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Robert
Lee "Rob" Penny
(August
6, 1941-March 16, 2003)
Prized
Playwright, Poet, Professor, and Pan-Africanist activist
By Peter Hart
Robert Lee "Rob" Penny,
playwright-in-residence of the Kuntu Repertory Theatre and a
founder with August Wilson of the Kuntu Writers Workshop, died
March 17, 2003, following a heart attack at his home in the Hill
District. He was 62.
An associate professor of Africana
studies who served as department chair from 1978 to 1984 [University of Pittsburgh], Penny combined the talents of a poet,
dramatist, teacher and social activist.
Colleagues described Penny as
profoundly committed to his African roots and a person who
inspired others in the classroom, in workshops and in the
street.
"He was deeply African, with
African values and paradigms, which guided his poetry, drama and
teaching," said Africana studies department chair Joseph K.
Adjaye. "His teaching and philosophy held that Africana
studies is a distinct discipline with its own methodology and
pedagogy. He was committed to the idea that knowledge in the
classroom has little meaning without its enhancing of black
life. His tragic passing is a big loss to the department, the
University and the black community."
Dennis Brutus, emeritus professor of
Africana studies, said, "As a teacher, Rob was a person who
inspired his students. He was always encouraging and helpful. As
a poet myself, I can say he also was a fine poet, in the black
poetic tradition, who inspired others to write, especially
through the Kuntu Writers Workshop. And he was a man who was an
inspiration to young people in terms of his activism and
community activities. [His death] is a great loss to the
community."
Penny was a prolific writer whose works
included more than 300 poems and 30 plays. His plays were
produced in New York, Chicago, Tucson and other national venues,
as well as locally by Kuntu Repertory Theatre, which was founded
in 1974 by Vernell A. Lillie, associate professor of Africana
studies.
His works explore the African American
cultural experience, especially in working-class Pittsburgh,
where his plays invariably were set.
Born in Opelika, Ala., Penny was raised
from a young age in Pittsburgh's Hill District. A self-styled
Afrocentric artist, Penny was mostly self-taught. He was heavily
influenced by famed playwright and American social critic Amiri
Baraka, whose work Penny researched.
In 1968, he and fellow Pittsburgh
playwright August Wilson co-founded the Black Horizon Theatre
here, which staged performances until the mid-1970s. In 1976, he
and Wilson co-founded the Kuntu Writers Workshop, which Penny
coordinated until his death.
Jack Daniel, vice provost for Academic
Affairs and dean of students, said Penny was in the first cohort
of faculty Daniel hired in 1969 when he was chair of the
then-Department of Black Studies. "In terms of his
professionalism, he was as close as someone can get to being an
unrecognized genius. He appeared to be a simple man, but was
actually quite complex," Daniel said. "As a person,
with his theatrical influence, he was genuinely in touch with
the human side of all of us. He was thought-provoking, forever
challenging, dedicated, sincere and warm, with a kind of
stick-to-itiveness -- someone who always kept his eye on the
prize."
Daniel said his somewhat ironic
nickname for Penny was Oba, the Yoruban term for king. "He
was the last person in the world that would have accepted such a
title, but one of the most deserving of it."
Penny's last play, "Difficult Days
Ahead in a Blaze," will be staged by Kuntu Repertory
Theatre May 22 - June 7.
He is survived by his wife Betty; three
sons, Johnny of the Hill District, Robert Lee Jr. of Duquesne
and Kadumu of the North Side; two brothers, Roy Lee of Homestead
and John D. of Atlanta; two sisters, Betty Jean and Ann, both of
Homestead; 12 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
Visitation will held today, March 20, 7
- 9 p.m. at White Memorial Chapel, Point Breeze, and March 21,
10 a.m. - 9 p.m. at St. Benedict the Moor Catholic Church, Hill
District. A mass will be celebrated March 22 at 11 a.m. at St.
Benedict.
The Penny family requests that memorial
donations go to the Rob Penny Memorial Student Assistant Fund,
CAS Development Office, 928 Cathedral of Learning; attn: James
Sismour.
A memorial service for Penny will be
held April 10 at 2 p.m. in Heinz Chapel.
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 5 December
2011
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