Raiford Chatman "Ossie" Davis was an American actor, director, writer, and activist. He was married to Ruby Dee, with whom he frequently performed, until his death. He received numerous accolades including an Emmy, a Grammy and a Writers Guild of America Award as well as nominations for four additional Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and Tony Award. Davis was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1994 and received the National Medal of Arts in 1995, Kennedy Center Honors in 2004
Cleavon Jake Little was an American stage, film and television actor. He began his career in the late 1960s on the stage. In 1970, he starred in the Broadway production of Purlie, for which he earned both a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award. His first leading television role was that of the irreverent Dr. Jerry Noland on the ABC sitcom Temperatures Rising (1972–1974). While starring in the sitcom, Little appeared in what has become his signature performance, portraying Sheriff Bart in the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy film Blazing Saddles.
Purlie is a musical with a book by Ossie Davis, Philip Rose, and Peter Udell, lyrics by Udell and music by Gary Geld. It is based on Davis's 1961 play Purlie Victorious.
Chester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works, some of which have been filmed, include If He Hollers Let Him Go, published in 1945, and the Harlem Detective series of novels for which he is best known, set in the 1950s and early 1960s and featuring two black policemen called Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. In 1958, Himes won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Ruby Dee was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist. Dee was married to Ossie Davis, with whom she frequently performed until his death in 2005. She received numerous accolades, including a Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Obie Award, and a Drama Desk Award, as well as a nomination for an Academy Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1995, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2000, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.
Helen Dorothy Martin was an American actress of stage and television. Martin's career spanned over 60 years, appearing first on stage and later in film and television. Martin is best known for her roles as Wanda Williams on the CBS sitcom Good Times (1974–1979) and as Pearl Shay on the NBC sitcom 227 (1985–1990).
Calvin Lockhart was a Bahamian–American stage and film actor. Lockhart was perhaps best known for his roles as Reverend Deke O'Malley in the 1970 film Cotton Comes to Harlem and Biggie Smalls in the 1975 Warner Bros. film Let's Do It Again.
Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge was an American stand-up comic and actor. Alongside Bill Cosby, Dick Gregory, and Nipsey Russell, he was acclaimed by Time in 1965 as "one of the country's foremost celebrated Negro comedians."
Plan B is an unfinished novel by Chester Himes (1909–1984), begun in 1967 or 1968, that was completed from his notes by Michel Fabre and Robert E. Skinner. It was published posthumously in America in 1993 by the University Press of Mississippi, edited and with an Introduction by Fabre and Skinner, as the final volume in the Harlem Detective series of novels by Himes. The story is even darker and more nihilistic than the preceding volumes in the cycle, culminating in a violent revolutionary movement in the streets of America. According to The Washington Post review, "As it stands, beneath the humor 'Plan B' is an honest, uncompromising look at race and race relations, as meaningful today as the day it was written."
Black Caesar is a 1973 American blaxploitation crime drama film written and directed by Larry Cohen and starring Fred Williamson, Gloria Hendry and Julius Harris. It features a musical score by James Brown, his first experience with writing music for film. A sequel titled Hell Up in Harlem was released in late 1973.
The Harlem Detective series of novels by Chester Himes comprises nine hardboiled novels set in the 1950s and early 1960s:
Come Back, Charleston Blue is a 1972 American crime comedy film starring Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques, loosely based on Chester Himes' novel The Heat's On. It is a sequel to the 1970 film Cotton Comes to Harlem.
Gertrude Hadley Jeannette was an American playwright and film and stage actress. She is also known for being the first woman to work as a licensed taxi driver in New York City, which she began doing in 1942. Despite being blacklisted during the Red Scare in the 1950s, she wrote five plays and founded the H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players in Harlem, New York, remaining active in mentoring African-American actors in New York City. In the 1960s and 1970s she appeared in Broadway productions such as The Long Dream, Nobody Loves an Albatross, The Amen Corner, The Skin of Our Teeth and Vieux Carré. She also appeared in films such as Cotton Comes to Harlem in 1969, Shaft in 1971, and Black Girl in 1972. She acted into her 80s and retired from directing theater at the age of 98.
Philip Rose was a Broadway theatrical producer of such productions as A Raisin in the Sun, The Owl and the Pussycat, Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, Purlie, and Shenandoah. His work was particularly notable for its social insight and distinctive social conscience.
Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s, when the combined momentum of the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panthers spurred African-American artists to reclaim the power of depiction of their ethnicity, and institutions like UCLA to provide financial assistance for African-American students to study filmmaking. This combined with Hollywood adopting a less restrictive rating system in 1968. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. After the race films of the 1940s and 1960s, the genre emerged as one of the first in which black characters and communities were protagonists, rather than sidekicks, supportive characters, or victims of brutality. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.
Cotton Comes to Harlem is a hardboiled crime fiction novel written by Chester Himes in 1965. It is the sixth and best known of the Harlem Detective series. It was later adapted into a film of the same name in 1970 starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx.
Roger Furman was an African American actor, director, playwright, and producer. He is known for founding the New Heritage Repertory Theater, the oldest active theater company in Harlem, New York City, and taught drama at several universities.
Gone Are the Days! or Purlie Victorious is a 1963 American comedy-drama film starring Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Godfrey Cambridge. It is based on the 1961 Broadway play Purlie Victorious, which was written by Davis. Davis, Dee, Cambridge, Beah Richards, Sorrell Booke and Alan Alda, reprised their roles from the Broadway production.
Louis Johnson was an American dancer, choreographer, teacher, and director whose work spanned ballet and modern dance.
Purlie Victorious is a three-act comedic stage play written by American actor Ossie Davis. The play tells the fictional story of Reverend Purlie Victorious Judson, a dynamic traveling preacher returning to his hometown in rural Georgia, to save his small hometown church. The play—starring Davis himself in the title role—premiered on Broadway in 1961 and ran for 261 performances.
