Black Movements in the US - Fall 2008 : Beah Richards

Agenda

Because Beah Richards spread her creativity and energy through several different forms of entertainment and associated herself with members and leaders of the Communist Party, she never received as much attention and appreciation as many entertainers less critically-received and encompassingly talented as her. Because she never reached full-fledged stardom, her associations with Civil Rights activists and Communists are often overlooked, ignored and undocumented despite clipping her career. Nevertheless many Americans turned to this black actress/poet who made them laugh, cry and think throughout four decades about the meaning of hope, pride and, to the FBI's concern, revolution. It is with this reverence that we present to the world the life, work and legacy of Beah Richards.

Upbringing and Personal Life

Beah Richards (born Beulah Richardson) was born on July 12, 1920 in Vicksburg,Mississippi. Her father was a Baptist and a poet and her mother was a seamstress and a PTA advocate. Her father always referred to his family as "black" as he felt their heritage should be a source of pride. Inspire by her father, Beah also became an advocate of "black" pride (when "negro" was the generally preferred term). She recalled her mother as the parent who primarily cared for Beah and her formal education. This strong mix of pride and education would fuel Beah for the rest of her life.

With the hope of finding freedom, and at her mother's insistence, Beah moved to New Orleans to study at Dillard University. Beah would later accuse Dillard University of "mis-educating" her, as she felt she was never learned anything about her people. Shortly before graduating, Beah dropped out and moved back to Mississippi. Beah was a bold and an outspoken black woman, leading Beah's mother to fear for her daughter's life in 1950s Mississippi.

Her mother then sent Beah to San Diego, California. When Beah reached California she became a participant to Old Globe Theater. While in California she met Francis Williams, a community, social, and political activist, who'd introduced her to many inspirational singers, actors, and actresses. She boosted her stage career by moving to New York City where she'd take her first paying gig, playing a grandmother in the production of "Take a Giant Step". In the city, Louise Patterson, a New York-based Communist leader, assured Beah that he would take care of her and became a good friend. During the 1950s in America (and arguably still today), it was nearly professional suicide to associate oneself with Communist, yet "Beah boldly identified prominent Black radicals, William L. and Louise Thompson Patterson, Frances Williams, DuBois, Robeson, and the like, as her political family." (Kelley) Of them, she stated, "I will die for these people. They're my people. They fought for me to say I'm a human being." (Kelley)

In New York, specifically the radicalizing-Harlem, Beah found her most powerful weapon against racism was in fact her poetry. Due to her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and close ties with Louise Patterson and other freedom fighters she was closely watched by the FBI. One of the most influential people in Beah's life was Frank Silvera. When asked for the date of her own birth, Beah responded it was "...when I met Frank". One of the great lessons she credited to him was that "being is mortal existence in a complete and perfect state."

Beah was not only an actress, but she was also a renowned poet and author. She married Harrell Jr., who was an African-American sculptor, but their marriage ended after less than 3 years. Beah passed away on September 14, 2000 from her pro-longed battle with emphysema.

Professional Life

Beah's journey to discover her acting dreams began with her leaving her hometown of Vicksburg, Mississippi for San Diego, New York City and eventually Los Angeles. Unsurprisingly, she didn't have the money necessary for the initial move, but her poem "A Black Woman Speaks of White Womanhood, White Supremacy and Peace" won a poetry contest and the $300 first place prize, funding Beah's migration. Beah would continue to write, often racially-charged (see: "The Liberal") poetry for many years.

In 1951, Beah helped found the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, "a radical group of Black women who confronted racism, sexism, and injustice at the height of the Red Scare" (Kelley). Other founders of the group included Lousie Patterson and Charlotta Bass, the famed editor of The California Eagle. The group took it's name from Sojourner Truth, an American slave, abolitionist and women's right activist who delivered her famous speech, Ain't I a Woman? a hundred years early at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention.

Despite her strong stage presence, or possibly because of it, Beah couldn't land a significant role until 1955, when she portrayed an eighty-four-year-old-grandmother in the off-Broadway show Take a Giant Step, at the age of thirty-six. She'd repeat the role for the film adaptation. Like many black actresses, Beah would be type-cast throughout her career as a maid or grandmother. Unexpectedly, Beah wasn't resentful towards her repeated roles, as she felt the dignity in acting came from playing the character as a real person, not just a flat occupation. She made her Broadway debut in 1959 as the maid, Viney, in The Miracle Worker. She'd later play the maid in the film production.

According the book International Library of Afro-American Life and History, in 1958 twenty artisans and performers, including Beah Richards, attempted to establish a Harlem Community Theater to serve as "a Negro theatre dedicated 'to telling it like it is'" (Patterson). Unfortunately, the Manhattan Art Theatre (as it was going to be called) never flourished as the Broadway family drama A Raisin in the Sun employed and occupied many of the actors during the theater's infancy, effectively ending the dream before it started.

To more fully understand the unfortunate reasoning behind her heavily, type-casted career, it's vital to know the era. When Beah's career was just starting out "comic character or minor parts as spear carriers or domestic servants were the norm" for black actors (Baxter). However Beah came to develop a philosophy in the 1950s that as a black actress, she could not refuse a speaking role when so many blacks in the real world were being denied the freedom of speech everyday.

