Erma Mozelle Duffy Lewis (1926–1982)

April 28, 2017 
/ Contributed By: Gloria Lawsha Smith

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Emma Duffy Lewis

Image Courtesy: Gloria Lawsha Smith

Erma Mozelle Duffy Lewis, the founder of the first African-American community theatre in Fort Worth, Texas, was born February 7, 1926, in Fort Worth, Texas, to Haywood James Duffy and Hazel Mae Calloway Duffy. She was the oldest of eight children and graduated from Historic I. M. Terrell High School. Duffy studied theatre and modern dance at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Texas College in Tyler, Texas. She married James Edward Lewis, a professional musician, in 1948.

In 1960, while working as the teenage program director at the Highland Park Branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Lewis introduced the performing arts to students in Fort Worth’s African American community. She began teaching drama, music, and beginning and advanced levels of ballet to youth of color in a makeshift dance studio without bars and mirrors.

Lewis was involved in other significant civic activities. Beginning in 1960, Lewis sponsored, for the next twenty-two years, the Junior Debutantes, eleventh and twelfth-grade African-American women at Dunbar High School. That collaboration led to the founding of the Sojourner Truth Players, the first African-American theatre group and nonprofit cultural arts center in the Fort Worth area. When the Fort Worth YWCA desegregated its summer residence camp for girls in 1969, she became the first African-American to serve as camp director.

In 1972, Lewis founded the Sojourner Truth Players, Inc. (STP). They gave their first performance on June 10, 1972, in James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner in the annex of the Community Christian Church, which was destroyed by fire in 1977. Using seed money to purchase a vacant building that was formerly a neighborhood grocery store, Lewis and volunteers renovated it, transforming it into the Sojourner Truth Cultural Arts Center, which opened on June 11, 1980.

The new center hosted what had now become a nationally prominent African-American theatre group. One of the most memorable moments came in 1980 when STP produced and performed the Broadway musical Purlie and hosted the playwright Ossie Davis and his wife, actress Ruby Dee, in Fort Worth. Funding, however, was increasingly difficult to obtain. When a second fire destroyed the center in 1981, at the same time it experienced dramatic cutbacks in funding, and Lewis took herself off salary, trying to keep the troupe afloat.

Erma Mozelle Duffy Lewis died on March 8, 1982, in Fort Worth, Texas. She was fifty-six. STP sustained itself for a short time afterward, but with the loss of its inspirational leader and cash-strapped, the group never quite recovered and permanently closed its doors in 1991. Lewis’s legacy, however, continued. The Sojourner Truth Players became the model for Curtis King, founder of The Black Academy of Arts and Letters, Inc. (TBAAL) in Dallas, Texas, in 1977, and Rudy Eastman, founder of Jubilee Theatre in Fort Worth in 1981. Both King and Eastman received their training under Lewis and carried forward her vision of theatrical arts programs that served and educated the African American communities of Fort Worth and Dallas.

About the Author

Author Profile

Gloria Lawsha Smith is an independent historian in Fort Worth, Texas who holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from The University of Texas at Arlington in Arlington, Texas, and a master’s degree in journalism from The University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Her writing experience spans various industries including the media, banking, telecommunications, and technology. Following a career as a technical writer and editor for IBM Corporation, she decided to leave corporate America in exchange for a calling to homeschool. She fulfilled her goal and taught each of her six children at home through high school.

While teaching, she kept her professional skills sharp as a scorer for the essay portion of the College Board SAT Reasoning Test, a grant writer for the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society, and a Stanford test administrator for Bob Jones University Press. She also started her own business in consulting as a certified minority business owner. She served as a member of the Fort Worth Public Library Advisory Board and volunteer for the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT). Currently, she assists her husband in the orientation ministry at Good Shepherd Temple of Praise Church in Fort Worth. She is an avid historian who enjoys genealogy and tracing her family history as an ongoing project.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Smith, G. (2017, April 28). Erma Mozelle Duffy Lewis (1926–1982). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/lewis-erma-mozelle-duffy-1926-1982/

Source of the Author's Information:

“Future Sojourner Truth Players, Inc. Building Coming,” The Fort Worth
Mind Newspaper
, Dec. 29, 1977; Sandra M. Mayo and Elvin Holt, Stages of
Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016); Reby Cary, A Step Up: The
Way Makers
(Fort Worth: Self Published, 2010); Jan Jones, Renegades,
Showmen and Angels: A Theatrical History of Fort Worth from 1873-2001

(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006).

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