Black theater trailblazer Woodie King, Jr., who helped launch the careers of Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Debbie Allen and Chadwick Boseman as the founder of New York City’s New Federal Theatre, died at the age of 88.

Company spokesperson Jonathan Slaff confirmed the award-winning producer, director and sometimes actor died Thursday at Weill Cornell Medical Center of complications from emergency heart surgery. He is survived by three children and five grandchildren.

Throughout the production of hundreds of stage plays since 1970, the New Federal Theatre became known as an incubator for Black talent including playwrights Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, Ed Bullins and actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Leslie Uggams, Phylicia Rashad, S. Epatha Merkerson and Issa Rae.

The Detroit-raised Alabama native had a bold mission to integrate people of color and women into mainstream American theater when he started his company on the Lower East Side after earning degrees from Lehman College and Brooklyn College and serving as a cultural director for Mobilization for Youth in the 1960s.

“Many white-controlled theatres produce only European plays that are directed to their own need to glorify the past,” King told Playbill in 2014.”African Americans are not integral to their past in any kind of positive way. That leaves me with a large canvas of untold stories.”

In the mid-1970s, New Federal provided a platform for emerging artists and groundbreaking theater works through training workshops in playwriting and drama for adults and teens.

Shange’s play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf” was developed at New Federal Theatre before being produced at The Public Theater and later on Broadway.

The work was adapted into a star-studded 2009 Tyler Perry film starring Whoopi Goldberg, Kerry Washington, Anika Noni Rose, Loretta Devine and Janet Jackson.

King, himself also dabbled in acting — counting Broadway’s “The Great White Hope,” the Sidney Lumet film “Serpico” and Dick Wolfe’s “Law & Order” series among credits.

Filmmaker Juney Smith directed the documentary “King of Stage: The Woody King, Jr. Story,” which premiered at the National Black Theater Film Festival in Winston Salem, North Carolina in 2019.

“My proudest moments were the times when traditional theatre producers denied me access and we prevailed,” he told Playbill, adding that “every play that I produced by Amiri Baraka was a learning experience on black art …I just love black theatre.”

In 2021, King was a recipient of the Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre award, which recognized his outstanding contribution to the Broadway industry.

Irene Gandy, the groundbreaking Broadway press agent and legit theater producer, joined King as one of the honorees.

“When he and I got the special Tony at the same time, I said during my award speech, that none of us would be here — I’m not just talking about actors, I’m talking about set designers, I’m talking about choreographers. I’m talking about costume designers, all of us — if it wasn’t for Woody King to provide the productions, the quality productions,” she told The Daily News on Monday.

“So it’s a great loss, but it’s a great legacy,” Gandy added.

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