Music Various Productions 1964 Off-Broadway | Lyrics Various Playwright Langston Hughes | |
Book William Hairston
Langston Hughes Similar Langston Hughes plays, Other plays | ||
Jerico-Jim Crow is a critically acclaimed 1964 musical, with a book written by Langston Hughes and William Hairston. It was a pioneering work in the urban contemporary gospel musical style, based on the themes of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. According to Hughes scholar and biographer Arnold Rampersad, Hughes "virtually pioneered" the black gospel musical, first with Black Nativity (1961) and then with Jericho-Jim Crow
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Jerico-Jim Crow premiered on Sunday, January 5, 1964, at the Sanctuary Theatre, New York City. It was co-directed by Alvin Ailey and William Hairston and conducted by Hugh Porter, with Marion Joseph Franklin, Jr as associate musical director and musical accompanist, the musical was favorably reviewed in The New York Times by Richard F. Shepard, who said: "This rousing production is an unabashedly sentimental and tuneful history of the Negro struggle up from slavery."