway production, said he has been eyeing this play for the big stage for more than a decade.
On June 20, 2011, a nonprofit called Project1Voice hosted an event in which 19 theaters across the country did readings of “Trouble in Mind.” Randolph-Wright directed a Roundabout reading at the American Airlines Theater, which included André De Shields, Leslie Uggams, Bill Irwin and LaChanze, who will be starring as Wiletta in the full production at the same Broadway venue.
“I’ll never forget everyone coming up to me saying, ‘Did you rewrite this?’ and I was like, ‘No, she wrote this in 1955.’ And they said, ‘But you tweaked it —’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t touch one thing,” Randolph-Wright explained.
After all, theater insiders and outsiders are still loudly calling for improved representation more than a half-century later.
“There’s been a false sense of progress. That progress has been in fits and starts,” Shannon said. “The same issues that Childress deals with, or dealt with in the 1950s with ‘Trouble in Mind,’ have always been bubbling beneath the surface. They’ve never gone away.”
In one scene in the play, Manners says, “I want truth. What is truth? Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe, that is all. You must have integrity about your work.”
Although the statement comes from a flawed character, the sentiment is Childress all the way. Perkins said that at the end of the day, Childress wouldn’t say she was writing for white audiences or Black audiences; she wrote for only herself, and she concerned herself first and foremost with the truth, whatever form that would take.
Randolph-Wright said he thinks of the late John Lewis when he approaches the play. “It is ‘good trouble,’” he said, referring to the call to action made famous by the activist and congressman. “It agitates, it illuminates, it makes you laugh, it’s entertaining.”
But he hopes this production will only be the beginning — that audiences will learn more about Childress’ work, and that she and other Black writers will get greater recognition for their contributions to the art form. Because this moment — after Black Lives Matter and “We See You, White American Theater,” and when seven new Broadway plays this fall are by Black writers — is perfect for Childress, but also for Spence and Ed Bullins and Angelina Weld Grimké and other Black playwrights past and present.
So will change really come this time around? The version of “Trouble in Mind” that’s finally arriving on Broadway ends inconclusively, not optimistically. The ending that Childress’ producers rejected back in 1955 seems right for right now. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright New York Times Company Nov 5, 2021.
Alice Childress Finally Gets to Make ‘Trouble’ on Broadway
Phillips, Maya.
New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast); New York, N.Y.
From left: Chuck Cooper, LaChanze, Danielle Campbell and Michael Zegen in “Trouble in Mind,” at the American Airlines Theatre in New York, Oct. 28, 2021. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
Actors’ Equity Association – Founded in 1913, the Actors’ Equity Association is an American labor union that represents American stage actors and stage managers. On a large scale, Actors Equity is responsible for negotiating wages, working conditions, and benefits. Actors Equity Association also has a presence in every production through a cast-elected deputy. The deputy is responsible for solving problems and representing the cast.
Glossary
Alimony – financial support a person is ordered by a court to give their spouse during separation or following divorce.
Alphonse and Gaston – These two excessively polite Frenchmen are the comic creations of Frederick Burr Opper. Opper was a famous American cartoonist in the 19th and 20th centuries. Alphonse and Gaston appeared in print in 1901 and remained a favorite comic strip until Opper died in 1937.
Atomic Bomb – A fission-based nuclear weapon. During WWII in 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
Backward – inept, clumsy, or incompetent.
Barbarous – uncivilized, wild, savage, or harsh
Barn Dance – A community or family dance with roots in folk and traditional music. It can be held in a barn and used to describe a community dance anywhere.
Blues Music – Blues has roots in music that synchronizes and accompanies human movements, such as work songs, chants, and spirituals. It was then developed by those who were enslaved, formerly enslaved, sharecroppers, and their descendants. Blues music is about adversity, dealing with hardship, and expressing how you feel.
Bridgeport, CT - is the most populous city and a major port in the U.S. state of Connecticut.
Brownskin Melody – Fictitious show
Charles Stewart Parnell - (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) was an Irish nationalist politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1875 to 1891. Parnell is celebrated as the best organizer of an Irish political party up to that time and one of the most formidable figures in parliamentary history. Despite this noted talent for politics, his career eventually became mired in a personal scandal from which his image never recovered. Ultimately, he could not secure his lifelong goal of obtaining Irish Home Rule.
