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This is a picture of the American dream.

This is a picture of what
the dream once was.

This is a picture of what
the dream has become.

At the center of prime-time television

has been the selling of the dream.

And at the heart of the dream,
the mythic American family.

Once an outsider,
the African American is now

part of this family,

part of the myth.

Through television, if nowhere else,

we are now watched and welcome
in the majority of American homes.

But what was the key to the households
of prime-time America,

the key to our inclusion

in the myth of the American dream?

As Blacks returned
from a war that they fought

to give other peoples freedoms

that were not allowed to them
in their own country,

Blacks became more determined to...

get some of what I gave my life for.

I think the mood
in Black America after World War II

was cautious optimism.

The military had just been integrated,

you know, as a result of that war,

and allowed Black soldiers in.

On the other hand, I think there was still
this caution about racial hostility.

There was a great deal
of anticipation on the part,

not only of the soldiers
returning from World War II,

but as well on the women and men

who worked in the defense industry
during the war.

They had had opportunities

that had been unavailable to them
prior to the war

because of the demand for their labor.

So that you had
a highly trained ex-military class...

and then you had people
who were formerly domestics, often,

who had experienced industrial life,

so that they were poised for life
fully in the 20th century,

a life that had been experienced
by other Americans

but which, of course,
had been denied to Black people.

Our optimism after the war

coincided with the celebration
of a new, infant technology in America.

After ten years of experiments,

the public at last gets
a preview of television.

Race relations and television
formed a critical link.

And so a new industry

steps out of the laboratory
into the limelight,

as television makes its bow
to the American public.

Where it will go from here
is any man's guess.

The white man, the Negro, the Oriental,

the Protestant, the Catholic, the Jew,

they've all shared the spotlight
on this stage.

Well, Danny, if I may inject,

that's the way show business operates.

Danny, there's no room for prejudice
in our profession.

We entertainers...

Television in the early days
was a medium trying to find itself.

It was a medium that was perched
to really make a difference,

but the kind of difference that it
could make was really to be proven.

The format of radio at that time
was you had,

you know, the evening programs,
dramatic shows,

westerns, comedies.

So television was a natural extension.

They just took those ideas and
brought them to pictures instead of sound.

And to that extent, then, I think
Black folks' representations in television

were very much inherited from radio.

And, of course, that gets us into

the old Amos 'n Andy sorts
of situation comedies.

You know, of course,
that there's a shortage of women.

I'll say. The one I took out
last night only come up to my belt buckle!

And, of course, in radio,
it was two white characters

who came up with the idea
and who impersonated Blacks.

Who's scared? Me?

Ha ha ha!

And by the time
it came over to television,

of course, they had to assemble
an entire Black cast.

If you don't give me my money back,

I'm gonna punch you in each eye!

Then I'm going to punch you in the mouth.

Then I'm going to take a stick
and crack your head!

In other words, I'm gonna open
everything that's closed,

and close everything that's open!

Take it easy, Andy!

Well, to say that
The Amos 'n Andy Show

was popular in its day
is a shocking understatement.

It was enormously, indescribably popular,

and also, indescribably primitive

in its use of stereotypes and clichés.

It's about time you met some decent people

instead of that horrible, uncouth group
you associate with.

Well, I done met all
the accomplished people I wanna know.

Like Andrew Brown, for instance.

Yeah, like Andrew Brown.

Well, what, may I ask,
has he ever accomplished?

Well, he, uh...

Just yesterday, he had a run
of 13 balls in the side pocket

without once leaning on the pool table.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Andrew hanging over a pool table.

You'd never find him in a public library.

No, they ain't got no pool tables
in there.

A composite of all the clichés

about lazy Black men
and about opportunistic Black men.

In those days, it was taken for granted
that the portrayal of characters,

as they chose to portray them,
was audience-pleasing.

And we're in the business
of pleasing audiences, so we did it.

At home, it was very important

that we not watch Amos 'n Andy.

It was very important to my mother
that I should not see

something that was so racist.

Why, you ain't got sense enough
to come in out of the rain!

I is too. I's done it lots of times.

It was years later
that I realized

that Amos 'n Andy are brilliant.

They were really funny.

Andy!

Now, ya see, Andy, first,

the atom splits
into what they call the monocle.

And then the monocle busts and breaks down

into what they call neutrons, "po-trons,"
Fig Newtons and morons.

The struggle
to end Jim Crow segregation

and the portrayal of Blacks
as second-class citizens

inevitably took television to task.

Hi, partner! Here, Andy. Hold this.

When we think of this group of people

whose historical experience
had been transformed by the war,

poised for full integration
into the American society,

and then we think about
what they were greeted with

as television made its debut,

they were greeted with
images of a fully autonomous,

segregated, separate Black community,

which was the community
in which Amos 'n Andy thrived.

Quiet, please!

The first prime time
television show to feature a Black cast,

Amos 'n Andy played on a familiar theme.

Blacks might aspire
to the American dream of success,

but we were continually,
comically ill-equipped to achieve it.

Why couldn't I have been a doctor
like you two guys?

Because there ain't
no uniforms that fit you.

Just shut your big mouth and come on!

Even before its premiere,
the show was sued by the NAACP

to block its broadcast.

The suit charged, "Every character
is either a clown or a crook.

Millions of white Americans see
this Amos 'n Andy picture

and think the entire race is the same."

Oh, no, no, Andy, I don't think you —

So that the interests
of the Black community

and the images fed
to that Black community,

and to the larger American society
in the early 1950s,

were diametrically opposed to each other.

Two seasons after its debut,

Amos 'n Andy was canceled.

The nation was heading toward a new era.

Yet television for the most part,
throughout the '50s, failed to adjust.

In the cultural landscape
of prime-time America,

Negroes remained in their place.

