Ira Jeffries
African-American author, playwright, and journalist (1932–2010)
Ira L. Jeffries (20 March 1932–16 July 2010) was an American playwright, journalist, and actress. In 1985, she won the Audelco Theatre Award for excellence in playwriting. She received a Bachelor of Arts in communications at City College of New York in 1987. In 1992, she founded the Kaleidoscope Theater Company for issues relevant to the LGBT community. She produced plays at the company in association with WOW Café. She wrote 21 one-act and full-length plays. She both acted in The Watermelon Woman, a 1996 black lesbian romcom, and assisted in the production. She wrote for publications such as B & G Magazine, The New Harlem Magazine, New York Amsterdam News, Womanews and Sappho's Isle. Some of her papers are housed at the New York Public Library, and others in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture's In the Life Archive.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ira Jeffries” as african-American author, playwright, and journalist (1932–2010). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as african-American author, playwright, and journalist (1932–2010). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q125417595. VIAF identifies the subject as 61455633. The Library of Congress control number is nr98001355. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 2010, 1985 and 1987.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ira Jeffries”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ira Jeffries primary sources, Ira Jeffries archive and Jeffries research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Ira Jeffries” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.