20th Century – The Heroine Collective

Biography: Ana Mendieta – Artist

Victoria Scott — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 17:34:26 +0000

Ana Mendieta was born in Havana in 1948, to a middle class family of prominent Cuban politicians. Her work includes performance, sculpture, painting and video, and she is best known for her earth-body works in which she explores the relationship between the landscape and the female form.

In 1961, two years after the Cuban authoritarian government was overthrown by Fidel Castro, Mendieta was sent to the United States with her sister, and 14,000 other children as part of Operation Pedro Pan. Aged 12, uprooted and moving regularly between foster homes, this experience greatly shaped the work she produced in later years. By 1966, the sisters were reunited with their mother and brother, but it was not until 1979 that their father was released from a political prison where he had been detained for his involvement in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. By the time he was reunited with his family, he had been imprisoned for 18 years. These formative years were to have a huge impact on the direction of Medieta’s artistic focus, which deals closely with a sense of belonging.

Mendieta studied at the University of Iowa from 1967- 1977. During her BA, the young artist was not only inspired by the rolling, scenic landscape of the midwest, but also by contemporary and avant garde art. In 1971, Mendieta visited Mexico for the first time, which would later (along with Iowa) become the stage for over one hundred earth-body works from her Silueta Series of 1973, 1974 and 1976. She went on to study her MFA from 1969-1972, before taking the innovative Intermedia Art programme under the tutelage of Hans Breder, who would become her lover and collaborator. Mendieta’s Silueta Series sees the artist using the shape of her own body to create sculptural pieces that respond to the landscape, often using the mediums of blood and dirt.

In 1973, Mendieta was deeply effected by the brutal rape and murder of fellow student Sarah Ann Offens, whose body was discovered on the same campus on which the artist lived. This incident would influence the direction of Medieta’s subsequent work, most explicitly Rape Piece (1972), in which she covered herself in blood before lying face down in a wooded area on Iowa University’s campus, and inviting peers to witness the scene. In doing so, Mendieta joins artists such as Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneemann in using her body to protest the sexual violence that women have endured for centuries. Commenting on Medieta’s performative works, Alice Bolin (author of Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession) writes;

Feminist performance art was an ingenious exploration of the market value of the female body: although women’s bodies are used to sell almost everything, through menial work and violence they are too often taken for cheap. Their work was an exploration of the performance required daily of all Women.

Blood is used throughout Mendieta’s ouvre, as can be seen in Chicken Piece (1972), Untitled (Self Portrait with Blood) 1973, and Sweating Blood (1973). Art Historians have suggested that Medieta’s fascination with blood may be a reference to the Cuban religion of Santeria, again grounding herself and her art in the heritage of a nation from which she had to flee at a young age. Blood is used often in ceremonies of the Santeria (or The Way of the Saints) religion, which has roots in Cuba’s oppressive slave trade. Santeria combines elements of Roman Catholicism with the customs of the Yoruba tribes of modern day Benin and Nigeria. Mendieta’s use of blood may be inspired by these traditions, and using her own body to trace feminine outlines into the earth of Mexico and North America, is perhaps a way in which Mendieta explores her cultural identity. In a 1981 Artist statement, she addresses this theory:

I have been carrying out a dialogue between the landscape and the female body (based on my own silhouette). I believe this has been a direct result of my having been torn from my homeland (Cuba) during my adolescence. I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the universe. It is a return to the maternal source.

The majority of large comprehensive exhibitions on Mendieta occurred post-humously. The first major survey of Mendieta’s work was exhibited at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC in 1987, ten years after her first solo exhibition, and two years after her sudden death in 1985. In 2004, a major retrospective of her work titled Ana Mendieta: Earth Body: Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985 was held at the Hishorn Museum in Washington DC, and in 2009 Mendieta was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Cintas Foundation. Since then further posthumous exhibitions have taken place at the Art Institute Chicago (2011), the De La Cruz Collection, Miami and the Hayward Gallery, London (2013).

In 1985 (at the age of 36) Mendieta died after falling from the 34th floor of the New York City apartment where she lived with her husband, the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre. Though Andre was acquitted of her murder in Feburary 1988, much controversy still surrounds Mendieta’s tragic death. This does not overshadow her impact and continuing relevance as a great female artist of the 20th Century, but it has been a driving factor for many protest groups globally, who not only want further investigation into how and why she died, but visibility for women in a white, male dominated art world. A symposium titled Where is Ana Mendieta? was held at New York University in 2010, commemorating the 25th anniversary of her death.

The post Biography: Ana Mendieta – Artist appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Biography: Kate Walker

Josephine Liptrott — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 15:54:49 +0000

Kate Walker was a lighthouse keeper who tended the Robbins Reef Light in New York Harbour for over 30 years. She made a vital contribution to the safety of shipping in New York waters and was an early female pioneer in a most male-dominated profession.

