[Claps]
♪ Spread the word
♪ Spread the Gospel
♪ Let the congregation know
♪ That a cornet was the downfall ♪
♪ Of the walls of Jericho,
♪ Spread the word, Spread the Gospel ♪
Abbey: I made a movie called "The Girl Can't Help It"
with Jayne Mansfield
and, um, Little Richard, and Fats Domino.
♪ Revival meeting, Spread the... ♪
- In a dress that Marilyn Monroe wore
in a movie called "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."
Well, what does that make me?
I would wear this dress and go places,
and I'd open the show, or whatever
and my breasts would be bouncing around -
I'd run on the stage.
Jacey: She was a chanteuse.
Sexy dresses, she rolled around on the piano.
She was a pretty face.
She, more or less, ran from that image
and she ran to the role of a truth teller.
- I saw myself as beautiful,
but I didn't see myself as an imitation of anybody,
but an original.
♪ Choppin' cotton don't be slow ♪
[Tambourine jingles]
♪ Better finish out your row ♪
- And I found songs that would express
what was in my heart.
♪ Keep a movin' with that plow ♪
Jacey: She told me, she said,
"You know what I did with that dress?
I threw it in a furnace."
I said, "Well why?"
"Are you kidding?
I'm not wearing some white woman's hand-me-downs!"
Abbey: What is most important to me is being free
of the shackles that chain me.
♪ Freedom daaaaay...
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Alicia: Black women entertainers -
they blazed such a trail...
- I hear that you're a big star now.
- Yes, I'm doing nicely, thank you.
Alicia: When I think of all these women,
I think of such credible human beings
who really stood for equality and justice.
And that is in the spirit of activism
in a way that art and politics all crossed.
♪ Somebody save me
Salamishah: Often times they're forgotten
and yet these artists are the most influential
and oftentimes, the most vanguard performers
in American culture.
Halle: These women were pioneers in the industry.
They were making a way out of no way.
They actually had careers in a time when
they really weren't supposed to have careers.
- [Yells] Nathan!
Ruth: Some are musicians, some are more famous on TV,
some through films,
but they all took risks
and they engaged with Black freedom struggles
in terms of the ways in which they represented blackness,
on screen, on stage,
in music, in their lyrics,
their choices of clothing, their choices of hairstyles.
Shonda: This moment right here,
me standing up here and my Thursday night
of network television full of women of color,
that could only be happening right now.
How many women had to hit that glass
before the first crack appeared?
How many cuts did they get? How many bruises?
How hard did they have to hit the ceiling?
Salamishah: All of these artists have been
carving out a space for themselves
in an industry that's still not quite ready to hear
what they're saying or performing or singing.
They had to create the space for themselves to be heard.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Diahann: I lived in New York
and I was in the Village a lot.
I loved being in the Village.
It was all so multiracial,
and people mixed and mingled
with less fear, less anxiety -
what the world should be.
Everything was based upon something you could do,
not what you looked like.
Ruth: Women entertainers were particularly important
in New York City
in interracial subcultures based in Harlem
and the Village,
where this idea that activism and entertainment
could come together in these exciting ways.
Tammy: Greenwich Village becomes this cultural,
musical, artistic enclave
beginning as early as the s,
but then it also becomes this incubator
of progressive political ideologies.
♪ I can't give you anything
♪ But love,
♪ Baby...
- Someone asked if I was named after Lena Dunham,
and I said, "No, I'm named for Lena Horne."
♪ Baby...
Lena W.: When my mom was pregnant,
she saw Lena Horne on TV.
She knew if she was having a girl,
that she would want them
to have the same amount of, uh,
class and grace as Lena had.
And I do everything I can
to try to live up to that.
♪ There's honey in the honeycomb ♪
- My God, she was a goddess.
She was, she was someone who I just thought
existed sort of in the ether
as just this angelic beauty.
- She was a singer.
She was, uh, an activist.
She was a forerunner.
She was an international superstar.
♪ ...in meeee
[Cheering and applause]
♪♪♪
Gail: In , my mother went into the Cotton Club
knowing how to, vaguely, how to dance and sing.
♪♪♪
Her mother decided she could do better
and spirited her away from the Cotton Club
to, uh, Boston to sing with Noble Sissle,
and he changed her image from the Cotton Club chorus girl
to a torch singer -
that was sort of the style of the day.
Finally, she got a job that kept her in New York
at Café Society.
Tammy: One of the central entities
that defines Greenwich Village is Café Society,
the night club that is created in the late s.
- It was the only integrated night club outside of Harlem.
It was started to raise money for the Communist Party.
It was sort of radical chic in its day.
It was full of showbiz people, and celebrities,
and socialite people, but also Communists.
So, my mother got a political education.
- I began to thrive.
I was introduced to great writers, and painters,
actors, and intellectuals.
People like Langston Hughes,
and Orson Welles, Billie Holiday,
Art Tatum, Duke Ellington.
♪♪♪
Tammy: We also have the great Hazel Scott,
who is oftentimes excluded
from these conversations of civil rights
who's performing there.
[Fast-tempo piano playing]
♪♪♪
- That's where Billie Holiday famously premieres
"Strange Fruit."
♪ Black bodies swingin'
♪ In the Southern breeze
♪ Strange fruit hangin'
♪ From the poplar trees
Ruth: Lena Horne later talked about that
as a time of awakening for her.
Charlene: I met Paul Robeson,
who became a part of my life.
Paul Robeson was a...
renowned black intellectual
and as he became more, uh, disconcerted
with the politics of America
and he became a kind of international figure,
his political beliefs and views
certainly influenced Lena Horne.
- Mr. Robeson, have you come back from Moscow
still a convinced Communist?
- I don't see how you can ask me that.
How do you know I'm a Communist?
Nobody else knows.
Interviewer: What are your political opinions?
Have they been changed at all?
- My political opinions about the Soviet Union
have only been deepened. I'm a believer in socialism,
the hope of the future.
- Robeson was enormously influential
in terms of the ways in which he modeled
being an activist entertainer.
And that he showed other artists and performers
that one could mesh activism
and political commitments with their artistry.
- He said, "You're a n*gro,
and that is the whole basis of what you feel
and it's the basis of what you will become."
And he gave me identity - he grounded me.
♪♪♪
Ruth: Abbey Lincoln's career started
very much in the mold that Lena Horne had established
several decades earlier.
Very sexualized, glamorous,
singing these popular hits.
She moved to New York.
She became more invested
in changing her musical style -
she became more invested in jazz vocals -
and she also became more interested in black politics.
Abbey: Well, I came to New York and met all these people.
You know, these writers, painters, musicians -
who told me why it was every time I would go to a city,
I'd find my relatives, the people that I represented,
living in hovels and they didn't have anything, you know?
I thought, I said, "Why is this? What is this?"
And they said, "Oh, this is because of this,
and because of that, and because of that."
And I said, "Okay, well, we have to fix it then."
Tammy: She ends up, in the s,
in this progressive scene that's being refueled.
Some of that political culture,
some of that political energy is being reformed
in these different nightclubs.
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
Tammy: In , Nina Simone
becomes a part of this nexus
of artists and activists and writers
and political leaders
that are meeting in New York.
Salamishah: She's in a community of people
who are from many margins,
and that kind of gives her a different courage
to be a different kind of artist.
- I'll never forget
the first time I played at Montreux Jazz Festival.
The guy who had run the festival since,
you know, it started;
he has an archive of every person
that ever touched the stage.
So, he said, "Who do you want to see?"
And I was like, "I have to see Nina."
And I just watched her, riveted,
in this little theatre,
like her playing this piano.
And I was like, "I'm never gonna play again
because I'm never gonna be as good as her."
[Laughs]
Salamishah: Nina Simone was born Eunice Waymon
in Tryon, North Carolina,
and she was discovered at a very young age
to be a musical prodigy.
Her family moves to Philadelphia.
All in the attempt to audition
for the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,
and she's rejected.
Was it because she wasn't good enough?
Was it because she was a woman? Was it because she was black?
The answer to that is unknown.
Heartbroken, she had to reinvent herself.
She gigs in Atlantic City.
Her mother is a very religious figure,
so she doesn't want her mom to know she's playing jazz.
So, she takes on this name, Nina Simone,
after the French actress Simone Signoret.
She was seen as kind of exceptional
from the very beginning of her career.
