*Cecil Taylor was born on this date in 1929. He was an African American pianist and poet. Cecil Percival Taylor was raised in the Corona, Queens neighborhood of New York City. As an only child to a middle-class family, Taylor’s mother encouraged him to play music at an early age. He began playing piano at age six and went on to study at the New […]
learn more*Samuel Jackson was born on this date in 1948. He is an African American actor and film producer. Samuel Leroy Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Elizabeth Harriett Montgomery and Roy Henry Jackson. He grew up as an only child in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His father lived away from the family in Kansas City, Missouri, and later died from alcoholism. Jackson […]
learn more*On this date in 1945, Richard Wesley was born. He is an African American playwright and screenwriter. Richard Wesley was born in Newark, New Jersey, to George and Gertrude Wesley, and grew up in the cities Ironbound section. After finishing high school, he studied playwriting and dramatic literature at Howard University and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1967. He first became known for the 1971 New […]
learn more*On this date in 1967, The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) started. This was a New York City-based theater company and workshop established by playwright Douglas Turner Ward, producer-actor Robert Hooks, and theater manager Gerald S. Krone, with funding from the Ford Foundation. The company’s focus on original works with themes based in the Black experience with an international perspective created a canon of theatrical works and an audience for […]
learn more*On this date in 1937, Robert Hooks was born. He is an African American actor, producer, and activist. The youngest of five children, Hooks was born in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C. 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 Walter “Jimmy”. […]
learn more*Ethel Ayler was born on this date in 1930. She was a African American character actress. She was born Ethel Spraggins Ayler in Whistler, Alabama and attended Fisk University, majoring in voice. While there she learned to sing in French, Spanish, Italian and German. Ayler moved to Chicago for a singing career and began acting when she won a role in a touring company of Porgy and Bess. In 1957, […]
learn more*Abram Hill was born on this date in 1910. He was an African American playwright, author and theater administrator. Abram Hill was born in Atlanta, Georgia and spent half of his childhood there. At the age of seven he appeared in a Morehouse College Theatre production. In 1925, the family moved to Harlem, New York, and at 13 years of age […]
learn more*On this date in 1935, the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was formed. This was a theatre program established during the Great Depression as part of America’s New Deal. Referred to as part of the Second New Deal, itfunded live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States. It was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, created not as a cultural […]
learn more*On this date in 1935, the Jitterbug (dance) was introduced to the world. Cab Calloway introduced it in his film Jitterbug Party. In the film, he performed two songs at the Cotton Club, then took some friends to Harlem for a “Jitterbug Party.” The jitterbug is a dance popularized in the United States in the early 20th century and is associated […]
learn more*On this date in 1927 the Lindy Hop dance was publicly introduced to the world. The Lindy hop is an African American dance which was born in Harlem, New York City. On that date, the Lindbergh Spirit of St. Louis airplane completed the first transatlantic flight by air, the Newspaper reported “Lindy Hops the Atlantic” and the dance style […]
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