Better known as Kate, Katharina Görtler was born in Rumbach in Germany in November 1848. She married Joseph Kaird in 1875 and had a son, Jacob. Kaird died shortly after the birth, leaving Kate a young widow with a son to raise alone.

In 1882, Kate and her little boy emigrated to the USA, settling in Sandy Hook in New Jersey. She took a job as a waitress in a boarding house and there she met a retired sea captain, John Walker. The couple married in 1884 and Kate gave birth to their daughter, Mary, the following year.

Captain Walker was the keeper of Sandy Hook Light and, soon after his marriage to Kate, he was transferred to Robbins Reef Light. Kate moved with her husband and children to this highly unusual home; a socket lighthouse situated on a small rift of sand surrounded by water at the entrance to one of the busiest channels in the Port of New York and New Jersey. Kate became assistant keeper and helped her husband to operate and maintain the light, keeping safe the vessels in the harbour waters.

In 1886, Walker died of pneumonia. At his death, he told his wife, “Mind the light, Kate” – and of course she did. For the next three decades.

Following Walker’s death it took four years for Kate to be officially recognised as the Robbins Reef Light keeper and to receive the appropriate remuneration. Initially the authorities had believed that this diminutive woman was not up to the job and refused her application. It was only after several men had turned down the role, by which time Kate had proved herself more than capable, that the post was formally hers and she was paid the $600 per year salary.

Minding the Robbins Reef Light was a huge responsibility and a tremendous amount of work. The light was lit at sunset every evening and remained shining until dawn. Kerosene lamps reflected onto the light’s huge lens, projecting across the harbour and illuminating the perilous reef beneath. Every few hours throughout the night, Kate had to refill those lamps and wind up the clockwork mechanism which drove the rotating lens.

When conditions were foggy Kate had to go down to the building’s cellar to fire up the engines which operated the siren. The siren would blast at three second intervals to alert oncoming shipping. On foggy nights, Kate would not sleep; she preferred to stay awake in case of a siren malfunction. In that event she would walk up to the top of the tower and hammer manually on the bell to alert officials on the shore that the siren needed repairing.

During the day Kate would wash the lamps, trim the wicks and clean the lens to prepare for the night ahead. She also kept detailed notes regarding weather conditions and water traffic and submitted a monthly report to the coastguard. In a 1909 interview, Kate told The New York Times, “Maintaining this light is more work than running any household or any child”.

In addition to tending the light, Kate also had two children to raise single-handedly. She turned the small three-story lighthouse, basically a cast iron cylinder, into a comfortable home for her family and, when her children were young, she would row them to Staten Island and back every day in order that they could attend school.

Although not part of her formal duties, Kate would come to the aid of vessels that had fallen foul of the treacherous waters around the reef and aided in the rescue of approximately 50 ships during her time as keeper at Robbins Reef Light. On one occasion, a schooner crashed onto the reef and five sailors were plunged into the freezing water. Kate used the small boat in which she took her children to school to row through the wreckage. She rescued not just all five men but their little dog too.

Kate finally retired in 1919 aged 71. In the decades to follow, Robbins Reef was known as “Kate’s Light”. She died in February 1931. Her obituary in the New York Evening Post read, “In the sight of the city of towers and the torch of liberty lived this sturdy little woman, proud of her work and content in it, keeping her lamp alight and her windows clean, so that New York Harbor might be safe for ships that pass in the night”.

The post Biography: Kate Walker appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Biography: Betty Lockwood – Labour Party Activist

Sara Sherwood — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 15:20:28 +0000

The glass ceiling still applies, but it’s a glass ceiling with windows in it, as it were, through which some women have been able to crawl and others haven’t yet made it.
Betty Lockwood

Betty Lockwood was a lifelong British Labour Party activist who campaigned tirelessly for women’s equality throughout her life. Lockwood was the first chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission and played a key role in implementing the 1970 Equal Pay Act.

Born in January 1924 in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, Lockwood came from a working-class background. Her father was a miner, and went through long stretches of unemployment while Lockwood was growing up; her mother worked as a weaver.

As well as coming from a poor background, Lockwood suffered physically. At 4 years old, Lockwood injured her foot badly. At 18, she had her leg amputated and was fitted with an artificial one.

Lockwood attended Eastborough Girls’ School until she was 14, when she had to leave for work in a clothes shop in her hometown. But later, after studying at night school for two years, she became a clerk for the local council.

Determined to obtain further education, Lockwood won The Mary MacArthur Scholarship for Working Women, which allowed her to study economics and politics at Oxford University. For the second year of her degree, Lockwood got a job working with the Labour Party as secretary to the party agent in Dewsbury. As such, she completed her degree by correspondence.

For the next three decades, Lockwood worked her way up the ranks in the Labour Party, becoming the Chief Women’s Officer in 1967. In this role, Lockwood was instrumental in increasing the number of female Labour MPs. In 1970, Labour had the lowest number of female candidates since 1924. Lockwood worked to turn this around and in the 1974 election, women fought for nearly a quarter of Labour seats.

