"Ashton Springer, who parlayed a professional life

as an owner of a laundry into a career as the first high-profile black producer on Broadway, drawing theatergoers black and white to shows like “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” “Eubie!” and Athol Fugard’s, “A Lesson From Aloes,”. Mr. Springer was considered the first black producer to wield real power on the Great White Way. He is credited not only with helping to bring theater by and about African-Americans to wider public consciousness, but also with helping to bring late-20th-century African-American audiences to Broadway.