Endesha ida mae holland biography of william

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born August 29, 1944, in Greenwood, MS; died of complications from ataxia, January 25, 2006, in Los Angeles, CA.

Educator, activist, and author.

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A Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright, Holland was an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California best known for her play From the Mississippi Delta. The daughter of a desperately poor Mississippi family, she knew a life of extreme hardship as a child.

Raped by a white man when she was just eleven years old, she would later see prostitution as her only means of income. That changed, however, when she discovered the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and became involved in the Civil Rights movement.

This involvement, however, also turned to tragedy when her family became a target of white violence.

Endesha ida mae holland biography of william

Her house was burned down, killing her wheelchair-bound mother inside. Holland soon left the South after that. Moving north, she continued h