The low status of women was quickly becoming a widespread issue during this period. In 1968, 850 women working at the Ford factory in Dagenham went on strike over unequal pay, which spurred Labour MP Barbara Castle to introduce the Equal Pay Act in 1970; it became law in 1975.

Lockwood saw that there was a need for a statuary body to implement the legislation and lobbied for a commission to be set up to enforce the law. In 1975, the then home secretary Roy Jenkins set up the Equal Opportunities Commission, which aimed to enforce the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act. Lockwood was appointed to chair the commission and preside over working towards eliminating discrimination in the workplace, promoting equal opportunities for men and women, and making recommendations to the government if amendments to the law were required.

Upon becoming Chair, Lockwood had to deal with a backlog of thousands of complaints and mockery in the national press. To make the commission a success, she insisted that the Equal Opportunities Commission must be a partisan organisation and appointed Conservative Elspeth Howe as her Deputy.

Energetic, warm and well-connected after three decades in politics, Lockwood made the commission a success and it survived until 2007, when it was absorbed into the Equality and Human Rights Commission. In 1982, Lockwood then became the Chair of the European Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men.

Lockwood was also a huge supporter of preserving working-class history. In the 1990s, the Yorkshire Mining Museum (based in Wakefield, close to her hometown of Dewsbury) came under threat of closure as the Coal Board funding ended. Lockwood lobbied the government for funding to secure the future of the museum, which became the National Coal Mining Museum. Lockwood was Chair of the Board of Trustees for the museum until her death in 2019.

Lockwood was inducted into the House of Lords in 1978 as Baroness Lockwood of Dewsbury, becoming Deputy Speaker in 1990. In her first speech to the House of Lords, Lockwood used her platform to advocate for women’s equality, arguing that women should have the same rights as men to pass their nationality on to their children. During her tenure in the House of Lords, she continued to campaign and speak on women’s equality. She formally retired from the House of Lords in 2017.

A passionate believer in lifelong education and promoting access to further education for women, Lockwood was the president of Birkbeck College (1983 – 1989) and Hillcroft College (1987 – 1995). She was also a member of Soroptimist International, which works to champion women throughout society.

She married Cedric Hall in 1978 and he died in 1988. Baroness Lockwood died in April 2019, at the age of 95.

©The Heroine Collective 2019 – Present, All Rights Reserved. Every effort is made to ensure our articles are as accurate as they can possibly can be, but if you notice a factual error, please do be in touch. We only use images we believe are either in the public domain or images we believe we are able to use for illustrative, editorial and non-commercial purposes. If you believe one of our images is being used incorrectly, please be in touch. References include: Erin Blackmore, ‘The Fair-Skinned Black Actress Who Refused to ‘Pass’ in 1930s Hollywood’, History.com, 27.02.19, https://www.history.com/news/fredi-washington-black-actress-hollywood-jim-crow-era [last accessed on 05.05.19] // Sheila Rule, ‘Fredi Washington, 90, Actress; Broke Ground for Black Artists’, New York Times, 30.06.94, https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/30/obituaries/fredi-washington-90-actress-broke-ground-for-black-artists.html [last accessed on 11.05.19] // Stephen Bourne, ‘Obituary: Fredi Washington’, The Independent, 04.07.94, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-fredi-washington-1411510.html [last accessed on 11.05.19] // ‘Fredi Washington’, Black History Now, 26.08.11, http://blackhistorynow.com/fredi-washington/ [last accessed on 12.05.19] // Nancy Finlay, ‘Remembering Fredi Washington: Actress, Activist and Journalist’, Connecticut History, 22.02.17, https://connecticuthistory.org/remembering-fredi-washington-actress-activist-and-journalist/ [last accessed 19.05.19]References include Alex Miller, ‘Prominent Dewsbury women’s rights activist Baroness Lockwood dies aged 95’, Dewsbury Reporter, 30.04.19, https://www.dewsburyreporter.co.uk/news/people/prominent-dewsbury-women-s-rights-activist-baroness-lockwood-dies-aged-95-1-9741228 [last accessed 15.09.19]; Julia Langton, ‘Lady Lockwood obituary’, The Guardian, 06.05.19, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/06/lady-lockwood-obituary [last accessed 15.09.19]; ‘Equal Pay and Equality Legislation’, British Library, https://www.bl.uk/sisterhood/articles/equal-pay-and-equality-legislation# [last accessed 21.09.19]; ‘Baroness Lockwood, equality campaigner’, Yorkshire Post, 04.05.19, https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/people/baroness-betty-lockwood-equality-campaigner-1-9745134 [last accessed 22.09.19]; ‘Baroness Lockwood Obituary’, The Times, 07.05.19, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/baroness-lockwood-obituary-rvkv8bnc0 [last accessed 22.09.19]; ‘Baroness Lockwood, energetic equality campaigner who was the first chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission – obituary’, The Telegraph, 01.05.19, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2019/05/01/baroness-lockwood-energetic-equality-campaigner-first-chairman/ [last accessed 22.09.19]; ‘Lady Lockwood’, Sync Leadership, http://www.syncleadership.com/?location_id=432&item=13 [last accessed 22.09.19]; Emma Ryan, ‘Tributes to West Yorkshire’s Baroness Lockwood who has died age 95’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 30.04.19, https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/politics/tributes-to-west-yorkshire-s-baroness-lockwood-who-has-died-aged-95-1-9741372 [last accessed 22.09.19].