♪♪♪
Tammy: And she comes under the influence of James Baldwin,
and Lorraine Hansberry, as well as Miriam Makeba
and Abbey Lincoln.
Salamishah: These figures were known as like
civil rights writers, right?
Lorraine Hansberry's, uh, famous play,
"A Raisin in the Sun";
Baldwin is writing scathing criticisms,
um, like "The Fire Next Time".
She has a, a cool quote about Lorraine Hansberry;
that they were talking about like Marx and Lenin
and revolution. You know, girl stuff, right?
♪♪♪
- I always taught my daughter
if she wanted to know something,
don't ask the internet.
Find the smartest person in the room.
- When we see black women on--
in film and in television,
the first thing that happens is we applaud.
We made it. We're being actually seen.
You know, the second thing that happens,
I think for myself, is an analysis happens.
How are we being portrayed?
When I see black women
in any kind of TV or film,
it's an act of protest
because I know how long and how hard
you have to fight to even get there.
["Stormy Weather" by Lena Horne plays]
♪ Don't know why
♪ There's no sun up in the sky ♪
♪ Stormy weather
♪ Since my man and I ain't together ♪
- She arrived in Hollywood the same time
that Walter White arrived in Hollywood
to speak to Hollywood producers
to ask them to change the stereotypes in Hollywood,
and they agreed.
- They began to talk about me being at the studio.
So, I called my father.
'Cause my father, he was tough,
hardworking provider.
He was a gangster.
He was in what we used to call "Sporting Life."
- Walter White and her father convinced her
that she could change the image of black woman in Hollywood.
- Sufficed to say he came to Hollywood the next day
and I arranged a meeting with him with L.B. Mayer.
And my dad walks in -
and he's sharp. You know, he was -
and he had on a diamond stick pin
but a very conservative dark suit.
And he said, "Mr. Mayer, it's a great privilege
you're offering my daughter," he says,
"But I can buy my own daughter her own maid."
He was just jivin', you understand.
"I don't want her to be insulted.
Uh, it's very nice,
but she's not gonna be in a "Tarzan" picture
and run around in a leopard skin."
Well, my father was from- [laughs]
and I don't think Mr. Mayer
had ever been approached by a black man like that.
So, he just sat and he said,
"Oh, well, Mr. Horne,
we wouldn't do anything to, to, to..."
And of course, remember, in , the NAACP
was trying to break the union out there
to get black cameramen, get black people on the sets.
- She was definitely a pioneer in her day
because black women represented-
had been represented on screen mostly in demeaning roles.
- If you don't care what folks says about this family,
I does! I's told you and told you,
they can always tell a lady by the way that she eat
in front of folks like a bird. And I ain't aiming...
Jacqueline: The Mammy, who I think, um, you know,
many of us might immediately bring to mind Hattie McDaniel
as the character named Mammy in "Gone With The Wind".
- Ooh!
- Just hold on and suck in!
Jacqueline: So if you think about that iconic image
of Hattie McDaniel tying up
the corset of Scarlett O'Hara,
the Mammy is, um, completely devoted
to perpetuating white womanhood.
Hattie McDaniel, first academy award winning role
for a black actor.
- I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race
and to the motion picture industry.
- I remember the first time seeing "Gone with the Wind",
and I remember thinking, "Oh my gosh,
I want to be Scarlett O'Hara."
Hattie McDaniel didn't even play in my consciousness
because the message that got infiltrated was
to be a black woman who is dark and poor
is a negative thing,
and it is...
not something to aspire to or to relate to.
Samuel: Seeing Butterfly McQueen and Hattie McDaniel.
Uh, seeing Stepin Fetchit wasn't confusing to me.
I knew white people had this image of us
as being shuffling and lazy.
- The level of stereotyping has been through the roof.
So blatant and so obvious.
- Holy Moses!
- Moses nothing! Say, that's Jonah!
- I went for the doctor, and I just--
- Come on out of there now. Ain't nobody gonna harm you.
What you doin' in there? - Nothin'. I was just--
Thought you thought I was Mr.--
Jacqueline: The scholar, Donald Bogle, wrote a book
called "Toms, c*ons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks".
The movies did not invent these stereotypes.
They came from much older traditions
of representing black people
across media and literature and theater.
And the movies just picked up on those things,
but then I think also really amplified them
and circulated them more broadly.
♪♪♪
♪ I'd like to black my face
[Claps]
♪ Put on a stovepipe hat
♪ On a February morn
♪ A tiny baby boy was born
- Well, thank you, boys! Here's my card.
Any time you're up my way, drop in.
- You need to look at the foundations of film, right?
Like the foundations of film
are much like the foundations of America.
Like, in the same way that America was built on sl*very,
film was built on r*cist imagery.
The film that is largely credited as teaching us
how to make films is "Birth of a Nation".
This was D.W. Griffith's epic recreation
of the civil w*r era.
It's a movie that was built off
the r*cist imagery from society,
But then it, in turn fed society
by, by inspiring the second coming of the KKK.
Lena H.: In any case, I became the first black to be signed
to a long-term contract. Seven years.
They said, "Well now, you are
in a very representative position
and you must make sure
that you've handle yourself circumspectly
so that you don't embarrass other black women."
That was a heavy load, you know?
- Progress in Hollywood comes in waves, okay?
Like it always - it's always baby steps
and it comes in waves, right?
So, they saw Lena Horne as kind of the new, the new hope.
- Why Lena Horne managed to negotiate this contract
with the Hollywood industry,
was a result of the fact
that African Americans had contributed to World w*r II.
And they realized that because of the black contributions,
that the country was changing.
And so, they were gonna have to compromise in terms
of the demands that blacks were making and expecting
in view of their contributions to the w*r effort.
♪♪♪
Ruth: For Lena Horne to say,
"No, I will not play maids onscreen,"
was to reject all of these deeply entrenched
historical stereotypes of African American women.
And she was saying, "No, I can be another kind of performer.
I can offer a different kind of representation."
♪ We could be messin' round
♪ But you is disgressin' round
♪ While I'm tossin' nature at your feet ♪
Lena H.: My signing this contract
and they're hearing that I would not do
certain kind of work,
got me into a lot of trouble with black actors.
- This could actually seem really problematic
for the black actors
who had been working in Hollywood or decades,
who felt as though, you know,
they were doing the work that was available to them.
[Ringing bell]
♪♪♪
- They feared that her contract
would then make it difficult
for all black performers.
- Oh, Mamie! - Coming!
Gail: If she refused to be a servant,
then they wouldn't have any more servant parts.
- Actors like Hattie McDaniel,
uh, could feel some kind of way
about Lena Horne entering Hollywood, ostensibly,
to improve the image of the n*gro;
well, then, like what does that say about
what Hattie McDaniel has been doing?
- They very fact that I was one of the first, you know,
I was isolated right away
because there was no niche for me.
So I was in the middle.
Grey, you see.
This pale thing.
- "In sunny Puerto Rico,
We drink floats of Rum and Clicquot
While our favorite houseboy Chico
Shakes the rhythm of the spin."
- Lena Horne was the first woman of color
I saw in a movie ever.
And I had the immediate reaction of saying,
"Is she black or is she white?"
I was a little confused.
And that's when I got the first lesson on
a drop of black blood makes you black,
and you should understand that right now.
♪ It was just one of those things ♪
- The first movie that I was in at MGM
was called "Panama Hattie".
♪ We have been aware
♪ That our love affair was too hot... ♪
Lena H.: "Who's the new Latin singer,"
everybody was asking.
Well, MGM may have wanted to pass me off as Latin,
but when my own people accused me of trying to pass,
I was furious,
and I felt more isolated than ever.
They said, uh, um,
"Why don't you be Latin, pass as Latin?
I mean, you know, you don't, don't look colored,"
and all that kind of nonsense.
- That was always meant to be a compliment--
- That was meant to be a big compliment, see.
So anyway... [laughing]
By the time they put dark makeup on me
to make match the darker actors that I was working with,
all they had was teeth.
- Then they said, "Okay. Max Factor was the genius."
So, he invented a new color
pancake makeup called "Light Egyptian,"
which they put on mother, and they put on everybody
who ever played a jungle princess after that.
Hedy Lamarr wore it. Everybody wore it.
♪ Oh, listen, sister...
Gail: My mother wanted very much
to play Julie in "Show Boat"
because she'd sung some of Julie's songs
in "Ziegfeld Follies."
