Koritha Mitchell

Last updated

Koritha Mitchell is a professor of American literature at the Ohio State University who obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. In 2011, University of Illinois Press published her book on a study of African-Americans titled Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 which won her numerous awards from the American Theatre & Drama Society and from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers respectively. [1] In March 2012, American Quarterly published her essay James Baldwin, Performance Theorist, Sings the Blues for Mister Charlie. [2] In March of the same year, she spoke on the podium at ColorLines about the death of Trayvon Martin and her book Living with Lynching. She also spoke about various African-American playwrights of the 20th century such as Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Angelina Weld Grimke, Mary Burrill, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. [3] In 2018, she published "Identifying White Mediocrity and Know-Your-Place-Aggression: A Form of Self-Care," in the winter issue of the African American Review. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toni Morrison</span> American novelist, essayist and academic (1931–2019)

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles W. Chesnutt</span> Writer, activist, and lawyer

Charles Waddell Chesnutt was an American author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South. Two of his books were adapted as silent films in 1926 and 1927 by the African-American director and producer Oscar Micheaux. Following the Civil Rights Movement during the 20th century, interest in the works of Chesnutt was revived. Several of his books were published in new editions, and he received formal recognition. A commemorative stamp was printed in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelina Weld Grimké</span> American journalist and playwright

Angelina Weld Grimké was an African-American journalist, teacher, playwright, and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ida B. Wells</span> American journalist and civil rights activist (1862–1931)

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Rosamond Johnson</span> American classical composer

John Rosamond Johnson was an American composer and singer during the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, he had much of his career in New York City. Johnson is noted as the composer of the tune for the hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing”. It was first performed live by 500 Black American students from the segregated Florida Baptist Academy, Jacksonville, Florida, in 1900. The song was published by Joseph W. Stern & Co., Manhattan, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Church Terrell</span> African-American educator and activist (1863–1954)

Mary Church Terrell was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and became known as a national activist for civil rights and suffrage. She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street School —the first African American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1895, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the Colored Women's League of Washington (1892). She helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and served as its first national president, and she was a founding member of the National Association of College Women (1923).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgia Douglas Johnson</span> American poet and playwright (1880–1966)

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson, was a poet and playwright. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mamie Till</span> American schoolteacher and mother of Emmett Till

Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley was an American educator and activist. She was the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, after accusations that he had whistled at a white woman, a grocery store cashier named Carolyn Bryant. For Emmett's funeral, in Chicago, Mamie Till insisted that the casket containing his body be left open, because, in her words, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."

Adrienne Kennedy is an American playwright. She is best known for Funnyhouse of a Negro, which premiered in 1964 and won an Obie Award. She won a lifetime Obie as well. In 2018 she was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.

Rachel is a play that was written in 1916 by African American teacher, playwright and poet Angelina Weld Grimké. Grimké submitted the play to the Drama Committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). For the first production of the play the program read: "This is the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda in order to enlighten the American people relative to the lamentable condition of the millions of Colored citizens in this free republic."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maidie Norman</span> American actress

Maidie Ruth Norman was an American radio, stage, film, and television actress as well as an instructor in African-American literature and theater.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Killing of Trayvon Martin</span> 2012 killing of teenager in Sanford, Florida

On the evening of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, United States, George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trayvon Martin</span> American teenager killed in a shooting (1995–2012)

Trayvon Benjamin Martin was a 17-year-old African-American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic American. Martin had accompanied his father to visit his father's fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. On the evening of February 26, Martin was walking back to the fiancée's house from a nearby convenience store. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the Sanford Police as suspicious. Several minutes later, an altercation happened and Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anti-lynching movement</span> Civil rights movement in the United States

The anti-lynching movement was an organized political movement in the United States that aimed to eradicate the practice of lynching. Lynching was used as a tool to repress African Americans. The anti-lynching movement reached its height between the 1890s and 1930s. The first recorded lynching in the United States was in 1835 in St. Louis, when an accused killer of a deputy sheriff was captured while being taken to jail. The black man named Macintosh was chained to a tree and burned to death. The movement was composed mainly of African Americans who tried to persuade politicians to put an end to the practice, but after the failure of this strategy, they pushed for anti-lynching legislation. African-American women helped in the formation of the movement, and a large part of the movement was composed of women's organizations.

Beth E. Richie is a professor of African American Studies, Sociology, Gender and Women's Studies, and Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where she currently serves as head of the Criminology, Law, and Justice Department. From 2010 to 2016, Dr. Richie served as the director of the UIC Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy. In 2014, she was named a senior adviser to the National Football League Players Association Commission on domestic violence and sexual assault. Of her most notable awards, Dr. Richie has been awarded the Audre Lorde Legacy Award from the Union Institute, the Advocacy Award from the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the Visionary Award from the Violence Intervention Project. Her work has been supported by multiple foundations including Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Institute for Justice, and the National Institute of Corrections.

Bessie "Betty" Mitchell was an American-born Canadian theatre director and educator.

Aminah L. Ahmad, formerly known professionally as Llanchie Stevenson, is an American ballet dancer who was the first African-American dancer at Radio City Music Hall Ballet Company, the first African-American female dancer at the National Ballet of Washington, and an original company member and former principal dancer with Dance Theatre of Harlem. She retired from dancing upon her conversion to Islam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myrtle Smith Livingston</span> American educator and playwright

Myrtle Smith Livingston was an American educator and playwright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alicia Graf Mack</span> American dancer

Alicia Graf Mack is an American dancer and teacher. She danced with Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Webster University, and University of Houston. As the youngest and first Black Dean and Director of the Dance Division at Juilliard School, a position she attained in 2018, she has been credited with "remaking Juilliard Dance."

Tameka Bradley Hobbs is a historian, educator, author, and activist. She currently serves as the Library Regional Manager of Broward County Library's African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She previously served as associate provost of Florida Memorial University and the founding director of the FMU Social Justice Institute think tank and research center. She is the author of the 2015 history book Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home: Racial Violence in Florida.

References

  1. "Koritha Mitchell recognized by American Theatre and Drama Society and Society for the Study of American Women Writers". Diversity and Identity Studies Collective at OSU. Archived from the original on December 26, 2013. Retrieved December 26, 2013.
  2. "Koritha Mitchell". Ohio State University. Retrieved December 26, 2013.
  3. Jamilah King (March 20, 2012). "Trayvon Martin and the Deadly Legacy of Vigilantism". ColorLines. Retrieved December 26, 2013.
  4. Mitchell, Koritha (2018). "Identifying White Mediocrity and Know-Your-Place Aggression: A Form of Self-Care". African American Review. 51 (4): 253–262. doi:10.1353/afa.2018.0045. S2CID   167113279. Project MUSE   715439.