The post Biography: Betty Lockwood – Labour Party Activist appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Biography: Ynes Mexia – Botanist

Amber Karlins — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 14:09:27 +0000

It’s as though some people are born knowing exactly what they want to be when they grow up. For others it takes longer to find their true calling and this was the case for Ynes Mexia. She began her career as a botanist in her fifties, but this didn’t stop her leaving a substantive mark on the field.

Ynes was born in Washington D.C on 24th May 1870, to Sarah Wilmer and Mexican Diplomat Enrique Mexia. Though she was born in DC, she spent the bulk of her childhood in Texas. Shortly after the death of her husband, Ynes moved to San Francisco, where she worked as a social worker.

While in San Francisco, Ynes joined the Sierra Club, an organisation dedicated to protecting and celebrating the environment that had been founded there in 1892. Ynes had always loved nature, so this was an obvious fit. In 1921, she also began taking courses at a local university, and it was here that she fell in love with botany.

Four years later, at the age of 55, Ynes embarked on a plant collection trip to Mexico that would change, not only the course of the rest of her life, but also the history of botany. Though she began the trip with a group of other botanists, Ynes soon became convinced that she would be more successful on her own, so she broke away from the team. It was a dangerous choice ––which she must have realised when she fell off a cliff during the expedition and fractured her hand, as well as several ribs — but Ynes was undeterred. She spent two years gathering 500 specimens, approximately 50 of which were previously undiscovered.

Over the next several years, Ynes continued her collecting, travelling everywhere from Alaska to Peru to Argentina in search of rare plants. She faced earthquakes and volcanoes and all sorts of other natural impediments, but she persisted, ultimately collecting roughly 150,000 specimens. It is believed that approximately 500 of those plants had previously been undiscovered.

Ynes died just 13 years after she embarked on her first expedition, but in that time, she made a profound, lasting contribution to the field of botany. Several of the plants she discovered have been named in her honor, her specimens are stored and showcased world-wide, and to this day, nearly a century later, scientists are still studying her work. Her remarkable life is a testament to the idea that you’re never to old to set another goal or a dream a new dream.

The post Biography: Ynes Mexia – Botanist appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Biography: Edith Rimmington – Artist

Victoria Scott — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 20:17:03 +0000

Born in Leicester, England in 1902, Edith Rimmington is a little-known Surrealist poet, painter and photographer.

Deeply affected by images of wounded soldiers that surfaced during the atrocities of World War II, Rimmington used her work to explore themes of death, decay, vivisection and regrowth. By practicing ‘automatic’ writing and drawing (created by subconscious agency rather than conscious thought), Rimmington produced work that was not just surreal, but which explored the psychological effects of living in war-torn Britain from the unique perspective of a female artist.

In 1946, an article was published in the Belgian surrealist journal Savoir Vivre, titled Surrealist Inquiry: What do you hate most? Amongst those interviewed for the inquiry was Rimmington, who was asked various questions about her personal desires and dislikes. When asked what she feared most, Rimmington replied: “All that constrains my freedom to be curious”. It was this love for the unknown, this desire to explore, that allowed Rimmington to produce enigmatic works of art which serve to both confuse and fascinate viewers to the present day.

Rimmington studied at the Brighton School of Art from the early age of 17. There she met Leslie Robert Baxter (1893-1986), a fellow painter, who would later become her husband.

She first made contact with the British Surrealist Group in 1936, during her visit to the infamous International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries. Here she was exposed to a new realm of artistic possibilities, and surrounded by subversive artists such as Rene Magritte, Andre Breton and Eileen Agar. During this exhibition, artists and writers took the opportunity to deliver bizarre performances. Salvador Dali would make history when he conducted his seminar Fantomes Paranoiaques Authentiques while dressed in a full diving suit (with helmet), brandishing a snooker cue, and allowing two Irish wolfhounds to lead him on to the stage. Sheila Legge would embody the Surrealist Phantom, standing outside the gallery with arms outspread, her face obscured by a floral mask, waiting for pigeons to settle on her sheer-gloved wrists. The poet Dylan Thomas would quietly weave through the crowds, offering guests steaming cups of boiled string.

Amongst these oddities Rimmington found great inspiration, and by 1937 she was an established member of the British Surrealist Group. In November 1937, she participated in the Surrealist Objects and Poems exhibition at the London Gallery, which opened at the stroke of midnight. The art historian Herbert Read stood at its doors declaring “Approach, for we have names to sell – angels of anarchy and machines for making clouds.” The artist’s work was also exhibited internationally, most notably at the Surrealist Exhibition in Paris in 1947 at the Galerie Maeght.

