James Joyce was an Irish writer and is noted for the novel Ulysses. Ulysses is the Roman name for the Greek hero Odysseus. Odysseus was the man who hid his soldiers in a gigantic hollow wooden horse to get into the city of Troy during the Trojan War. That’s where the saying which describes a deceptive tactic comes from… it is sometimes referred to as a “trojan horse.”
Anyway, that’s not why I brought up Joyce’s name. Joyce penned a saying which is the title of this article and is the underpins of what we will be talking about later.
He said, “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine too…”
Now he wasn’t the first one to say it. Something similar was said in one of Shakespeare’s plays, but he is the guy credited for taking the idiom mainstream.
If It Walks Like a Duck
In 1894, a device was invented which would herald in the golden age of motion pictures. The device was called the Cinematographe. So, the Cinematographe was a projector inside of a wooden box. The inventors put the projector inside of a wooden box because it also had a camera inside the contraption which could take pictures. The camera section needed to be in the dark to so that the film could be processed, otherwise the projector could project on its own outside the box.
So, before we move on, earlier in 1891 Edison demonstrated a device called the Kinetoscope. You could watch moving pictures with it also, and it too became a commercial success. There were hundreds of parlors with these devices in them… but it had one major drawback. Only one person could view the movie at a time.
The movies were usually just short two-to-three-minute clips of people walking around or waving at you.
******
Barker: “Alright who’s next!! It will just cost you 5 cents to see the “WONDERS OF THE WORLD!!” STEP RIGHT IN!!
Patron: What can I see for my money!
Barker: WHAT CAN YOU SEE?!!! YOU CAN SEE WONDERS OF THE WORLD!!! YOU CAN SEE THE MYSTERIOUS!!! YOU CAN SEE THE AMAZING!!!
Crowd: Awwwwwwwww…. Ohhhhhhh….
Patron: Okay!! Here’s my 5 cents!!!
Barker: COME RIGHT IN!!!
2 minutes later….
Crowd: Wait… What?? You’ve only been in there two minutes… What did you see!!? Did you see the wonders of the world… the mysterious… the amazing!!?
Patron: Well, yes and no …. they told me not to tell you what I saw… and he said if I do…. the world is going to “WONDER” what happened to me… because I’m going to “MYSTERIOUSLY” disappear… and it will be “AMAZING” if anyone ever hears from me again…
******
So yeah, it didn’t take long for the Kinetoscope to go out of favor and for people to move on to the Cinematographe. I mean who wants to see a two-minute film of someone waving at you.
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
Scene from DW Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation and a white actor in blackface.
In 1895 the first paying movie venue opened in Paris, France. It was the first time everyone could watch the same movie at the same time. Here in the states, the first movie theater was in New Orleans and was called Vitascope Hall. At the beginning of the 20th century the movie industry started kicking into high gear. One of the best known producers of that era was a man named D.W Griffith. His full name was David “Wark” Griffith… I’d go by D.W too if my middle name was “Wark.”
******
Me: Where’s “WARK”! Has anybody seen “WARK!!?”… I wonder where “WARK” is?
D.W: “Oh, you got jokes huh? You see me standing here nigra… and now I gonna whip yo’ azz!!”
Me: OMG!!
******
Anywho, D.W Griffith did a lot of short films. Back then they thought that long running films would ruin your eyes, so a lot of the films were short, less than 1/2 hour or so.
One of the earliest feature length films he did and the one which made him famous was called the “Clansman.” The name was later changed to “Birth of a Nation.” Birth of a Nation was over three hours long. It was one of the earliest films which “depicted” African Americans. Noticed I said depicted instead of featured. White men in blackface “depicted” African Americans. Now if you want to know how they really felt back then, here is a link to Birth of a Nation… The film is one of the most reprehensible, monuments to white supremacy that has ever been produced for the silver screen… and in 1915 it was a “huge” commercial success. It was also the first movie shown in the White House by President Woodrow “Grand Buzzard or whatever,” Wilson. It was during Wilson’s term that thousands of Klansmen marched down Pennsylvania Ave, and he was said to have a copy of the Clansmen, the novel on which the movie is based, on a coffee table in the Oval Office.
Anyway, after the commercial success of Birth of a Nation, for the next several decades, blacks in Hollywood productions would be cast as outlaws, servants or savages.
