Endesha Ida Mae Holland, 61, Wrote ‘From the Mississippi Delta’
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Playwright Endesha Ida Mae Holland, whose autobiographical play “From the Mississippi Delta” told how the civil rights movement inspired a girl born in poverty to turn her life around, has died. She was 61.
Holland died January 25 at a Los Angeles nursing home after a 15-year battle with the nerve disease ataxia.
She was a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s theater school, and had also taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Beginning as a one-woman show, the 1988 play told the stories of Holland’s life, including a period spent in a small shack in the 1940s, a rape at age 11, her life as a prostitute and the death of her mother in a fire rumored to have been set by the Ku Klux Klan. Holland changed her life and began pursuing a college education after working in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
The play was performed around the country and at the Young Vic in London in 1989, and in New York in 1991 at the Circle in the Square theater, where Oprah Winfrey was one of the producers.
As in the play, Holland moved north to Minnesota to study. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, where she eventually earned a Ph.D. in American studies. She credited a writing course there with sparking her interest in writing plays.