Biaku, Wanaba.

Jambo, jambo, bwana.

Hold it, Mr. Erwin.
Something's gone wrong!

Watch it! Watch it, Willie!

Oh!

Whoa!

- Whoa!
- Oh, Willie!

I don't think that
the sponsor or the network,

and certainly not the writers,

ever considered
the questions of race relations,

of stereotyping, et cetera.

That was the farthest from our minds.

Uh, again, what we were trying to do

was to present
an amusing set of characters

in as amusing a background
as we possibly could,

doing amusing things

to entice that audience
to come back next week.

The Beulah Show,

brought to you by new milder Dreft,
for dishes and fine washables,

and deep-cleaning Oxydol
for the family wash.

Starring Louise Beavers as —

Beulah.

If marriages are made in heaven,

my guardian angel
has sure been loafing on the job.

I think Beulah was popular
because she almost idealized

what every person
would love to have in a housekeeper.

They thought, "God, if we could get
a Beulah to run our house,

this house would be much better off
than it was."

The Hendersons' residence.

This is Mrs. Harrington...

But in this idealized dream
of the American family,

what of Beulah herself?

Would she be better off?

Gosh, Beulah, I'm gonna have to dance

in front of Mom and Dad and everyone.

That's easy. What's bothering you?

I just can't dance!

Well, that's easy to fix. I'll teach you.

Jeepers, Beulah, can you dance?

Can I dance?

Donnie, when the beat's right,
I just take off!

You make her so happy in it...

and you made her
so unaware of her own children

and so aware of somebody else's children.

That is a Hollywood maid.

I knew a lot of people
who worked as domestics...

and I know people who had
to educate their children

from their earnings as a domestic,

and they did it because
they didn't want their children

to go through what they
were going through.

Noble.

That's nobility.

The nobility
of our historic dream of freedom

and the dream of race relations
in early television

continued to clash.

But most of '50s television
retreated from the conflict.

My partner's Frank Smith.

The boss is Captain Norman.
My name's Friday.

♪ I married Joan ♪

♪ What a girl, what a world ♪

♪ What a light ♪

♪ Oh, I married Joan ♪

There was something
always good and wholesome

about white culture.

It was so powerful, you kind of believed

that there was this life that whites led

that was very kind of wholesome
and almost trouble free,

or that's where the beauty was
and the good things and the pleasure.

Mama, Mom! Look, Mom, no cavities!

Sis and Ted are off to school.

Dad heads for his office, as a rule.

♪ So keep on the Sunbeam
Go out and get Sunbeam ♪

♪ Batter Whipped Sunbeam Bread ♪

Through the '50s,

nightly television viewing
became a family ritual.

And the family, not surprisingly,
became the centerpiece

in this 7:00-to-10:00 p.m.
prime-time programming.

George and Martha Washington!

An explosion of new baby boom families

found, in television,
neatly packaged images

of what the ideal
American family should be,

what the dream household should have.

And a freezing system all its own.

We were rarely part
of this mythic picture.

Through the late '40s and '50s
on television,

it's as though Black people didn't exist.

You know, night after night,
there were programs,

and occasionally
we'd have a superstar as a guest.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Miss Diahann Carroll.

♪ When a bee lies sleeping ♪

♪ In the palm of your hand ♪

♪ You're bewitched... ♪

Somebody would yell
or we would know through the grapevine

that some Black person was going to be on
television that night, and we watched it.

The rest of it we didn't watch.

There was nothing that related to us
or we could relate to,

so we didn't watch it.

I can remember my mother
and my aunts and my neighbors,

if they heard that a Black person
was going to be on television,

or if they saw one come on the screen,

they would dash to the phone
and start calling each other,

so that the neighbors
and the aunts wouldn't miss it.

My mother wouldn't call
long distance on the phone

if there was a death in the family,

but she would call my sister far away
to tell her that she'd heard

that Cicely Tyson was going to be
on a program, for example,

because it was such
a source of pride for them,

for that generation,
for my mother's generation,

somebody who'd grown up
in the '30s and '40s.

There was such a void
in the magazines and on the radio,

so rare to see African American people
depicted anywhere,

that it was a treat for them.

♪ In the evenings
May I come and sing to you ♪

♪ All the songs that I would like
To bring to you? ♪

Ladies and gentlemen,
The Nat King Cole Show,

with tonight's special guest
Frankie Laine.

And now here is
the incomparable Nat King Cole!

He was a smooth, classy guy
and he loved ballads and love songs.

What a velvet voice he had.

Um, it was wonderful to see,
in prime-time television,

The Nat King Cole Show.

♪ When I fall in love ♪

♪ It will be forever ♪

♪ Or I'll never fall ♪

♪ In love ♪

I love Nat King Cole.
I loved his music.

I loved his voice as a kid growing up...

and coming of age, as it were, you know.

He was a very romantic sound

in my adolescence.

♪ And too many moonlight kisses ♪

♪ Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun ♪

I loved the way he sang,
I loved his ease, I loved his grace.

Um, uh, he was a wonderful —

a wonderful musician,
wonderful piano player.

Um, he looked great.

Had a wonderful smile.

I loved Nat King Cole.

♪ Give my heart ♪

♪ And the moment ♪

♪ I can feel that... ♪

I was very proud to see
that elegant man on television.

I didn't realize how proud
I was going to be.

I didn't realize that
I had no images, really,

that had that kind of sophistication.

♪ With you ♪

King Cole was
a major breakthrough in the sense that

Black people were
in charge of representing

the culture and music
and talk and so forth,

um, in a way that wasn't
so much rooted in humor.

It wasn't so much rooted in comedy.

Well, the composer of that song,

who was so widely unknown
14 years ago, is our guest tonight.

And here he is,
my good friend Frankie Laine!

