[78-L] Race observations

[lizmcl at midcoast.com]

> I ran across this statement by the NAACP about the Amos 'n Andy television
> program, which was written in 1951..
>  
That statement comes up a lot, but there are a number of problems with it.
It was actually drafted *before* the A&A television series premiered, over
the opposition of a number of key NAACP officials, among them Roy Wilkins,
who had always had a cordial relationship with Freeman Gosden and Charles
Correll, and had written positively about their radio series twenty years
earlier. The issue of A&A was a highly divisive one among the
Association's board, with many members feeling that it was a very minor
concern at a time when far more pressing matters were on the table, and it
remained so thruout the controversy of 1951-53. (Interestingly, the
Association never took any formal position of condemnation against Correll
and Gosden's original radio series.)

The main problem with the statement is that most of its points simply
weren't true. While there were certainly exaggerated, comic characters at
the heart of the TV show, there were plenty of examples elsewhere in the
series to explicitly contradict the arguments made in the statement:
plenty of black characters encountered by Andy and the Kingfish were
neither crooks nor clowns, and certainly Amos himself was never either,
and similar arguments can be made for each point. To take a position paper
which was essentially a piece of political hyperbole as a statement of
pure fact is both bad argumentation and bad history.

I was going to stay out of this whole issue, because there so far hasn't
been anything said that hasn't been said over and over again over the
eleven years I've been on this list, but this I couldn't resist.

Elizabeth
(Author, "The Original Amos 'n' Andy: Freeman Gosden, Charles Correll, and
the 1928-43 Radio Serial.)