Cold-water Flats – A staple for the struggling artist, these rooms were just one step up from homelessness. Most offered the bare minimum, if any, amenities.
Countenance – appearance, look on one face, visage.
Diner-car Waiter – In “hotel cars,” railroad cars with beds and kitchens, waiters served food and acted as porters to the travelers. Diner-car waiters endured highly long hours and harsh treatment. Malcolm Little was at one time a vendor on a diner car.
Draft Board – Part of the Selective Services Act, the draft board was a group that selected men of legal age for service in the military. They were used in WWI and WWII.
Father-Fixation – Electra complex – A neo-Freudian theory set by Carl Jung that states women compete with the mother for the father's desire.
Galy Theatre – A fictitious theater, it could also be a play on the no longer existent Daly Theatre of London.
Gilt – The past tense of gild, to cover in a thin layer of gold or deceptively attractive.
Henry Clay – (1777-1852) Clay was a congressman and the founder of the Whig party; he was known for his abilities as a speaker and a leader. Clay was instrumental in “The Missouri Compromise” and was a founder of the “American Colonization Society.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - An American poet, writer, translator, and educator. The play quotes his poem; The Day is Done.
Hollywood Investigation – refers to the anti-Communist witch hunts of the House Committee on Un-American Activities or HUAC. In 1947, HUAC attacked the motion picture industry over alleged communist influence and propaganda. These interrogations spread across entertainment, forcing the closure of many shows and the end of careers.
Home Rule – a form of de-evolution of centralized government or independence. It can also refer to exercising state rule over its administrative area.
Home Rule League – A political party that campaigned for the home rule of Ireland, eventually becoming the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Jack of All Trades (master of none) – A person who is competent in many fields or possesses many general skills but is not exceptional at any of them.
Jemima – is a derogatory term used to like Tom but applies to females. The name comes from the stereotypical female cook character used to market syrup.
John Dillon (4 September 1851 – 4 August 1927) was an Irish politician from Dublin who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for over 35 years and was the last leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. By political disposition, Dillon advocated Irish nationalism, originally a follower of Charles Stewart Parnell, supporting land reform and Irish Home Rule.
John Edward Redmond (1 September 1856 – 6 March 1918) was an Irish nationalist politician, barrister, and MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. He was best known as a moderate Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) leader from 1900 until he died in 1918.
Lax – loose, not strict, careless
Little Rock, AK (1957) - a group of African American students known as the Little Rock Nine (Melba Pattillo Beals, Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Thelma Mothershed, Terrence Roberts, and Jefferson Thomas), enrolled in the previously segregated Little Rock Central High School. The students had to be escorted by armed Federal troops and the National Guard. Throughout their high school careers, they faced
Lockjaw – the common name for tetanus, a progressive bacterial disease that affects muscles and nerves that can result in death. The bacterium is commonly found in manure and feces.
Lynching – A form of execution where vigilantes take the law into their own hands. It is also a tool to control, intimidate, and manipulate those who go against the acting social or political group. Lynching was usually carried out by mobs and often by hanging the accused—the causes (accusations) for lynching range from rape to whistling or inappropriate looks.
Man, The – Government or authority in power.
Medium Brown Magazine – Fictions magazine
Montgomery, Alabama – The Montgomery Bus Boycott – December 5, 1955- December 21, 1956, the boycott opposed racial segregation in the public transit system. The boycott was led by Martin Luther King Jr. and ignited by the arrest of Rosa Parks. The US Senate ruled that segregating buses was unconstitutional. The boycott's success propelled The Civil Rights Movement, giving Martin Luther King Jr. national attention.
Mother-complex – Oedipus complex – A part of Freudian psychoanalytic theory focuses on boys and their repressed emotions. The boy in question desires his mother and feels the need to kill his father to get her.
Mumps – A contagious viral disease characterized by painful swelling in the salivary glands.
Naming People – Those interrogated by HUAC were asked to list the names of other communists they knew or associated with.
Newport News, Virginia – Home of Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey (actress in the film Porgy and Bess)
Numbskull – dull, stupid, or thick-headed
Off-Broadway – A theatre performance in Manhattan that is open to critics and general audiences in a house of 100-499. Originally Off-Broadway theatre was a response to the highly commercialized and formulaic productions of Broadway. Off-Broadway theaters are smaller, allowing them to take more risks. It is known for fostering groundbreaking theatre with innovative shows and new theatre artists.
