Revolution Televised.pdf

Reading the Roots of Resistance 21
black community over Amos ’n’ Andy. African American actors
pointed out the opportunities for black artists in the burgeoning
medium. Spencer Williams argued that the situations occurred to
“real Negroes you and I know.” 48 Other black viewers resented the
NAACP and other white organizations for disrupting their viewing
pleasure.
The show battled to avoid racist practices. They hired veteran
African American TOBA and Chitlin’ Circuit performer Flournoy
Miller as a consultant on the set. The set decoration catered to socalled
middle-class sensibilities through paintings, books, and apartment
ambience. The main characters’ motivations were also upwardly
mobile, and supporting characters were often self-employed
business owners. Criminals, when represented, were not African
American. As Cripps concludes,
Amos ’n’ Andy arrived in full view of the television audience, complete
with symbolic baggage from an older time in black history
and broadcasting history. Solidly rooted in a segregated world, by
its existence, even on television, it seemed to cast doubt over black
social goals and to mock the newly powerful, organized black
middle class. 49
Thus, although Amos ’n’ Andy had a large black following, the program
was rejected by black activists as regressive.
The production and reception of Amos ’n’ Andy indicate the
level of contestation over images of African Americans. The debate
over the show revealed how television was inscribed onto the African
American program of uplift. In this case, middle-class black
America believed that, to uplift the black community, integration
was essential; one needed to represent African Americans as worthy
of progressing into mainstream social and economic circles. These
“regressive” black images, although entrenched in black folk culture,
were impeding the process of integration. What this debate
also points to is that the values of one segment of the black community
could silence other black voices. I do not mean to argue that
legitimate concerns did not exist in regard to the power of the medium
in distributing images of a community. However, this production
elucidates that a single black community has never existed and
that the appeal of such binaristic positive/negative concerns leaves a
gap in understanding the hidden transcripts of such productions.
Clearly, Amos ’n’ Andy entertained many African Americans.