Alice Childress was born in Charleston, South Carolina, but at the age of nine, after her parents separated, she moved to Harlem, New York City, where she lived with her grandmother, Eliza Campbell White, on 118th Street, between Lenox Avenue and Fifth Avenue.
12 Facts About Alice Childress
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Alice Childress attended public school in New York for her middle-school education and went on to Wadleigh High School, but had to drop out once her grandmother died.
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Alice Childress became involved in theater immediately after her high school and she did not attend college.
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Alice Childress took odd jobs to pay for herself, including domestic worker, photo retoucher, assistant machinist, saleslady, and insurance agent.
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Alice Childress acted in Abram Hill and John Silvera's On Strivers Row, Theodore Brown's Natural Man, and Philip Yordan's Anna Lucasta.
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In 1965, Alice Childress was featured in the BBC presentation The Negro in the American Theatre.
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Alice Childress published more than thirty columns in the Paul Robeson-associated newspaper, Freedom.
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Also in association with Freedom, in 1952 Alice Childress collaborated with Lorraine Hansberry, who had recently relocated to New York City and begun working at the paper.
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Alice Childress is known for her young adult novels, among which are Those Other People and A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich.
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Alice Childress adapted the latter as a screenplay for the 1977 feature film entitled A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich, starring Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield.
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Alice Childress had used the names Louise Henderson and Alice Herndon before her marriage in 1934 to actor Alvin Childress.
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Alice Childress died of cancer, aged 77, at Astoria General Hospital in Queens, New York.