Vinie Burrows, actress, activist, and radio producer, passes

Vinie Burrows, the ageless actress and activist, who once noted that her greatest role in life was the one she performed for truth and justice, died on Christmas Day, surrounded by her family, according to her press representative and an obituary in Playbill.  She was 99.  

Whether on or off stage, Burrows seemed to always be aware of who she was and where she was, usually dressed splendidly and charming whoever was fortunate enough to meet and greet her. 

According to her profile in “Notable Black American Women,” edited by Jessie Carney Smith, Burrows was born on November 15, 1928, in New York City and earned her B.A. and master’s degree from New York University. She was also a recipient of an honorary doctorate from the New School.

Burrows was still a student at NYU in 1950 when she made her stage debut with Helen Hayes in “The Wisteria Trees,” written by Joshua Logan and based on Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” A succession of performances on stage followed, from “The Green Pastures” in 1951 to “Black Medea” in 1978. During these stints, she often shared the bill with notables such as Mary Martin, Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, and Ossie Davis. Her numerous television appearances included conversations on “The Merv Griffin Show” and “The Tonight Show.”

Burrows was perhaps best known for her one-woman shows, where the full complement of her talent was showcased. Smith wrote that the most successful of these productions was “Walk Together Children,” a collection of poetry and prose by Black authors. 

After performances at the Greenwich Mews Theater in 1968, Burrows toured more than 900 colleges in the U.S. and abroad to great acclaim. “As a Black actress,” she explained in Smith’s book, “whose talents have never been fully used in our theater, I have turned to solo performances, not merely to find employment but also to gain a greater measure of artistic fulfillment and personal satisfaction.”

Equally successful was her performance as poet Phillis Wheatley, with the assistance of dancer Pearl Primus. Besides her interpretation of Black writers, she produced and performed a collage of seven women based on the writings of  Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, and Langston Hughes.

Never one to cower and always willing to speak truth to power, Burrows was opposed to the films of the 1970s in which Black men were “superstuds” and then, as she said, Black became “not only beautiful but bountiful” for the white producers. For Encore magazine, she wrote that “the hunger of the Black community to see Blackness triumph over Whiteness in celluloid fantasy is a psychological mechanism social scientists might contend is a necessary emotional cathartic. Nevertheless, it is a damaging misdirection  of energies born of oppression and frustration.”

On more than one occasion and sometimes during her one-woman shows, Burrows expressed the need for Black artists, writers, and producers to explore that vast reservoir of Black experience for their themes and creations. Her shows were exemplary of this edict.

That commitment to Black self-determination manifested itself beyond the theater to her membership and in several organizations: the Black Theater Alliance, Committee for the Negro in the Arts of the Screen Actors Guild, a permanent Nongovernmental Organization representative to the UN, and vice president of Women for Racial and Economic Equality.

She received an Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2020.

Age meant little to her spirited resolve to continue on the stage, and she did so magnificently in “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years” at several venues. 

At the time of her death, according to Playbill, Burrows was in development for the TEAM’s productions of “Reconstructing (Still Working But The Devil Might Be Inside).” 

Burrows is survived by her son and daughter, six grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.