♪ Can't help lovin'
♪ That man of mine
- Lena Horne was particularly attracted to it
because she, herself,
was a light-skinned black woman singer
and the fictional character was as well.
- So, when they were casting the movie many years later,
I hoped I would be chosen for the part.
- MGM felt it was too big of a risk
to cast a light-skinned black woman
to play a leading role as a light-skinned black woman.
Lena H.: Instead, they chose Ava Gardiner,
who, ironically, was my best white girlfriend out there.
♪ Tell me I'm crazy
Lena H.: And they put dark make-up on her,
created for me especially, and she played Julie.
♪ Can't help
♪ Lovin' that man
♪ Of mine
- As successful and prominent as Lena Horne was,
it is worth thinking about
what her career might have been
if this door and other doors hadn't been shut to her.
Gail: My mother could've played that part,
but Hollywood was nervous.
They were always nervous about race
because of the Southern market,
which was their biggest market.
And Southerners just slashed any movie
that had a black in it that wasn't playing a servant.
And it was Hollywood's way of, of saying,
Look, we're not r*cist. We have this black star.
But at the same time, we don't do anything with her.
- You know I still love you.
- Now, you just be a little more careful what you say
to your wife in front of me. - [Laughter]
- Georgia, you keep out of this.
- I'm speaking my mind. - And I ain't heard a sound.
- Now Little Joe, are you just so dumb
you can't see what she's after?
- We're both after the same thing,
but I'm still the wife and got the inside track.
Gail: There were only two movies
that she ever had speaking parts in:
"Cabin in the Sky" and "Stormy Weather"
and they helped make her famous.
- Like here's MGM doing this really progressive thing
by making an all-black musical for the black audiences.
That was the big progress for Hollywood,
and they never did it again.
♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey, Hey, hey, ♪
♪ Hey, over there you all ♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey
♪ Your city's gonna fall ♪ Do you give in
Ruth: She ends up being in films
where she appears as a singer.
She doesn't have a speaking role.
And the reason they did that was so that, um,
southern distributors could cut her out of the movie
if they so chose.
We had two movie theaters
that were specifically black in Chattanooga,
because we couldn't go to the other theaters anyway.
So, I went to The Liberty or The Grand,
which were on diagonal corners from each other.
So, I saw movies in that particular way.
- The censors...
They took out a beautiful scene I did, when...
when I take a bubble bath in "Cabin in the Sky."
They don't show it in the picture.
They cut it out because everybody said,
what's this black woman doing in these soap suds
acting like, you know.
And it's one of the prettiest scenes in the picture.
♪ Love is a rippling brook
♪ Man is a fish to cook
♪ You got to bait your hook
♪ Rise and shine
♪ And cast your line
- They hadn't made me a maid,
but they hadn't made me into anything else either.
So, I just became a little butterfly
pinned up against the wall,
singing all these lovely songs.
Singing my heart away in Hollywood.
[Drumming, cymbals crash]
Announcer: And now ladies and gentlemen,
the Plaza Hotel takes great pride in presenting...
Ms. Diahann Carroll.
["Everything's Coming Up Roses" by Diahann Carroll plays]
♪ Things look swell,
♪ Things look great
♪ Gonna have the whole world on a plate ♪
♪ Starting here, starting now ♪
♪ Honey, everything's coming up roses ♪
♪♪♪
- Diahann Carroll came of age professionally, um,
with this aura of glamor around her,
and the parts that she played reinforced that.
She won the Tony Award for "No Strings"
in which she played the part of a model.
- I wanted this.
I'm like Abe Burrows, I really wanted this.
Male Interviewer: I know, inevitably, you will be
and probably are already compared with Lena Horne.
Does this bother you at all?
- I suppose it does on the same basis that
any young artist hopes to carve out their own niche
and, uh, not suffer through comparisons,
but I don't mind the comparison
because, to me, Lena Horne
is one of the greatest performers in the world.
So being compared to that caliber is kind of very nice.
- She's this iconic, kind of, figure
that still maintains part of that Hollywood mystique.
Uh, and she was around when Hollywood stars
were bigger than life
and more mysterious than magic.
And she's created a sort of niche
that a lot of young actresses don't even realize:
the Ingénue,
the gorgeous kind of smart, sexy woman
that could entice, you know, people of all races,
you know, not just, not just the brothers.
- In the United States, as well as here,
there are very few Negroes employed in,
in television drama and in movies.
And I would like to do more,
as I'm sure many other young n*gro actors
and actresses would like to do,
but the job opportunities are très few.
- You look at an actress like Diahann Carroll,
light-skinned, beautiful,
and she still was not able to have the opportunities
that her white counterparts had.
Ruth: In ,
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell
convened hearings to address racial discrimination
in the entertainment industries and Diahann Carroll
was among the black luminaries that testified.
It's kind of hard for us to imagine now.
They were not recorded; they were not televised.
The white mainstream press barely wrote a word about it,
even though the African American press
covered it extensively.
Diahann: I am living proof of the horror of discrimination
because when you consider
how little employment I have had,
in the field of television and Broadway,
and yet, being as well-known as I am.
I have been discriminated because of my color.
Chairman Powell: Here is the brightest star on Broadway,
a girl who virtually made "No Strings",
all the critics have said so -
yet, you have only worked twice
in seven-and-a-half years?
If they made a film of "No Strings",
they would probably get a white girl and darken her up.
Ruth: It's a little bit ironic
because the erasure of the hearings
brings even more attention to the fact
of why Adam Clayton Powell was motivated
to have these hearings in the first place -
was to talk about the absence of black people
in Hollywood industries.
- You often hear about people talk about
the gatekeepers in Hollywood.
They're the ones that decide
how wide the gate's gonna be opened
and how much they're gonna close the gate.
But the thing for black people is that
there's always less of us allowed through.
- You can't deny that there are
fair-skinned black actresses
that just have more opportunities
than actresses that are, that are brown-skinned.
And that's just a fact.
- It seems a number of times in, in your life and career,
you have been, quote unquote,
"The first black woman to..."
do one thing or another.
Did that bother you? Did you like that?
- No, I don't mind, I really don't mind.
I know why it happens to me
as opposed to happening to, happening to others
and I think it is because God put me together in a way
that is more acceptable to the white community.
"Oh, it's not such a major chance,
let's take it with Diahann."
And, and that does not make me feel proud
of the white community.
- I get these lists of actors that, you know,
that studios and networks
deem more profitable
or, or feel as if it can help get the movie greenlit.
And very rarely are there brown-skinned women
at the top of those lists.
- When it comes to getting jobs,
light is better to certain people that are hiring.
Um, you know, that's why,
not to take away from the other women,
you know, Diahann Carroll, Lena Horne,
they're, they're a different thought to me.
Um, they are not in the same realm
because I am not going to be
like a Diahann Carroll, you know.
I am a brown woman,
and I have a whole other kind of situation
that I'm going to have to deal with in life.
[Door opens]
[Light clicks on] - Portia?
[Floorboards creak]
You drunk? - No.
You drunk? - No.
I been trying mighty hard,
but I ain't been able to make it - yet.
Halle: Someone like Cicely Tyson
didn't fit into that mold,
and she was, um, accepted
for her talent alone.
And it wasn't about her physicality
or what she looked like, or if she fit into that box or not.
And I think that gave, um,
a pathway to women that didn't fit in that box
to also be respected,
and to be found beautiful in their own right,
and not be defined by this
white American's version of what beauty is.
- Yeah, Cicely Tyson.
- Yeah, Cicely Tyson.
I mean, obviously she's been a part
of some of the most incredible films of all time.
But what I remember the most is meeting her,
and I was immediately drawn to her.
That gorgeous skin
in this most magnificent queen face,
and this tiny body, by the way -
very small woman -
and spirit like bam!
Ruth: In ,
one of Cicely Tyson's first big performances
was in a play called "The Blacks".
She was very committed to portraying her character,
you know, accurately and with dignity.
And I think that was a defining thing for Tyson
and remains so to this day.
- May I sit, please? - Yes. Yes, please.
Ruth: Where she chooses her parts so carefully,
infusing her roles with a realism
and a believability.
- Cicely Tyson stood out to me
because she was brown-skinned.
So, I'm like "Okay, she's like me," you know?
And then...
she was also becoming characters
that were not stereotypes,
they were real people.