Rimmington’s painted works are executed with extreme precision, exploring the boundaries between “non-beings” and the autonomous; between life, death and sentience. Butterflies are a regular motif, symbolising rebirth and regeneration, and can be seen fluttering across the canvas of The Decoy (1948), which is the only painting of Rimmington’s in a public collection. In this work, a dissected hand hangs limply, and its exposed muscles and ventricles become macabre incubators for butterflies and their cocoons. Here, the artist continues to examine the way in which death can promote new life. These themes are also recurrent through her poetic work, such as Growth at the Break (1946) and The Sea-Gull (1946), as well as other pieces of writing that Rimmington contributed to Surrealist publications throughout the 1940s, such as the London Bulletin and Arson.

Perhaps influenced by Dali’s stunt at the 1936 Exhibition, and his expressed desire to “dive” into the human subconscious, we see Rimmington using diving suit and sea imagery often in her work, including Eight Interpreters of the Dream (1940), and The Oneiroscopist (1947). In Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, Whitney Chadwick refers to the latter painting, describing its imagery and “surrealist content” as residing “in the fantastic biomorphic image of the birdlike creature preparing for its descent into the world of the dream.” Linking the vastness of the ocean to the mysteries of the human mind is a theme Rimmington would explore often throughout her career, describing the sea as a “vast water brain [that seems to] hold all the secrets” in a letter to her friend and fellow artist John Banting in 1971. For Rimmington and her contemporaries, the sea was a point of great curiosity, and provided an excellent visual metaphor with which to explore surrealist motifs.

By the 1960s Rimmington had moved to live in the Bexhill area of Sussex, where many artists and poets were retreating to nurture their creativity, far away from the war-torn streets of London. Here, she began to focus on creating photographic works, continuing to use the ocean as a metaphor with which to explore unusual surrealist juxtapositions. Sussex Coast (1960s, photograph) shows a half-submerged rock, the shape of which reminds the viewer of half submerged body or a corpse, Bellmer-like in its dislocation.

It is not clear if Rimmington continued to make any more work after the early 1970s, and she died in 1986, in Bexhill-on-Sea, where her apartment overlooked the ocean.

The post Biography: Edith Rimmington – Artist appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Fredi Washington – Actress

Sara Sherwood — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 19:22:09 +0000

“Early in my career it was suggested that I might get further by passing as French or something exotic. But to pass, for economic or other advantages, would have meant that I swallowed, whole hog, the idea of Black inferiority.”
– Fredi Washington

In 1903, Frederika ‘Fredi’ Washington was born in Savannah, Georgia, to a dancer and postal worker. Her family moved to Harlem during the Great Migration, which forced families to leave southern American states to escape the oppressive Jim Crow laws.

Washington’s career in entertainment began when she moved to New York City when she was 16. In 1922, she made her stage debut as a dancer in the touring musical Shuffle Along which also starred Josephine Baker. Despite some early success in New York, she found a lack of opportunity for black actors and so toured Europe with her dance partner, Al Moiret. Later, returning to America, she was cast in Black and Tan Fantasy in 1929 alongside Duke Ellington. She continued to appear on stage for next couple of years, establishing herself as a respected dramatic actress.

In 1934, Washington was cast in Imitation of Life as Peola, alongside Academy Award-winning actress Claudette Colbert. One of the major themes of the film revolved around Peola, a young black woman played by Washington, who wants to ‘pass’ as white. Washington’s character eventually disowns her African-American mother, played by Louise Beavers. As well as being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, the film had a more lasting legacy: in 2005, Imitation of Life was inducted into the United States National Film Registry and in 2007 was named as one of ‘The 25 Most Important Films on Race’ by Time.

Washington was aware that she could have denied her African-American heritage to ‘pass’ as white within the film industry, especially after the acclaim her performance in Imitation of Life received. She had ‘light’ skin and green eyes. Given the levels of oppression and racism, some African-Americans with lighter skin tried hard to ‘pass’ as white. But after growing up in the Harlem Renaissance, Washington had been surrounded by black artists and she was fiercely proud of her heritage.

As such, Washington wouldn’t allow the film studio to cast her in roles which required her to ‘pass’ as white and despite critical acclaim surrounding her performance, her role in Imitation of Life absolutely didn’t kickstart her career. Washington had only had one film credit following it – a role in One Mile from Heaven in 1937. Some argue that her light-skinned presentation prevented her from working in black roles, and her features prevented her from working in white roles.

Far from letting this put a halt to her ambitions, in 1937 Washington helped to found what would later become the Negro Actors Guild of America. This was a group which lobbied for better conditions, pay and treatment for black actors. Washington was their first executive secretary. She also lobbied for better lodging conditions for African-American performers as part of her work with Joint Actors Equity-Theatre League Committee.