Nat King Cole, I think,
appealed to a broad spectrum of people

because he didn't seem threatening.

He didn't, um...

He didn't seem forceful

or belligerent or anything
that would make, say,

white people uncomfortable.

I think that many...

um, of the minorities involved

in this profession during that period

are guilty of something

that, um, we had to do for survival,

and that's called adjustments.

We had to make adjustments
in our mind constantly

in order to stay away
from the area of anger

and, uh, "What's wrong with me?"

As a man who wrote, produced
and directed this television show,

the feedback I would get occasionally

was that he had wide acceptance
in the white area

because he was a gentleman.

I'd hear that a lot.

They said he was the kind of guy
that you could welcome into your home.

He was just a gentleman.

If any one Black performer of the time

held the key to prime time's
family of entertainers,

the key to inclusion
within the American dream,

it was Cole, the model of assimilation.

♪ I ♪

♪ Got a home in that rock... ♪

But was this enough
to pay the price of the ticket?

Would prime-time America
open the door and welcome him in?

Two, four, six, eight,
we don't want to integrate!

Two, four, six, eight,
we don't want to integrate!

Why don't you
tell the niggers to go home?

In 1957, the same time
Nat King Cole was on television,

Black children in Little Rock, Arkansas
are trying to go to school

and meeting with
a great deal of resistance

on the part of
the white political structure

that is supposed to enforce their rights.

Don't stop! Just keep coming!
Don't allow them to teach the niggers!

King Cole was very threatening.

"How dare you bring
a Black man into our homes

and into our communities
with white guests, no less,

with white women, no less,
with white men, no less."

"They're trying to go to our schools.

Now look. They have a television show?"

So it became impossible

for the producers
of The Nat King Cole Show

to find a sponsor
willing to underwrite that program.

They did not want to alienate
their Southern constituency.

- You're beautiful.
- You too!

I had fun!

The reality of race relations
had reframed television,

making an otherwise
acceptable image taboo.

Unable to find a national sponsor,

The Nat King Cole Show
ended after one season.

I think it was Sam Goldwyn who once said,

when he was criticized about some of the —

why he didn't do shows
of a more sociological import, he said...

"If I want to send a message,
I'll call Western Union."

Uh, the networks, the sponsors,

they just want to get
good ratings, high ratings.

High ratings — good for NBC
and it sells product.

'Cause ultimately, let's face it,
television is a commercial industry.

The society moves like this

and television moves
a little behind it all the time.

It's never gonna lead it.
It's always gonna follow it.

Because it's a sponsored, uh, medium.

Just out and just wonderful,

the 1957 Chevrolet.

The theory is
when a sponsor advertised a show,

it's to sell the product, period.

He doesn't care what —
You can put a test pattern on.

If a lot of people will watch it,
he'll put his commercials in it.

So that if somebody feels,

by putting a commercial
on a television program

that has some controversy to it —

this is early on in television —
it may affect their product.

They didn't buy anything with controversy.

Broadcasting cannot continue
to live by the numbers.

Ratings ought to be the slave
of the broadcaster, not his master.

You must provide a wider range of choices,
more diversity, more alternatives.

It is not enough
to cater to the nation's whims.

You must also serve the nation's needs.

The networks were predictably slow

to take up this challenge
in television entertainment,

but in the prime time arena
of public affairs,

the civil rights movement
provided a golden opportunity.

♪ Wade in the water ♪

♪ Wade in the water, children ♪

♪ Wade in the water ♪

Precisely in this period,

the images of Black people
dominated the news,

and they were images of,

on the one hand, Black men and women
being tortured and beaten and abused

and whose rights
were being systematically violated.

On the other hand,
there was a certain nobility of spirit,

and no one knew
what to do with Black people

in terms of representing them
in a TV series.

So this afternoon, I have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted
in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day...

There was so much possible.

And there was, at the same time,
so much fear and so much violence.

And out of this pressure
that was brought to bear

by the civil rights movement on
the structures of the South particularly,

um, there was the potential for a new day,

and everybody knew it
because it was on television.

♪ Let my people go ♪

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪

♪ Over the hills and everywhere ♪

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪

♪ To let my people go ♪

♪ Who's that yonder dressed in white ♪

♪ Let my people go ♪

♪ Just like the children
Of the Israelites ♪

♪ Oh, let my people go ♪

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪

♪ Over the hills and everywhere ♪

♪ Go tell it on the mountain ♪

♪ To let my people go ♪

That was a turning point,
an important turning point

to mobilize and get
the sympathies of whites

who started to see the brutality,

who started to actually see
the deep resistance

to essentially Black enfranchisement
into the society.

And I think the spillover that it had was

to at least raise the question of absence

of Black representations on television,

or at least raise the question of
to what extent did television

have some responsibility
to try to participate

in this opening up of the society.

Chuck?

Chuck, we've got some new neighbors.

One of the most provocative
series of the early '60s

was East Side/West Side.

Stories were set
in a variety of communities,

each dramatizing not America's dream,

but her nightmare realities.

I told you, there's no jobs!

You hear something?

It's just the baby
crying herself to sleep.

Ruth!

Taxi, stop!

Hey, you! Hey, hey, cab!

Hey, stop, will ya?
Come on, stop, man! Hey!

Hey, cab! Man, will you stop over here?

There were no
neat resolutions in the show,

no happy endings, no sentimental songs
or canned laughter.

What do you mean?

In one episode, the show even challenged

the unspoken assumptions
behind American integration.

Oh, come on, now,
he's a perfectly nice old man, but —

But you wanted a white Negro
and you got a Black one.

The Negroes have a right
to move in under the Constitution.

The only thing is, what kind of a Negro?

I'm telling you,
he isn't the type for this community.

What if he were white? Come on.

