J. E. Franklin
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J. E. Franklin
J. E. Franklin (born August 10, 1937) is an American playwright, best known for her play ''Black Girl (play), Black Girl'', which was broadcast on public television in 1969, staged Off-Broadway in 1971, and made into a feature film in 1972. She has written and adapted eleven plays for television, theater, and film. Biography She was born Jennie Elizabeth Franklin in Houston, Texas, to Robert Franklin and Mathie Randle. She was the eleventh of thirteen children. Her father operated the family's store and her mother worked as a maid in the homes of wealthy white families. Due to the alternating work and sleep schedules of her parents, there were strict rules about not making noise at home. She nearly drowned in a gully at the age of three. For a time there were six children in one bed, as the family rented out their house and lived in the store. Later, she worked alongside her mother, making beds, ironing, and peeling potatoes. "I was a domestic worker," she recalled. While doi ...
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Houston, Texas
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in 2020. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat and largest city of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second-most populous in Texas after Dallas–Fort Worth. Houston is the southeast anchor of the greater megaregion known as the Texas Triangle. Comprising a land area of , Houston is the ninth-most expansive city in the United States (including consolidated city-counties). It is the largest city in the United States by total area whose government is not consolidated with a county, parish, or borough. Though primarily in Harris County, small portions of the ...
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John Henrik Clarke
John Henrik Clarke (born John Henry Clark; January 1, 1915 - July 16, 1998) was an African-American historian, professor, and pioneer in the creation of Pan-African and Africana studies and professional institutions in academia starting in the late 1960s. Early life and education He was born John Henry Clark on January 1, 1915, in Union Springs, Alabama, the youngest child of John Clark, a sharecropper, and Willie Ella Clark, a washer woman, who died in 1922. ). With the hopes of earning enough money to buy land rather than sharecrop, his family moved to the closest mill town in Columbus, Georgia. Counter to his mother's wishes for him to become a farmer, Clarke left Georgia in 1933 by freight train and went to Harlem, New York, as part of the Great Migration of rural blacks out of the South to northern cities. There he pursued scholarship and activism. He renamed himself as John Henrik (after rebel Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen) and added an "e" to his surname, spelling i ...
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Richard Roundtree
Richard Roundtree (born July 9, 1942) is an American actor. Roundtree is noted as being "the first black action hero" for his portrayal of private detective John Shaft in the 1971 film '' Shaft'', and its four sequels, released between 1972 and 2019. For his performance in the original film, Roundtree was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor in 1972. Early life and education Born July 9, 1942, in New Rochelle, New York, to John and Kathryn Roundtree, Roundtree attended New Rochelle High School; graduating in 1961. During high school, Roundtree played for the school's undefeated and nationally ranked football team. After high school, Roundtree attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. Roundtree dropped out of college in 1963 to begin his career. Career Roundtree began his professional career around 1963. Roundtree began modeling in the Ebony Fashion Fair after being scouted by Eunice W. Johnson. After his modeling success wit ...
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Negro Ensemble Company
The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) is a New York City-based theater company and workshop established in 1967 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 writers who came later, such as August Wilson, Suzan-Lori Parks, and others. Beginnings The Negro Ensemble Company was created in 1964 when Hooks created a tuition-free acting workshop for urban youth which he named the Group Theatre Workshop (GTW), in tribute to Harold Clurman's The Group Theatre. The group became a refuge for young minority actors, with a focus on black theatre. He and his associate Barbara Ann Teer produced in a one-night showcase for friends and family of the actors. The plays chosen were Gwendolyn Brooks's '' We Real Cool'' and Douglas Turner Ward ...
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Robert Hooks
Robert Hooks (born Bobby Dean Hooks; April 18, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and activist. Along with Douglas Turner Ward and Gerald S. Krone, he founded The Negro Ensemble Company. The Negro Ensemble Company is credited with the launch of the careers of many major black artists of all disciplines, while creating a body of performance literature over the last thirty years, providing the backbone of African-American theatrical classics. Additionally, Hooks is the sole founder of two significant black theatre companies: the D.C. Black Repertory Company, and New York's Group Theatre Workshop. Biography Early life The youngest of five children, Hooks was born in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C. to Mae Bertha (née 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". Named Bobby Dean Hooks at birth, Robert was their first child born up north ...
