Black on Black: Childress, Baraka, Bullins, Kennedy

Abstract

When the word ‘black’ dislodged ‘negro’, a radical self-examination was forced upon the United States, and this was reflected in theatre. Loraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun (1959) seemed to hold promise for negro playwrights as well as actors: her cast included actor-playwrights Ossie Davis, Lonne Elder, Douglas Turner Ward. Only two years later Jean Genet’s The Blacks exploded Off-Broadway, with then-unknown performers who have since attained celebrity — Roscoe Lee Browne, Godfrey Cambridge, Charles Gordone, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson. By the end of the three-year run of The Blacks (with cast replacements), the Negro Ensemble Company had been founded and funded in New York City.