Oliver Twist – Written by Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist is the story of an orphan trying to survive in London. Dickens exposes the struggles of orphan children, those in workhouses and on the streets. The famous line “Please, sir, I want some more” is Oliver’s plea for more food from his cruel master.
Organdy – Sheer, crisp, lightweight cotton product that is stiff and holds its fullness. Organdy is a popular fabric for decorating.
Parliamentarian – a member of parliament or a person who is an expert in the rules and procedures of deliberative assemblies and other formal organizations.
Playing Tom, “Tommish” is a derogatory slang used to describe an African American who is perceived as behaving subserviently to Whites. The term is from Uncle Toms's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Porgy and Bess – This is a Gershwin musical based on the book and plays Porgy by Dorothy and DuBose Heyward. The musical is about the life of African Americans in fictitious Catfish Row and premiered with an entirely African American cast.
Prejudice – preconceived opinions or feelings formed beforehand. It also refers to hostile, unreasonable beliefs and attitudes regarding other groups.
Psalm 133 – this psalm is about Unity;
1 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
2 It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;
3 As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.
Psalm 23 – Shepard’s psalm is a commonly memorized and quoted psalm;
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - A poet, lecturer, philosopher, and writer known for his impact on the 19th-century transcendentalist movement. Emerson advocated individualism and was a proponent of abolition. Bill, playing Renard, references Emerson’s essay Civilization.
Rascals – A mischievous, dishonest, or unscrupulous person
Reverend King – Martin Luther King, Jr. - January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968 – King was a non-violent activist and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and received a Nobel Peace Prize.
Sardi’s – A popular restaurant for theatergoers famous for its autographed celebrity caricatures.
Smug – Excessively self-satisfied
Soft-shoe – A kind of tap dancing performed in soft-soled shoes, popular in vaudeville.
Subpoena – An order issued by a government agency that requires a person to appear in court.
Talkin’ Low – to accept a lesser or subservient role to meet your needs.
Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers – Plantations relied heavily on the labor of enslaved people for farming. After the emancipation of enslaved people, the land still needed to be farmed, but the farmers didn’t want to increase the payment of their workers. So they would have immigrants, the poor, and newly freed slaves independently farm a section of the land for a portion of its output. The system was new, but it did little to change the status quo because most farmers were constantly in debt to the landowner.
They shellacked – To varnish something with shellac or to beat/defeat resoundingly.
Trellis – Interwoven wood or metal structure that is used to support plants
United Nations – Founded in 1945 to maintain international peace, security, human rights, and friendly relations between nations.
Unorthodox – Unusual, not conforming to rules, tradition, or codes of conduct
Vaudeville – A genre of theatre that combines multiple acts and different talents, often unrelated on the same bill. These performances could include musicians, singers, impersonators, acrobats, dancers, animals, magicians, comedians, jugglers, and anything selling.
Voting –
· 1776 – Only landowners can vote
· 1790 - Naturalization Law passed, citizen means “free white.”
· 1856 – all white men can vote
· 1870 – 15th amendment ratified – formerly enslaved people and another African American right to vote
· 1920 – 19th amendment – Women were granted the right to vote
· 1964 – 24th amendment – Poll taxes outlawed
· 1965 – Voting Rights Act – Outlaw discriminatory voting practices
William Ewart Gladstone (29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-consecutive terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894. He also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times, serving over 12 years. In an office in early 1886, Gladstone proposed home rule for Ireland but was defeated in the House of Commons.
Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror
During the period between the Civil War and World War II, thousands of African Americans were lynched in the United States. Lynchings were violent and public acts of torture that traumatized Black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials. These lynchings were terrorism. “Terror lynchings” peaked between 1880 and 1940 and claimed the lives of African American men, women, and children who were forced to endure the fear, humiliation, and barbarity of this widespread phenomenon unaided.
“History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.”
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened to the public on April 26, 2018, is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence.
Timeline:
Act 1:
10 am Monday morning.
Act 2:
10 am Thursday morning.
Wiletta Sings
Enjoy the music of 1955!
Because DeRon and Martine are about a bop!
Roy Hamilton: Life, Sound, and Tragedy
Roy Hamilton (April 16, 1929 – July 20, 1969) was an American singer. By combining semi-classical technique with traditional black gospel feeling, he brought soul to Great American Songbook singing.