******
Director: I need this movie to be real!! I need this movie to have… to have…
Assistant: No, you don’t mean…!!
Director: Yes!! I want actual Nigra’s in my movie!! I want Nigras!!
Assistant: OMG!!
Director: Find that janitor and tell him to put on this loincloth… we’ll call the movie… “The Savage Nigra…”
Assistant: What about the script? What will he say!!?
Director: We’ll figure that out later… for right now his only line will be “Yes Suh Massa!!”
******
Stepping In It…
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry… aka Stepin Fetchit.
So, among the earliest movies blacks were in were the Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan movies. Tarzan was a creation of Edgar who dreamt him up in his 1914 novels. They were later adapted to film which was right on time considering the way the general public viewed African Americans fifty years after the Civil War. I mean in 1913 over 50,000 veterans who fought at Gettysburg, both Union and Confederate, held a reunion in Gettysburg. Now I don’t know everything that those 50,000 Civil War veterans were talking about at that reunion but believe you me… they were definitely talking about the Nigras.
Anyway, in Edgar’s 1914 book called “Tarzan of the Apes,” he introduces Tarzan to Jane as “the killer of beasts and ‘many black men’.” I’m like… “Wait?!! What!!? Killer of many black men!??” Yep… Edgar was letting all his frustrations out. In the same book Tarzan later saves Jane from the clutches of a “black ape rapist...” Edgar was foul “wid” it… Unfortunately for Jane she was later dropped from the cast in the film versions and replaced by a chimpanzee… As for Edgar, well he decided to accept an invitation to Africa from Shaka Zulu and was never heard from again… okay… no he didn’t. He lost his ranch in the Great Depression and subsequently died from a heart attack.
By the 1930’s real black folks, not white folks in black face were being shown on TV and the silver screen.
One of the most successful blacks in the film industry was a man named Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry… aka Stepin Fetchit. Perry was a vaudeville actor who migrated to film. He was billed as the “Laziest Man in the World”.
Ima tells you right now… Perry was really… really… despised by the black folks of that time for his portrayal of blacks as being lazy, stupid and no account. He took that shat to a “high-level” art form. They probably got posters of him in every Klan klavern south of the Mason Dixon Line.
Grand Blizzard (or whatever): “This is a picture of Stepin Fetchit… All Hail to Nigra Fetchit!! A Credit to His Race!!”
Klan: “Hail Nigra Fetchit!! Hail Nigra Fetchit!!”
I’m almost sure if a person like Master Sargent Waters would have gotten a hold of him, Fetchit would have had his own chapter in the “Water’s Despicable Dead Negro’s Digest…”
Oh, you don’t know who Master Sargent Waters was? Well, he was the sergeant that Pfc. Peterson killed in the movie “A Soldier’s Story.” For those who saw the film and don’t quite remember Waters… Waters was the sergeant who describes to C.J what they did to a “Geechee,” in Paris after the black man had been paid to dance on a table with a tail taped to his backside at some highbrow French restaurant during WWI.
So, I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen the film and tell you what Waters and his crew did to the man… but I can tell you it wasn’t very pleasant… nope… not pleasant at all…
Anyway, Perry made his living portraying so called lazy, uneducated blacks and he was very, very good at it and very, very successful. He was the first black actor to make over a million dollars in his career, and the first black artist to have screen credits. Of course, his rep suffered irreparably after his death and the name Stepin Fetchit is synonymous with being two rungs under being called an Uncle Tom.
Yes, I know, Uncle Tom wasn’t the azzhole in Stowes’s novel, but I’m just trying to be relatable…
On the positive side, Perry is credited with opening the film industry to other black actors.
Perry died in 1985 at the age of 83 from Kess Arse Disease and is buried at… alright… he didn’t die from Kess Arse Disease… he died of heart failure and is buried at Calvary Cemetary in Los Angeles.
Awwww Nigra!!
Hattie McDaniel portraying Mammy in ‘Gone With The Wind.’