They were people with emotion, with heart.
They weren't always pretty people;
they were just real.
- I think that we need to level the playing field
so that way the best person for the job is who gets it.
But it really is - it's tricky.
I mean, you cannot--
These days, if you cast a light-skinned woman,
black Twitter is coming for you.
Uh, but then somebody could also argue
if you're a lighter-skinned actress,
and you want an opportunity,
are you paying for the sins of, of those that came before you?
♪ We who believe in Freedom ♪
♪ Cannot rest
♪ We who believe in Freedom ♪
- Black women were so fundamental
to the Civil Rights Movement.
They were the rank and file.
♪ Not needing to clutch for power ♪
- I question America.
Is this America, the land of the free
and the home of the brave,
where we have to sleep
with our telephones off of their hooks
because our lives be threatened daily,
because we want to live as decent human beings,
in America? Thank you.
- When we look back,
Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker,
were clearly leaders in the movement
and yet we write these women out of the narrative.
Gail: Her grandmother made my mother a lifetime member
of the NAACP when she was two,
so she had a sense of activism her entire life
and never gave up on it even when she was,
um, criticized for it.
My mother started off the s with a bang.
She was in The Luau restaurant in Hollywood.
She was sitting up in the balcony at the restaurant,
and she heard a little commotion down below.
A drunken man called, "Waiter, waiter!"
And the waiter said, "I'll be with you,
I just have to serve Ms. Horne."
- And he said, "Who the hell is Lena Horne?
Who does she think she is? She's just another "*-word"
just like all the rest of them."
And I got so mad,
I picked up a lamp off the table,
I threw that first.
I picked up three other ashtrays - glass ones -
and I threw them at him,
and he began to bleed down the side of his head.
And the people over on his side of the room were looking.
Nobody touched me 'cause I was furious.
- And sometimes your madness just mounts into,
you know, beautiful madness,
and I struck him. And I got tons of mail,
and letters, and telegrams from black people who said,
you know, "Hey! Thank you and how wonderful."
And all I said, "My God, I'm not alone."
I had lived a long time without that feeling.
I even got one from Joe Louis who said,
"I always said you had a great right arm!"
- This woman who had been in front of cameras and audiences
since she was was saying,
"Look at me in a new way."
And so, she was really aligning herself
with the younger generation of activists
who were also demanding to be seen.
- ♪ I'm a woman who speaks in a voice ♪
- ♪ In her voice - ♪ And I must be heard
- ♪ I must be heard
- ♪ At times I can be quite difficult ♪
- ♪ Difficult
- ♪ And I want to live in...
- What brought me out
was the young people of my race.
Their movement all over this country
gave me something to feel.
I, I became alive again.
Announcer: I take great pleasure and pride
in introducing to you Ms. Lena Horne.
[Crowd cheers]
- Freedom!
I don't feel like a movie star particularly,
but I'm a New Yorker, and what happens in the South
happens to my state and for my state too.
It's a communal effort, I'm sure.
♪♪♪
[Crowd cheering, loud buzz of chatter]
♪♪♪
Diahann: The marches I will never forget.
It was wonderful, frightening.
Crowd: [Chanting "freedom"]
- It just had a feeling of something you should be doing.
That was the most important point -
how much power our voices had.
Ruth: Behind the scenes,
Diahann Carroll supported black organizations; the NAACP,
and SNCC financially.
She hosted fundraisers in her home.
Diahann: I met Dr. King through Harry Belafonte.
It was a strange sensation
because we were in the presence of someone
who really understood that what he was doing
would probably cause his death.
Dr. King: The n*gro still is not free.
We can never be satisfied as long as the n*gro
is the victim of the unspeakable horrors
of police brutality.
[Cheering and applause]
- He operated without ever mentioning it,
but it was all around him, like an aura;
that he was certainly willing to give up his life
to do what needed to be done.
[Protestors chant]
Jacey: Abbey Lincoln was very serious
when it came to her emancipation
and the emancipation of her people.
Tammy: Her apartment became a meeting place for activists,
and also celebrities that were activists.
Ruth: She was really involved in
critiques of colonialism
and really thinking about black diasporic politics
in, in sophisticated ways.
- For example, uh, when Patrice Lumumba
was involved in the coup d'état
and Mobutu Sese Seko overthrew the government.
Well, Abbey Lincoln and other black entertainers,
as well as black youth in America,
begged America to help Patrice Lumumba
protect his country,
and they didn't do a damn thing about it.
Newsreel: Arrest. Ill treatment.
Imprisonment. Death.
Such was the fate of Patrice Lumumba.
Newsreel : The slaying of the deposed Congo premiere
is violently protested by students
and left-wing demonstrators in important world cities.
Newsreel : First, in the United Nations itself,
where a security council meeting
was violently interrupted.
[Chaotic yelling]
- There was some protest at the U.N.
- Mm-hmm. - And there was a picture
on the front page of the New York Daily News.
And you weren't identified but you were right there
in the, in the forefront.
Abbey: We were making armbands for the men
and, uh, veils for the women.
We didn't know there was gonna be a demonstration like this.
Nobody planned it.
Newsreel : Most of the group are American Negroes,
members of African nationalist groups in New York.
Abbey: I remember crashing the gates of security council.
I never was a violent person,
and it was really scary for me.
Newsreel : United Nations guards
were injured in making arrests.
- There were a lot of lies they told
because we didn't have any weapons
because nobody knew this was gonna happen.
♪ How you do
♪ Do carry on...
♪♪♪
Max Roach: Alright. This is the "Made Him in the Tomb"...
, , ...
♪ Were you there when they laid him... ♪
Max: I'm the drummer. My name is Max Roach.
- ♪ In the tomb...
- This beautiful young lady is very special to me.
She's my wife, Abbey Lincoln,
the voice of our group.
♪ Were you there...
- Abbey married Max Roach
and the two of them together became a force
to be reckoned with.
They did the "Freedom Now Suite",
which is considered to be
So, Abbey's voice, Max's band,
Oscar Brown Jr.'s lyrics,
I mean, it was something. It really was.
♪ Rumors flyin', must be lyin' ♪
♪ Can it really be?
♪ Can't conceive it, don't believe it ♪
♪ But that's what they say
- You really hear her being radical and transgressive
in what she does musically.
The use of the voice is not that feminine
nuanced sound that we equate with jazz singers.
♪ Herero,
♪ Grebo, Ibo...
Tammy: It's about creating sound
that emotes emotion and experience.
It's embedded in that, right?
It is really clear
that she's engaging in resistance culture.
♪ Choppin' cotton don't be slow ♪
[Tambourine jingles]
♪ Better finish out your row ♪
[Tambourine jingles]
♪ Keep a movin' with that plow ♪
[Tambourine jingles]
♪ Driva' man'll show you how ♪
Jacey: This record in a lot of ways
was a battle cry, you know.
It was a manifesto of, of, of enough is enough.
Ruth: "We Insist!" has a photo on the front
of the Greensboro sit-in activists.
And again, very explicitly political
in terms of its claims for black rights.
Tammy: You have black and white college students
who are beginning to organize.
They're going to spark the Direct-action campaigns -
the pray-ins, the sit-ins, the freedom rides -
that are going to propel the movement
into a new level of activity,
but also bring the movement to the attention
of white America and the world.
- By the time she's performing this really radical 'Suite',
she's heralding and harnessing
the long history of black women's experiences
in the United States.
[Drumming]
Ah-ah! Ahhhh!
[Drumming]
Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Ahhhh!
- Sonically, she's trying to invoke and imitate
what she imagined enslaved black women were feeling
under siege, under as*ault,
and on the plantations.
- Learning to scream was very good for me
as far as my work is concerned.
It helped to unleash, uh,
to release me, you know. - Mm-hmm.
- I believe that the role of the black woman
is the same role she's always played.
You do whatever is necessary, you know?
That's what we've always done.
Ruth: What we see black women entertainers doing
is really forging what we call today
an intersectional analysis.
They weren't just thinking about race.
They weren't just thinking about class.
They weren't just thinking about gender.
They were engaging in all of these at once,
simultaneously.
And they were forging kind of a freedom politics.
♪ sl*ve no longer, sl*ve no longer ♪
♪ This is Freedom Day
♪ Freedom Day
♪ It's Freedom Day
♪ Throw those shackle and chains away ♪
- And then by the time you get to the end of the 'Suite',
she's ushering a new moment of freedom
that's tied to civil rights initiatives
and equal pay initiatives.
