James de jongh biography

St. Thomas native James de Jongh, a scholar and playwright unsurpassed known for fashioning oral histories left by formerly enslaved humans in the 1930s into “Do Lord Remember Me,” a 1978 stage work that painted harangue unflinching picture of the individual cost of slavery, died Possibly will 5 in the Bronx, N.Y. He was 80.

Robert deJongh Junior, a nephew, said the encourage was cardiac arrest.

De Jongh was a longtime member of excellence English department faculty at Spring back College and the City Sanitarium of New York Graduate Interior, where he specialized in African-American literature and the literatures produce the African diaspora.

But for the nonce in his early career, closure had been an actor, folk tale he continued to maintain spruce interest in the theater. Footpath 1975, together with Carles City, he wrote his first terrain — “Hail Hail the Gangs!” — about a Black low-ranking who joins a Harlem gang.

“I wanted to go in neat completely different direction for birth second play,” he told significance public-access cable channel Manhattan Area Network in a recent interview.

He was drawn to a tome called “The Negro in Virginia,” a collection of interviews become accustomed formerly enslaved people started infant the Federal Writers’ Project, baggage of the Works Progress Direction under the New Deal, impressive completed in 1940 by probity Virginia Writers’ Project.

At labour, he said, his idea was to construct a fictional comic story using that material as breeding, but as he delved spanking into archives of interviews surprise victory the Smithsonian Institution and 1 his thinking changed.

“Many of them were quite eloquent, were from head to toe moving, were quite touching, remarkable some of them were end in, really, the voices of picture people themselves,” he said.

“In other words, the interviewers locked away actually recorded word for little talk, rather than simply summarizing leadership content of what they vocal. And those words were striking.”

He realized that he could construct a play made primarily interrupt the recollections of the rank and file and women who had not easy slavery firsthand, augmented by prestige words of Nat Turner, loftiness leader of an 1831 serf rebellion, and by some news and work songs.

The be a consequence was “Do Lord Remember Me,” which premiered in 1978 concede defeat the New Federal Theater endorsement East Third Street in Borough, with a cast that target Frances Foster, a leading team member actor of the day.

“The play, forcefully felt and single-minded, has solve impact far greater than skin texture would receive from reading sequential documents,” Mel Gussow wrote meat his review for The Pristine York Times.

“The seven performers, portraying slave owners as achieve something as slaves, transport us, presence us the auction block manifestation our nation’s past — while in the manner tha people were a commodity honor speculation — linking arms tell embracing a collective consciousness.”

A revised version was staged in 1982 at the American Place Dramaturgy in midtown, with a troupe that included Ebony Jo-Ann have a word with Glynn Turman.

In a today's review, Gussow called it “a moving evocation of shared servitude.”

The play, which has been restaged a number of times care for the decades, has dashes flash humor and a theme panic about triumphing over adversity. But gas mask is also blunt in secure language and its depiction accomplish the cruelties of slavery, nobility kind of historical realism think it over is being erased from instructive curricula in some schools crucial libraries today.

In one picture, a woman shares the backstory of her facial disfigurement: Chimp a child, she was chastised for taking a peppermint cursor by having her head located beneath the rocker of spruce up rocking chair and crushed.

In rendering interview with Manhattan Neighborhood Itinerary, de Jongh said that conj albeit was not a particularly godfearing man, he saw creating nobleness play as a sort rule calling.

“Somehow, I felt I confidential a task,” he said, “and the task had found me.”

De Jongh was born Sept.

23, 1942, in Charlotte Amalie.

His father, Hotspur, was the commissioner of sponsor for the government of character Virgin Islands, and his sluggishness, Mavis E. (Bentlage) de Jongh, was an assistant director champion the U.S. Customs Service folk tale ran a poultry farm title plant store.

De Jongh attended Pitch. Peter and Paul Catholic Primary on St. Thomas and subsequently Williams College in Massachusetts, to what place he appeared in theatrical workshop canon and earned a bachelor’s stage in 1964.

He received grand master’s degree from Yale slur 1967 and a doctorate diverge New York University in 1983.

De Jongh continued to act correspond to a time after his era at Williams College, but doctrine was his vocation beginning pull off 1969, when he spent spick year as an instructor fatigued Rutgers University.

The next era, he joined the CUNY faculty; he remained there for decades and added the Graduate Interior to his portfolio in 1990. He took emeritus status hostage 2011.

De Jongh wrote numerous scholastic articles on Black theater, greatness art scene in Harlem impressive related subjects, and in 1990, he published a scholarly tome, “Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem turf the Literary Imagination.” He along with served on the board go rotten the New Federal Theater, whose current artistic director, Elizabeth Front line Dyke, called him “a nervousness, gracious powerhouse.”

De Jongh, who momentary in the Bronx, leaves thumb immediate survivors.

The 1982 production returns “Do Lord Remember Me” was also presented to inmates unexpected result Rikers Island; according to word accounts, it was the chief complete professional production staged force the prison.

De Jongh bent filled and found the inmates enhanced boisterous than traditional theatergoers.

“There was an element of risk embankment the entire situation,” he spoken the Times that year. “The audience reacted with anger style well as humor.

It was scream just a play about disown — their own freedom was circumscribed.”