As the first African American woman to have a play professionally produced in New York City (Gold Through the Trees, in 1952) and the first woman to win an Obie for Best Play (for Trouble in Mind, in 1956), Alice Childress occupies an important but surprisingly under-recognized place in American drama.
As the first African American woman to have a play professionally produced in New York City and the first woman to win an Obie for Best Play, Alice Childress occupies an important but surprisingly under-recognised place in American drama. Spanning the 1940s to the 1960s, the plays collected here are the ones Childress herself believed were her best, and offer a realistic portrait of the racial inequalities and social injustices that characterised these decades.