Angeline

Butler

Angeline Butler, born in Columbia, South Carolina, was received by Rev. Isaac Bartley Butler and wife Emma Harris Butler at three days old. They promised to love, cherish and educate her as their first child and later gave birth to five girls: Mary Alice, Mettie Delores, Mildred Elaine, Aretha Louise, and Emma Margaret. Butler’s father was the principal of the Cross Roads Elementary School in Eastover, SC, and her mother taught the second grade. Rev. Dr. Butler was a farmer, a principal of the Crossroads Elementary School  in Eastover,  a mathematics teacher,  a pastor of three churches and a community leader.  From this great beginning, Butler went to C.A. Johnson High School (Columbia, SC), Hopkins High School (Hopkins, SC), Fisk University (Nashville, TN), Juilliard School of Music on scholarship (New York), University of California, Los Angeles, and Columbia University (New York) to complete a Master of Arts Degree in Music and Ethnomusicology.  In addition, she studied acting at the Herbert Berghof School, the Gene Frankel Theatre Workshop, the Renata Mannhardt Theatre Foundation, the Roger Simon Studio, and was privately coached by Alice Spivak in New York City.

Early in her life 1957, she was chosen to represent her state to the National Shriner’s Beauty Pageant in Philadelphia. Her parents had always noticed her very talented gifts and groomed them with piano lessons, dance lessons, speech competitions and by entering her in the 4- H Clubs. The 4H clubs taught Angeline the cooking and sewing arts and made her more aware of   nature and the outdoor though Summer camp.

Angeline Butler’s singing and acting talents have taken thru a very successful career in television, theatre, and on recordings. Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy After Dark, The Virginia Graham Show, and the ABC Dick Cavett hired Angeline with recurring performances.  She toured with “Johnny Carson In Concert” and worked with the late Great Duke Ellington and the Late Great Count Basie. Her credits are extensive in theatre and commercials, among them are Joseph Papp’s NY Public Theatre, Ireland’s Gaiety Theatre as Mary Magdalene in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the Cork Opera House and the Gaiety Theatre in “Playing Porter” and a two minute commercial for Ultra Sheen on the “And Beautiful” TV Specials with Della Reese and Jerry Butler (with the H.B. Barnum Orchestra).  She is too a recording artist and sold over 500,000 units on CoBurt –MGM Records “Angeline Butler/Impressions.”  The Producer Tom Wilson, on Columbia Records discovered Angeline when she was at Julliard School and singing on the Bell telephone Hour with the Buster Davies Singers. Tom Wilson produced Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfinkel.   He liked Angeline’s voice and added Bob Guillaume and Gilbert Price to form “The Pilgrims/Just Arrived.” On Columbia Records, they were seen as the Black Answer to Peter Paul and Mary.   The Pilgrims recorded and toured the college circuit and the Playboy Clubs.

Ms. Butler has received many awards and wide acclaim for her work in Civil Rights: May 12, 2025, “Angeline Butler Award for Leadership in Social Justice” (John Jay College for Criminal Justice as part of the Graduation Ceremony Awards. 2023 The Gandhi-King Season For Nonviolence Award, 2021 The Omni Award from the International Black Women’s Congress  (La Francis Rogers-Rose, Founder) 2018 John Jay College for Criminal Justice “Honored Angeline Butler at the Malcolm-King Scholarship Breakfast.” 2011 A Freedom Rider 50^th Anniversary Conference and Reunion Award in Jackson Mississippi;  2010  A Freedom Flame Award from the National Voting Rights Museum and the Selma Jubilee;  2009 John Jay Republican Student Association Award; The “Nashville Room”1 of the Davidson County Library “Oral History Project,” and the publication of her “ Music: A Scrapbook of Performer, Educator, and Civil Rights Activist Angeline Butler” on permanent exhibition in the Nashville Room; The City of Nashville presented an award to her as a Sit-In Organizer 1960; and in 1987 The Martin Luther King Jr. Museum at the Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles acknowledged Septima Poinsette Clark, Angeline Butler, Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Millicent Moore Hill for help in founding the museum.

Currently Ms. Butler is a contributor to the recently University of Illinois Press publication “Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC 1959-1969” (University of Illinois Press) and was featured in David Halberstam’s book “The Children” (1998) (Penguin Random House).  She is, also, featured in many television documentaries: Among them are the 1960 NBC “White Paper Series #2 “SIT-IN” Produced and Directed by Bob Young, “Eyes On the Prize” a PBS series produced by Judith Richardson, ‘The Sit-in: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show” >>https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/the-sit-in-harry-belafonte-hosts-the-tonight-show (Clip with Johnny Carson and Angeline Butler).  The Actors Fund of America RCAC Project researched and published online a four month study in 2022 “Angeline Butler: A Biography of the Woman, the Performing Artist, a Living Legend of the Sixties.” 

Butler was an original Coordinator and participant in the Nashville Sit-Ins, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) along with Marion Barry Jr., John Robert Lewis, James Bevel,  Maryann Morgan, Peggy Alexander, Curtiss Murphy, Bernard Lafayette, Diane Nash, Rev. Jim Lawson, Jr; a Coordinator of the 1961 Freedom Rides, a Coordinator of voter education and registration drives, a participant in the 1960 Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) “Miami Summer” with James Farmer, an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, and the Crisfield, Maryland Movement in December 1961.  Her total jail time from all these different events was about 40 days and nights with charges ranging from “Trespassing on Private Property,” “Loitering,” “Conspiracy to Obstruct Trade and Commerce,” to Florida’s “Ejection of Undesirable Guests” state statute.

Butler also was a patron of Septima Poinsette Clark, founder of Citizenship Schools, during the last six years of her life.  Clark spoke after each performance of Butler’s play, “Voices of a Sit-In,” which was performed at the Church in Ocean Park in Santa Monica, California during the spring of 1986 and 1987.  In 1987, The Los Angeles Times newspaper published a half-page feature article about Clark, “She wrote the book on Civil Rights:  Ready From Within,” as a result of her participation in Butler’s play; this brought Clark to national attention.  Butler also arranged for UCLA to co-sponsor Clark’s stay in Los Angeles.

She is currently on the faculty of John Jay College for Criminal Justice in New York. She previously taught as an instructor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California.  Butler also created and coordinated the Ellington Tree Project (1981), and as a director in theatre, she revived Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs.  She was, also, a company member at the Metropolitan Opera from 2003 to 2011 and previously worked at the Los Angeles Opera in 1996-97. Ms. Butler also recorded two albums, one in pop-rock music and one in folk music:  Angeline Butler/Impressions on CoBurt-MGM Records and The Pilgrims/ Just Arrived on Columbia Records (Producer Tom Wilson) with Robert Guilluame, Gilbert Price (and later Millard Williams).

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION SEE WEB PAGE:  www.myspace.com/angelinebutler.