Research Catalog

Title

Julian Mayfield papers, 1949-1984.

Author

Mayfield, Julian, 1928-1984.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Feelings, Tom.
• Angelou, Maya.
• Clarke, John Henrik, 1915-1998.
• King, Woodie, Jr., 1937-
• Nelson, Truman John, 1912-
• Marshall, William, 1924-
• Joseph, Gloria I.
• Gibson, Richard, 1931-
• Forman, James, 1928-2005.
• Dee, Ruby.
• Davis, Ossie.
• Dassin, Jules, 1911-2008.
• Windom, Alice.
• Sinnette, Calvin.
• Sinnette, Elinor Des Verney.
• King, Preston T., 1936-
• Du Bois, David Graham.
• Branch, William B.
• Boone, Sylvia Ardyn.
• Bailey, Herman Kofi.
• O'Brien, Conor Cruise, 1917-
• Cordero, Ana Livia.
• Guy, Rosa.
• Williams, Robert Franklin, 1925-
• Cambridge, Joan.

Description

14.4 lin. ft.

Summary

The collection documents Julian Mayfield's career as a writer, educator, and actor, and his activities as a political expatriate in West Africa and Guyana. Significant correspondents include fellow African-American expatriates and friends Maya Angelou, Herman Kofi Bailey, Sylvia Boone, William Branch, Tom Feelings, David DuBois, Preston King, Jim Lacy, Calvin and Elinor Sinnette, and Alice Windom. Other correspondents are John Henrik Clarke, Jules Dassin, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, James Forman, Richard Gibson, Gloria Joseph, Woodie King, Paul Mann, William Marshall, Truman Nelson, and Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Donor/Sponsor

Schomburg NEH Archival Resources for the Study of the Post-Civil Rights Movements Project.

Subjects

• Nkrumah, Kwame, 1909-1972
• Motion picture plays
• Burnham, Forbes, 1923-1985
• African Americans in literature
• Black power > United States
• Civil rights > North Carolina > Monroe
• Haiti > History > Revolution, 1791-1804 > Drama
• Guyana > Politics and government > 1966-
• Ghana > History > Coup d'état, 1966
• African American novelists
• Black Arts Movement
• Heads of state > Caribbean Area > Biography
• Mallory, Mae
• Ghana > Politics and government > 1957-1979
• Cuba
• Howard University
• Nkrumah, Kwame, 1909-1972 > Drama
• Du Bois, W. E. B (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963 > Criticism and interpretation
• Fulbright scholars
• African Americans > North Carolina > Monroe
• African American motion picture actors and actresses
• African Americans > Political activity
• Heads of state > Africa > Biography
• African American dramatists
• African Americans > Intellectual life
• Manuscripts
• Guyana > Ministry of Information and Culture
• Heads of state > Guyana > Biography
• Heads of state > Ghana > Biography
• American literature > African American authors
• Henri Christophe, King of Haiti, 1767-1820 > Drama
• African Americans in the performing arts
• Course outlines
• African American authors
• Radio scripts

Genre/Form

• Manuscripts.
• Radio scripts.
• Course outlines.
• Motion picture plays.

Note

• Photographs transferred to Photographs and Prints Division.

Source (note)

• Mayfield, Joan Cambridge

Biography (note)

• Julian Mayfield lived a varied career as a novelist, playwright, actor, journalist and critic, aide to two heads of state, an educator and writer-in-residence at several colleges and universities.

Processing Action (note)

• Accessioned
• Processed
• Catalogued

Call Number

Sc MG 339

OCLC

NYPW89-A147

Author

Mayfield, Julian, 1928-1984.

Title

Julian Mayfield papers, 1949-1984.

Biography

Julian Mayfield lived a varied career as a novelist, playwright, actor, journalist and critic, aide to two heads of state, an educator and writer-in-residence at several colleges and universities. He wrote, produced and directed several off-Broadway and summer stock productions between 1949 and 1954. He played the juvenile lead role of Absalom Kumalo in the Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson musical "Lost in the Stars," and directed Ossie Davis's first play, "Alice in Wonder," in 1952. Two of Mayfield's plays, "Fire" and "417," were produced off-Broadway and in summer stock. "Fire" was produced in 1949 by the Group 20 Players.

Mayfield's first three novels, "The Hit" (1951), "The Long Night" (1958) and "The Grand Parade" (1961), were published by Vanguard Press. He went to live in Ghana in 1961 where he worked as a writer in the office of President Kwame Nkrumah and as a journalist and editor of "African Review", an international magazine of political and economic affairs. He was host to Malcolm X in Ghana during the latter's trip to West Africa, and helped organize the first international branch of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964. Mayfield left Ghana in 1965 and lived briefly in Spain before returning to the United States. Between 1967 and 1971, he taught at Cornell and New York Universities, lectured broadly, and starred in Jules Dassin's film "Uptight." The author lived in Guyana between 1971 and 1974, serving as an adviser to the minister of information and culture and to the prime minister, Forbes Burnham. He helped design the country's National Service, a compulsory development program for Guyanese youth. Mayfield was awarded a Senior Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to teach American studies in Germany for the academic year 1976-1977. For the remainder of his life, he worked as lecturer and writer-in-residence at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Howard University.

Connect to:

Finding Aid

Added Author

Feelings, Tom.

Angelou, Maya.

Clarke, John Henrik, 1915-1998.

King, Woodie, Jr., 1937-

Nelson, Truman John, 1912-

Marshall, William, 1924-

Joseph, Gloria I.

Gibson, Richard, 1931-

Forman, James, 1928-2005.

Dee, Ruby.

Davis, Ossie.

Dassin, Jules, 1911-2008.

Windom, Alice.

Sinnette, Calvin.

Sinnette, Elinor Des Verney.

King, Preston T., 1936-

Du Bois, David Graham.

Branch, William B.

Boone, Sylvia Ardyn.

Bailey, Herman Kofi.

O'Brien, Conor Cruise, 1917-

Cordero, Ana Livia.

Guy, Rosa.

Williams, Robert Franklin, 1925-

Cambridge, Joan.

Research Call Number

Sc MG 339