So, she's, she's saying that in, in song, right?
We need our equal rights, we need to be given fair wages,
and we need voting rights.
♪ Freedom Day!
[Band plays final notes of the song]
- As the civil rights movement
was gaining more and more
momentum and urgency,
African American entertainers
were very much on the front lines
along with other activists.
Ruth: Lena Horne was one of the celebrities
that James Baldwin invited to the meeting
with Robert Kennedy in
along with Harry Belafonte,
Lorraine Hansberry, the white actor Rip Torn,
as well as some younger civil rights activists.
- James Baldwin came to New York,
and I was with him at a very important meeting
we had with Robert Kennedy and some other people.
I had to the right to be with them -
as a black woman.
Not as Lena Horne.
Gail: She said that the most interesting person
at the meeting was one of the SNCC members.
- SNCC stands for the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee.
And it was one of the major civil rights organizations
of the s,
and was associated with younger,
College-aged activists.
- And that was how she got really interested in SNCC.
And he told harrowing stories of what it was like
in Alabama and Mississippi.
And this young man from SNCC said
he would never go to Vietnam,
but he would fight in Mississippi.
Lena H.: I went to Medgar Evers home in Mississippi
and I was driven around the town.
And that's when he said to me,
"This is where I was born.
This country I love,
and I love Mississippi."
And he was working with people
who were trying to get voter permission for black people.
I got back to New York,
and the next morning I was gonna go on NBC
with, uh, Chet Huntley.
And he came in the room and he said,
"We're gonna be a little late starting because...
they've just k*lled Medgar Evers."
We were all angry.
It wasn't a surprise.
It's never a surprise
when you know what is going down.
♪ Alabama's got me so upset
♪ Tennessee made me lose my rest ♪
♪ Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam! ♪
♪ Alabama's got me so upset
♪ California has made me lose my rest ♪
♪ Everybody knows about Mississippi goddam! ♪
♪ Can't you see it?
♪ I know you can feel it, It's all in the air ♪
- Six kids were m*rder*d
in Birmingham, on a Sunday
and in Sunday school,
in a Christian nation, and nobody cares!
- Nina Simone, already feeling kind of a fury
and sadness of the death of Medgar,
learns that four girls were k*lled
in the church bombing
of the th street Baptist church in Birmingham.
And so, Nina Simone famously says,
that she tried to make a g*n
and she didn't really know how to do that.
And so, she composes "Mississippi Goddam"
in under an hour.
- This is a pivotal point for Nina Simone,
who says that at the,
at the moment in which that bombing took place,
she had this spiritual awakening.
♪ Hound dogs on my trail
♪ Little school children sitting in jail ♪
♪ Black cat cross my path
♪ Think every day's gonna be my last ♪
Ruth: So, as Nina Simone went on that show
and she performed "Mississippi Goddam"
and she talked about it as a black woman too.
In both performing and talking,
she was able to bring these issues of race and racism
into the homes of white Americans across the country.
- First you get depressed, and after that you get mad.
And when these kids got bombed,
I just sat down and wrote this song.
And it's a very moving, violent song
because that's how I feel about the whole thing.
It's called "Mississippi blank-blank."
- The first word is, "God," and the second word is "damn."
And I think everybody up this late at night
who can afford to pay for a television set
is adult enough to recognize
that one not only hears that expression,
but probably most of you say it
when you hit your thumb with a hammer.
- In "Mississippi Goddam",
we have Nina Simone pulling from the past
and invoking it in the present,
but also speaking to what is yet to come
if America does not enact real social change.
- Probably no admission of Jesus
has been more difficult to follow
than the command to love your enemy.
♪ Lord have mercy on this land of mine ♪
♪ We all gonna get it in due time ♪
♪ I don't belong here
♪ I don't belong there
♪ I've even stopped believing in prayer ♪
- There was an instance when Nina Simone met Dr. King
and had a meeting and talked with Dr. King.
And she made it clear to him
that she respected him and what he was doing,
but that she was not non-violent.
♪ Mr. Backlash Mr. Backlash ♪
♪ Who do you think I am?
♪ You raise my taxes and freeze my wages ♪
♪ Sent my only son to Vietnam
Lou: Nina Simone, one of our "Say Something singers."
Her music articulates the hopes
and purposes of black people.
And Black Journal recently accompanied Nina Simone
on a nationwide tour across the country.
Let's dig it.
- Every song that I sing, to me, is important;
that it communicates to-- something to someone.
It is not just a, a song.
It's something that says something to someone.
It's very much like poetry, or a good play.
Something that communicates
and gets into the soul of people.
- Even from the beginning,
- Even from the beginning,
when the first enslaved Africans
arrived here in America,
music has been the central form of resistance.
They've had no political agency,
they've not had money,
they've not had social power.
The only thing they've ever had
is the ability to lift their voice,
the ability to dance, and to defy gravity.
The ability to create rhythms,
that can translate word
and stir the soul,
and Nina understood that.
- An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned,
is to reflect the times.
That to me is my duty.
A-a-and at this crucial time in our lives
when everything is so desperate,
when every day is a matter of survival,
I don't think you can help but be involved.
Young people, black and white, know this.
That's why they're so involved in politics.
We will shape and mold this country,
I will not be molded and shaped at all anymore.
♪ Simple walk to the corner store ♪
♪ Mama never thought she would be gettin' a call ♪
♪ From the coroner
♪ Said her son's been gunned down, ♪
♪ Been gunned down
♪ Can you come now?
♪ Tears in her eyes, can you calm down? ♪
Alicia: If she didn't choose to speak out
and be an activist,
to know and to feel what was going on
socially in the world,
what would we have done?
That drives my, my life right now.
- I'm feeling good now!
[Applause]
♪ To be young
♪ Gifted, and Black
♪ Oh how I've longed to know the truth ♪
Salamishah: She's making such a clear indictment
of American racism.
And she's doing it through really, really different
kinds of musical traditions.
She's coming up with like the showtune
for "Mississippi Goddam".
She's using a kind of gospel sound
with "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black".
♪ To be Young
♪ Gifted and Black
♪ Hey, is where it's at
♪ Is where it's at
♪ Is where it's at
[Applause]
Ruth: Popular culture is tremendously important
to the politics of civil rights.
People made sense of the civil rights movement
and engaged with the civil rights movement in films,
in music, on stage.
- Once you kind of create a lens
for us to see art and entertainment
as a political act,
then you'll get a deeper understanding
of the way women contribute.
["The Beulah Show" theme music plays]
"The Beulah Show!"
- Well, that looks pretty good! - Oh, it does, Beulah.
- It ought to. The prices they're charging,
I didn't know whether to cook it or deposit it!
[Laughter]
- We didn't get to see colored people.
I can remember always running to the television
or something and having somebody say,
"Colored people on T.V." or something.
- [Snoring]
- Wake up, you loafer! You hear me, wake up!
- Take a letter, sweetheart!
- I said WAKE UP!
- Oh, Oh, Oh...
Oh, Sapphire!
- We saw "Amos 'n' Andy".
We saw "Rochester" on "Jack Benny".
- Rochester! - Yes, boss!
[Audience laughs]
- Rochester, I asked you a thousand times
to fix that dripping faucet!
- You know, and the occasional black performer
on Ed Sullivan.
- Sometimes television can seem superficial to people
or they think, oh, it's just a TV show.
But when it's us, it's never just a TV show,
it's never just a movie.
It's more than that.
It's a doorstop propping up a door
so that way others can walk through.
♪♪♪
LaTanya: Then along that time came, you know,
Diahann Carroll with "Julia".
- I had been a guest of Jack Valenti
who asked a group of us to come to lunch
and be introduced to a man named Roy Wilkins.
And he talked about the Negroes place
in the entertainment business.
How little they're represented properly on the air
and backstage or behind the camera.
And I thought to myself,
there's something more I can do
and try to help the black people
present themselves more,
because after all, I had done "Amos 'n' Andy"
and I had done "Beluah."
And I felt that I was partially responsible
for some of the black image
that was prevalent at the time.
- It was known to all the writers in Hollywood
that everybody was trying to integrate.
All of the networks, all of them.
And that's when Hal wrote "Mama's Man."
That became "Julia".
So, I came to Hollywood and I listened,
and I heard what they hoped to do,
hoped to accomplish.
