Julian Mayfield
| Julian Mayfield | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Julian Hudson Mayfield June 6, 1928 Greer, South Carolina, United States |
| Died | October 20, 1984 (aged 56) Takoma Park, Maryland, Washington metropolitan area, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Actor, director, writer, lecturer and civil rights activist. |
Julian Hudson Mayfield (June 6, 1928 – October 20, 1984) was an American actor, director, writer, lecturer and civil rights activist.
Julian Hudson Mayfield was born on June 6, 1928, in Greer, South Carolina, and was raised from the age of five in Washington, D.C. He attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School and while there he decided on being a writer as a career. After high school, he joined the US Army in 1946 and was stationed in Hawaii before being honorably discharged. He studied briefly at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
Mayfield moved to New York in 1948, originally to study at New York University, but instead began a career in theatre. He developed the role of Absalom Kumalo for the Kurt Weil musical Lost in the Stars during 1949–50, before producing his own play Fire in 1951 and directing Ossie Davis's Alice in Wonder in 1952. Along with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Alice Childress, Rosa Guy, Audre Lorde, John O. Killens, William Branch, Sidney Poitier, and Loften Mitchell, Mayfield became an important figure in what historians have termed the New York Black Cultural Left. This group was associated with the African-American singer and political activist Paul Robeson and was composed of actors, writers and artists who believed that art was a key component of the struggle for Civil Rights. During this period, Mayfield spent summers at Camp Unity, a left-wing interracial summer camp for adults in Wingdale, New York. There, he wrote and produced his one-act play 417, which he later adapted into his first novel, The Hit.
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