Amos 'n' Andy

It was on this day in 1926 that a two-man black-face comedy series "Sam 'n' Henry" debuted on Chicago's WGN radio station. Two years later, after changing its name to "Amos 'n' Andy," the show became one of the most popular radio programs in American history. The show later became one of the first television series to depict black people as something other than maids and servants.

Though the creators and the stars of the radio show, Freeman Gosden and Charles Carrell, were both white, the characters they played were two black men from the Deep South who moved to Chicago to seek their fortunes. Black-face performances by whites were normal for the time. This was the result of the famous Jim Crow character popular around the Civil War that white actors performed in the "black-face" tradition. Gosden and Carrell, both vaudeville performers, were doing a Chicago comedy act in black-face when an employee at the Chicago Tribune suggested they create a radio show.

When "Sam 'n' Henry" debuted it became an immediate hit. In 1928, Gosden and Carrell took their act to a rival station, the Chicago Daily News' WMAQ. When they discovered WGN owned the rights to their characters' names, they simply changed them. As their new contract gave Gosden and Carrell the right to syndicate the program, the popularity of "Amos 'n' Andy" soon exploded. Over the next 22 years, the show would become the highest-rated comedy in radio history, attracting more than 40 million listeners.

By 1951, when "Amos 'n' Andy" came to television, changing attitudes about race and concerns about racism had virtually wiped out the practice of black-face  With Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams took over for Gosden and Carrell, the show was the first TV series to feature an all-black cast and the only one of its kind for the next 20 years. This did not stop African-American advocacy groups and eventually the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from criticizing both the radio and TV versions of "Amos 'n' Andy" for promoting racial stereotypes. These protests led to the TV show's cancellation in 1953.

The final radio broadcast of "Amos 'n' Andy" aired on November 25, 1960. Fast forward to the trash we see depicting African Americans in television shows today. Was Amos 'n' Andy really a negative upon society? Imagery is very important and in my opinion the show should be praised for showing a people long denied the spotlight represented as professionals in a time of separate but equal. The truth of the matter is that this show in large part contributed greatly to removing the horrible practice of “ black-face”.

Could it have been that the society at large did not want the African American to think they could live the American dream? And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

The Huge Shoulders Of Hal Jackson

It’s hard to imagine that not too long ago, and even today, there were and are still firsts with respect to the first Colored, Negro, Black, or African American to do this or that. The amazing radio personality Hal Jackson did it before it was believed possible.

He broke through the color wall on the radio in Washington in the 1930s, pushed the District’s major clothing retailers to let blacks into their dressing rooms and restrooms in the ’40s and became the first black host on a national broadcast network in the 50s – and I for one honor him.

Through most of the second half of the last century, many black New Yorkers grew up knowing Mr. Jackson as a radio DJ whose smiling face appeared on billboards across the city. Decades before that, Mr. Jackson was a household name in black Washington, which is what impressed me about him. Being from the area I remember the broadcasting giant and civil rights pioneer who repeatedly found ways to smash through barriers.

In the mid-1930s, he won free entry into Griffith Stadium as a volunteer to clear trash during Washington Senators games where no blacks were allowed to enter the press box. The Negro League’s Homestead Grays also played there where Mr. Jackson eventually was allowed to narrate some Gray’s games to the crowd in the ballpark. At the time, Negro League games were not broadcast on the radio in Washington.

He wrote a proposal to present “The Bronze Review,” a program of entertainment, interviews and news, but Mr. Jackson said nothing about having a black host. The station’s white executives had no idea that “bronze” was then the classy term for “negro” in Washington’s black community.

On his debut night, Mr. Jackson arrived at WINX with his first guest, Mary McLeod Bethune, President Franklin Roosevelt’s director of Negro affairs. They waited outside until 15 minutes before airtime to minimize the chance that station managers might bar them from the air. The show went on, devoted to a discussion about Washington’s blighted black neighborhoods. “The Bronze Review,” hosted guests such as first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, entertainer Lena Horne and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (D-N.Y.) becoming a nightly must-listen show for black Washington.

By the mid-1940s, Mr. Jackson was doing sports and his late-night talk show on WINX and spinning “race records,” as songs by black artists were then known, during morning drive time on WOOK in Silver Spring. He performed commercials in rhyme and urged listeners to join his Good Deed Club, collecting toys and books for charities.

In 1949, Mr. Jackson by then was the host of a television variety show broadcast from the Howard Theatre. He organized a picket on Connecticut Avenue, then the city’s most prestigious shopping boulevard, against retailers who sold to black customers but refused to let them use the dressing rooms or restrooms. The protest worked: Stores changed their policies.