A rough, uneducated, decent sort of a guy
who made it the hard way.

A guy who could
never be your particular friend.

Is that any reason
for keeping him out of here?

We have a different yardstick
for measuring a Negro, don't we?

If he went to Harvard...

if he plays golf...

if he looks like a Boston gentleman
and talks like a Philadelphia lawyer,

why, fine, let him be brown.

Only not too brown.

Yeah, your husband believes in equality...

but —

Mr. Adams is the "but."

Neil, I —

No, no.

I'll see you around.

Boldly bucking
prime-time convention,

the show repeatedly undercut
the myth of American progress.

East Side/West Side
was canceled after one season.

Still, prime time was faced with adjusting
to the continuing civil rights struggle.

Could TV entertainment
address Black life in America,

yet still sell success, the good life,

the American dream?

The look of success,
the feel of success,

the power of success.

A luncheon I attended
in which Mr. Roy Wilkins spoke,

and he spoke to a large group

of Hollywood writers

and producers and directors

and made a pitch

for gentler treatment
and more aware treatment

of Blacks in all media.

The end was always to be the inclusion
of the Negro American

without racial discrimination...

And he really
shook up that audience.

...equal in all phases
of American citizenship.

And I left there saying,
"There must be something I can do."

I thought that I really owed
to my Black colleagues

some sort of an apology
for a lot of the things

that we had done on Amos 'n Andy.

Too bad you didn't get back earlier.
You really missed it!

- Missed what?
- Dr. Chegley has finally...

Hal Kanter created
an environment that was new.

So he created this young lady
who was a nurse,

who had a family and an education...

and she lived
in an integrated environment.

- Well, how'd it go?
- It didn't.

I tried, Marie. But with Brenda,
you have to turn her off first.

However, if there's anything you'd like
to know about flamenco...

...just ask.

She didn't present a picture
of being either overly grateful

or overly subservient.

She felt she belonged there.

We'll just have to figure out
some way for me to tell her.

It felt like a step above

the, uh, grinnin' domestic...

who had to be very stout,

very dark,

preferably with large eyes

and a wide grin.

And I guess we were...

tired of being so inundated
with that imagery

that we accepted Julia...

as a breath of fresh air.

I think that we were
very one-dimensional in many areas.

She was —
Listen, she was the perfect mother.

- Did you brush your teeth?
- Yes, ma'am.

Good. Brushing your teeth
wakes up your mouth.

- And now you can eat breakfast.
- Mama, why are...

What we had to do, I think, was to...

find a kind of acceptable area

that broke down some barriers

and then we were able
to move on from there.

- Hi!
- Hi.

"Man who hath no music in himself..."

"...is fit for treasons,
stratagems, and spoils."

Greetings.

That's your assignment.

That man.

We all watched I Spy.
I was 15 at the time.

I couldn't wait to watch it.
He was my hero.

He was a Rhodes scholar.
He was so articulate.

I mean, so much more articulate

than his sidekick, Robert Culp.

Race was not a factor. These were two men.

There was male bonding occurring there,

loyalty, friendship, love between the two.

And it had nothing to do with whether
one was Black or the other was white.

Listen, we've been through a lot together.

- Haven't we?
- I guess.

I pulled you out of a lot
of close shaves, haven't I?

Yeah.

Well, I know you'd do the same thing
for me if I needed it, wouldn't ya?

I would hold white hot steel
in my hand to save you.

Are you kidding?

Cosby's acceptance
was immediate and overwhelming,

and this encouraged the medium,
the television medium, to say,

"Hey, look what we discovered.

Black people are not only acceptable,
but they're good box office.

People like to watch 'em."

Look, Kelly, you did what you could.

- You phoned it into the police.
- Yeah.

There's nothing else you could do.
Nothing.

Alexander Scott, from I Spy,
and Julia were designed

to overcome the received images
of Black people

from all forms of media,

whether it was minstrelsy and vaudeville,

or whether it was television's
own early history itself.

Hey! Whoo!

Hey! Stop it!

- Who's taking me today, you or Hannah?
- Me!

These were fully assimilable
Black people.

These were people who could
move into your neighborhood

and not disturb you at all.

- Thank you, Mrs. Waggedorn.
- Sure.

I'll come back and get Corey...

- That's your mother?
- Yeah.

- You're what?
- Black.

Your mother's colored.

Of course. I'm colored too.

You are?

- Yeah!
- Oh, boy!

The political climate of the 1960s

sort of forbade liberal-thinking producers

from putting any other kind of image
on television,

and part of their mission,
if they perceived it as such,

to amplify the civil rights movement

rested in telling America

that Black people were just like
white Americans,

um, if not better.

You should be proud to have
an Einstein in the family.

I don't need a seven-year-old prodigy.
I want a normal child.

But if I don't do something fast,

Corey's going to wind up either
in the institute for advanced study

or the funny kindergarten.

You almost have
to over-endow the character

with attributes that comfort
white, middle-class sensibilities

and strip him or her of anything else,

so that the sense of the white Negro

becomes what it takes
to make them acceptable.

In the Black community,
it caused a great deal of anger

that said, "She's a sellout.
She's an Oreo cookie.

Why doesn't this show represent the street

where I spend my life, I spend my time?

I don't wanna have to think about a woman

that has pushed herself
into the middle class."

We're all so proud of you!

The controversy around Julia
was typical of Black shows,

not just in the '60s,
but before and since.

Because prime-time images
of us were so rare,

each image became precious,

involuntarily bore the burden
of representing the race.

But since such images
were typically one-dimensional,

like most of television,

they often came under attack,
despite high ratings,

for what they failed to reflect.

Anybody who thinks they can intimidate...

And so where Amos 'n Andy
was faulted for featuring

bumbling Black men in a segregated world...

Uh, don't get excited, Andy.

