The Adventures Of Amos N Andy

Reprint of the 1991 Free Press edition, with Ely's (history, College of William and Mary) new eight-page preface. c. Book News Inc.

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZEA New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors' ChoiceThomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong. Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. There, ex-slaves established farms, navigated the Appomattox River, and became entrepreneurs. Free blacks and whites did business with one another, sued each other, worked side by side for equal wages, joined forces to found a Baptist congregation, moved west together, and occasionally settled down as man and wife. Slavery cast its grim shadow, even over the lives of the free, yet on Israel Hill we discover a moving story of hardship and hope that defies our expectations of the Old South.

This critical reexamination of Amos ’n’ Andy, the pioneering creation of Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden, presents an unapologetic but balanced view lacking in most treatments. It relies upon an untapped resource—thousands of pages of scripts from the show’s nearly forgotten earliest version, which most clearly reflected the vision of its creators. Consequently, it provides fresh insights and in part refutes the usual blanket condemnations of this groundbreaking show. The text incorporates numerous script excerpts, provides key background information, and also acknowledges the show’s importance to radio broadcasting and modern entertainment.

In the fall of 1961, a new cartoon made its primetime network television debut, joining Hanna-Barbera's The Flintstones and Top Cat series. Titled Calvin and the Colonel, it was the creation of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, and was produced by Kayro Productions in association with MCA TV/Revue Studios. The new cartoon was anything but new; it was the reincarnation of Gosden and Correll's Amos 'n' Andy radio program. Amos and Andy storywriters Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, who wrote for the radio show, were brought onboard to repurpose their old scripts for the new cartoon series. While characters Colonel Montgomery J. Klaxon and Calvin T. Burnside were animals, their voices, performed by Gosden and Correll, were identical to the radio's Andy Brown and George "Kingfish" Stevens characters. Explore this unique look at how Calvin and the Colonel became a cartoon, Gosden and Correll's previous 1934 animation venture, and all of the controversy that went with it.

A study of the NAACP’s activism in the cultural realm through creative projects from 1910 to the 1960s. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, having dedicated itself to the fight for racial equality since 1909. While the group helped achieve substantial victories in the courtroom, the struggle for civil rights extended beyond gaining political support. It also required changing social attitudes. The NAACP thus worked to alter existing prejudices through the production of art that countered racist depictions of African Americans, focusing its efforts not only on changing the attitudes of the White middle class but also on encouraging racial pride and a sense of identity in the Black community. Art for Equality explores an important and little-studied side of the NAACP’s activism in the cultural realm. In openly supporting African American artists, writers, and musicians in their creative endeavors, the organization aimed to change the way the public viewed the Black community. By overcoming stereotypes and the belief of the majority that African Americans were physically, intellectually, and morally inferior to Whites, the NAACP believed it could begin to defeat racism. Illuminating important protests, from the fight against the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation to the production of anti-lynching art during the Harlem Renaissance, this insightful volume examines the successes and failures of the NAACP’s cultural campaign from 1910 to the 1960s. Exploring the roles of gender and class in shaping the association's patronage of the arts, Art for Equality offers an in-depth analysis of the social and cultural climate during a time of radical change in America. Praise for Art for Equality “A well-conceived and well-executed study that will add significantly to the historiography of the NAACP, the long civil rights movement, and African American history.” —John Kirk, George W. Donaghey Professor and Chair of the History Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock “In this insightful book, Woodley writes with great verve and confidence. As a result, Art for Equality will attract readers in a variety of fields from African American history to art history to American political history.” —Matthew Pratt Guterl, Brown University “A necessary contribution to African American social and cultural histories.” —Journal of Southern History

Even well-meaning fiction writers of the late Jim Crow era (1900-1955) perpetuated racial stereotypes in their depiction of black characters. From 1918 to 1952, Octavus Roy Cohen turned out a remarkable 360 short stories featuring Florian Slappey and the schemers, romancers and ditzes of Birmingham's Darktown for The Saturday Evening Post and other publications. Cohen said, "I received a great deal of mail from Negroes and I have never found any resentment from a one of them." The black readership had to be satisfied with any black presence in the popular literature of the day. The best known white writers of black characters included Booth Tarkington (Herman and Verman in the Penrod books), Irvin S. Cobb (Judge Priest's houseman Jeff Poindexter), Roark Bradford (Widow Duck, the plantation matriarch), Hugh Wiley (Wildcat Marsden, the war veteran who traveled the country in the company of his goat) and Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden (radio's Amos 'n' Andy). These writers deservedly declined in the civil rights era, but left a curious legacy that deserves examination. This book, focusing on authors of series fiction and particularly of humorous stories, profiles 29 writers and their black characters in detail, with brief entries covering 72 others.