African Americans and US Popular Culture by Verney Kevern;

Author:Verney, Kevern; [Verney, Kevern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2022-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four Black Power, 1965–76

DOI: 10.4324/9781315015316-4

In the late 1960s America was a country at unease with itself. In 1965 peace protesters organized the first concerted demonstrations against the Vietnam War. By 1968 opinion polls showed that the majority of Americans were against the conflict. Racial confrontations spread outside the South. In the ‘five long hot summers’ of 1964–8 there were serious urban disorders in some 200 American cities, most of which were in the North or on the West Coast.

Violence became a part of political life. Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, on 22 November 1963, the President's brother, Robert, was killed in 1967, whilst himself campaigning for the Presidency. African Americans also suffered the loss of martyred leaders. On 21 February 1965 Malcolm X was gunned down in Harlem, New York. On 4 April 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

The troubled times created problems for television programmers and Hollywood filmmakers. The conservative instincts of decision makers in both industries were offset by the need to keep up with changing public opinion. The Green Berets, a 1967 Hollywood production, demonstrated the cost of the failure to adapt. A patriotic defence of the Vietnam War inspired by actor John Wayne, the film flopped at the box office.

The leading cinema attractions for US audiences in 1967 involved more sobering portrayals of social and racial problems. To Sir With Love starred Sidney Poitier working as an educator in a deprived inner-city school. A calculated attempt to repeat the success of The Blackboard Jungle, the film reworked the plot of the earlier production by casting Poitier as a teacher rather than a student, and moving the setting from the United States to London.

Poitier enjoyed another 1967 triumph with In the Heat of the Night. Playing a New York detective, Virgil Tibbs, Poitier's character became involved in a murder case in a small southern town whilst on a family visit in the region. Initially suspected of the killing himself, Tibbs not only proved his innocence but also identified the true culprit, working in an uneasy alliance with the bigoted local police chief played by Rod Steiger. Tense and fast moving, the film highlighted the South's racial problems.

At the same time, In the Heat of the Night was less radical than it seemed. References to Tibbs' well-adjusted life in the North gave the impression that race could still be seen as a southern rather than a national problem. The role of the black detective was a reprisal of the ‘ebony saint’ stereotype that Poitier had played in the 1950s. Intellectual, self-controlled, non-violent, and able to understand and forgive the failings of his tormenters, the character embodied an idealized white vision of black civil rights campaigners as personified by Martin Luther King. Travelling alone in the South, Tibbs conveniently had no love interest, constituting another example of the desexualized black hero.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Poitier's third box office hit of 1967, suffered from similar failings. Portraying an interracial relationship between a world

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