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When William Withers, Jr., stepped up to the conductor’s podium at Ford’s Theatre that April evening, he believed the greatest triumph of his career was just a few minutes away

April 14, 1865, was an important day for William Withers, Jr. He was the orchestra leader at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., and that evening he was going to perform his song “Honor to Our Soldiers” for Abraham Lincoln.

The author and director of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Green Pastures” recalls the struggle to get a play about a black God produced in 1930.

Just forty years ago this month—on the evening of February 26, 1930—at Broadway’s old Mansfield Theatre, there was uttered for the first time the most awesome entrance cue in all of theatrical history. “Gangway!” shouted the angel Gabriel. “Gangway for de Lawd God Jehovah!”

Or, How to Write a Smash Hit the First Time You Try

On a certain day in December, 1913, I went up to the ornate courthouse of the Appellate Division, on Madison Square, to join a numerous company of youths who, like myself, had survived the bar examinations and the scrutiny of the Character Committee of the Bar Association, and

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