Cleveland

Cleveland

Mission

Karamu House is a not-for-profit community-based arts and educational organization designed to encourage and support the preservation, celebration and evolution of African-American culture and provide a vehicle for social, economic and educational development.

Discussion

In 1915, Russell and Rowena Woodham Jelliffe, graduates of Oberlin College in nearby Oberlin, Ohio, opened what was then called Settlement House and established as a place where people of different races, creeds and religions could find a common ground. The Jelliffes discovered in the early years, that the arts provided the perfect common ground, and the work of the Playhouse Settlement began.

The early twenties saw a large number of African Americans move into an area from the Southern U.S. Resisting some pressure to exclude their new neighbors, the Jelliffes insisted that all races were welcome. What was then called the Playhouse Settlement quickly became a magnet for some of the best African American artists of the day. Actors, dancers, print makers and writers all found a place where they could practice their crafts.

Reflecting the strength of the Black influence on its development, the Playhouse Settlement was officially renamed Karamu House in 1941. Karamu is a word in the Swahili language meaning "a place of joyful gathering".

Karamu House had developed a reputation for nurturing black actors having carried on the mission of the Gilpin Players, a black acting troupe whose heyday predated Karamu. Many directors such as John Kenley, of the Kenley Players, and John Price, of Musicarnival — a music "tent"[clarification needed] theater located in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb — regularly recruited black actors for their professional productions from the Karamu ranks including Norma Powell, Mary Dismuke and Sue H. Johnson.

Throughout the years Karamu has gone through many changes, some profound. With the retirement of the Jelliffes in 1965, and the social shifts of the ...