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Douglas Turner Ward
Douglas Turner Ward (May 5, 1930February 20, 2021) was an American playwright, actor, stage director, director, and theatrical producer. He was noted for being a founder and artistic director of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). He was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1974 for his role in ''The River Niger'', which he also directed. Early life Ward was born Roosevelt Ward Jr. in Burnside, Louisiana, on May 5, 1930. His parents, Roosevelt Ward and Dorothy (Short), were poor farmers who also owned a tailoring business. They relocated to New Orleans when Ward was eight years old, and he went to Xavier University Preparatory School. He was accepted by Wilberforce University in 1946, before transferring to the University of Michigan. He majored in politics and theater, but dropped out of college at the age of 19 and relocated to New York City. There, he became friends with Lorraine Hansberry and Lonne Elder III. Ward became a member of the Progr ...
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Shauneille Perry
Shauneille Gantt Perry Ryder (July 26, 1929 – June 9, 2022) was an American stage director and playwright. She was one of the first African-American women to direct off-Broadway. Biography Shauneille Perry was born on July 26, 1929, in Chicago, Illinois, to a prominent African-American family. She is the only child of Graham T. Perry (1894–1960), one of the first African-American assistant attorneys-general for the State of Illinois and his wife, the former (Laura) Pearl Gantt (1903–1957), one of the first African-American court reporters in Chicago, who studied business at Morris Brown College. She is the niece by marriage of real-estate broker and political activist Carl Augustus Hansberry, who married her father's sister, Nannie Louise Perry, and the first cousin of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, their daughter. She is also the niece by marriage of Carl Hansberry's brother, Africanist scholar William Leo Hansberry. She later said, "Lorraine and I sat at the table a ...
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George Houston Bass
George Houston Bass (April 23, 1938 – September 18, 1990) was an American playwright, director and writer. He lived and worked in Providence, Rhode Island. He founded the Rites and Reason Theater at Brown University in September 1970. He was also the literary secretary to and the executor of the literary estate of poet Langston Hughes. Bass founded the Langston Hughes Society in 1981 and the society's publication, the ''Langston Hughes Review'', in 1982. Bass is credited with writing the arrangement of the folk song "Sea Lion Woman "Sea Lion Woman" (also "Sealion Woman", "Sea-Line Woman", "See heLyin' Woman", "She Lyin' Woman", "See-Line Woman", or "C-Line Woman") is a traditional African American folk song originally used as a children's playground song. History The song w ..." popularized by Nina Simone in 1964. A 1965 letter from Hughes supports this by referencing "my former secretary's SEA LION WOMAN inais featuring live on every concert". Awards * Harlem Cultural ...
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National Educational Television
National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It operated from May 16, 1954 to October 4, 1970, and was succeeded by the PBS, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which has network affiliate#Member stations, memberships with many television stations that were formerly part of NET. The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) provided funds for cataloging the NET collection, and as part of an on-going preservation effort with the Library of Congress, over 10,000 digitized television programs from the non-commercial TV stations and producers spanning 1952 to 1972 have been contributed to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. History The network was founded as the Educational Television and Radio Center (ETRC) in November 1952 by a grant from the Ford Foundation's Fund for ...
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Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most populous city in the country. The city boundaries encompass an area of about and a population of 675,647 as of 2020. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest ...
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WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV (channel 2), branded on-air as GBH or GBH 2 since 2020, is the primary PBS member television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is the flagship property of the WGBH Educational Foundation, which also owns Boston's secondary PBS member WGBX-TV (channel 44) and Springfield, Massachusetts PBS member WGBY-TV (channel 57, operated by New England Public Media), Class A Biz TV affiliate WFXZ-CD (channel 24) and public radio stations WGBH (89.7 FM) and WCRB (99.5 FM) in the Boston area, and WCAI radio (and satellites WZAI and WNAN) on Cape Cod. WGBH-TV also effectively, but unofficially serves as one of three flagship stations of PBS, along with WNET in New York City and WETA-TV in Washington, D.C. WGBH-TV, WGBX-TV, and the WGBH and WCRB radio stations share studios on Guest Street in northwest Boston's Brighton neighborhood; WGBH-TV's transmitter is located on Cabot Street (east of I-95/ MA 128) in Needham, Massachusetts, on the former candelabra tower, wh ...
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Public Television
Public broadcasting involves radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing and commercial financing. Public broadcasting may be nationally or locally operated, depending on the country and the station. In some countries a single organization runs public broadcasting. Other countries have multiple public-broadcasting organizations operating regionally or in different languages. Historically, public broadcasting was once the dominant or only form of broadcasting in many countries (with the notable exceptions of the United States, Mexico and Brazil). Commercial broadcasting now also exists in most of these countries; the number of countries with only public broadcasting declined substantially during the latter part of the 20th century. Definition The primary mission of public broadcasting is that of public servic ...
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