Famed Theater Producer/Director Woodie King Jr. Passes
Donated three of his films to Medgar Evers College archives in 2023
Medgar Evers College would like to honor the passing of Woodie King Jr., the storied film/theater actor/producer/director and founder of the New Federal Theatre (NFT) who passed away on January 29, 2026 at the age of 88. Over the years, King’s relationship with Medgar Evers College has gone through the Center for Black Literature (CBL), which honored him with a National Black Writers Conference Institutional Leadership Award at the 13th National Black Writers Conference: Writing Race, Embracing Difference. In addition, the Alabama native was a featured speaker at the opening program for the 15th National Black Writers Conference: Activism, Identity, and Race: Playwrights and Screenwriters at the Crossroads.
Three years ago, King donated three films he directed to the schools’ archives—1980’s The Torture of Mothers, 1981’s Death of a Prophet and 2006’s Segregating the Greatest Generation. It was from a conversation he had with CBL founder Dr. Brenda Greene, where the idea came out to make these films a part of the Medgar Evers College archives.
“When I met Dr. Brenda Greene I said, ‘Films are forever. They need to be a place where the staff, faculty and students can look at it whenever they want to,’” King recalled back in 2023. “So, I donated those three films to Medgar Evers College.”
King founded the NFT in 1970 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and for the next half century-plus, he provided the community with a space where an array of African-American playwrights and actors were able to express themselves. Among the talents who were able to showcase their works were Ron Milner (Checkmates), Ed Bullins (The Taking of Miss Jane) and Amiri Baraka’s final play (The Most Dangerous Man in America [W.E.B. DuBois]). The actors who graced the NFT stage are a literal Who’s Who: Debbie Allen, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin, Jackée Harry, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Phylicia Rashad, Dick Anthony Williams, Taurean Blacque, Chadwick Boseman, Laurence Fishburne and Glynn Turman.
For King, the founding mission of the NFT was “to integrate artists of color and women into the mainstream of American theatre by training artists for the profession and by presenting plays by writers of color and women to integrated, multicultural audiences—plays which evoke the truth through beautiful and artistic re-creations of ourselves.” It was a point he reiterated when he received the 2021 Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre.
“What we tried to do was integrate women and minorities into the mainstream of theater,” he said.
It’s a legacy Greene kept in mind when she worked on establishing a relationship between the 2012 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee and Medgar Evers College.
“I fondly remember attending Woodie King Jr.’s production of Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem, for colored girls who have committed suicide when the rainbow is enuf, and J.E. Franklin’s Black Girl,” Greene said “These memories of King, whom I called the Mayor of Black Theater in NYC, were part of the motivation for ensuring that the Center for Black Literature had a connection with him and his work.”