*On this date, 1935, the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was formed. This theatre program was established during the Great Depression as part of America’s New Deal. Referred to as part of the Second New Deal, it funded live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States. It was one of five Federal Project Number One projects the Works Progress Administration sponsored. It was created not […]
learn more*Simmie Knox was born on this date in 1935. He is an African American artist.
From Aliceville, Alabama, his father was a carpenter and mechanic. After Knox’s parents divorced he lived with his father’s sister on a farm in Leroy, Alabama. This arrangement occurred while his father lived and worked in another city until young Knox was nine. As a boy his first love was baseball, which he played with friends one of which was Hank Aaron. Yet during a game, a ball hit Knox in the eye forcing him to put the game down for more than a year.
learn more*On this date in 1935, The Federal Art Project (FAP) began. This was the visual arts arm of the American Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA), a Federal One program. Funded under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act 1935, it operated from 1935 until 1943. It was created as a relief measure to employ artists and artisans to […]
learn more*Richard Hunt was born on this date in 1935. He is a Black sculptor artist. Richard Howard Hunt was born on Chicago’s South Side. At eleven years old, he and his younger sister Marian moved to Galesburg, Illinois, where he spent most of his time in Chicago. From an early age, he was interested in […]
learn moreOn this date in 1935,”Porgy and Bess” opened on Broadway. This was the first American folk opera about the lives of Black Americans.
“Porgy and Bess” was first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It tells the story of African American life in the fictitious Catfish Row (based on the real-life Cabbage Row) in Charleston, S.C. in the early 1920s.
learn more*On this date in 1935 Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Deep South had its Broadway debut. This was a play about race issues by Langston Hughes. Martin Jones produced it, running for 11 months and 373 performances. It was one of the earliest Broadway plays to combine father-son conflict with race issues. Historian Joseph McLaren noted that the play was […]
learn more*Raven Wilkinson’s birth in 1935 is celebrated on this date. She is an African American ballet dancer (semi-retired) and actress.
From New York City, her mother was influential pursuing ballet training for her. Wilkinson began studying with a well-known Russian dancer when she was nine. After being inspired by seeing Janet Collins on stage in the early 1950s, she left school in her teens to pursue ballet full time. When the director of Ballet de Russe purchased Monte Carlo, her ballet school the students were invited to try out for his company.
learn more*Voodoo Macbeth opened on this date in 1936. This play was a New York William Shakespeare’s Macbeth production through the Federal Theatre Project. Orson Welles adapted and directed the show, moved the play’s setting from Scotland to a fictional Caribbean Island, and recruited an entirely Black cast. It earned the nickname for his production from the […]
learn more*Julia López’s birth is celebrated on this date in 1936. She is a self-taught Afro Mexican painter. López was born in a small village near Ometepec on the Costa Chica of Guerrero. She was one of eight daughters born to African and (Amuzgo) Indigenous heritage parents. Her parents raised cotton, chili peppers, tobacco, sesame seeds, […]
learn more*On this date in 1936, the Negro Actors Guild (NAG) is celebrated. Formed in 1936, the Negro Actors Guild of America (NAG) wanted to eliminate stereotyping of African Americans in theatrical and cinematic performances. They began operations in 1937 to create better opportunities for Black actors during a period in America when the country was […]
learn moreLou Stovall, an African American master printmaker and artist, was born on this date in 1937.
Born in Athens, Georgia, he grew up in Springfield, MA, where he attended Technical High School. Stovall initially studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design and at Howard University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Since 1962, he has lived and worked in Washington, D.C. Over the years he has won numerous awards, but perhaps his most enduring legacy is his work in the community.
learn more*Billy Dee Williams was born on this date in 1937. He is a Black actor, voice actor, and artist. William December Williams Jr. was born in New York City, the son of Loretta Anne, a West Indian-born elevator operator at the Lyceum Theatre. She was an aspiring performer from Montserrat, and William December Williams, Sr., a Black and Native American caretaker from Texas. He grew up in Harlem. He used to […]
learn more*Robert Hooks was born on this date in 1937. He is a Black actor, producer, and activist. Hooks was born in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C, the youngest of five children. His mother was Mae Bertha (Ward), a seamstress, and Edward Hooks, who had moved from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, with their four other children, Bernice, Caroleigh, Charles Edward “Charlie,” and James […]
learn more*Ron O’Neal was born on this date in 1937. He was an African American actor.
From Utica, NY he got his big break when he was cast in Charles Gordone’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play No Place to Be Somebody, which began at Off-Broadway’s Public Theater and later went to Broadway in 1969. The producers of “Superfly,” urban crime film were impressed with his work. They cast him as the movie’s lead character, a cool cocaine dealer named Youngblood Priest. “Superfly” became an unexpected hit, one of the defining films of the twentieth century Blaxploitation genre.
learn more*Ernie Barnes was born on this date in 1938. He was an African American Neo-Mannerist artist and former professional football player.
learn more