The Actors Studio, Inc. Presents… “Blues for Mister Charlie.” Playbill for Anta Theatre. [New York]: Playbill, [1964].

From the Papers of Sarah-Patton Boyle.

African-American Playwrights I

James Baldwin

James Baldwin, the renowned African-American essayist and novelist, also wrote several plays, one of which was Blues for Mister Charlie. To escape the racism in America, Baldwin left his birthplace, Harlem, and spent most of his adult and literary life in Europe. Although physically distanced from his native country, his writings never strayed far from the struggles of his race in the United States.

Carbon copy of typed letter from Sarah-Patton Boyle to James Baldwin. 29 May 1964.

From the Papers of Sarah-Patton Boyle.

Loosely based on the racially-motivated murder of fourteen-year-old Emmet Till in Mississippi in 1955, Baldwin’s explosive drama, Blues, explores the racial conflicts in a small southern town confronted with the killing of an African-American boy and the subsequent trial of the white man who murdered him. First produced in 1964 in New York by the Actor’s Studio, Baldwin’s play opened at the Anta Theatre.

At right: Sarah-Patton Boyle, a Charlottesville civil rights leader, writes to Baldwin, praising the production of Blues for Mister Charlie.

Jones, LeRoi [Imamu Amiri Baraka]. Dutchman and The Slave. New York: Morrow Quill, 1964.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Amiri Baraka

Through his fiction, essays, poems, and plays, Amiri Baraka, born Everett LeRoi Jones, has produced a body of work with a strong political message condemning racial injustice and the oppression of African Americans in the United States. His play Dutchman won the Village Voice OBIE Award for Best American Off-Broadway Play for 1964. As the acknowledged leader of the Black Arts and Black Theatre movements of the 1960s, Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre and School in Harlem in 1964. He promoted drama by African-American playwrights, about African-American issues, performed for African-American audiences.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

At right: Jones, LeRoi [Imamu Amiri Baraka]. Arm Yourself, or Harm Yourself! A Message of Self-Defense to Black Men! [Newark, N.J.]: Jihad Publication, [1960s].

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

At right: Baraka, [Imamu] Amiri. What Was the Relationship of the Lone Ranger to the Means of Production? Playbill. [New York: Anti-Imperialist Cultural Union, 1978?].