Day 24 - Alice Childress

Alice Childress, actress, novelist, a playwright known to the world as the only Black woman to write plays for four decades. She was born in Charleston, South Carolina on October 12, 1912. At the age of five, Alice moved to Harlem where her grandmother raised her and encouraged her to write. Growing up, she attended church where she heard moving stories from members which helped her fall in love with storytelling. The stories that she heard inspired her writing as an adult. She dedicated her work to telling stories about the plight of urban Blacks. 

Alice Childress also fell in love with theatre, she attended the American Negro Theater School of Drama and Stagecraft College. In 1944, she made her debut on Broadway in the stage play Anna Lucasta. The stage play became the longest-running all-Black play on Broadway. Four years later Alice wrote and directed her first play and shortly after opened her own theatre. Following its opening, she wrote and directed many other plays including Trouble in Mind and Wedding Band.  Alice Childress is a revolutionary Black woman because she created space for other Black actors and actresses while focusing on the pressures of urban Blacks. 

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