One of the most memorable black artists to come out of the 1930’s was the Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel. Hattie played “Mammy,” in Margaret Mitchell’s film adaption of “Gone With The Wind.” The role earned her an Academy Award for best supporting actress. Personally, I thought Prissy should have won an award too. Prissy was played by Butterfield McQueen and was the half-witted servant who told Scarlett O’Hara she was a midwife. She was about as much a midwife as Thanos was in the Infinity Wars…
Anyway, both actresses were following the long held trope of blacks being portrayed as subservient to whites… and they both took hits for it from the black community. Hattie in particular faced extremely harsh criticism as she became increasing famous for playing “Mammy’ in the film. She was called everything but a child of God by the black community. They called her an Uncle Tom because she was advancing personally by enriching herself perpetuating stereotypes. However, Hattie wasn’t having none of it!!
Hattie: “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I did, I’d be making $7 a week being one.”
Black Folks: “Awwwwww Nigra!!”
Hattie died of breast cancer October 26, 1952. More than three thousand mourners turned out for her funeral. Now, Daniels wanted to be buried at Hollywood Cemetary, but you knew how that went… same way as they want ice water down there… The cemetery had a policy of racial segregation and refused to bury her there, so she was buried in Rosedale Cemetary. Rosedale was the first cemetery opened to all races in Los Angeles. In 1999 they offered to have Hattie re-interred in Hollywood Cemetary, but her family refused. Instead, a cenotaph (a monument) was erected at Hollywood Cemetery in her honor and is one of the most popular tourist’s attractions at the cemetery.
Butterfly McQueen portraying Prissy in ‘Gone With The Wind.’
Butterfly McQueen, the actress who portrayed Prissy, tragically died at the age of 84 after lighting a kerosene heater which caught her on fire. Before her death she said…
“I didn’t mind playing a maid the first time, because that’s how I thought you got into the business. But after I did the same thing over and over again, I resented it. I didn’t mind being funny, but I didn’t like being stupid…”
Butterfly donated her body to medical science.
******
Director: Okay cut!! Mike that Nigra looks too intelligent… lose the glasses…
Mike: Okay boss… what about the tie?
Director: Yeah, that too… somebody is going to be offended… lose the tie… what about the shirt… does he need to wear a shirt?
Mike: Boss, he is supposed to be a driver… he has to wear a shirt…
Director: Let’s say he is a driver from Africa… lose the shirt… and somebody get me a nose ring… please!!
Mike: Boss I don’t know about this… the movie is called Driving Sister Lilly … a white nun riding around with a half-naked nigra with broad shoulders and a ring in his nose…? Gawd fearing red blooded men might get upset… remember what happened to the other nigra actor? We reported him missing and the police said the only thing they found was a nose ring, a pile of ashes and a burned up steering wheel nailed to his door…
Director: He’ll be alright… that could have been anybody’s nose ring… instead of Driving Sister Lilly, we will call it… “Sister Lilly’s Black Man!!”
Black Actor: WAIT!! WHAT!!
******
The Lighter Shortage…
Spencer Williams aka Andy, Tim More aka Kingfish, and Alvin Childress aka Amos
So, like I said before, in the early days of television and movies black actors were relegated into roles which were subservient to whites. By the late 1940’s things started changing. Black sitcoms and variety show’s started airing.
One of the most enduring was the sitcom called Amos ‘N’ Andy. So, while most of us are familiar with the television show, Amos ‘N’ Andy was an initially a radio program hosted by two white guys named Freeman Gosden and Charles Corell. Gosden played Amos and Correll played Andy. So, in their radio broadcast career the men were fairly successful. However, television was another thing. In 1930 they starred in a feature length film about Amos N’ Andy called “Check And Doublecheck.” Now, the film did well box office wise, but the critics of the film “Pelosied” the script. That means they tore it up and threw it in the trash like Nancy Pelosi did Trump’s State of The Union speech during his first term… I was like “Dayummmm Nancy!!, Right in front of everybody baby… wow…”
The hate was real. When Nancy’s husband was attacked by a hammer wielding intruder at his home, in one of his rallies the President said, “We will stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi who ruined San Francisco… how’s her husband doing… anybody know? (crowd laughs…) And she’s against building a wall at our border even though she has a wall at her house… which obviously didn’t do a very good job…” (crowd laughs…)
Nancy was like, “Ima finna come over there and “PUT MY FOOT IN YO’…!!!”… okay no she didn’t…
The man who attacked Pelosi’s husband got the whole library thrown at him… life without parole, plus thirty years. That’s state charges… I think he still owes Uncle Sam for attacking the spouse of a congress person… they probably gonna call that shat “terrorism” and ship him off to Guantánamo Bay where he’s going to get a lifetime subscription to “TOTALLY FOCKED MAGAZINE.”
