Playwright

Alice
Childress

Born in 1916, Alice Childress grew up to become an actress, playwright, and novelist. A founding member of the American Negro Theatre, she wrote her first play, Florence, in 1949. Childress was the first African American woman to have her play (Gold Through the Trees) professionally produced in New York. In 1955, Trouble in Mind was a critical and popular success Off-Broadway. When producers for a Broadway transfer asked Childress to change the script to make it more palatable to a commercial audience, Childress refused to compromise her vision, ending her chance of being the first African American woman playwright to have a work on Broadway. Trouble in Mind received its Broadway production in 2021. Childress is best known for her novel A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich. Plays by Childress include Wedding Band, Wine in the Wilderness, Florence, Mojo, and Gullah (1984). Alice Childress died in New York in 1994. Throughout her career, she examined the true meaning of being Black, and especially of being Black and female. As Childress herself once said, “I concentrate on portraying have-nots in a have society.”