This date in 1918 marks the birth of Hilda Simms. She was an African American stage and film actress.
Born Hilda Moses in Minneapolis, MN she graduated from South high school. Sims joined the American Negro Theater at Harlem, NY, in 1943, and was given the title role in Anna Lucasta. When the production moved to Broadway in 1944, it became the first all-Black production to be performed on Broadway without a racial theme. It had a run of over 950 performances.
learn more*Gordon Heath was born on this date in 1918. He was a Black Gay actor and musician. Heath was born in New York City, his parent’s only child. His father, Cyril Gordon Heath, had emigrated from Barbados to the US, where he met and married Hattie Hooper. Young Heath showed an early talent for music and art but opted […]
learn more*Eugene Grigsby Jr. was born on this date 1918. He was an African American artist, and educator.
learn more*Lorenzo Fuller was born on this date in 1919. He was an African American musician and entertainer.
learn moreLoften Mitchell was born this date in 1919. He was an African American playwright, historian, and writer.
From Columbus, North Carolina, his parents were Ulysses Sanford Mitchell and Willia Spaulding Mitchell. In addition to having three brothers, he had one sister, Gladys. The family moved to Harlem before young Mitchell was a month old. His first stage productions were the shows that he and brothers Louis, Melvin, and Clayton performed in the backyard of their home in Harlem.
learn moreLloyd Richards was born this date in 1919. He was an African American film, theater, and video director.
He was born in Toronto, Canada, but at an early age his family moved to Detroit. Lloyd Richards was only nine years old when his father died, leaving his mother to raise five children during the Depression. To make matters worse, soon after his mother became blind. At 13, young Lloyd went to work to help support the struggling family.
learn more*Herbert Gentry was born on this date in 1919. He was a Black artist and expressionist painter. Herbert Alexander Gentry was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the son of James Jentry of Madison Courthouse, Virginia, and Violet Howden of Kingston, Jamaica. By 1924, Gentry was living in Harlem, New York City, with his mother and her family. […]
learn more*Joe Nash was born on this date in 1919. He was an African American dancer, archivist of African American dance and essayist.
learn more*Ella Williams was born on this date in 1919. She was an African American operatic soprano, and the first African American to have received a contract with a major American opera company.
learn more*Ellen Stewart was born on this date in 1919. She was a Black theatre director, producer, and theater owner. From Alexandria, Louisiana, Stewart said that her father was a tailor from Louisiana, her mother was a teacher, and they divorced during her youth. Her family then moved to Chicago, Illinois. She moved to New York […]
learn moreThe birth of Beah Richards in 1920 is celebrated on this date. She was an African American actress and poet.
learn more*Allen Hoskins was born on this date in 1920. He was a Black child actor and rehabilitation counselor. Allen Clayton Hoskins was born in Boston, but his parents, Clayton H. Hoskins and Florence A. Fortier Hoskins, moved the family to Los Angeles, and in 1922, his acting career began. His younger sister Jannie also appeared […]
learn more*Afrocubanismo is affirmed on this date in 1920. This was an artistic and social movement in Black-themed Cuban culture with origins in the 1920s, as in works by the cultural anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. The Afrocubanismo movement focused on establishing the legitimacy of Black identity in Cuban society, culture, and art. The movement developed in the […]
learn more*On this date in 1920, The Emperor Jones held its first performance. It’s a play written by white-American dramatist Eugene O’Neill. For the first time in mainstream American Theatre, a production featured a full commitment to the principles of the Art Theatre movement. It’s the story of Brutus Jones, a resourceful, self-assured Black (former) Pullman Porter who kills another Black […]
learn moreOn this date in 1920, Esther Rolle was born. She was an African American Emmy Award-winning actress.
She was born in Pompano Beach, FL, the tenth of 18 children birb ti parents were of Bahamian descent. Rolle attended Booker T. Washington High School in Miami, and then attended Spelman College for a year before moving to New York. She supported herself by working in a pocketbook factory while auditioning for the theater.
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