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Creator
Childress, Alice
Call number
Sc MIRS Childress 1998-56
Physical description
5 audio_recordings. 1 video_recording
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Alice Childress audio and moving image collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library
Sponsor
An anonymous donor funded preliminary processing for this collection, and a grant from the Mellon Foundation supported the digitization.
Repository
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
Access to materials
Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.

Pioneering African American writer, actress, and director Alice Childress (1916-1994) was known for her plays and her best-selling young adult novel, A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich. The collection consists of five sound recordings and one video recording documenting performances and research dating from 1959-1991.

Biographical/historical information

This note was originally written by archivists in the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division for the Alice Childress papers (Sc MG 649) finding aid. It has been adapted to reflect this collection.

Pioneering African American writer, actress, and director Alice Childress (1916-1994) was known for her plays and her best-selling young adult novel, A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich. Her acting career began in 1944 with the American Negro Theatre's production of Anna Lucasta, where she performed alongside her first husband, actor Alvin Childress of Amos and Andy fame.

Alice Childress began writing plays and other works in the late 1940s, becoming the first Black woman to have a play produced in the United States, and the first Black woman to receive an OBIE for Best Off-Broadway Play. Her first publication Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life, was a 1956 anthology that brought together the vignettes she published in a column in Paul Robeson's newspaper Freedom.

She was a collaborative writer, working creatively with her second husband, musician Nathan Woodard, on projects such as Behind Every Door: A Light Opera for a Working Lady. The play was a finalist in a 1984-1985 contest sponsored by the New York Shakespeare Festival. She also worked with actress Clarice Taylor to develop Moms: A Praise Play for a Black Comedienne, first staged in 1986. The play brought to life the stage persona of Black vaudeville and comedy actor Jackie "Moms" Mabley. Together, Childress and Taylor conducted oral history interviews with Mabley's family, including her son Charles "Cholly" Atkins, a dancer and former Motown choreographer. Taylor later adapted their research material into a play of her own about Mabley, entitled Moms: The First Lady of Comedy which ran at Astor Place Theater in 1987. The two plays were at one time the focus of a copyright infringement case.

Childress had produced dozens of works, including books, plays, screenplays, and teleplays by the time of her death in 1994.

Scope and arrangement

The collection consists of five sound recordings and one video recording documenting performances and research dating from 1959-1991. The recordings are arranged chronologically.

The collection contains a small selection of Childress's lengthy catalog. Several recordings document her performing her own works, such as an early recording of her reading "All About Ms. Tubman," a chapter from her novel Like One of the Family. She performs on a demo tape featuring an excerpt from her play Behind Every Door: A Light Opera for a Working Lady. Another recording documents her rehearsing the first act of her 1986 play Moms: A Praise Play for a Black Comedienne. As part of her research for the play, she interviewed Charles "Cholly" Atkins. Clarice Taylor also appears on the recording. The only recording that doesn't feature Childress is an audio recording of Taylor's performance of her play Moms: The First Lady of Comedy. A 1991 video recording documents one of Childress's last performances as part of a PEN program, in which she reads from A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich for an elementary school class.

Administrative information

Revision History

Item scope and content notes and AMI identifiers revised for clarity by Lyric Evans-Hunter. (2024-04-12)

Processing information

Collection inventoried by Nathan Evans. Collection processed and described by Lyric Evans-Hunter, archivist; and Shola Lynch, curator. Finding aid published in 2023.

Separated material

Papers transferred to Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division. See Alice Childress papers, Sc MG 649.

Using the collection

Location

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Third Floor

Access to materials

Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.