And so, I thought, yeah, I'd like--
this is something new.
I'd like to try this.
First, we got rid of the name [laughs],
which is such a stereotypical thought,
"Mama's Man".
[Singsong] And that's how "Julia" got born.
[Clicks tongue]
- We have dark skin and people like Mrs. Bennet
think that Afro-Americans like you, and me,
and Uncle Lou and Aunt Emma,
that we're different.
- Yeah. Mrs. Bennett says we move into nice, clean places
and make them dirty.
LaTanya: For us, it was finally!
Because finally we saw a reference of who we were.
A reflection of what we see in the mirror everyday.
Diahann: Everyone was scared because, um,
we were saying to the country,
um, we're going to present
a very upper middle-class black woman,
and her major concentration
will not be about suffering in the ghetto.
And we don't know if you're gonna buy it,
but this is what we're going to do.
- Has Mr. Colton told you?
- Told me what? - I'm colored?
- What color are you? - I'm a n*gro.
- Have you always been a n*gro,
or are you just trying to be fashionable?
- [Laughs]
Jacqueline: Diahann Carroll -
she has this quality of refinement
that really helps to explain why it is that
she was the one who was cast in the role of "Julia'.
This first, you know, uh,
television program centered on,
you know, a black woman lead character.
[Doorbell buzzes]
- Merry Christmas, Julia! Merry Christmas!
- Julia was a nice lady who had a little boy,
lost her husband during the w*r. Smart.
Great sense of humor.
She was great fun to play too.
The fact that Julia was a nurse in a huge hospital
that had all sorts of people of many races, colors, and...
but it was maybe something that the American audience
had not, uh, seen before.
- And besides, when you go on a trip like that,
there are too many things to do to get ready.
There are plane tickets, hotel reservations...
car rental. - Car rental.
Ruth: Julia lived in this integrated,
middle-class neighborhood in California.
She was really, um,
not only integrating the show,
but she was integrating the living rooms
of the white people who would be watching the show.
- Mrs. Baker, I've been a very stupid woman.
You've opened my eyes.
I hope you can open your heart enough to forgive me.
[Knock on door]
Jacqueline: There was a lot of criticism
of the way that the show did not take up
social and political issues.
Julia is not shown picketing and protesting.
She's not, you know, putting her son to bed
and then going to a Black Panther rally.
Male Voiceover: I do not object
to white people being in the cast.
What I do object to is selecting the black cast
from people who are so white oriented,
that everyone has a white mentality.
Female Voiceover: Your show is geared to the white audience,
with no knowledge of the realness
of normal n*gro people. "Julia" is unreal.
To repeat again, Julia is no n*gro woman.
- Some of the criticism of course was valid,
but that's not what we were doing.
And we were of a mind that was a different show.
We were allowed to have this show.
We were allowed to put this point of view on the air.
We were allowed to have a comedy
about a black middle-class family.
- And then, we get into a lot of debates about realism.
You know, like, uh,
how, how much can we expect,
of, you know, white writers, producers
to develop worlds for black characters,
worlds that they don't know?
- Here's what I say, man, this is logic to me.
- Okay.
- Here we have a beautiful nurse,
wearing $ gown.
And I just said,
"She got to be selling dope out to hospital to folk."
[Audience laughs]
[Applause]
- He's so bad, I love you anyway!
He is just so bad!
I think everyone was very proud that they put Julia together
and put it on the air.
And the reception was wonderful,
we had great ratings.
- I thought that "Julia",
because it was such a popular show,
was going to catapult that whole,
whole situation -
the genre of, of black women
in those professional positions
that you would have seen more of that.
But it didn't happen, you know.
- In the s, you saw the gates open again,
and that was pressure from the NAACP saying,
"You need to see us."
And the white creators created "Julia".
And so, there was a little bit of space. It did well.
People enjoyed it. There was a little bit of controversy,
[clap] and the gate shut again.
- The reality is there are not a lot of parts
for leading ladies, for women of color.
We really have to get behind the scenes
and create these projects
and tell our stories for ourselves.
Cicely: We are not just considered actresses.
For instance, I would be up
for the same role as Jane Fonda.
If I were considered an actress
rather than a black actress,
which limits my ability to work.
Ruth: From the start of her career,
Cicely Tyson was very, very selective
about what parts she would and wouldn't accept.
Her support for civil rights came through the ways
in which she performed black womanhood.
- I have the reputation in my business
for working every few years.
And it's every two or three years when a role comes along
that appeals to me, uh,
that speaks for me,
that deals with what I would like to project
to my audiences.
♪ Will you come by here
♪♪♪
♪ Now is the needed time Oh, now... ♪
Sharon: When I saw "Sounder" with Cicely Tyson,
it changed everything.
It was a beautiful relationship
between a black man and black woman.
[Birds chirp]
- Where was it you went last night, Nathan?
- I did what I had to do, Rebecca.
- She plays the mother in a working-class
sharecropping family,
um, set in the depression.
- Now you took some food and stuff
from Jamie's smokehouse last night.
My deputy and me,
we gotta' take you down to the county house.
- What they doing, Mama? - Quiet, son! Quiet!
[Engine rumbles, dog barks]
- Her husband is arrested for having stolen ham
to feed this hungry family.
And she along with her children
get the family through their struggles
and work the land while her husband is in jail.
- Ready to go, Mama!
- Well, tuck that shirt in, David Lee.
When you get out of that school,
you come straight on home, you hear?
- We got to see them relate to each other
in terms of daily struggles.
You know, what it was to feed your family,
what it was to connect romantically,
what it was to have a community around you.
- The two of you could sit under a shaded tree,
drink ice cold whiskey, and sh**t the breeze!
- Well, I hope you told him I's too busy
for that kind of stuff? [Laughs]
Sharon: It was black love. It was beautiful.
It was political
because we weren't allowed to have that.
We weren't given the freedom
to actually be full human beings,
and Cicely Tyson brought that to us.
[Birds chirp]
- Oh, my God. It's Nathan.
[Yells] Nathan!
- She was amazing. Her running - just -
her acting had such breath in it
that I think we realized
that you could actually blow it out of the water.
- Daddy!
- [Cries]
- [Cries]
- There's something about us
that always made us want to close in.
And it was because of how we had been treated.
Cicely was like, "Let's open it up!"
Let's break it all open.
- This happened in Los Angeles,
and this was a journalist who said to me,
"I'm glad I saw the movie, Cicely,
because I never really thought that a black man and woman
related to each other that way. I thought that the thing
that existed between them was just a lust or a sex;
that they never really had love." And I said,
"You know what you're saying? You're saying that
we're not human beings.
She said, "The only way I get my education
is through the film media, through books,
and through one or two black people that I meet in business.
But I don't really know them,
so I don't know their lifestyle.
I don't know what their home life is like."
Well, in that case, then,
it's serving as an education to many whites.
Alicia: There's nothing more powerful
than being able to speak the truth of what you're living.
When it's not easy, by the way,
to stand for stuff.
To stand up in front of all these people telling you that,
you know, "You shouldn't, you couldn't, you wouldn't.
They'll k*ll you. You won't have a career.
You won't feed your family."
You know, it is not easy.
♪♪♪
Gail: My mother realized that
she wasn't going to go far in Hollywood,
so nightclubs were really where it was going to be for her.
♪♪♪
Lena H.: I had hoped for a while
to have my own television series.
But the time wasn't right yet for that.
And so, it made me begin to think
that probably it would never happen.
Ruth: She couldn't really advance in Hollywood
because she became more increasingly associated
with the Left.
And so that proved particularly problematic for her
and she was blacklisted.
Gail: "Red Channels" was published by a man
who was the biggest black-lister in Hollywood.
And he put out this booklet
in which he listed all of the actors
and actresses and performers
who he thought were Communist sympathizers.
In those days if you were even listed,
you were considered a communist.
And she did not make a movie for six years.
The nightclub bosses wanted her off the blacklist.
What you had to do was you had to write a letter
to this union. This union was mobbed up.
My mother wrote saying she was not a communist
and that Paul Robeson had not influenced her politics
even though he was a family friend,
and that she would not give up speaking out for her race,
but certainly would not get involved
with any communist organizations.
And then she had to go and see a man called George Sokolsky
in New York, who was a big Right-wing columnist.
And he could clear you.
It was all crooked.
