Freedom Legacy
John E. Allen Jr.
Mr. Allen founded Freedom Theater in a North Philadelphia storefront in 1966 with the support of the Black People's Unity Movement. He left his job as a supervisor with the Sun Oil Company in 1973 to run the theater full time.
Mr. Allen was also a performer, teacher, director and writer. He had worked in television and had directed productions for the New York Theater Festival, the Walnut Street Theater and the Philadelphia Company.
He studied drama at Hedgerow Theater in Rose Valley, Pa., and the American Education Theater in Washington.
ROBERT E. Leslie
In 1968, Mr. Leslie joined John E. Allen Jr. to expand a theater group Allen had started two years earlier. They formed the New Freedom Theatre, more commonly known as just the Freedom Theatre.
Though Mr. Leslie wrote plays and directed a little, he focused more on the theater's administration and, at one time, served as general manager, said his daughter Gail Leslie, director of operations at New Freedom Theatre.
She said her father took great pride in New Freedom's training program, which he developed and oversaw for a period.
Mr. Leslie had worked for 20 years as a circulation manager for the Evening Bulletin, supervising drivers and newsstand sales. When he retired in the late 1970s, he devoted all of his time to the theater, Gail Leslie said.
"Through many tough times when others might have wavered, Bob fought indefatigably for the theater to pull through," said Derek Hargreaves, president of the New Freedom board.
Sandra N. Haughton, executive director of the theater, said Mr. Leslie "insisted that the arts be taken seriously."
Walter Dallas
Dallas, a graduate of Morehouse College and the Yale School of Drama, was based in New York when he accepted the invitation to come to Philadelphia in 1983 to create the School of Theatre for the University of the Arts. He got involved with Freedom Theatre and John Allen Jr., Freedom's founding Artistic Director. Under Dallas, Freedom has worked with playwrights and artists including James Baldwin, Denzel Washington, August Wilson, Sonia Sanchez, Grover Washington, Jr. and Glynn Turman.
Sandra Haughton
Sandra N. Haughton, who served as financial consultant for the debt-plagued Freedom Theatre for years, was then named executive director of the organization, believed to be the nation’s oldest black theater company.
Haughton, is Freedom Theatre’s first executive director and the first manager officially in charge of all operations since the departure of artistic director Walter Dallas, who also served as interim managing director. Haughton is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a seasoned arts administrator.
“We still have a ways to go,” Haughton said.
She single handedly eliminated $4 million of our debt, programmed theater and kept the light on at Freedom and inside the hearts of Freedom staff and supporters.