While other black actresses during her day, such as Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge, experience considerable recognition and success, Beah was never considered a "black beauty" due to her dark complextion, natural hair and a larger nose. Though she eventually had access to plastic surgery, Beah would turn it down, coyly explaining, "a nose is something you breathe through" (Ebony, 1987). It would later be written that Beah discovered there is "something much deeper in the human being that defines humanity, not your nose, or the bridge on your nose, or the width of your nostril or the texture of your hair." Beah would not let the appearance of a person define their identity--or hers, but rather let what was underneath shine through. Similarly, her emphasis on character, especially for women, rang in her poem "Keep Climbing Girls".

Years after her work in The Miracle Worker, she had her true break-out performance as Sister Margaret in James Baldwin's The Amen Corner. She received rave reviews, a Theater World Award and a Tony nomination for the role in 1965.

Perhaps Beah's most iconic role came as the powerful, peace-making mother in Stanley Kramer's "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), a role for which she was nominated for an Oscar. Unfortunately the joy of the Oscar nomination was stunted as the Academy Award ceremony was held just days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Her "subtlety and quiet dignity" (Allen) distinguished all of her performances but also allowed her to pen the play All's Well that Ends, which was a personal exploration into the issues of racial segregation.

But she did more than work on stage and in films. She was a civil rights activist on the levels of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois. Even before her career began to stabilize she befriended Louise and William Patterson, two leaders of the American Communist Party. This friendship led the FBI to keep a file on her from 1951 to 1972. Her association with the Patterson's and other communists hindered Beah's movie and stage career during the latter years of the Red Scare and Cold War.

During the 70s, Beah wrote and acted in two plays, One Is a Crowd (1970) and A Black Woman Speaks (1975) and also developed a one-woman show entitled "An Evening with Beah Richards". The television show largely consisted of her reciting her poems and monologues before a live studio audience. She would also perform at the famed Watts Cultural Theater, marking her participation in the Los Angeles Black Arts Movement during the 1970s. Beah's poems are the clearest windows into her political and social views, as they were entirely her own--oppose to any role she played.

She'd later play Bill Cosby's mother in "The Bill Cosby Show" and was Aunt Ethel on "Sanford and Son". Beah won an Emmy as Best Guest Performer in "Frank's Place" in 1988.

In 1998 she played Baby Suggs, the mother-in-law of Oprah Winfrey's character in Beloved. Lisa Gay Hamilton, a fellow black actress and co-star in Beloved, befriended Beah and directed the feature-length documentary of Beah's life, called "BEAH: A Black Woman Speaks". Included in the documentary are rare interviews with Beah's closest friends and family and archival footage of Beah's famed roles and poetry readings. Lisa Gay interviewed Beah Richards herself to obtain more than 70 hours of footage. Lisa Gay was also able to film Beah receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival.

During this same time Beah was suffering from emphysema but managed to appear in a guest role on the hit-television show "The Practice". Despite her physical need of an oxygen concentrator, Beah would deliver such a powerful performance as to win her a second Emmy. Days later, on September 15, 2000, Beah Richards passed away.

Lisa Gay Hamilton's documentary about Beah's life would go on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI Film Festival.

Legacy

An actress that embodied esteem, love for her self, and a strong sense of racial pride, Beah Richards willfully moved and convinced audiences with her conscious and stage presence. Beah Richards's parents, Beulah Molton Richardson, a seamstress and president of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), and Wesley R. Richardson, a minister, cultivated and made conducive an environment for Beah to develop in her earlier years an awareness and self-respect for her identity.

Beah went on to join a debate team and drama club in high school, repeatedly winning contests and receiving praise for her strong conviction and enthusiasm. After attending college and acting school, she moved to New York City, seeking roles in Broadway productions. It took Richards four years to finally receive a professional role, but her career took off in 1955 when she portrayed an elderly grandma in the off-Broadway show "Take a Giant Step". Throughout her acting career, she continued to play those roles, but never really received a leading role due to the bias and the ideal of what a black woman should be and look like. But nevertheless, Richards would go on to attain significant side roles as a well-brought up and mannerly woman, marking her determination to dignify such roles "no matter what the situation was."

Noting her subtle, realistic style of of acting, producers offered her lots of money to play parts, many of which would degrade her character, specifically comedic roles. Even as recent as the 1950s, black actors and actresses on TV, stage, and film were predominately cast to impersonate characters and roles that are deemed as ignorant, blatant, and nonsensical; however, Beah would have no part in those roles.

The casting discrimination (racism and sexism) fueled Richards to believe, "...there are a lot of movies out there that I would be paid to do, some real demeaning, real woman-denigrating stuff. It is up to women to change their roles. They are going to have to write the stuff and do it. And they will." Some historians, including Dr. Robin Kelley, credit Beah as being "one of the foundational thinkers of modern Black feminism." (Kelley) "Black Feminism" being a combination of civil rights and modern feminism. The proponents argue that sexism and racism directly affect one another. This, comparatively new, movement argues for the end of all oppression, as black women are oppressed both racially and sexually and therefore will be the last people freed from oppression.

Perhaps though Beah found her individuality in a sea of aspiring and working actresses in New York City and Los Angeles by never dreaming for her own success. Beah sought for larger goals in society, not just for herself or even black actresses. It seems that Beah wrote it best in her poem, "Let Liberty Be":

Other Popular Quotes

"For me life is a challenge. And it will be a challenge if I live to be 100 or if I get to be a trillionaire."

"The world you want to create needs you. It needs you to create it. It needs to hear what you have to say. The last word has not been spoken."

Beah Richards: American actress, poet, playwright and activist.

Agenda

Upbringing and Personal Life

Professional Life

Legacy

Other Popular Quotes

Sources

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