He said to her, "Well, I'm sure these are
all your youthful indiscretions and you're cleared."
And she got cleared.
She saved her career.
♪♪♪
Salamishah: Abbey Lincoln is a good example of an artist
who pays for her political voice
and is censored,
as a result of her deep political engagement.
- She makes the controversial album "Straight Ahead".
♪ Straight ahead
♪ The road keeps winding
♪ Narrow, wet
♪ And dimly lit
- We have Abbey Lincoln,
who is projecting to us the anger,
the outrage, right, that's been simmering,
but she has the audacity to articulate it.
- That's an album for which she was criticized a great deal.
A very influential jazz critic for the journal "Downbeat"
lambasted the album and accused Lincoln
of being a "Professional n*gro",
infusing jazz too much with politics
and really deriding her for that reason.
Announcer: Downbeat conducted a roundtable discussion
to air the situation.
Much of the following conversation
revolved around Gitler's review of Abbey Lincoln's album
"Straight Ahead".
Abbey: It's impossible for me to be "a professional n*gro"
because I am a black woman. [People chuckle]
Ira: I meant by that, using the fact that
you were a n*gro to exploit a career,
in particular-- Abbey: Exploit a career?
How can I sing as a black woman, as a n*gro,
if I don't exploit the fact that I'm a n*gro?
Ira: Yes, but I thought you were overdoing it.
- They attack her in a way they cannot attack Max Roach.
Max: If anybody has a right to exploit the n*gro,
it's the n*gro.
Ira: I felt she was leaning too much
on her negritude in this album.
- They attack her in a way that they will not attack
a Miles Davis, or a John Coltrane.
Abbey: Everybody is not black in this society,
and the people who are,
are the only ones who are qualified
to say how it feels.
And I, Abbey Lincoln,
sing about what's most important to me.
You know, when I wasn't a Professional n*gro,
nobody seemed to mind.
I was capitalizing on the fact that I was a n*gro
and I looked the way Western people expect you to look.
I was not an artist. I had nothing to say.
And as soon as I said,
"I don't want to do this anymore,"
they came down on me with all four feet.
Ruth: And you can see her changed appearance
in terms of her commitment to representing herself
as a certain kind of black woman
and defining herself as beautiful on her own terms.
Jacey: The permed hair and perfectly quaffed do's -
gone. Gone.
Afros and braids came.
Abbey: I started to wear my hair natural
and that spooked a lot of people.
It's amazing what'll spook people.
They said I was a rebel.
♪ Black is Beautiful
♪ Don't you see
♪ Black...
♪♪♪
♪ Took a trip to Paris...
Salamishah: The ways in which black women performers
have always had to navigate, push back,
redefine a cultural aesthetic tied to their beauty,
that's where you can see how politics
and racial and gender wars
are really being played out.
♪ Come home to see the promised land ♪
Jacey: Blacks are saying,
"Don't buy Abbey Lincoln's records.
Don't listen to her music because she's a troublemaker."
Because of her hair. You know?
How ridiculous is that? You know?
But before you knew anything, everybody was wearing afros.
Sharon: Every time we wear an afro or every time,
we wear our hair naturally,
it is a huge statement
against years of oppression,
telling us that that's not beautiful.
Yolonda: Who is the hair police?
You know, who says that your straight, fine hair
is the way that my hair should be?
If it grows from my head a certain way,
that's the way it should be.
You know, if I choose to put a chemical in it
to straighten it, or use a hot comb to straighten it,
that's my choice.
♪ Oh...
♪♪♪
Jacey: Abbey is considered, by some,
to be the first artist to wear an afro.
Some people say it's Cicely Tyson.
Some people it's Abbey Lincoln.
Either way, both of them wore afros.
They were the ones that started it.
- Cicely, yet another spectacular hairstyle.
- [Laughs] - What do you call that?
- Well, I-I don't know that this one has any specific name,
but my hairdresser, Ouma,
refers to it as African hair sculpture.
- I had the great fortune of playing opposite Ms. Tyson
in a play called "The Blacks" by Jean Genet.
- Oh my heavens, yes.
- And you had one of the first naturals or Afros then.
- Yes. - But then,
you took it into a modern character on television.
- Yes on television, "East Side, West Side".
♪♪♪
- Do you have an apprentice program?
- Why yes. - Could a n*gro get into it?
- If he we're qualified.
- Could a man with a certificate
from a trade school,
a registered trade school like this, qualify?
- This isn't exactly precision instrument.
- But he could get into your training program
with that kind of background?
If not, Mr. Stone,
maintenance work is all that will ever be open.
- As a matter of fact, it brought about
a great deal of feeling amongst hairdressers
because I began to get a lot of mail
stating that they were losing their customers
because they were beginning to cut off their hair
because this actress was quote,
"wearing her hair nappy."
[Laughs] - It is nappy, right.
Lena W.: Her deciding to wear her hair,
in its natural state was almost a form of protest.
♪ Save Me
♪ Somebody save me
Salamishah: Nina Simone, for example,
is a progenitor for a kind of black aesthetic,
um, that black women would really take up
in the late s and mid s,
that we think of as like afros and dashikis -
a Black Power aesthetic.
And so for someone like Nina Simone
who was highly conscious of the fact
that she was already marginalized
because she was a dark brown skinned woman,
and then marginalized because her hair wasn't straight,
and marginalized because her features didn't fit
the kind of stereotype of European beauty.
For her to embrace her beauty,
and not just embrace it,
but also render her beauty as glamorous,
was really, really political.
- Four n*gro women.
One...
each one with a different color.
Each one with a different grade of hair.
And one of the women's hair is like mine.
Each one with a different background.
Four women...
Salamishah: Nina Simone composes a song
called "Four Women".
She was really, really was putting forth a narrative
of black women that was broken down
by different color categories,
as well as different historical conditions.
♪ My skin is tan
♪♪♪
♪ My hair is fine
Tammy: "Four Women" is a pivotal song
because I think it really brings to the forefront
how black women visualize themselves
within this larger narrative of liberation.
♪ My skin is black
Tammy: It looks at how black women,
and their bodies...
♪ And my arms are long
Tammy: ...and their skin color has been used
to shape their lives.
♪ My hair is like wool
Tammy: But it is also the transformation
of the word "black" from something that
was seen as an insult
to something that is about empowerment.
♪ Strong enough
♪ To take all this pain
♪ That's been inflicted
♪ Again and again and again and again ♪
Tammy: Black radio refused to play that particular song,
saying that Nina Simone is perpetuating racism
because of her advancement of a conversation
about colorism, and how that impacted black women.
♪ My skin is brown
Salamishah: And then also I think it becomes the blueprint
for burgeoning generation of black feminist writers
like Toni Morrison,
Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange.
They all say that Nina Simone kind of gave them permission
to be the kind of writers that they are.
Toni Morrison even says Nina Simone saved our lives.
So, "Four Women" and Nina Simone's
really complicated discussion of color,
really complicated discussion of color,
and gender, and race in that song;
you can think of it as a precursor to, um,
Toni Morrison's novel,
"The Bluest Eye", her debut novel.
Lena W.: Even though I'm not a musician,
her music is very influential
in how I want to tell stories,
and how I want to make art
because she knew that
every time she sat down at a piano
or stepped in front of a microphone,
it was an opportunity to,
to really speak to her community.
And yes, she was speaking to the world,
but she was also speaking specifically to us
as a people.
Tammy: Nina Simone and Abbey Lincoln,
they were both situating their bodies
and their voices in this spectrum of resistance culture.
Jacey: Abbey, she lost a lot of work because of that.
She really did.
I mean, it, uh, that transformation
hit her in the wallet.
And, you know, because of that,
Abbey couldn't get another record deal for a long time.
It was like or years.
- She actually just leaves that part of her life behind,
in terms of recording studio albums, right,
and begins to focus on activism and acting.
[Jackhammer rattles]
Ruth: She was in the independent,
very low budget film, "Nothing But A Man".
[Door shuts, feet shuffle]
- [Sighs]
- It ain't gonna be easy, okay?
But it's gonna be alright. - [Cries]
Jacey: It's a love story.
Blue collar guy falls in love with a preacher's daughter,
who's a schoolteacher.
This love helps him move forward.
And he truly becomes a man.
- How would you like to have a baby, Duff?
- Huh? You jivin' me?
- Well, I haven't come around.
- Wow. Ain't that somethin'.
