Prophets for a New Day (1970) focuses on histori-
cal events from this movement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
King, Martin L., Jr. I Have A Dream: Writings and
Speeches That Changed the World. Edited by James
M. Washington. San Francisco: Harper Collins
Publishers, 1986.
Lewis, Anthony. Portrait of a Decade: The Second
American Revolution. New York: Bantam Books,
(with The New York Times) 1965.
Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil
Rights Years: 1954–1965. New York: Viking Pen-
guin, 1987.
Margaret Whitt
Cleage, Pearl Michelle (1948– )
Award winning author, dramatist/poet and one
of the nation’s most produced African-American
woman playwrights, who said she writes to “find
solutions and pass them on... and to find lan-
guage and to pass it on,” Pearl Cleage was born on
December 7, 1948 in Springfield, Massachusetts;
she grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Her father, the
late Reverend Albert Buford Cleage, was a promi-
nent minister who founded his own denomina-
tion, the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church,
changed his name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman,
and, in 1962, ran for governor of Michigan on the
Freedom Now ticket. Her mother, Doris Graham
Cleage, was an elementary school teacher. Pearl is
the youngest of two daughters.
Cleage studied playwriting at Howard Univer-
sity in Washington, D.C., from 1966 to 1969 and
produced two one-act plays as a student. She left
Howard to marry Michael Lomax, an Atlanta poli-
tician, and to move to Atlanta. They divorced in
- Cleage received her bachelor of arts degree
from Atlanta’s Spelman College in 1971 and con-
tinued graduate study at Atlanta University. In At-
lanta, she established an impressive list of media
achievements, including serving as a host on an
Atlanta-based community affairs program, as di-
rector of communications for the city, and as press
secretary for Mayor Maynard Jackson.
Cleage began her playwriting career in the 1980s
with productions of her plays Puppetplay, Hospice,
Good News, and Essentials. Since the early 1980s,
she has drawn national attention for her works
Chain, Late Bus to Mecca, and Flyin’ West, which
chronicle the lives of pioneer black women at the
turn of the century, and for Blues for an Alabama
Sky. Her other theatrical works include Bourbon
at the Border, a full-length drama commissioned
by and premiered at the Alliance Theatre in 1997
under the direction of Kenny Leon, a frequent col-
laborator and Alliance artistic director.
Although Cleage frequently performs her work
on college campuses, Blues was part of the Cul-
tural Olympiad in Atlanta in conjunction with the
1996 Olympic games. During the 1992–93 season,
under the direction of longtime collaborator Leon,
Flyin’ West was produced at more than a dozen
venues nationwide, including the Kennedy Cen-
ter in Washington, D.C., the Brooklyn Academy
of Music, the Indiana Repertory Company, Cross-
roads Theatre Company, the Alabama Shakespeare
Festival, the St. Louis Black Repertory Theatre,
and the Long Wharf Theatre, making it one of the
most produced new plays in the country that year.
In 1983, Cleage garnered five AUDELCO awards
for Outstanding Achievement off-Broadway for
her play Hospice.
Cleage has received grants from the NEA, the
City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs, and the
Georgia Council for the Arts. Her exploration of
topics such as race and gender issues forces read-
ers to stand at attention and heed her clarion call.
She does so in many of her collected essays found
in Mad at Miles: A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth
(Cleage Group, 1990), Deals with the Devil and Oth-
ers Reasons to Riot (One World/ Ballatine, 1993),
and The Brass Bed and Other Stories (Third World
Press, 1996). In Mad at Miles, Cleage candidly de-
scribes her objectives as a writer: “I am writing to
expose and explore the point where racism and
sexism meet. I am writing to help myself under-
stand the full effects of being black and female in a
culture that is both racist and sexist. I am writing
to try and communicate that information to my
sisters and then to any brothers of good will and
honest intent who will take the time to listen.”106 Cleage, Pearl Michelle