Greenville P&C: New play about civil rights and folk music pioneer Josh White
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This musician rose from segregated Greenville to become a legend. A new play tells his story.
- By Spencer Donovan sdon...@postandcourier.com
- May 18, 2026
SC New Play Festival/Provided
GREENVILLE — A new play this summer will tell the story of one of Greenville’s most influential natives, Josh White, who broke commercial and social barriers as a Black musician in the prelude to the Civil Rights Movement, all while coming under persecution by the U.S. government.
White’s story will be told in “The House I Live In: Josh White’s America,” a new play commissioned by the SC New Play Festival.
The show will be performed July 29-Aug. 9 in a historic spiegeltent — an ornate, Belgian traveling venue — on the lawn next to New Realm Brewing Co. in Greenville.
Framed by White’s actual testimony before a McCarthy-era U.S. House committee, the play showcases White’s music to tell his life story.
To write the piece, playwright Donnetta Lavinia Grays interviewed White’s son, the late Josh White Jr., as well as experts on Black history in Greenville, Mary Duckett and Ruth Ann Butler.
Written by Grays, who is based in Columbia, the show is directed by Tamilla Woodard, with musical direction from Wesley Hix. There have been private workshops of the show during past festivals.
A musician and Civil Rights activist
White was born into a working-class family living in a segregated neighborhood on Dean Street, said Kendra Williams, who leads Black History in Greenville walking tours and sits on the board of the festival.
He grew up as Jim Crow laws and practices tightened around Black communities in Greenville, driving out relative economic integration and dividing people further by race.
“This is a city that had on its books that Black people could not go into stores, that we had segregated lunch counters,” Williams said.
When White was younger than 10 years old, a White bill collector came to the family home, Williams said. His father asked him to take off his hat when he entered the home, and the bill collector refused and spat on the floor. So White’s father kicked the man out, and later the police came.
The police tied White’s father to the back of their wagon and dragged him through town. His father suffered severe injuries and was sent to the South Carolina State Hospital, where he later died, according to death records from the Hughes Main Library.
To make money for his family, White became an assistant to a blind blues street musician as they traveled across Greenville and later, the South. He picked up guitar playing but also witnessed lynchings and mistreatment during the travels.
As White grew older and became an established folk and blues guitarist and singer, Greenville was still deep in Jim Crow.
In 1947, a White mob pulled Black cab driver Willie Earle from the jail and beat and killed him, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. A few months later, the men who lynched Earle were put on trial, but the all-White jury acquitted them, even though the men admitted to the crime.
“You put that as context during that time,” Williams said. “You got people who are walking around this town every day who are confessed murderers and yet, not convicted.”
White’s early life and the subsequent national environment he grew up in informed his work as a musician and as a voice for civil rights.
He worked under the wing of other musicians until he broke into the industry, eventually becoming a regular performer at Cafe Society, one of the first integrated nightclubs in New York City. Along the way, he developed a casual yet suave style that later influenced Harry Belafonte.
White performed on Broadway and shared music spaces with Billie Holliday, Duke Ellington and dozens of other music legends. He acted and sang in movies and was invited to perform at the White House, later becoming a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt.
In 1944, White became the first Black artist to sell more than 1 million records with “One Meat Ball,” according to Folk Alliance International.
A few years later, he was blacklisted for being a suspected Communist. He came and testified before the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities to defend his loyalty to the U.S. while maintaining his advocacy for civil rights.
However, White struggled to receive work in the U.S., remaining under scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the 1960s, he acted as a mentor and inspiration to legendary folk singers in their own right. He was invited to perform at the March on Washington led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. White died in 1969 during surgery related to heart disease.
How the play was made
White’s story first caught the attention of West Hyler, executive director of the festival, after he moved to Greenville from New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He saw the mural featuring White outside Horizon Records on North Main Street and the bronze relief sculpture on Falls Park Drive outside the Hampton Inn & Suites. White’s story intrigued Hyler, who reached out to Grays.
Grays knew Hyler’s wife — Shelley Butler, who is also the festival’s artistic director — from working in theater while living in New York City. In 2023, Grays moved back home to South Carolina.
She joined Tamilla Woodard, her longtime collaborator, and set out with questions. They interviewed White’s surviving children, consulted historical resources and spoke with locals to learn who he was as a man and a father.
Josh White (right, holding guitar) played music with Duke Ellington (seated at piano) and other famous musicians of the mid-20th century.
Gjon Mili/Getty Images/S.C. New Play Festival/Provided
Hyler said he hopes the audience for the play in Greenville looks like the audience at Cafe Society in New York City. It was one of the first integrated nightclubs in the country, and White was a regular performer.
“I’m kind of interested in the town having a bit of ownership inside of the story too,” Grays said.
Stories from local Black elders like Butler and Duckett “tell a more complicated story” of Greenville that “holds a community to account in that history,” Grays said.
In their research, Williams and others introduced them to places of historical significance to the Black community, such as the Broad Street and Spring Street area that once served as a vibrant Black business district.
Grays particularly remembered the former site of the Liberty Theatre, which opened in 1919 as the first movie and vaudeville theater for Black residents in Greenville. The property now holds a parking deck.
“I think Greenville as a city is gorgeous,” Grays said. “It's an arts haven. It is so incredibly welcoming. And yet, there is still a history there that I think is absent … or not acknowledged, maybe, as fully as one would hope.”
White’s story offers a different lens for understanding how Greenville evolved into what it is today, and by extension, how the U.S. became what it is today, Grays said.
“His story maps the story of today's America,” Grays said.
Reporter
Spencer Donovan covers Greenville for The Post and Courier. He's an Atlanta native and graduate of the University of Georgia. You can find him on walks around town, eating at local restaurants and hiking in the mountains.