Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, the first full length American feature film. The crisis of Southern white masculinity during Reconstruction (1865-1877) was at the center of D.W. Black men were portrayed as chicken and watermelon thieves in early film shorts following Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The development of cinema would add a new dimension to the stereotyping of the African-American community. Minstrel shows were the earliest form of American humor and set the stage for depictions of blackness in popular culture. Black performers like Bert Williams also blackened up for minstrel shows. All of this amounted to a less than flattering attempt to duplicate blackness through grotesque forms of cultural appropriation and racial cross dressing. These actors used burnt cork to darken their faces, dressed in tattered clothing, spoke in broken English, and performed Negro spirituals and jigs. White performers, Dan Emmett and Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, introduced minstrelsy to American popular culture in the 19th century. Why did civil rights leaders believe that this series was harmful to African-Americans? Was this boycott a necessary endeavor during the Civil Rights Movement? Did this series become a scapegoat for a segment of the black middle class and elite more concerned with defining all pop cultural images of the African-American community by their imposed standards of respectability and blackness than the show’s actual impact on the black masses? The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network cancelled Amos ‘n’ Andy after a national boycott led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As it turned out Amos ‘n’ Andy was the most controversial series in television history. Years later I learned that not everyone viewed one of my favorite childhood shows with the same enthusiasm. I just knew that this was one of the funniest shows that my young eyes had ever seen. I never asked my dad why the show was not on television. We had to rent videocassettes from Erol’s, a now defunct video rental store, to watch the episodes. Unlike the other “classic” shows, Amos ‘n’ Andy reruns did not come on television. One summer he introduced me to a series called Amos ‘n’ Andy. Stay tuned for the next post on April 8th: The New Kernersville Library.During childhood my favorite television shows were cartoons, The Cosby Show, and the black-and-white classic series I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, and The Three Stooges, which I watched with my dad. Photograph courtesy of the Forsyth County Public Library Photograph Collection. He was very active in little theatre work, both directing and producing plays in Los Angeles. Alvin Childress (1907-1986) was a successful stage and screen actor. Spencer Williams (1893-1969) had an impressive list of screen and director credits during his career. Pressure from the NAACP also resulted in the removal of the syndicated reruns of the program in 1966. Pressure from the NAACP, which began when the series aired in 1951, was a primary factor in the cancellation of the television series. And, thirteen more episodes were produced, focusing on Kingfish and intended to be used for “The Adventures of Kingfish,” a program that never came to fruition. Thirteen additional episodes were produced for the 1953-1954 season, but they were released with the syndicated reruns instead. In addition to Amos and Andy, other characters were George “Kingfish” Stevens, Sapphire Stevens, Ramona Smith (Sapphire’s Mama), Algonquin J. The television series, “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” was produced from June 1951 to April 1953, with 52 filmed episodes. Correll voiced the main character, “Andy Brown,” and some lesser characters. Gosden voiced the characters “Amos,” “George ‘Kingfish’ Stevens,” “Lightnin’,” “Brother Crawford,” and some dozen other characters. “Amos ‘n’ Andy” began as a radio broadcast which was written and performed by Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden in 1928. Their next stops on the tour were Statesville and Gastonia. They carry out their famous roles with talk and action. The men were on an eight-week tour of the nation’s theatres, along with Ray “Tex” Holland, billed as the “first Negro hillbilly.” When they perform on the stage, they use no props. They were staying at the home of Reverend William Franklin Stokes Jr. Better known as the television characters, Andrew (Andy) Brown and Amos Jones, in the successful television program, “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the men came to Winston-Salem to perform at the Center Theatre. Spencer Williams and Alvin Childress came to Winston-Salem in September 1958.
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