This is Miss Yarby and Dr. Chegley.

...Julia was rebuked for much the opposite —

an integrated world
with a successful Black family,

minus Black men.

The father had been conveniently killed
in military duty.

A Black family severed from
African American culture and society.

Tonight, I think all of us
have everything we —

We interrupt this program.

The worst race riot since Watts
erupted today.

... more than two dozen fires...

A massive show of force
by Miami police forces...

In Mississippi, two more
Black students were shot and killed...

- ... 200 arrested...
- ... shot and killed.

It's almost as if there
were two Black Americas.

There was the Black America
that you saw on the news,

which confronted racial issues head on.

Can we get a doctor?

And then there was
the Black America that you saw

the rest of the evening
on prime-time television,

where racial hostility
was virtually absent,

where harmony dictated the neighborhood,

where there were no signs

of any kinds of struggles
with segregation.

Arrests continue...

So you get on screen
this idealized view

of how Blacks and whites work together

that most people knew
were inaccurately depicting the reality.

What I said at the time

was that the audience

gets enough of the confrontation

and the incendiary actions

of people in the ghettos

and people in Watts, for instance.

Uh, they see enough of that on the news.

They read enough of that in the newspaper.

When they turn on television
to have a half an hour of pleasantry,

let's ignore all of that.

In those days, our mandate
was to amuse an audience,

not to excite them,

and I stuck to that mandate

to try and amuse as many people
as I possibly could.

The point is that there is
this universe of experience

that is held up as the norm,

and once people enter it,
including whites,

then everybody has to sort of work hard
to participate in that universe.

America's favorite family, the Nelsons...

The entertainment function
of television is predicated

on the assumption that this world

is a comforting world
that we all aspire to —

Black, white, Latino,
Chinese, Japanese, it doesn't matter.

That's where I think
television's ideological function,

to use that language,

really starts to show up.

But it's hidden behind this notion that
television is only there to entertain.

Well, in its entertainment,
what it's doing

is reinforcing, legitimating, normalizing

that particular universe.

By the late '60s,

the myth of America
as one big happy family

was under concerted assault.

♪ All we are saying... ♪

Power to the people!

- What was that you said?
- Said "Power to the people!"

- Soul power!
- Soul power!

Soul power!

Soul power! Soul power! Soul power!

No longer must we
be ashamed of being Black.

No! Tell it!

Black is beautiful!

The only politics in this country
that's relevant to Black people today

is the politics of revolution, none other!

Hell no, we won't go!

This is a nation of laws
and we're going to enforce the laws!

Senator Kennedy has been shot.

Oh, hi, honey. How was your day?

Hi, Marie. Diapers again?

I was in World War II, fella,

and I served for years,
I know what it's about!

Listen to me! It's in the Bill of Rights!

- From the mountains, to the prairies...
- Why do you think we broke away

from England to begin with, huh?

- Because we demanded freedom!
- ...to the oceans white with foam!

Because I have a son
that's gonna go into the army!

- You don't listen to reason!
- God bless America, you dumb Polack!

They got the nerve to walk around here
with peace flowers on —

Not anymore! I'm leaving!

- ♪ God bless ♪
- You're prejudiced!

♪ America ♪

- Archie!
- Get away from me.

♪ My home ♪

♪ Sweet ♪

♪ Home ♪

All in the Family
absolutely blew the lid off

of these conventions of families,

like the ones you would see
on The Donna Reed Show

or The Brady Bunch or Father Knows Best.

You'd never hear
those white male head of households

say anything disparaging
about Black people,

but you certainly heard it
from Archie Bunker.

Now, listen, little girl.

I've been around a lot of places.
I've done a lot of things.

But there's one thing Archie Bunker
ain't never gonna do

and that's break bread
with no jungle bunnies.

When I started All in the Family,
one of the early accusations was,

"What is this guy doing sending messages?"

Or, "How dare he talk about these subjects

or address these subjects?"

Uh, and I remember very early thinking,

"My God, they're talking
about sending messages."

What was the message
in all of the television shows,

especially the situation comedies
of the '60s?

The message was louder and clearer
than anything I could do.

It was, there were no race problems
in America.

There was no Vietnam.

So I thought,
"Well, we're not saying that much at all."

You're the one that needs
an American history lesson.

You don't know nothing about Lady Liberty,

standing there in the harbor
with her torch held high,

screaming out
to all the nations in the world,

"Send me your poor,
your deadbeats, your filthy."

And all the nations sent them in here.

They'd come swarming in like ants —

your Spanish PRs
from the Cariboo in there,

your Japs, your Chinamen,
your Krauts and your Hebes

and your English fags!

All of 'em come in here
and they're all free to live

in their own separate sections...

...where they feel safe.

And they'll bust your head
if you go in there.

That's what makes America great, buddy!

I think that Norman Lear's programming

represented the first steps
towards reality

in depicting American households,

and I think it's because the public

was growing intolerant across the board

of these perfect families they were seeing
on prime-time television.

Throughout television's history,

the prime-time family had been
a sanctuary against social crisis.

Lear readjusted this picture.

The TV family, as in real life,
became a political battleground.

Cincinnati busing leaders
were onstage with the governor...

Bikers across the city
are organizing a mass...

... 400 extra policemen tomorrow...

The president says he, too,
is opposed to forced busing.

♪ My home sweet home ♪

Our world is coming crumbling down.

The coons are coming!

Well, let's see how wonderful it is

when the watermelon rinds
come flying out the window!

My father was as racist
as Archie Bunker, in his own way,

and I used to fight with him all the time,

and I never thought anybody in America
would have a problem

with the kind of thing
they lived with all the time.

I think that if God had meant us to be
together, he'd have put us together.

But look what he done.
He put you over in Africa.

He put the rest of us
in all the white countries.