Anyway, back to our story…
So Gosden and Corell’s film “Check and Doublecheck” did do well box office wise, but the critics were getting tired of white men portraying black men in black face. The men returned to what they did best, radio broadcasting, but by 1951 the men had decided to retire from radio broadcasting and eventually the show was turned over to black actors. In June of 1951 the Amos N’ Andy show was adapted to television. Between 1951 and 1953, seventy-eight half hour episodes were made. The show was sponsored by the Blatz Brewing Company. Blatz beer is still made today by the Pabst Brewing Company.
Anyway, Black actors were cast to play the main characters and on June 28, 1951, the first episode aired. You know something, back in the day the character’s names were household words in the black community, although sometimes they were used to stereotype people. Especially the character named Sapphire. She was loud and aggressive as hell… (lol)… we have another word for it nowadays, but I ain’t going there.
Anyway, some old heads might remember these names:
Amos was played by Alvin Childress
Andy aka “Hogg” was played by Spencer Williams
Kingfish was played by Tim Moore
Sapphire was played by Ernestine Wade
Lightnin was played by Nick Stewart
There were also some reoccurring uncredited roles played by some notable black actors such as Sam McDaniels who was Hattie McDaniels older brother and William Walker who played the preacher in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Now, not everybody liked the Amos N’ Andy show. The NAACP was like WTF!!
It stated that the show “tends to strengthen the conclusion among uninformed and prejudiced people that Negroes are inferior, lazy, dumb, and dishonest, … Every character” is “either a clown or a crook”; “Negro doctors are shown as quacks and thieves”; “Negro lawyers are shown as slippery cowards”; “Negro women are shown as cackling, screaming shrews”; “All Negroes are shown as dodging work of any kind”; and “Millions of white Americans see this Amos ‘n’ Andy picture of Negroes and think the entire race is the same.”
The show played in syndication through 1965 on CBS. In 1966 the NAACP told them if you don’t take that shat down… there is going to be a cigarette lighter and gas can shortage in every city in the country starting on Madison Ave in New York at yo’ headquarters!! Not only was the NAACP breathing down CBS”s neck, but they were also shining their boots to get at the Blatz Brewing Company, aka Pabst, which eventually withdrew advertising support.
******
Everybody’ Dying…
Endicott: Sam, go get this boy some nice cold lemonade…
Sam: Yes Massa Endicott…
Tibbs: I didn’t know you could grow that species down here…
Endicott: Boy these are orchids… do you know what an orchid is?
Tibbs: I don’t know much about them, but I like them.
Endicott: Well, let me show you… I call these Endicott’s Nigga’s…
Tibbs: Wait!! What!!?
Endicott: That’s funny why you would like this species of orchid… you like them because like the Nigra, they need care and patience… sometimes you got to prune their roots so that they grow with their minds right… I mean grow right… I toss the cut off roots right over there in that basket…
Tibbs: You better not be talking about what I think you are talking about…
Gillespi: WELL… we don’t want to take up any more of your time Mr. Endicott… let’s go Tibbs…
Endicott: Why did you and Gillespi come here boy?
Tibbs: To ask you about a murder.
Endicott: You came here to question me nigra!!!
Tibbs: Well, someone saw you peeing on his grave last night…
Endicott: NIGRA I OUGHT TO…!!! (SMACK!!!)
Tibbs: YOU MUTHFLIKA!! (SMACK!! SMACK!! SMACK!!)
Endicott: GILLESPI DID YOU SEE THAT!!? WELL!!? WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT!!?
Gillespi: I don’t know… I don’t know… I don’t want him to smack me too…
Endicott: I’m going to remember that Gillespi…
Nigga there was a time when ten big strong muscular red blooded white men with long white beards in cutoff tee shirts would have come in here and whipped yo’ ass like mash potatoes for even coming in this house, less more smacking me across my lips!! Then we would have taken you down to that tree in the front yard… and hanged yo’ ass so high up in them branches, they would have been able to see you from outer space…
Tibbs: Shut up bish… lets go Gillespi… here Sam, you can take this lemonade back… (door slams)
Sam: Would you like some more lemonade Massa Endicott?
