Alice Childress was born Alice Herndon in 1916 in South Carolina but raised, from the age of 5, in Harlem during the cultural agitation of the Harlem Renaissance. An artistic, intellectual and social eruption that took place in Harlem, New York. The movement glorified African-American (AA) culture and was considered the rebirth of AA arts. The play String was produced in 1969. During the sixties, significant numbers of African Americans and whites were staging nonviolent sit-ins, as an attempt to achieve the civil right's to the Black community. The high point of the early phase of the civil rights movement was the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964, President Johnson signed the far-reaching Civil Rights Act. By 1968, nonviolent resistance had given access to the more militant black power movement.