Well, you must have told him
where we were,

'cause somebody came and got us.

Ironically, this show broke
one mold while reinforcing another.

Though social change and conflict
were now shown to affect family life,

through it all,
family bonds remained intact.

With love, flexibility,
and not least humor,

our troubles could be contained,

even resolved, all in the family.

♪ Good Times ♪

♪ Any time you need a payment ♪

♪ Good Times ♪

♪ Any time you need a friend ♪

♪ Good Times ♪

♪ Any time you're out from under ♪

When Good Times debuted,
I was happy to do it.

♪ Keepin' your head above water ♪

Because I had long wished
to redeem the image

of the domestic worker.

♪ Good Times ♪

♪ Scratchin' and survivin' ♪

♪ Good Times ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

I...

looked at the first script.

I said, "Where is these children's father?
Where's my husband?

There is none."

"Oh, no, it wasn't written for that.

It was written for you
and your three children."

I said, "Then you find
the actress who can do it.

I'm sure there are some
who can do it. I can't."

Because I insisted, I got a husband.

James, how long we been married?

- Getting on towards 21 years now.
- That's right.

And we had a lot of arguments
in them 21 years, right?

Yeah, we're having
a pretty good one right now.

Yeah.

Good Times
was the first prime-time series

to feature a Black family
with both mother and father.

In contrast to
the integrationist shows of the '60s,

Good Times was set in the heart
of Chicago's Black South Side community.

I mean, we are poor.

If you was to make a list of
all the things that people want to be,

"poor" would be right down
at the bottom of the list,

just above sick and dead!

I think with Good Times,
you get the attempt

to basically replicate
what you have in All in the Family,

but make it more relevant
to what was going on

in Black communities across the country.

♪ Living just enough ♪

♪ Just enough ♪

♪ For the city ♪

Unemployment figures were released today.

More than seven million Americans
remain out of work.

Blacks and inner-city
residents are bearing the brunt...

The president has vetoed legislation

authorizing over $50 million...

Another steep rise in
Black unemployment. Among young Blacks...

- How much money we got in that shoe box?
- About $32.

That's about some $72 short.

I got a hundred ways I can get $70.

And I got a hundred ways
to warm your butt if you do!

I don't want you stealing, James Jr.

I wouldn't do that, Mama.
I may just find $70.

Yeah, but I don't want you finding it
before it gets lost.

I hope I'm coming through to you, boy.

Mama, "boy" is a white, racist word!

Michael, this ain't no time to be Black.

Mama...

Good Times represented
the greatest potential

and also, in my opinion,
the greatest failure.

It had the greatest potential
because it was an inner-city family

that was nuclear, that was solid.

What is it, another eviction notice?

Well, it ain't no valentine card.

Oh, baby, we got two of those
while you was in the hospital.

But my friend Monte,
who works down at the projects,

he said, "Don't worry about it."

That's the same Monte that said,

"Nixon was gonna be
poor folks' best friend."

Oh, James, I'm so sorry.

They would talk about real-world issues

and how an actual Black family
deals with those real-world issues

of racism and economic discrimination.

But what happened?

Dynamite!

They elevated J.J.'s role,

which had been one of amusing
and sometimes sophisticated comedy,

to that of a buffoon.

His humor was tied

to a long tradition
of the kind of minstrel character.

J.J.'s function in it
was essentially to deflate,

to let off a lot of the buildup

in the particular issues
that the show tried to address.

I mean, I thought it was a very—

in retrospect, particularly,
a very clever use of a character

to rob the show of the kind
of political bite that it might have.

No! Oh-oh-oh!

By the mid '70s,

so-called "ghetto sitcoms"
populated prime time,

eagerly watched by us all.

Ticket! How about
that lucky number for today?

Ooh-wee!

If it was what it was,

then it was at the Y!

On the one hand,
many of us applauded these TV programs

because at last,
the "reality" of the Black experience —

that is, inner-city life —
was being represented.

On the other hand,
these programs were problematic

because they represented
the hellholes of the ghetto

as places where human beings
could survive.

Ha-ha! Dyn-o-mite!

Any of the impetus
for changing the American society

that could have come from showing
these real-world situations

as abominable and unacceptable
and intolerable

was completely lost.

I wish they were long enough
to cover up my eyes

so I wouldn't have to look
at your ugly face!

Why, you old heathen you!

Ow!

I don't think there's any question

that white America
is uncomfortable with victimization

or however you wanna term
the Black experience.

That which makes you feel guilty,
makes you uncomfortable.

Could prime time
break the mold of comedy

and still comfort white America?

By what formula, what alchemy,

could television transform
racial oppression and racial guilt

into a drama of the American dream?

I felt that Roots
didn't sound like a good idea

with 90% of the country white,
10% of the country Black.

I'm gonna do a 12-hour show
where the whites are the villains

and the Blacks are the heroes.

Does not sound like a very good idea
when you first say it.

But the thing that attracted me

was it showed two things.

Number one,
it showed the power of an underdog

overcoming enormous odds to succeed.

Number two, it showed the power of family.

I know that whites are going to be
very uncomfortable seeing this program.

Look at this baby.

I said I'm gonna have to cast
my Blacks... actors

as comfortable as I can
for the audience watching.

I did not want to scare away
my white audience

before they got to see the program.

I wanted to get them in to see the show.

And if they thought
they were gonna see a show

where they were going to be, um,

overpowered by the actor —

you know, overpowering them
in some social message —

they may not watch the show.

Never had so many white viewers

watched anything Black
in the history of television.

That was amazing.

Oh, God, no. No, massa.
You can't sell Kizzy too!

No, massa, not my baby. Not my child!

Oh, massa, no! Not my child, not my baby!

- Massa. Massa.
- Bell.