Washington also continued to be artistically committed to theatre. She became the drama editor for The People’s Voice, a New York weekly newspaper and continued her work in the theatre with roles in Lysistrata in 1946 and A Long Way From Home in 1948.

In her personal life, Washington was married to Lawrence Brown, a member of Duke Ellington’s band. After her divorce from Brown, Washington married Anthony Bell and retired to Stanford.

In 1975, Washington’s contribution to cinema was awarded with an induction into America’s Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

In 1994, at age 90, she died in Connecticut.

•

The post Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Fredi Washington – Actress appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Ethel Waters – Singer/Actress

Claudia Marinaro — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 18:56:44 +0000

Ethel Waters was born in Pennsylvania in the late 19th century to an extremely poor family. At a young age Ethel started stealing food and running errands for criminals until, at twelve, she felt she had found Jesus and started attending convent school. That same year though, still a child, she got married. Her husband was an abusive man and they divorced the following year.

Waters then began dreaming of becoming a maid to a wealthy white woman who would take her travelling around the world. She did indeed go on to work as a chambermaid in Philadelphia. It was while working there that she was noticed by two vaudeville producers when she sang in public.

This marked the beginning of Waters’ music career.

By the age of seventeen, she was singing professionally in Baltimore under the stage name ‘Sweet Mama Stringbean’, and from there she moved to New York City. Soon she would leave the vaudeville scene for the Harlem nightclubs. By 1925 she was performing at Harlem’s well-known Plantation Club.

Her singing encompassed both the raw tones of the Baptist songs and a more refined, enunciated style. This combination made Waters a unique singer. Because of her technique, she could sing different genres of music, from classic blues to jazz to musical theatre. Her nightclub gigs led to her Broadway debut: in 1927, she performed in the all-black revue Africana. By that point, she was dividing her time between theatre, nightclubs and eventually, cinema. Between 1930 and 1931, she performed in the Broadway musicals Blackbirds and Rhapsody in Black.

Her appearance in the 1933’s musical As Thousands Cheer marked her first role in a cast which wasn’t all-black. It sealed her success as a jazz and blues singer, with composers writing songs especially for her, or coming to associate pieces from the canon specifically with her, including Dinah and Stormy Weather.

In the following decade, Waters’ success on Broadway continued as she appeared in both musicals and drama, including the musical Cabin in the Sky, in which she acted alongside Lena Horne, and a stage adaptation of Carson McCullers’s novel The Member of the Wedding for which she won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.

In 1939 Waters had a dramatic role in DuBose and Dorothy Heyward’s Mamba’s Daughters, which premiered at New York’s Empire Theatre; it was said to have earned Waters seventeen curtain calls.

Waters was not afraid of challenging the roles she was cast in; she was especially keen to show that big African American women could be seductive, playful, and not only suitable to play mammies. She was an inventive, talented performer, but some said she was a difficult artist to work with. She, perhaps fairly or unfairly, developed an increasingly bad reputation, which left her with little work for the best part of the mid-1940s.

By the time she was cast as the mammy in Elia Kazan’s Pinky in 1948, she was almost begging for work. But once again, Waters picked herself up and her performance earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination. It was the first time a back actress was nominated since Hattie McDaniel won an Academy Award for her supporting role in Gone with the Wind.

Waters went on to star in a number of films, including Cairo and The Sound and the Fury, but it was her role in a film adaptation of The Member of the Wedding that confirmed her cinematic talent. Released shortly after the publication of Waters’ autobiography His Eye Is on the Sparrow in 1951, the film sealed in the mind of the audience the idea that Waters was in fact the characters she played: she was a woman who received blow after blow at the hands of lovers and bad turns of fortune; a woman who had suffered and survived a heritage of slavery. Some believe that it was Waters’ role as Berenice in The Member of the Wedding which started the archetype of the big, strong African American woman who symbolised the dignity and resilience of Black Americans.

Despite the film’s success, Waters’ career then entered another phase of decline. Some attribute this to the fact that the Black Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s cast a new light on the mammy roles that Waters would traditionally play, which, for all her interpretative efforts, came to be seen as derogatory and old-fashioned, but achieving consistent success as a black actress was never going to be easy.

Waters worked in television more sporadically, and then returned to singing in nightclubs.

She died in September 1977 at 80 years of age from cancer.

•

The post Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Ethel Waters – Singer/Actress appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Butterfly McQueen – Actor

Sarah Learmonth — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 08:48:12 +0000

Famous to generations as Prissy, the squeaky-voiced, scatter-brained maid to Scarlett O’Hara in the 1939 epic Gone With The Wind, actress Butterfly McQueen was the only child of a single-parent mother, trained as a nurse then as a dancer and became a successful Broadway actress before being critically acclaimed for bringing “artistic mayhem” to her portrayal of apparently simple-minded maids in a handful of films during the 1940s.

