Revolution Televised.pdf

114 Respect Yourself!
actors and black media critics placed a greater emphasis on uplifting
the image of the race and therefore on what each representation
suggested. The analysis of Julia and Good Times describes these
women’s struggle for control over their images.
“I’m a Black Women with a White Image”
At the moment, we’re presenting the white Negro. And he has very little
Negro-ness. I don’t delude myself into thinking that I’m operating in
the context of anything but a white society. . . . The white community
has to assuage its own conscience. Julia, of course, is a product of
that. The white society has put a television-show on the air about black
people. Now don’t you know what that’s going to be all about?
Diahann Carroll, in Richard Warren Lewis,
“The Importance of Being Julia”
In 1968 a half-hour situation comedy called Julia was introduced
by NBC to a nation of television viewers. 6 The story line was mundane
enough: “a beautiful woman, her bright eyed child and their
suburban apartment . . . registered nurse whose Army husband had
died a hero in Vietnam. Her search for a new life in a strange city.” 7
Yet the show was the focal point of much uproar and controversy;
Julia was black. Although television featured black characters in
minor or supporting roles, Julia was the first situation comedy
to place a black character in the sole starring role since Amos ’n’
Andy and Beulah had both been canceled in 1953. This was a
watershed moment in television history. The genesis of this show
proves instrumental to understanding the political agenda evident
in the program’s inception and illustrates the discourse in which the
star, Diahann Carroll, attempted to intervene. On March 22, 1967,
director of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins, delivered a speech at a fundraiser
in Los Angeles. He was invited by Jack Valenti, president of
the Motion Picture Association of America, to address some of the
most powerful executives in the film and television industry. Hal
Kanter, creator of Julia, stated that he wanted to do more than
donate money to the NAACP and that he felt compelled to write
the show after listening to Wilkins’s words. 8 TV Guide reporter
Richard Lewis summarizes the event. 9
Wilkins spoke calmly yet firmly about solutions to the crisis in the
cities, a sober contrast to the demagoguery of his more militant con-