Massa, beat her.
Do anything you want to her!

Anything, massa.
Tear the skin off her worthless hide!

She a awful nigger
to do such a thing, massa!

Please, massa,
in the name of Jesus, have mercy!

Me and Toby, we give you our lives, massa.

Massa —

Forty years, massa!

Forty years I served you.

- Don't that count for something?
- Well, you're doing your job.

She disobeyed the rules.
She has to suffer the consequences.

That's all there is to it.

Massa, please, please, massa, I beg you!

Please don't sell her! Please, massa!

She's already been sold.

Oh, then, massa,
please sell me and Bell with her.

But don't split up the family, massa.

You ain't never been that kind of man.
Please, massa!

Mr. Tom Moore owns Kizzy now.

Mr. Odell will take her away then.

- Massa.
- No, no, I don't wanna go!

Oh, God, my baby!

No, no! Mama!

Kizzy! Kizzy!

Missy Anne, please, please!

- Missy Anne, please!
- My baby!

- My baby!
- Missy Anne, please!

Help me! Help me!

Mama! Mama!

Mama, no!

Mama, help me!

Missy Anne, please don't! No, no, no...

Mama!

Oh, Lord, holy — Oh!

Lots of people, I think,
can tell you about the aftermath of Roots

in the workplace or in the school,

about going to work or going to school
after each night and the episodes,

and the kinds of conversations
and dialogues that were opening up

between Black and white Americans
for the first time,

in the aftermath
of those episodes of the program.

It's a very profound experience.

There was something that gripped America
about this story that Alex Haley wrote

about a current Black person

tracing his history

all the way over into Africa
and going there and finding relatives.

I think that part of
the popularity of Roots

was for just that reason —

it showed Black people

being just like every other
American immigrant group

for the first time
to such a large audience.

Roots was a Horatio Alger story,
that's correct,

about starting up a family here
and ending up here.

And that's a good story.

Positive stories are much more
acceptable to audiences

than negative stories are.

There ain't nothing hard
about being happy.

Go on then, mule!

- Ain't nothing gonna stop us now!
- Let's move on!

Roots was still an assimilation story.

The way in which it was made palatable

and the way in which it was made
a powerful story

was to make it a family saga
about movement into America.

It didn't indict the American society.

It was an indictment of bad people.

It was an indictment
of certain forms of brutality,

but in terms of the whole edifice

of American political,
social, cultural structure,

it came away pretty unscathed.

We's here! This here our land!

We had finally found a place
in mainstream America,

less by changing society

as by patiently adapting to it.

Television's profoundly conservative bias
was again underscored.

Prime time has selectively
reframed American history,

transforming a national disgrace

into an epic triumph
of the family and the American dream.

Still, it seemed for many of us that Roots

had at last delivered the positive image
of Black success we'd long dreamed of.

But had we reached the promised land?

If you took the argument implicit
in Black history about our images

to its logical conclusion,

the millennium would come
when a refined Afro-American doctor...

and his wife,

who, let's say, hypothetically
was a partner in a Wall Street law firm,

and who would be obviously
comfortable, very elegant, well educated,

who would have lovely, perfect children
who would, of course, go off to college.

If an image such as that
could be projected,

let's say, into virtually
every American home,

the argument went, historically,

we as a people would be free.

Hey, back from shopping. How was it?

Great. We only had one fight.

It started the moment we left
and it hasn't finished yet.

- Now, what happened?
- I took him to Bookmans.

He told me I couldn't go in.

Dad, Bookmans is a menswear store.

Menswear store.
No mothers allowed.

Before The Cosby Show came on,

the American public had been bombarded
with negative images of the Black family.

When The Cosby Show came on,
and I know even in Cosby's thinking,

that it was seen that
the Huxtables, the family,

would be a good opportunity to project
new images of Black people in America

that ultimately might diminish...

um, uh, attitudes of racism

rather than to support them.

From its premiere,
The Cosby Show

catapulted into America's top ten shows.

The triumphant saga of Roots
continued in the Huxtables.

Dad!

No 14-year-old boy

should have a $95 shirt

unless he is onstage
with his four brothers.

In part, the show's success
was its image of success,

an image perfectly attuned to the politics
of post-civil rights America.

Economic recovery,
rededication to values,

all show the spirit of renewal
gaining the upper hand,

and all will improve
family life in the '80s.

We need to replace a welfare system

that destroys economic independence
in the family

with one that creates
incentives for recipients

to move up and out of dependency.

The Reagan ideology was predominantly

that if you open up access
to corporations to make money,

then the opportunity structure opens up.

Well, we see that didn't happen.

There will be record
numbers of the homeless this winter...

Business failures
recently hit a 40-year high.

Among Blacks,
the unemployment rate was almost double...

We've got this incredible
polarization of rich and poor,

and Black people converged
around the poverty end of that.

And I think that to have, then,

a show that mediates
between that polarization,

we come away with a sense in which,
well, the society's fine.

I mean, there's no problem.

You just have to work hard,
you just have to have the right values,

have the right kinds
of desires and aspirations,

and it'll be all right.

None of this would have happened
if we weren't so rich.

Let me get something straight. Okay?

Your mother and I are rich.

You have nothing.

Your father and I are not rich.

- We're not?
- No, honey, we're not rich.

Rich is when your money works for you,

not when you work for the money,
and we work hard for the money.

Ah, yes.

In many ways,
the Huxtable household

favored prime-time families of old.

The TV family was, again,
a mythic sanctuary,

a shield against social crisis.

Within the worsening polarization
of 1980s America,

this dream of the happy, harmonious,
successful Black family

held a powerful seduction.

Dad, I have to go to school
with these girls.

Cosby represents everyone's fantasy.

Everyone wants to live that way.

Uh, did you lose the case, dear?