Behind the scenes, McQueen was pioneering in her refusal to agree to dialogue and scenes that were beyond humiliating in their representation of African Americans to a Hollywood audience. In one scene, she was asked to eat a watermelon and spit out the seeds. She refused. During a take of the birth scene in Gone With The Wind, Vivien Leigh slapped McQueen so hard she insisted on an apology and that the slap be mimed in future takes: “I was suffering the whole time,” she said. “I didn’t know that I’d have to be just a stupid little slave.”

Roles for African American actors followed rigid racial stereotypes and McQueen’s objections were not confined to onscreen adjustments. Off-set she lobbied with other black cast members against segregated toilets and complained at the inequitable treatment of black actors. McQueen was prevented from attending the premiere of Gone With The Wind because it was held at a ‘whites-only’ theatre.

McQueen continued to work in Hollywood for the next seven years, often typecast as a maid but injecting her unique brand of comedy and pathos into every part. Her film work included amongst others, The Woman (1939) and Mildred Pierce (1945); both roles went uncredited. In 1947, after playing a supporting role in Duel of the Sun (1946), she announced she would no longer accept the racially demeaning work that she described as “handkerchief head” roles.

The offers dried up: “When I wouldn’t do Prissy over and over they wouldn’t give me any more work.” Unable to support herself as an actress, McQueen took numerous casual jobs including as a sales assistant at Macy’s toy department in New York, a cab dispatcher in the Bronx and a maid to a couple in Atlanta. Other than a part in the all-black film Killer Diller (1948), she had no movie offers for the next 20 years but was determined to stand by her principles: “I didn’t mind being funny, but I didn’t like being stupid.”

Occasional roles on stage, radio and television followed for a number of years and McQueen’s public profile faded. Whilst travelling to Tampa, Florida, then in her sixties, she passed through the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Washington DC, stopping briefly in the ladies’ lounge. She was instantly confronted by a security guard who took her for a pickpocket. His aggressive assault resulted in McQueen being thrown against a bench, cracking several ribs. She sued the bus line for $300,000 and after years of litigation, in 1980 she was awarded $60,000, saying: “It was absolutely the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me.”

McQueen dedicated herself to social and education projects in Harlem during the 1970s and in 1975 at the age of 64, earned her degree from City College of New York. In 1978 she toured her one-woman show Butterfly McQueen and Friends and despite her insistence that “Show business is only my hobby, my main job is community work”, she received an Emmy in 1979 for her television role in The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid.

Always on the lookout for good quality work, in 1986 McQueen was cast in what was to be her final film, Mosquito Coast, starring Harrison Ford. At the fiftieth anniversary of Gone With The Wind in 1989, McQueen found herself recast as a public treasure: “Everyone tells me I was a pioneer. Maybe I’ll only do one interview a year — what do you think? […] I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”

Thelma ‘Butterfly’ McQueen died aged 84 on 22^nd December 1995 when a kerosene heater she was trying to light at her home burst into flames.

•

The post Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Butterfly McQueen – Actor appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Ruby Dee – Actor, Writer

Josephine Liptrott — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 08:15:23 +0000

“The world has improved mostly because unorthodox people did unorthodox things. Not surprisingly, they had the courage and daring to think they could make a difference.”
Ruby Dee

Ruby Dee was an acclaimed American actor, screenwriter, author and poet who was also a lifelong civil rights campaigner.

Ruby Dee was born Ruby Anne Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1924. Her family moved to Harlem in New York when she was still a baby. After graduating from High School, she attended Hunter College, gaining a BA in Romance Languages, and studied acting at the American Negro Theatre (ANT). She made several appearances on Broadway and her first screen role was playing Janie in the 1947 film, That Man of Mine.

As an actor, Ruby Dee appeared on stage, film and television for over 70 years. On the big screen she is perhaps best-known for her widely acclaimed portrayal of downtrodden housewife, Ruth Younger, in the 1961 film, A Raisin in the Sun. Ruby had previously played the role on stage several years earlier when the play, written by Lorraine Hansberry, debuted on Broadway in 1959. The New York Drama Critic’s Circle named it the best play of the year. In 1965 Ruby performed at the American Shakespeare Festival, playing Cordelia in King Lear and Kate in Taming of the Shrew. She was the first black actress to take a leading role at the festival.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Ruby was a regular face on national television and appeared in a number of iconic and hugely successful programmes. For example, she played Alma Miles in primetime soap opera, Peyton Place in 1968 – 1969, becoming the first African American woman to be featured in the series and she appeared in an episode of the hugely popular crime drama, Police Woman, playing a character loosely based on Angela Y Davis. She also played Queen Haley in the 1979 mini-series Roots: The Next Generations, a role which earned her one of her eight Emmy nominations.

Ruby often worked with her husband, Ossie Davis, whom she married in 1948. The couple met whilst both were working on the 1946 Broadway production, Jeb. They were particularly keen to produce television which portrayed African America culture and heritage and promoted other black performers and writers. They produced a number of TV ‘specials’ including Today is Ours, Martin Luther King: The Dream and The Drum. In 1974, they produced The Ruby Dee / Ossie Davis Story Hour for the National Black Network and in 1981 they produced the series With Ossie and Ruby for the Public Broadcasting System.

