Celebrating Dr. Je Franklin - The unveiling of Black Girl - Aloft Harlem - August 11, 2024Dr. Jennie Franklin
A life of activism and storytelling
Best known for her play Black Girl, first produced in 1969, by W-GBH Boston.
In 1971, it was picked up by The New Federal Theater and moved to The Theater De Lys,
where it ran for over 800 performances, won a New York Drama Desk Award, and was the only
play of the 1971-72 season to be optioned for Hollywood. Ms. Franklin wrote the screenplay
for the feature film, which Ossie Davis directed, and in which Ruby Dee played an unforgettable
cameo role! The film starred Peggy Pettitt, Brock Peters, and Leslie Uggams. In 1984, the
McGinn-Cazale/Second Stage Theater selected Black Girl for its series on American Classics.
Ms. Franklin’s other film credits include “That’s Why They Calls Us Colored,” starring Rod
Bladel and Vinie Burrows, and directed by Malika Nzinga. The film won the Reel Sisters of the
Diaspora Spirit Award, and premiered at The AMC Magic Johnson Theater, The Dwyer Cultural Center, and The Citizen Jane Film Festival.
Ms. Franklin’s other plays include several sets in the Ten-Minute genre, one of which, “Some
Woman’s Son” was a recent winner ( 2023) in the Tennessee Williams Inaugural 10:4:TENN National
Ten-Minute Play Contest. Written as units of thematically connected ten-play sets, called
“Decatets,” Coming to the Mercy Seat: The First Decatet, was the inaugural program of the
Langston Hughes Theater, in the Arturo Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Precious Memories: The Second Decatet, opened at the Abrons Arts Center.
Her works have been performed on four continents, and have appeared in several anthologies
and reviews, including: The Best American Short Plays; Black Drama in America; Women
Playwrights; Perrine’s Literature; The Ponder Review; and in Terrain.Org.
Since 2017, Ms. Franklin’s “Race-Aid Project,” her body of One-Act plays, has been incubating,
in the Ossie Davis/Ruby Dee Theater, where she was the Resident Playwright.
The Race-Aid Project is a series of theater-based Community-Dialogues, highlighting the lives
of key historical personalities who joined the conversation on Race, from Fourth Century Rome.
She is also a children’s book author, creating “A Hip Hop Aesop” A bebopped version of Aesop’s Fables with 4 published books available for purchase on Amazon, and over 50 additional versions of “A Hip Hop Aesop” awaiting publication.
Make sure to add her short story collection to this long list as well.
Ms. Franklin has been awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship; a Eugene O’Neill Fellowship; an NEA
Fellowship; and a John F. Kennedy New American Play Award: a joint project of the American
Express Company and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
In 2024, she received her honorary doctorate from Herbert H. Lehman’s, City University of New York, and in the months following received her accolades recognizing ALL of her works, which include over 150 works.