Actress & Playwright Ann Kathryn Flagg Died: October 27, 1970

Ann Kathryn Flagg died on October 27, 1970. The playwright, teacher, and actress was born in Charleston in 1924.

After growing up in the segregated part of town, she graduated from Garnet High School in 1941 and from West Virginia State College four years later. She then taught drama in a Virginia high school and toured nationally with the noted American Negro Repertory Players. Afterward, she returned to West Virginia to teach at Fairmont’s Dunbar High School.

In 1952, she was named director of the Children’s Theater at Karamu House in Cleveland. In this role, she adapted plays for children and received acclaim for starring in Sophocles’ Antigone and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.

In 1961, she moved to Chicago to work on her master’s degree. During this time, she wrote Great Gettin’ Up Mornin’. The play came in first place in the National Collegiate Playwriting Contest and was broadcast nationally on CBS television. She went on to write more plays, including Blueboy to Holiday—Over, A Significant Statistic, and Unto the Least of These.

Her sudden death from an attack of emphysema at age 46 ended a promising career.