A Tribute to Ms. Beulah 'Beah' Richards

A TRIBUTE TO MS. BEULAH "BEAH" RICHARDS-HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON (Extensions of Remarks - February 26, 2004)

HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON
OF MISSISSIPPI
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2004

Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize an African American pioneer, actress Ms. Beulah "Beah" Richards.

For the daughter of a Mississippi-born Baptist minister, a good education might have led to a secure job and a middle-class existence. For Beah Richards of Vicksburg, Mississippi, it meant freedom and rejection of life in a town in which she claimed to have suffered racism "every day of my life".

In 1948, Richards graduated from Dillard University, New Orleans, and decided to pursue an acting career. Although she had her first paid acting job at age 36, Richards won three Emmy awards and was nominated for a Tony award and an Academy Award for her 1967 role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

Her career began at a time when roles for black actors were becoming marginally less stereotypical compared with the pre-war years, when comic characters or minor parts as spear carriers or domestic servants were the norm. Since she was solely an actress, not an entertainer, Richards never achieved star status, and specialized in feisty character roles, usually older than her years, notably indomitable matriarchs.

A move to New York in the early 1950s, to play the role of the grandmother in Take a Giant Step, boosted her career. Take a Giant Step was a thoughtful drama about race that proliferated in the 1950's. Richards shined in the Pulitzer Prize winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, where she understudied the lead on Broadway and played in later productions.
In the social thriller In the Heat of the Night (1967), she shared the screen with Sidney Poitier, Hollywood's leading black actor; later that year she did so again in Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, this time playing Poitier's mother, despite being two years his junior. Poitier was to be the first of many screen sons. She later mothered James Earl Jones in The Great White Hope (1970), Danny Glover in And the Children Shall Weep (1984) and Eriq La Salle as the irascible Dr. Benton in ER.

Aside from her acting career, Richards' life was an apex of activism and artistry. Her little known friendships with historical giants Paul Robeson, W.E.B DuBois and African-American communist leaders William and Louise Patterson helped cultivate her passion for using words to create wisdom.

Reading her fiery poem A Black Woman Speaks of White Womanhood, White Supremacy and Peace garnered the attention of the FBI under the J. Edgar Hoover administration. The agency's surveillance of her from 1951 to 1972 yielded a 100-page file.

She also had a brief stint as a journalist for New-York based Freedom Ways magazine covering the civil rights movement in Alabama in the 1960s.

Richards, who started smoking at age 17, had emphysema and returned to Vicksburg in 2000 to live with family.
Richards died Sept. 14, 2000, 10 days after receiving an Emmy award for a guest role on The Practice. It was her last role.

Beah Richards pioneered a trail for African Americans in the film community. She was one of the original foot soldiers in the fight for African Americans and women in film and for this she deserves recognition.

END