“C” is for Childress, Alice (1920-1994 )

“C” is for Childress, Alice (1920-1994 ). Actress, theater director, playwright, novelist. Childress was born in Charleston but was taken to New York City quite early and raised by her grandmother. However, she maintained a connection to the lowcountry through a network of Charlestonians living in Harlem. She first worked professionally as an actress in 1940, when she joined the American Negro theater. She rose to director, a position she held for nearly 12 years. Childress acted in plays on and off Broadway and later in films. Perhaps her most famous play, A Wedding Band, a tale focusing on an interracial love affair in Charleston, circa 1918, premiered in 1966. In 1977 Alice Childress published A Short Walk, a novel of a woman growing up in Charleston, going into show business, and ending up in New York.