Hamilton's greatest commercial success came from 1954 through 1961, when he was Epic Records' most prolific artist. His two most influential recordings, "You'll Never Walk Alone" and "Unchained Melody", became Epic's first two number-one hits when they topped the Billboard R&B chart in March 1954 and May 1955, respectively. Hamilton also became the first solo artist in the label’s history to have a US top-ten pop hit when “Unchained Melody” peaked at #6 in May 1955.
Roy Hamilton was born in Leesburg, Georgia, where he began singing in church choirs at the age of six. In the summer of 1943, when Hamilton was fourteen, the family migrated north to Jersey City, New Jersey, in search of a better life.
Civil Rights Movement Timeline
HISTORY.COM EDITORS | UPDATED: JAN 19, 2021 | ORIGINAL: DEC 4, 2017
The civil rights movement was an organized effort by Black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law. It began in the late 1940s and ended in the late 1960s. Although tumultuous at times, the movement was mostly nonviolent and resulted in laws to protect every American’s constitutional rights, regardless of color, race, sex or national origin.
July 26, 1948: President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services.
May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education, a consolidation of five cases into one, is decided by the Supreme Court, effectively ending racial segregation in public schools. Many schools, however, remained segregated.
August 28, 1955: Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago is brutally murdered in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. His murderers are acquitted, and the case bring international attention to the civil rights movement after Jet magazine publishes a photo of Till’s beaten body at his open-casket funeral.
December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her defiant stance prompts a year-long Montgomery bus boycott.
January 10-11, 1957: Sixty Black pastors and civil rights leaders from several southern states—including Martin Luther King, Jr.—meet in Atlanta, Georgia to coordinate nonviolent protests against racial discrimination and segregation.
The Road to Freedom: Black History & the Civil Rights Movement | Full Episode
This 2-hour special, narrated by Deon Cole, gives a fresh perspective of the black movement in America, from Emancipation to the Civil Rights era. See more in this special.
EDDIE 'ROCHESTER' ANDERSON
Also Known As: Edmund L Anderson, Rochester, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson
Birth Place: Oakland, California, USA
Born: September 18, 1905
Died: February 28, 1977
Cause of Death: Congestive Heart Failure
This gravel-voiced African-American comic player from the vaudeville stage and nightclub revues is best remembered as Jack Benny's worried valet and straight man, 'Rochester' for 28 years on Benny's radio and later TV show (1950-65). Although he entered films in the late 1920s usually playing stereotyped servants, and appeared as Noah in "Green Pastures" (1936) and Uncle Peter in "Gone With the Wind" (1939), the rolling-eyed Anderson had his most notable film performance as the lead opposite Ethel Waters in Vincente Minnelli's all-black musical "Cabin in the Sky" (1943).
Miscegenation /Interracial Dating
In 1948, the California Supreme Court ruled in Perez v. Sharp (1948) that the Californian anti-miscegenation laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the first time since Reconstruction that a state court declared such laws unconstitutional, and making California the first state since Ohio in 1887 to overturn its anti-miscegenation law.
The case raised constitutional questions in states which had similar laws, which led to the repeal or overturning of such laws in fourteen states by 1967. Sixteen states, mainly Southern states, were the exception. In any case, in the 1950s, the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws was still a controversial issue in the U.S., even among supporters of racial integration.
In 1958, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany,[28] who escaped from Europe during the Holocaust, wrote in an essay in response to the Little Rock Crisis, the Civil Rights struggle for the racial integration of public schools which took place in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, that anti-miscegenation laws were an even deeper injustice than the racial segregation of public schools. The free choice of a spouse, she argued in Reflections on Little Rock, was "an elementary human right": "Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs." Arendt was severely criticized by fellow liberals, who feared that her essay would arouse the racist fears common among whites and thus hinder the struggle of African Americans for civil rights and racial integration. Commenting on the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka against de jure racial segregation in education, Arendt argued that anti-miscegenation laws were more basic to racial segregation than racial segregation in education.
Arendt's analysis of the centrality of laws against interracial marriage to white supremacy echoed the conclusions of Gunnar Myrdal. In his essay Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem (1948), Myrdal ranked the social areas where restrictions were imposed by Southern whites on the freedom of African-Americans through racial segregation from the least to the most important: jobs, courts and police, politics, basic public facilities, "social equality" including dancing and handshaking, and most importantly, marriage. This ranking was indeed reflective of the way in which the barriers against desegregation fell under the pressure of the protests of the emerging Civil Rights Movement. First, legal segregation in the army, in education and in basic public services fell, then restrictions on the voting rights of African-Americans were lifted. These victories were ensured by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the bans on interracial marriage were the last to go, in 1967.