Endicott: Sam… I’m finna whip yo’ ass…
Sam: OMG!!
******
In 1967 it got extremely real for the white nationalist when for the first time a black man struck a white man across his lips on the silver screen. The movie called “In the Heat of the Night” starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger was a commercial success, garnering seven Oscar Nominations. The quote, “They call me Mister Tibbs!” is listed as #16 on the American film institute’s top 100 film quotes. It ranked #75 on the list of greatest movies of all time. Citizen Kane was #1.
In 2002 “In the Heat of the Night” was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress as being culturally and historically significant. Down south there was a tenfold increase in the number of black folks being admitted to the emergency room after the film’s premier… okay no it wasn’t… but white folks wished to gawd a brother would say to them…”They call me Mister Tibbs…”
**********
Racist: Oh, they call you Mr. Tibbs huh?
Police Dispatcher: Calling all cars… calling all cars… we got a 127 at King Ave… All units respond….
Rookie Cop: What’s a 127?
Sgt: That’s a Nigra in distress… We usually get there before they throw the rope in the tree… that’s if they take time to tell the nigga why he violated… like he back sassed or something… but if they block the street before we get there… then it’s a 128… that’s a Nigra in the Upper Room…
**********
Where No Black Man Has Gone Before…
The sixties were a time of firsts in black television, from the first smack down to the first kiss, blacks were finally breaking free of the 30s and 40s stereotypes. Now let me make one thing clear, the first inter-racial kiss on television was not a black man kissing a white woman… because if that would have happened lips on black men would have been illegal.
********
Deputy: Sarah let me talk to the Chief… over…
Sarah: The Chief is kinda busy Buster… what’s the problem… over…
Deputy: Stopped a nigra on old Route 69… he’s got lips… over…
Sarah: Does he have two of them… over…
Deputy: That’s a 10-4
Sarah: The Chief wants to know if he looks like he was born with them… over…
Deputy: No… they look like he stole them… over…
Sarah: The Chief says bring him in… over
Deputy: 10-4… over…
*********
Yessiree… and the meant that shat…
Anyway, the first inter-racial kiss was between a black woman and a white man. The television show was Star Trek, and the actors were Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura and William Shatner who played Captain Kirk. The episode was named “Plato’s Stepchildren,” and it aired on November 22, 1968.
The 70’s were the breakout year for black actors in television and movies. Most notably were sitcoms involving black family life like the Bill Cosby Show, Different Strokes, Good Times, The Jeffersons, and Sanford and Son. The 70’s also saw the rise of what was called black exploitation films. This genre included films such as Shaft, Super Fly and Fox Brown and Mandingo. Mandingo took it to the next level! It was based on a book by Norman Wexler. It was about a black man who was enslaved in the deep South and had a baby by the Massa’s wife. She wanted to get back at her husband who was having an affair with an enslaved black woman. So, she lured Mandingo up to her bedroom and told him if he didn’t get busy, she was going to tell her husband he “RAPED HER”!! Mandingo started crying… and so did I. She had that that nigga right where she wanted him… I’m like dayummm… she got yo” ass good!! He was as far down south as you could get unless you were at the South Pole… and he knows if he gets caught with his Massa’s wife, he better have a heart attack… I know I would…
Me: MASSA!!!… croak…
Massa: NAW NIGGA !! NAW!! WAKE UP!! WAKE UP!!
Anyway, I’m going to tell you right now, Wexler who wrote the book, made an example out of that Neegrow, made an example out of the Massa’s wife and made an example out of the baby. The baby was suffocated, the woman poisoned and the Neegrow was shot and put into a large cauldron of boiling hot water… The author wanted you to know that sleeping with a white woman was a cuss word no-no!!
Wexler: “Now Ima have to think of a way to kill all of them… the nigga Ima boil in oil… I know that…”
In 1977 another black television series came out which rocked black and white audiences alike. More than 130 million people watched the family saga, and it remains one of the most watched television shows in American history. It was called “Roots.”
It’s Toby…
Kunta Kinte name change ceremony.
