Ellis B. Haizlip; TV, Stage Producer Aided Black Performers

Ellis B. Haizlip, 61, a stage and television producer and mentor of black performing artists. Haizlip was an executive producer at public television station WNET in New York from 1967 to 1981. Starting in 1986, he was director of special programs at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. He helped further the careers of such black artists as singers Roberta Flack, Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson and actress Anna Horsford. He was executive producer and host of “Soul,” an Emmy Award-winning public TV series featuring young black artists, which was broadcast from 1967 to 1973. Haizlip moved to New York after graduation from Howard University in 1954 and began producing plays at the Harlem YMCA with Vinette Carroll. He later produced world tours of works by Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Eugene O’Neill and dancer Donald McKayle. In the early 1970s, Haizlip and the Lincoln Center produced “Soul at the Center,” a 12-day festival of black performing arts. He also helped produce the annual Congressional Black Caucus dinner, a public TV special on the Alvin Ailey dance company and “Harlem Welcomes Bishop Desmond Tutu” in collaboration with the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York. In Washington on Jan. 18 of lung cancer.