y
black culture.
or television. An instant hit was found with the
Amos n’ Andy show in 1929, created by two comedians with Vaudeville and Blackface experience, Freeman Gosden and Chris Correll. The
first radio program to be syndicated by the United States, it ran as a weekly serial from 1923 to
1945 and a weekly situation comedy from 1943
to 1955.
The show found challenges with not being a
visual medium, and therefore, they exaggerated the voices to create a clear distinction between the characters for radio audiences. All
of the male characters were voiced by Gosden
and Correll and purposefully made these black
characters buffoonish and inept, which created
the groundwork for the comedy.
The Amos n’ Andy show was among a wave of
similar radio shows that mocked black people
based on white man’s stereotypes at the time.
And yet, it wasn’t just radio that paved the way
for these kinds of performances. Around this
time, black people were subject to humiliation
through animation. Even highly-successful film
studios such as Walt Disney and Warner Bros.
created short cartoons mocking the blacks
which aired shortly before the main feature film
in cinemas. These films would soon run on syndicated television. These cartoons are now illegal and are a mere memory, although they do
circulate online.
Television further proved that Blackface was to
be popular even in people’s living rooms. In Britain, The Black and White Minstrel Show aired
from 1958 to 1978 and was considered highly
respectable entertainment during that period. It
featured a sing-along performance of dancing
minstrels with ‘comedy interludes’ that parodied
However, the programme’s racial implications
were finally taken into account by the late 70’s
and thus led to its demise twenty years after it
first aired. It has since not been aired again and
is seen posthumously as being an embarrassment, despite its huge popularity at the time.
In America, Amos n’ Andy had a television incarnation that proved to be just as popular as
their ventures in radio. It initially aired in 1951
despite attempts from the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People) to prevent its release.
Unlike the radio show, it used actual African-American actors, although they were still
instructed to emulate Gosden and Correll’s voices and speech patterns as closely as possible.
This was so that the show could still portray the
comedic pairing’s perspective on what ‘Negro’
humour was, as was done with their radio show.
This meant that although African-American
actors were used, it was still as racist as ever
since it continued to be a mockery towards that
race with its buffoonish characters and harmful stereotypes. Eventually, in 1966, CBS gave
in to the growing pressure of the NAACP and
the civil rights movement and axed the television show. Such dramatic action was unpr