Fred Hudson, 74; Teacher, Guru to Blacks at Creative Arts Center

Fred Hudson, 74, a mentor to black actors and playwrights as the president and director of the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, died Feb. 13 of heart failure at his home in New York City.

Brought up in Miami, Hudson attended Florida A&M; and Howard universities, served in the Air Force during the Korean War, and graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in music and dramatic literature. He stayed on in Berkeley for a time, supporting himself by working at its physics library while he wrote script after script.

In 1965, the Watts riots in Los Angeles prodded novelist Budd Schulberg to organize the Watts Writers Workshop to encourage black writers. Schulberg hired Hudson to run a San Francisco branch of the organization.

In 1971, the two men moved to New York City and established the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center.

Hudson once explained the reason behind the center, where he taught writing for more than 30 years: “We started ... because there were no black writers on the team that wrote the ‘Roots’ television series, and they said that was because there were no black writers. We said we would develop some black talent so that nobody would ever be able to tell that lie again.”

During his tenure, Hudson nurtured more than 100 published writers, and expanded the curriculum to include acting, directing, video, film and journalism. Among the center’s alumni are actors Danny Glover and Samuel L. Jackson.

As a writer, Hudson reached his peak success as a young man, penning “The Legend of Deadwood Dick” and other produced plays. He was probably best known for his screenplay for the 1974 film “The Education of Sonny Carson,” adapted from the autobiography of the black New York City activist.