A black actress was murdered onstage by a playwright in 1970s Detroit.

Evidence

Black woman poet Audre Lorde refers to this murder in a short essay, “The Great American Disease” in which she comments on black male woman-hating. She recalls the case of Pat Cowan: She was a young black actress in Detroit, 22 years old and a mother. She answered an ad last spring for a black actress to audition in a play called “Hammer.” As she acted out an argument scene, watched by the playwright’s brother and her son, the black male playwright picked up a sledgehammer and bludgeoned her to death from behind. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 315