Those We Lost — August 14

Honoring those we lost on August 14 — remembered for what they gave, and for what they left behind.

Alice Childress

Birth name: Alice Herndon

Born Oct 12, 1916 — died Aug 14, 1994

Playwright, novelist, actor, director, and chronicler of working-class Black life.

Childress wrote with rare attention to Black women, domestic workers, artists, families, and young people confronting racism and inequality. Works including Trouble in Mind, Wedding Band, and A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich expanded Black American theater and literature across four decades.

Abbey Lincoln

Birth name: Anna Marie Wooldridge

Born Aug 6, 1930 — died Aug 14, 2010

Jazz vocalist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist.

Lincoln brought emotional depth, political commitment, and self-definition to jazz, especially through Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite and her own later compositions. Her music and screen work rejected limiting images of Black womanhood and joined artistry with liberation.