In 1954, a New York station, WMCA, lured Mr. Jackson to Manhattan to create the city’s first integrated air staff. Mr. Jackson’s “All-American Revue” was designed to appeal to black and white listeners with music by Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Xavier Cugat.

Within a couple of years, Mr. Jackson was again on the air virtually around the clock at white- and black-owned stations. By the late 1950s, Mr. Jackson had added a children’s TV show that featured New York’s first integrated studio audience. It was round this time that Irving Rosenthal, the owner of Palisades Amusement Park, asked Mr. Jackson to host weekend concerts at the theme park and the DJ’s face was plastered on billboards around New York.

Mr. Jackson worked as a popular DJ up and down the east coast; Washington, New York, a midday show at WANN in Annapolis and an evening gig on Baltimore’s WSID as well as owning several radio stations. In 1995, Mr. Jackson was the first black elected to the Radio Hall of Fame. Every black or minority working on radio or in television owe this man a debut of gratitude. Or maybe I’ll say it this way – “They stand on the shoulders of this Giant”.

After paying homage, and much deserved, I will use Mr. Jackson’s nightly sign-off reflected his peripatetic life: “I’ve got to pack the shellac and hit the track, but I’ll be back.” And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

http://johntwills.com 

A Comedic Genius

If you were to look Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor up in the dictionary; it will say GENIUS! Known to most of us as “Richard” a comedic genius, the most profound and prolific American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC. Pryor was, if anyone ever was, ahead of his time and the greatest comedian to ever live. His genius derived from an uncompromising examination of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets.

The great comedian Bill Cosby reportedly once said, "Richard Pryor drew the line between comedy and tragedy as thin as one could possibly paint it." His body of work includes a list far too numerous to mention in this writing that included concert, movies, and recordings. He collaborated on many projects with actor Gene Wilder and frequently collaborated with actor/comedian/writer Paul Mooney.

Mr. Pryor won an Emmy Award in (1973) and five Grammy Awards (1974, 1975, 1976, 1981, and 1982). In 1974, he also won two American Academy of Humor awards and the Writers Guild of America Award. The first ever Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was presented to him in 1998. Pryor is listed at Number 1 on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians.

Mr. Pryor had what he called in his autobiography Pryor Convictions an "epiphany" when he walked onto the stage at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas when he looked at the sold-out crowd, exclaimed over the microphone "What the f@#k am I doing here!?", and walked off the stage. Afterward, Pryor began working profanity into his act, including the use of the “N-word”.

In the 1970s, Pryor wrote for such television shows as Sanford and Son, The Flip Wilson Show, and the Lily Tomlin special, for which he shared an Emmy Award. During this period, Pryor tried to break into mainstream television. He was a guest host on the first season of Saturday Night Live. He had his own show – The Richard Pryor Show which premiered on NBC in 1977, but was canceled after only four episodes. Television audiences did not respond to the show's controversial subject matter, and Pryor was unwilling to alter his material for network censors.

In 1979, at the height of his success, Pryor visited Africa. Upon returning to the United States, Pryor swore he would never use the word "nigger" in his stand-up comedy routine again. However, his favorite epithet, "mother@#ker", remains a term of endearment on his official website.

Despite a reputation for constantly using profanity on and off camera, Pryor briefly hosted a children's show in 1984 called Pryor’s Place. Like Sesame Street, "Pryor's Place" featured a cast of puppets, hanging out and having fun in a surprisingly friendly inner-city environment along with several children and characters portrayed by Pryor himself. However, "Pryor's Place" frequently dealt with more sobering issues than "Sesame Street". Pryor co-hosted the Academy Awards twice, and was nominated for an Emmy for a guest role on the television series, Chicago Hope.

In 1989, he appeared in Harlem Nights, a comedy-drama crime film starring Eddie Murphy. It was a financial success, grossing three times the amount it cost to make it (worldwide) and is well known for starring three generations of black comedians - Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Redd Foxx. In 1990, Pryor suffered a second and more severe heart attack and underwent triple heart bypass surgery.

By the early 1990s, he was confined to using a wheelchair as well as a motor powered scooter for the remainder of his life to get around when his multiple sclerosis began to take its toll on his body. On December 10, 2005, nine days after his birthday, Richard Pryor left us for the great beyond and on that day his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was covered with flowers, beer bottles, fan letters etc. Just the way Rich would have wanted it.

I will tell you that on that day in December the world lost a treasure and I lost a hero – a man that only comes this way once in a lifetime. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

http://johntwills.com