Alice Childress

A founding member of the American Negro Theatre, Childress became in 1952 the first African-American woman to see her play (Gold through the Trees) professionally produced in New York and in 1956 the first to receive an Obie Award (for Trouble in Mind). She is perhaps best known today, for A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich, her 1973 novel for young adults about a 13-year-old black boy addicted to heroin. At the time of her death in 1994, Childress could lay claim to a writing career of more than 40 years in which she examined with honesty and passion the meaning of being black, and especially of being black and female, in a culture where being white and male was what counted. As Childress herself once said, "I concentrate on portraying have-nots in a have society."