Southern Projections: Black Television Hosts, Madison Avenue, and Nationalizing the South in 1950s Primetime

This article situates Nat King Cole’s NBC experience within those of Hazel Scott and Harry Belafonte, whose own programs bookended the first decade of television. While Scott was blacklisted and her Dumont show canceled, the brief primetime stints of Cole and Belafonte on national network television, reveal a shifting rhetoric surrounding the policing of blackness on TV that focused blame on the South. The South, then, became a convenient rhetorical device in the rejection of Black national television content. This article follows these two parallel yet interlocking threads, with the first section detailing the rise of national television in conversation with the South and the deflection of racism onto the region—an easy representational task amidst news coverage of the civil rights movement. The latter portion of the article follows a genealogy of Black hosted variety programs and Black televisual resistance from Scott to Cole and Belafonte.

The American Negro Theatre

From the group’s first public performance in June 1940 until its collapse in late 1949 or early 1950, the American Negro Theatre (ANT) stood as Harlem’s preeminent theatrical organization. From modest beginnings (including an initial treasury of less than twenty cents), this company grew in visibility and prestige, achieving prominence both in Harlem and on Broadway, and influencing the evolution of American culture with respect to inclusion of black artists and representations of race. The ensemble achieved new heights for African American artistic autonomy and self-expression within the theater. At the same time, the ANT undertook groundbreaking interracial collaborations and advanced the cause of integration in the theater, through its frequent partnerships with white artists. The ANT’s ongoing fame derives in large part from the accomplishments and visibility achieved by many of its alumni as professional artists, following the company’s demise. Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Earle Hyman, Alice Childress, Clarice Taylor, Frederick O’Neal, William Greaves, and many others worked with ANT early in their careers—gaining experience and training that helped propel them into greater public visibility later in life. Another source of renown for the ANT was the creation of the wildly popular Anna Lucasta—which began in Harlem before transferring to a historic two-year run on Broadway, an engagement in London’s West End, and two Hollywood film adaptations. Anna Lucasta still stands as the longest-running play in Broadway history with an entirely African American cast. Despite its collapse amid financial hardships after ten years of activity, the ANT’s influence—both on African American cultural expression as well as on commercial entertainment in the United States—has been transformative and far-reaching.

The Process of Writing a Book about Baldwin’s Self-Exile in Saint-Paul de Vence

Rather than write a classic biography of James Baldwin in the last cycle of his life—from his arrival in 1970 as a black stranger in the all-white medieval village of Saint-Paul, until his death there in 1987—I sought to discover the author through the eyes of people who knew him in this period. With this optic, I sought a wide variety of people who were in some way part of his life there: friends, lovers, barmen, writers, artists, taxi drivers, his doctors and others who retained memories of their encounters with Baldwin on all levels. Besides the many locals, contact was made with a number of Baldwin’s further afield cultural figures including Maya Angelou, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Angela Davis, Bill Wyman, and others. There were more than seventy interviews in person in places as distant as Paris, New York or Istanbul and by telephone spread over four years during the preparatory research and writing of the manuscript. Many of the recollections centred on “at home with Jimmy” or dining at his “Welcome Table.”

Popular Folk Music Comes of Age, 1955–1956

This chapter describes the folk music scene from 1955 to 1956. It discusses the formation of the Hillbilly-Folk Record Collectors' Club and launching of the quarterly Hillbilly-Folk Record Journal in early 1954, in Britain; how the skiffle provided a dramatic boost to the popularity of folk-style music in Britain; the sudden popularity of a different musical hybrid, calypso, in the U.S.; how folk music was linked with the developing countercultural movement—poetry, films, novels, comic books, jazz, comedy—spreading across the U.S. in the mid-1950s; the emergence of Harry Belafonte; and the rising popularity of international music in the U.S., spurred by people's search for international understanding and world peace during the harsh years of the Cold War.

Introduction

This introductory chapter traces the emergence of a rich folk music community in the 1950s. During the decade, folk music was part of the pervasive culture, as well as the emerging counterculture. Popular folk performers such as John Jacob Niles, Burl Ives, Josh White, Harry Belafonte, and the early Weavers easily entered the musical mainstream, while others existed more on the fringe but still attracted a loyal following. In addition to the commercial performers, there were also folk festivals, radio programs, record collectors, small record labels, and a host of organizations and venues. Indeed, folk music remained widespread and accessible, despite its often-perceived left-wing taint. Across the Atlantic a similar, although smaller, movement became visible. Moreover, they were increasingly connected: American folk music had a definite influence on the British scene.

Passing as Identity Crisis

This chapter examines how passing in Hollywood films that were produced in the late 1950s changed from being represented as an accepted external social strategy to one that reflected a psychologically motivated identity crisis. This is evident in films like Island in the Sun and Imitation of Life, which were portrayed as a pathological psychological failure to accept an imagined authentic identity. The chapter attributes this shift to a change in attitudes toward passing as the civil rights movement, the rise of black stars including Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge, post-passing narratives, and the psychoanalytic turn in Hollywood redefined how Americans understood race. It suggests that passing evolved into a sign of a deeper internal psychological disability and became marginalized and relegated to unsympathetic and/or supporting characters. It also considers how anxiety about racial ambiguity was framed as a crisis about sexual deviance and masculinity.

Roots of the Revival

This book presents a transatlantic history of folk's midcentury resurgence that juxtaposes the related but distinct revivals that took place in the United States and Great Britain. After setting the stage with the work of music collectors in the nineteenth century, the book explores the so-called recovery of folk music practices and performers by Alan Lomax and others, including journeys to and within the British Isles that allowed artists and folk music advocates to absorb native forms and facilitate the music's transatlantic exchange. The book places the musical and cultural connections of the twin revivals within the decade's social and musical milieu and grapple with the performers' leftist political agendas and artistic challenges, including the fierce debates over “authenticity” in practice and repertoire that erupted when artists like Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio carried folk into the popular music mainstream. From work songs to skiffle, from the Weavers in Greenwich Village to Burl Ives on the BBC, the book offers a frank and wide-ranging consideration of a time, a movement, and a transformative period in American and British pop culture.