Spouse Evelyn Rodgers Name Larry Neal | Died January 6, 1981, Hamilton | |
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Born September 5, 1937
Atlanta, Georgia ( 1937-09-05 ) Institutions City College of New York.
Wesleyan University.
Yale University Alma mater Lincoln University (Pennsylvania),
University of Pennsylvania Books Visions of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Writings, Hoodoo Hollerin' Bebop Ghosts Education University of Pennsylvania (1963), Lincoln University Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada Similar People Michael Schwartz, Langston Hughes, Gil Scott‑Heron, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Ja A Jahannes | ||
Larry Neal or Lawerence Neal (September 5, 1937 – January 6, 1981) was a scholar of African-American theatre. He is well known for his contributions to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
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Biography
Neal was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) in 1961 and received a master's degree in 1963 from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1968 to 1969, Neal taught at the City College of New York. The following year he taught at Wesleyan University. He taught at Yale University from 1970 to 1975.
Neal is known for working with Amiri Baraka to open the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. His early writings—including "The Negro in the Theatre" (1964), "Cultural Front" (1965), and "The Black Arts Movement" (1968)—were influential in defining and describing the role of the arts in the Black Power era.
His essays and poems appeared in publications such as Liberator, Drama Critque, Black Theatre, Negro Digest, Performance, and Black World. He also uncovered Ed Bullins's plagiarism of Albert Camus's play The Just Assassins. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970.
Neal died from a heart attack in 1981. His papers are at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library apart of the New York Public Library.
Family
In 1965, he married Evelyn Rodgers; they had one son.