Ruby and Ossie were also involved in the civil rights movement and were tireless campaigners for racial equality. Ruby was a member of, amongst other organisations, The Congress of Racial Equality, The Student Non-Violent Co-ordination Committee and The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. Both were close friends of Martin Luther King Jr. and attended the 1936 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Ruby was an MC. In 1970, the National Urban League honoured Ossie and Ruby with the Frederick Douglass Award for Distinguished Leadership Towards Equal Opportunity.

In 1999, Ruby and Ossie were arrested at 1 Police Plaza, the headquarters of the New York Police Department. There were there to protest the death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who had been fatally shot by white police officers. In November 2005, The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis awarded Ruby their Lifetime Achievement Freedom Award.

In addition to her work as a performer, Ruby was also a writer. She authored two children’s books, Tower to Heaven and Two Ways to Count To Ten, and co-authored a joint autobiography with her husband, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. She wrote a book of poems and short stories, My One Good Nerve, which she later adapted into a solo performance piece and wrote or adapted a number of stage plays including Take it From the Top, The Stepmother and Zora is My Name.

Ruby’s acting career continued throughout her later life and she remained an ever-popular presence on stage and screen. She appeared in two of Spike Lee’s films: Do the Right Thing in 1989 and Jungle Fever in 1991. She won and Emmy for her appearance in 1991 TV movie, Decoration Day.

In 1995, Ruby and Ossie were awarded the National Medal of Arts, and in March 2001, when they had been married for 52 years, they received the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. They were also recipients of the Kennedy Centre Honours in 2004. Sadly, Ossie died suddenly in 2005. Despite her tremendous grief, Ruby continued to work.

In 2007, Ruby appeared in American Gangster playing Mama Lucas, the mother of a notorious crime kingpin played by Denzel Washington, a towering performance that earned her an Oscar nomination and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In February 2009, then in her late 80s, Ruby performed at the Riverside Church in New York in honour of Abraham Lincoln’s 200^th birthday.

Ruby died in June 2014 at her home in Rochelle, New York. She was 91 years old.

–

References include ossieandruby.com, Britannica, Notable Biographies. ©The Heroine Collective 2019 – Present, All Rights Reserved. Every effort is made to ensure our articles are as accurate as they can possibly can be, but if you notice a factual error, please do be in touch. We only use images we believe are either in the public domain or images we believe we are able to use for illustrative, editorial and non-commercial purposes. If you believe one of our images is being used incorrectly, please be in touch.

The post Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Ruby Dee – Actor, Writer appeared first on The Heroine Collective.

Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Pearl Bailey – Singer

Amber Karlins — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 07:59:21 +0000

Peal Bailey was an acclaimed actress, singer, and performer who defied expectations and built a career that was as varied as it was impressive.

Pearl was born in Virginia on 29th March, 1918. Her father was a Pentecostal preacher, and she grew up singing and dancing in his church. Though Pearl initially planned to become a teacher, a talent show win when she was twelve years old gave her a taste of what it would be like to be a professional performer, and from that moment on, she was hooked.

Pearl ultimately dropped out of high school in order to pursue a career in the arts, and she quickly became active in the vaudeville circuit. Though she started out performing primarily in Pennsylvania, it wasn’t long before she was working regularly in New York City and Washington DC. She soon won another career-altering contest, this one at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem.

Following her win at the Apollo, word of Pearl’s talent spread, and soon, she transitioned from performing in nightclubs to performing in Broadway musicals.

Pearl made her Broadway debut in a 1946 production of St. Louis Woman, where her stand-out performance resulted in her winning the Donaldson Award for Best Newcomer on Broadway. She went on to perform in a number of other Broadway shows over the next several decades, most notably an all-black production of Hello Dolly, for which she won a Tony award in 1967.

In addition to her work onstage, Pearl also developed a successful film and television career, working with everyone from Dorothy Dandridge to Sidney Poitier and even hosting her own TV show: The Pearl Bailey Show. She was also an author who penned six books.

Pearl used her success on stage and screen to try and make the world a better place. She was active in humanitarian work and fought for human rights. She served as a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations under three different administrations, and in 1970 Richard Nixon appointed her “America’s Ambassador of Love.” She also toured with the USO for nearly 50 years.

Though Pearl had, as a child, made a decision to prioritise performing over receiving an education, education was nevertheless important to her. As such, when she was in her 60s, she decided to go back to school, ultimately receiving an undergraduate degree in theology from Georgetown University at the age of 67.

Pearl died on 17th August 1990, after a long, rich life. She left behind a powerful legacy as both an artist and an activist, and she paved the way for generations of African American artists to come.

The post Pioneers of Black Hollywood: Pearl Bailey – Singer appeared first on The Heroine Collective.