Jerico-Jim Crow

{{Short description|1964 musical by Langston Hughes and William Hairston}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2025}}

{{Infobox Musical

|name= Jerico-Jim Crow

|subtitle=

|image= Jerico-Jim Crow cast album.jpg

|caption= Original Off-Broadway Cast Album

|music= Various

|lyrics= Various

|book= William Hairston
Langston Hughes

|basis=

|productions= 1964 Off-Broadway

|awards=

}}

Jerico-Jim Crow is a 1964 musical, with a book written by Langston Hughes and William Hairston. It was a pioneering work in the urban contemporary gospel musical style, based on the themes of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. According to Hughes scholar and biographer Arnold Rampersad, Hughes "virtually pioneered" the black gospel musical, first with Black Nativity (1961) and then with Jericho-Jim Crow.[http://www.nyfos.org/?body=notes&program=1995langston New York Festival of Song.]

Jerico-Jim Crow premiered on Sunday, January 5, 1964, at the Sanctuary Theatre, New York City. It was co-directed by Alvin Ailey and William Hairston and conducted by Hugh Porter, with Marion Joseph Franklin, Jr as associate musical director and musical accompanist, the musical was favorably reviewed in The New York Times by Richard F. Shepard, who said: "This rousing production is an unabashedly sentimental and tuneful history of the Negro struggle up from slavery."[https://www.nytimes.com/books/01/04/22/specials/hughes-jericho.html "Theater: A Rousing 'Jericho-Jim Crow'"], The New York Times, January 13, 1964.

A cast recording was released in 1964 by Folkways Records.Porter, Hugh. "[https://folkways.si.edu/hugh-porter/langston-hughes-jericho-jim-crow/african-american-spoken-drama-poetry/album/smithsonian Langston Hughes' Jericho-Jim Crow]"