Oh, I wish I had lost it.
At least the thing would be over with.

The most successful shows

depicting the African American experience
in America

are shows like Cosby

that reaffirmed the American dream
and hard-core middle class values,

where you work hard,

you are rewarded
with good-looking children,

good-looking wives,
nice cars, nice households.

And that image is the one
that's perpetuated.

Anything that —
that digresses from that norm

is suspect

and will probably not be granted tenure
on prime-time television...

- ♪ Do you know what it means ♪
- ...as is evidenced

by a program like Frank's Place.

♪ To miss New Orleans ♪

♪ Where mockingbirds used to sing ♪

For many people, Frank's Place

was the best television program
involving Black people

that there's ever been.

Frank's Place showed
a broader range of types

than any other Black television program
that I can remember,

but it was killed by the ratings.

♪ I dream of oleanders in June ♪

They didn't know how to handle it

and they supposedly couldn't
schedule it with anything.

Whatever they scheduled it with,
there was a problem.

It didn't relate to anything else
they had on the schedule,

so they moved it six times.

The audience couldn't find the show.

My mother couldn't find the show
half the time.

♪ And there's something more ♪

♪ I miss the one I care for ♪

♪ More than I miss New Orleans ♪

We looked for the unusual
whenever we did the show,

but we caught constant flak.

They didn't want us to do it.

They kept wanting us to be funny.

Now if we had been funnier,
we'd probably still be on the air.

They really want you to be colorless.

They want you not to bring
your race with you.

He shouldn't be off gallivanting
with a bunch of snobs

who are laughing at him behind his back
'cause he's colored.

He oughta be just here letting us —

I'm colored?

What do you mean, I'm colored?
I haven't heard that word in 20 years.

- It's nothing, Frank.
- No, I wanna know.

- See this bag?
- Yeah.

Which is darker, me or the bag?

You.

- Which is darker, you or the bag?
- What are you talking about?

The capital "C" club?

In the old days, Frank,
if you were a light-skinned Black,

you were a Creole,
and they spell Creole with a capital "C."

If you were dark-skinned,
it was creole with a little "C,"

and there was a big difference
between the two.

Skin color used to be the big separator
in New Orleans, Frank.

Still is.

They just ain't
as out in the open about it.

Why would Ozell Dryer have me there?

So, what was I going to be,
the first darkie in the capital "C" club?

Oh, man, look, I am sorry.

I should have been
more up-front with you about this.

But there's a group of us in the club
that are trying to change things.

- And I'm the guinea pig?
- Well, sort of.

See, you've got all the credentials
to put an end to this whole color thing.

Ozell, let me cut to the chase here, okay?

All my life, I've been "the only Black."

I was the only Black in this class.

I was the only Black in that organization.

I was the only Black on this team.

Look, man, I'm not about to become
the only Black in a Black club.

I think that's going a little too far.
Don't you think?

Frank's Place was too real for Americans.

I mean, it was the closest thing
to the reality

that I experienced growing up
and that I experience now

as a person of color in American society

that I have encountered on television.

And I don't think that, um,
the average white American

is prepared to encounter
the full complexity of that reality.

They want to encounter
fictions of that reality

which are palatable to them.

They are comfortable with that,
with that kind of fantasy.

They are very uncomfortable
with Frank's Place.

And I understand that.

And I'm not saying that that's
the worst thing in the world.

It's just that I'm comfortable
with my people.

I'm comfortable with my background.

I wanna see my story told.

By the end of the 1980s,

television had been in American homes
just over 40 years.

The status of Black Americans
had remarkably improved.

You never told us how you feel
about Black people.

Well, you sure gotta hand it to 'em.

I mean, two years ago, they was nothing
but servants and janitors.

Now they're teachers
and doctors and lawyers.

They've come a long way on TV.

African Americans
continued to succeed, in prime time.

But what of the historic dream
that new positive images

would help improve
America's race relations?

I don't think that you can change
300 years of history,

300 years of the exploitation of
Black people by white people in the West,

that you can change hundreds of years

of the representation of Black people
in stereotypical roles

just by having a prominent Black man
in a situation comedy.

It's not gonna work that way.

Images are one part

of a larger formula of social behavior,

and you can't give to them
all of this importance,

that they will free us
if only we can control them.

They do not have
enough autonomy to liberate us.

Still, if TV alone
cannot liberate us,

it continues to mold
how we are seen and defined.

One while, they said
we could only sing and dance.

Then when we left singing and dancing,
we could only be comics.

But there is room for the comic.

There's room for the dancer.
There's room for the singer.

There's room
for the serious dramatic actor.

There is room —

What makes you think a whole people...

have to be alike?

And how dull and uninteresting
we would be.

What we get is the continuing press
towards an imaginary middle.

And part of my critique is
of that imaginary middle,

uh, whether it's a class middle,
whether it's a racial norm,

um, whether it's some idealized aspiration
about what a good life is.

I think that what we need
are more complicated ways

of imagining ourselves in the world

that are truer to what people know
and what people's imaginations are about,

and that those things
are inflected by difference,

and that what we need to do
is begin to illuminate that difference,

not so that people are divided
and can't have access to each other,

but so that we understand
the ways in which inequality

gets perpetuated and operates.

But also so that we learn more about
each other and more about ourselves.

And I think that television
simply hasn't done that.

♪ Such a taste ♪

♪ That never gets too heavy ♪

♪ It's gossamer
It never holds you down ♪

African Americans
have claimed a high profile

in this commerce of pop culture.

But what have we bought
and what have we traded?

Have we exchanged the myths
of pre-television America

for new fictions, just as confining,

for impossibly rigid,
homogenized fictions of the family

and the American dream?

And if this is the price
of the ticket to acceptance,

is it worth paying?

Is this dream worth keeping alive?