Roots is a miniseries based on a book by Alex Haley. The story was about an enslaved man named Kunta Kinte, and it follows his progeny through several generations. So, what made this story so enticing to America? One thing… it was based on a true story. Yes, there were hundreds of movies out about enslaved black people, but this one was based on facts handed down by generations of the Haley family. The second thing was that it was shown on network television in “primetime.” That’s right, they brought the Nigras right into the white folks living rooms in cuss word color!
White home: “Henreitta!!! There’s a cuss word nigra in my cuss word living room on my cuss word TV!!”
Black history was the farthest thing from their minds… shat, even black folks weren’t that enamored by the subject having tired of the black power movement of the 60s and early 70’s. By the mid-70’s Madison Avenue had young blacks thinking about being pimps, gangsters and shot callers. All that changed when Kunta Kinte was dragged from his home in Africa, wearing chains, beat down and made to accept the new name his enslaver had given him.
Massa: Yo’ name is Toby!! Say it!!
Kunta: Toby… my name is Toby…
To a lot of black folks, it was the most powerful scene up to that time ever witnessed on television about enslaved blacks and it pissed us off to the ninth power of ass kickery. I don’t remember how many episodes there were at the time, but after that episode it was an unspoken agreement among black folks all over the United States that after seeing Kunta beat into submission and the Massa making him say his name was Toby… well that shat was an act of war!
Now, not all white folks who watched the series found it interestingly benign… a significant amount were just as appalled and disgusted as black folks… but still there were a few who….
********
Blackfolk 1: Did you watch Roots last night?
Blackfolk 2: Yeah… and now I know sumpin….
Blackfolk 1: Me too…. lets go…
*******
Whitefolk1: Did you watch Roots last night?
Whitefolk2: Yep… all the boy had to do was say his name was Toby and then he wouldn’t have got that azz whooping…
Whitefolk1: Yep… made shat harder than it had to be…. do you hear someone at the door?
Blackfolk1 & 2: Knock, Knock, Knock….
Whitefolk1: Who is it?
Blackfolk1: It’s Toby…
Whitefolk2: OMG!!
Yep… after that episode of Roots, it was a lot of situations…
********
There were a few spinoffs after the original Roots, and I believe the last spinoff showed the Haley family from the 1950’s. The last scene of the last episode showed Alex Haley writing Roots. He subsequently visited the home of his ancestor Kunta Kinte in Jufureh, Gambia, West Africa.
It was a memorable time in black television history… you had to be there.
And so, we gradually moved from being portrayed as pimps, gangsters, servants and the abused enslaved on the silver screen to being real people, with real aspirations and hopes. We had a story to tell, and America was ready to hear it.
Just before the turn of the 21st century a new facet of the black story begins to be told. The story of life in the inner cities.
No Introduction Needed…
Out of Atlanta, Georgia a master storyteller is born, and his imprint on the American psyche will be felt for decades. An alumnus of Morehouse College and graduate of the NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, he set the world on fire in 1989 when he wrote, directed and produced the highly acclaimed “Do the Right Thing.” His name is Shelton Jackson Lee… aka Spike Lee!
The story was about racial tensions in a Brooklyn neighborhood between African Americans and Italian Americans and centered on neighborhood pizzeria. Now I’m using the word “tension” lightly… like New Yorker’s say… “It was “mad” racism going on…” The story ended in tragedy and violence. My main man Radio Raheem was killed in that joint…. if you know you know.
Anyway, I have family on my mothers and fathers’ side in NY. I used to spend almost every summer in Brooklyn in the sixties, but I never knew about the bitter racist atmosphere there. Albeit I was just a teenager and had been surrounded by black folks for most of my life… I mean I was raised in Chocolate City… aka DC and Brooklyn in the 60’s and 70’s, was just as black as DC… it just never occurred to me at that age. I knew there were other races, but I just never interacted with them like that. Only thing I knew about them was what I saw on TV and that they used to enslave our people and now they don’t. Wasn’t much black history taught in our schools in the 60’s and 70’s… but believe me, by the time I was a young man in my early twenties… Racist: “You gonna learn today nigra!!!”
Anywho, Spike wasn’t the only one telling America about our story… there was this cat from Los Angeles, California, who was kicking every last bit of it and taking erebody’s name. At the age of 24, he was the first African American and the youngest person ever nominated for the Academy Award’s Best Director… I’m talking about the incomparable John Singleton.