Most Americans in the 1950s were opposed to interracial marriage and did not see laws banning interracial marriage as an affront to the principles of American democracy. A 1958 Gallup poll showed that 94% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriage. However, attitudes towards bans on interracial marriage quickly changed in the 1960s.
By the 1960s, civil rights organizations were helping interracial couples who were being penalized for their relationships to take their cases to the Supreme Court. Since Pace v. Alabama (1883), the Supreme Court had declined to make a judgment in such cases. But in 1964, the Warren Court decided to issue a ruling in the case of an interracial couple from Florida who had been convicted because they had been cohabiting. In McLaughlin v. Florida, the Supreme Court ruled that the Florida state law which prohibited cohabitation between whites and non-whites was unconstitutional and based solely on a policy of racial discrimination. However, the court did not rule on Florida's ban on marriage between whites and non-whites, despite the appeal of the plaintiffs to do so and the argument made by the state of Florida that its ban on cohabitation between whites and blacks was ancillary to its ban on marriage between whites and blacks. However, in 1967, the court did decide to rule on the remaining anti-miscegenation laws when it was presented with the case of Loving v. Virginia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the_United_States
This is an episode of the Edge of Night from the 1950's.
Soap Operas in the 1950s
Here are some of the more popular shows at the time:
The Brighter Day is an American daytime soap opera which aired on CBS from January 4, 1954, to September 28, 1962. In this episode Dr. Hamilton (Larry Ward) involved in a scandal. Transferred from a 16mm b-w kinescope film. From our home video release MC-284 SOAPERS Vol. #3 1953-1960.
A fifteen minute episode originally broadcast on April 9, 1953 from the longest-running soap opera in television history.
Wikipedia
“The off-Broadway movement started in the 1950s as a reaction to the perceived commercialism of Broadway and provided less expensive venues for shows that have employed many future Broadway artists.”
Robert Viagas
The Back Stage Guide to Broadway (2004))
“The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as a "complete rejection of commercial theatre".”
Off-Broadway Movements
The Merchant of Venice at the New York Shakespeare Festival, 1962, production photograph/Americantheatre.org
In 1924, the Drama School opened, immediately accepting women.
Video Clips:
Here are some clips for some people (per Ron).
Stepin Fetchit in Miracle in Harlem (1948)
James Cagney and Hattie McDaniel. "Johnny Come Lately" 1943.
John Barrymore, original name John Sidney Blyth, (born February 15, 1882, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died May 29, 1942, Hollywood, California), American actor, called “The Great Profile,” who is remembered both for his film and stage roles as a debonair leading man and for his interpretations of William Shakespeare’s Richard III and Hamlet.
John was born into a theatrical family; his parents, Maurice and Georgiana Barrymore, were stage actors, and his siblings, Ethel and Lionel, also became noted actors. John studied painting in Paris but returned to the United States to make his stage debut in 1903. He became a popular light comedian, but it was in serious roles that he scored his greatest stage triumphs. The most important of these were Justice (1916), Peter Ibbetson (1917), The Jest(1919), Richard III (1920), and Hamlet (New York, 1922; London, 1925). These roles led to his being acclaimed as the greatest tragedian of his generation.
Black Swagger
Some Inspiration…….
1943 Musical Movie
This is not time appropriate but the gentleman in the suit may be useful.
From Soul Man. Also not time appropriate but may be inspirational.
With JEAN WALLACE, RICHARD WRIGHT. Based on the novel by WRIGHT. Richard Wrights legendary novel is at once an American classic and an incisive examination of what it means to be black in America. The writer himself stars in this superlative adaptation of his story.
Additional Resources
(These are for fun!)
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For eleven years, photographer Carell Augustus has created portraits of Black actors recast in classic Hollywood films like “The Shining,” “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Dirty Dancing,” “The Graduate” and “Back to the Future.” His resultant book, “Black Hollywood: Reimagining Iconic Movie Moments,” from Ebony Magazine publishing, hopes to amend the glaring omission of Black representation in the mainstream media during Hollywood’s golden ages.
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TBD
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This is a placeholder since I know there will be more.
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TB
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