When I was growing up in Rocky Mount, North Carolina it was rare that you saw a Black person on television. I can recall everyone in the house yelling as loud as possible: “Hurry up there is a black person on television!”

During this Black History month I would like to focus on Black Entertainment. A few facts you should know:

We have come a mighty long way. Halle Berry and Denzel Washington made film history on March 24, 2002, as the actors won the Best Actress and Best Actor Awards, breaking a 40-year dry spell for African-Americans at the ceremonies. Both of these actors received a tremendous career boost from my friend and Morehouse College classmate “Spike Lee”. 

Mahalia Jackson is credited with popularizing gospel music as a modern art form. She first attracted national attention through her close association with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She also sang at Dr. King’s funeral.

In May 1965 the Pulitzer Prize Advisory Board voted against honoring Duke Ellington. Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday launched their careers at the Apollo Theater during “Amateur Night”. Gladys Knight got her big break on the “Ted Mack Show”. Fats Waller scored the hit “Ain’t Misbehavin” which was a part of his musical, Hot Chocolates. Ethel Waters first won acclaim as a jazz singer. She is best remembered for her films, The Sound and the Fury, and The member of the Wedding. Billy Eckstine was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1914. He became the first Black pop idol. Some of his songs were “I Apologize,” “No One but You” and “Tenderly”. Nora Douglas Holt was the first black musician to earn a master’s degree in music. In 1947 the NAACP tried to stop the filming of Disney movie, Song of the South because of the stereotyped character, Uncle Remus. At age 76, George Washington Carver narrated a 1940 documentary dramatizing his struggles and successes to a young boy pondering the options for the future. Fredi Washington plays the role of a light-skinned black girl who tries to pass for white in the 1934, film version of Imitation of Life. Until 1968 David Ruffin was the lead singer for the Temptations. Diana Ross made her film debut in the 1972 film about blues great, Billie Holiday. Pearl Bailey played the title role in the all-black Broadway version of Hello Dolly. Stephanie Mills recreated Judy Garland’s role in the 1939 MGM classic Wizard of Oz in a movie titled The Wiz. Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge played the titled roles in the 1959 film, Porgy and Bess. In 1977 ABC-TV aired its mini-series extravaganza, based on Alex Haley’s book Roots. In Roots, Kunta Kinte of the Mandika Tribe is stolen and sold into slavery in the 1750s from the nation of Gambia. In 1971 Isaac Hayes won an Oscar for his music in the detective drama Shaft. Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder are paired in the 1971 movie Silver Streak. Redd Fox portrayed Fred Sandford, a lazy junk collector on TV’s Sanford and Son. Butterfly McQueen played Prissy in the 1939 romance, Gone With the Wind. Sidney Poitier was the eligible, John Prentice, who came to dinner in the 1967s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Sammy Davis plays Big Daddy, with whom Shirley MacLaine falls in love in the musical, Sweet Charity. Sam Lucas is believed to be the first black man to have a leading role in films, he played Tom in the 1914 silent film, Uncle Toms Cabin. Maya Angelou in addition to writing the screenplay, she also wrote the songs featured in the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia. Diahann Carroll played a nurse in the TV series Julia. Ray Charles was born in 1932, became a blind singer, composer, and pianist. He sang the theme song to the film, In the Heat of the Night.  In the early 1900’s J. Rosamond Johnson, trained in the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and his brother James Weldon Johnson, wrote the Negro National Anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” Paul Robeson was a celebrated actor on Broadway and in Hollywood was a lawyer, athlete, and leader in the civil rights struggles, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. “Bojangles” was the nickname of Bill Robinson, the dancer who made more than 14 Hollywood movies in the 1930s. Coleman Hawkins was the first prominent tenor saxophone soloist in jazz history. His most successful record was “Body and Soul”. Louis Armstrong forgot the lyric of a song during a recording session and thereby invented ‘scatting”.

Oprah Winfrey won a Best-Supporting Actress nomination for her portrayal of the strong-willed Sophia in the Color Purple. In 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution denied Marian Anderson permission to sing in Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall.

In the words of my dad, “If you don’t have money at least have class!”

Greg Griffin is a free lance writer. You can read his previous articles by visiting his web page at www.greggriffin.com