October 3, 1978

Woodie King Jr. spoke about his work after a showing of his film, The Black Theatre Movement: “Raisin in the Sun” to the Present (1978). Author, director, producer, actor and filmmaker King, the “renaissance man of black theater,” founded the New Federal Theatre, a highly successful neighborhood-based professional theater, in 1970. Writers for the theater included Ron Milner, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, Laurence Holder and Alexis DeVeauz, and its actors included Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Lynn Whitfield, Ruby Dee, Leslie Uggams and Ella Joyce.

King visited Vassar again in 1986, showing films by independent black filmmakers and speaking on “The Relevance of Art in Politics and Society.”