I’m not going to say much about John Singleton except…
Boyz n the Hood, Poetic Justice, Rosewood, Baby Boy, Shaft and Hustle and Flow…
My personal favorite was Boyz n the Hood. The dude was like that! His movies did his talking!
Boyz n the Hood was also put into the Library of Congress because of its historical and cultural significance. It was released on July 12, 1991. Dayummm!!! That movie is 34 years old and it’s still hot as shat!
********
Leave It to Beaver…
Beaver: Mom, I don’t like asparagus… Do I have to eat it?
Mom: Now Beaver, asparagus is good for you… it will make you big and strong.
Beaver: But I don’t like the way it tastes… may I be excused?
Mom: Okay… but I want you to do your homework before you go outside…
Beaver: Okay mom!!
Mom: (On telephone) … Ethyl, I’m telling you, I just don’t know what I’m going to do with these kids…. (laughing…)
Meanwhile…
Me: Momma, I don’t like asparagus… Do I have to eat it?
Mom: What did you say?!!
Me: I said I don’t like asparagus… I’m not going to eat it… Beaver didn’t have to eat it…
Mom: Pick that damn fork up and put that shat in yo’ mouth right now!!! I said put it in yo’ mouth!! Now start chewing!!! I said chew!!!
Me: Chew!! Chew!!! Chew!!! Chew!!! Chew!!!
Mom: Now ask me for some more…
Me: Can I have some more Momma…
Mom: Say please can I have some more… and I want to see you smiling when you say it…
Me: Momma, can I have some more asparagus please… (me smiling)
Mom: Hell No!!! Now take yo’ dusty azz outside and be back in here when the lights come on…
Yep, all I knew about white folks was from what I had seen on TV… I guess mamma didn’t watch TV…
*********
By Any Means Necessary…
Malcolm X played by the Academy Award winner Denzel Washington
By the turn of the 21st century, we were on our way. The story of black America was being told in all its triumphs and in all its pains. Stories like Drumline, Coach Carter and Antwone Fisher, revealed black resilience and redemption in a country scarred by racism and bigotry. Black tribulation blazed across the screen in films such as Remember the Titans, Ray, and Precious.
Then we started seeing films about our history. Movies like Red Tails, Selma, 12 Years a Slave, Till, and Lee Daniels, The Butler… Race, Hidden Figures, and more recently The Six Triple Eight to name a few.
Our time had come for the most part… and then it slipped away again.
*******
Me: Hey baby, let’s stay in tonight and watch a movie!
Baby: Okay that sounds good!
Me: Okay, I’ll make us some popcorn and you can pick out a movie.
Baby: What do you want to watch?
Me: I don’t know… haven’t seen 12 Years A Slave in a while…
Baby: Okay… lets see… Wow… they want $5.99 to rent that!
Me: What?!! That was free last year… Forget about it… lets watch Glory…
Baby: Nope… $3.99
Me: What kinda frackanakle bull shat is this!! Let me see that remote…
click… Mandingo – $3.99 -click… Color Purple $6.99 – click… The Help $4.99 – click… Do the Right Thing $2.99…
click… click… click… this some straight up bull shat!!! When did they start charging to see black content!!
Baby: I don’t know…
Me: Click… Wait a minute… here is something… “Black Pride.”
Baby: Sounds good… what’s that about?
Me: Let’s see here… it says it’s the story about a black man that was hung from the tallest tree they could find… but against all odds faced death with a smile on his face…
Her: You ready to go…
Me: Yeah, let me get my coat…
********
So, I don’t know when it happened, but most black movies about us and our history are no longer available without paying for them through the large streaming conglomerates.
What’s ours is theirs and what’s theirs is theirs… It’s incredibly hard to find quality black films without paying for them…
However, if I want to see the Klan hang a black man from the tallest tree they can find, see a black man put in jail for 500 years or get an azz whooping for back sass… well that’s free… and they even show you other movies you might be interested in… like “Skinned Alive…” the story of a black man accused of raping a white woman in Mississippi… that’s free without commercials…
Okay, there is no movie called “Skinned Alive…,” I was just making a point…
Anyway, I hope the day comes when our histories and stories will be available to watch for free like other histories and stories are.
Free at last… free at last… thank gawd almighty, they’re free at last.
Thanks for reading ©Hill1News.
Be the first to comment