- We'll be alright.
- Abbey was very proud of that film.
- I saw this film and I saw subsequent appearances.
Uh, I was just convinced that, that you were it.
You were - you were going to be up there on top,
- Mm-hmm.
- And uh, and it didn't happen, and--
- It hasn't happened for anybody
who is female and black on stage.
A lot of women would like to be actresses,
and to work all the time in films.
Including Diana Ross, and Cicely Tyson,
Ruby Dee.
You know, Dorothy Dandridge passed away
waiting for a film - it's why I sing.
Because we have a w*r here in this country.
It's for who's going to be on top.
And the black woman has to suffer. I know that.
She always has.
- Are you ready black people? Crowd: Yeah!
- Are you ready black people? Crowd: Yeah!
[Music plays]
- Are you ready to call the wrath of black Gods?
♪ [Are you ready?] Black magic,
to do your bidding? ♪ [Are you ready?]
Salamishah: The Harlem Cultural Festival took place in .
It's kind of famously dubbed "Black Woodstock",
but Nina Simone stands out as like the artist
that everyone was paying attention to.
- Are you ready to smash white things?
♪ [Are you ready?] Crowd: Yeah!
- To burn buildings, are you ready?
Crowd: Yeah! - Are you really, really,
really, ready? Crowd: Yeah!
♪ [Are you ready?]
Salamishah: She's reciting radical
black nationalist poetry,
galvanizing the crowd to kind of believe
in their blackness and to harness the power
of the Black Power movement.
♪♪♪
- During the late s,
there is a rising militancy.
Kathleen: The Black Panther Party overlooks nothing,
is afraid of nothing,
and is able to resolve the major contradiction
of our time.
Salamishah: The Black Power Movement
and the Black Panther Party have risen.
Angela: If keeping my job means
that I have to make any compromises
in the liberation struggle in this country,
then I'll gladly leave my job.
Salamishah: And the women's liberation movement
is in full bloom.
- [Chanting] Bring him down! Bring him down!
- And so, there's, a desire to see a different
kind of black representation.
- He has to see the people that stays here.
Her, me her, and the people out here.
Jacqueline: There is an increasing appetite
for characters on screen
who are willing to fight for themselves
and for their communities.
Salamishah: And you have these films,
we know as the Blaxploitation film genre.
♪♪♪
Jacqueline: Blaxploitation is one of,
I think, the most fascinating chapters
in American film history,
because black people saved the film industry.
- My name is John Shaft.
Jacqueline: Hollywood studios were suffering
because of television.
Because of white flight to suburbs.
So, the industry picks up on the fact
that if we make films that are about black characters,
that tell black stories,
that we can make some pretty big and quick money
in these downtown theaters,
and that's exactly what happened.
♪♪♪
- Some of the criticism that leaders of the civil rights era
got was that they did not represent all black people.
They did not represent the black people of the street.
So, you have something like Blaxploitation
which is about that.
♪ Foxy lady, Foxy lady ♪
Announcer: Pam Grier - that one chick hit squad
[g*nshots pop] who creamed you as Coffy
is back to do a job on the mob as "Foxy Brown".
- You tell me who you want done,
and I'll do the hell out of him.
Announcer: A chick with drive who don't take no jive.
[Tires screech]
Foxy Brown!
[g*nsh*t pops]
Salamishah: Pam Grier becomes the most visible,
uh, female face in the Blaxploitation genre.
She's the person who's fighting back against authority,
and she's taking down the man.
- Oh, you son of a b*tch!
You had to tell them, didn't you?
[g*nsh*t pops] [Woman screams]
- The first time I saw Pam Grier on screen,
I, for lack of a better word, I was in awe.
- What are you trying to do, k*ll me?
- I damn well ought to, you rotten b*stard!
And If I don't, you better thank the Lord
you're my brother 'cause there's no other reason.
Meagan: She was just so powerful and so intentional,
and so unapologetic, and so sexy,
and, um so badass.
- I don't know what you talkin' about.
[g*nsh*t pops] - Agh!
- Now, I only got so much control.
And I'm liable to put one of these right between your eyes,
no matter what Mama'd say.
Meagan: A lot of times you'd see movies
and women are always the damsel in distress.
She's never the hero. She's never the one who's,
you know, is beating someone up
and getting whatever needs to be done.
So for me, the first time that I saw her in "Foxy Brown",
I was just like, "Who is this woman?"
- I'm O.G.
Pam Grier.
The a*s-kicking roles.
It comes from my own empowerment.
- Wait! Wait! What do you wanna go and do this for?
Why? Why? Look here, I got your fix.
Don't you want your fix? - No!
Salamishah: The Black Panther Party
is by then majority women.
So, she's really representing all these different movements
in which black women's power
is being harnessed for public good.
Pam: I had such a positive response
from the Black Panthers.
They, it was, they were so supportive
because the Black Panthers allowed women
to be fighters and warriors.
♪ The Revolution has come [Off the pigs!]
♪ The Revolution has come [Off the pigs!]
- We make no distinction whatsoever.
Women hold, uh, ranking positions in the party.
They are all military trained.
♪ No more brothers in jail [Off the pigs!]
- What is it you really want? - Justice.
- For whom, your brother?
- Why not? It could be your brother too,
or your sister,
or your children.
I want justice for all of them.
Meagan: She was a vigilante. She was someone who was like,
"Justice for the people."
Someone who protected the underdog.
Yolonda: As much as I wanted to be like Cicely Tyson,
I wanted to be Pam Grier, you know,
because she was the, you know,
the epitome of the gorgeous black woman
who wasn't gonna take any sh*t.
- The thing that upsets me most about those films
is that they are shown all over the world.
And if there is no other way of educating whites...
- Girls, this m*therf*cker's got rhythm.
All: [Laugh] [g*nsh*t pops]
- This is the opinion that they have of us.
And what we have to do is balance the scale
so people will get a realistic view of what we're like.
Salamishah: Blaxploitation films
have a kind of complicated history.
In one hand, they are seen as these films
with a really important political message.
- But I don't know. Vigilante justice?
- It's as American as apple pie.
- But they're also seen as, you know,
sometimes troubling around
what kind of images they were putting forth.
- Hey look, I want you to meet somebody.
This here is, uh, Mystique.
Cicely: They're definitely exploitation of blacks.
Mystique: Hmm. Quite an assortment you have here, man.
Cicely: Simply because they do not project
a real slice of black life.
They say that we're all wh*res,
we're all drug users,
we're all drug pushers.
We're con men, we're super studs.
We're, we're just unreal!
- This is the end of your rotten life,
you mother-f*ck' dope pusher.
[g*nsh*t pops]
Pam: My agents are calling me,
and I got a three-picture deal.
Jacqueline: She was like this extraordinary sex symbol.
She's pushing so hard against
the history of limitation
on the way that black women could express their sexuality
on screen and off screen.
Radheyan: This is the first time we're really seeing
black actors on screen being able to own their sexuality,
'cause that didn't happen with Sidney Portier.
That didn't happen with Harry Belafonte.
They had to be neutered for white audiences.
Pam: The s really the basic rewards for the s and s
political gains. So, we went crazy with music,
and afros, and hair, and we were part of
the sexual movement and the women's movement.
My movies were doing so well,
the audiences would see the movie three and four times.
Then it would stay in the theatres too long,
which caused, you know, the majors to get upset.
And so, that's when they started the multi-theaters
because one theater wasn't enough.
♪♪♪
- It let Hollywood know that that was an audience for,
you know, hot, black women that would, you know,
spend their money to go in there,
sit in the theater and watch them.
- Why don't we go and, uh,
adjudicate this matter in chambers, as they say,
and maybe we can make a few motions or something?
[Laughs]
- We also found out black women are very vindictive, you know.
And when revenge is in play,
they get revenge, which is awesome.
- This ain't gonna hurt! [Loud thud]
Samuel: They also found out that they were professional
and able to carry a storyline.
And were important in terms of how we wanted
to perceive ourselves on screen.
- I got her! Get the other one!
- Ah! - Get her!
Quentin: Pam's star was an action female hero.
She really owned the spot for women in the 's
with those films that America had really never seen before
or since.
[Plane engine roars] - Bunyon! Ah!
Pam: It was fun. Just go out, jump around,
fall off buildings into bags.
You know, I love flying, I love scuba diving,
I love, you know being outdoors.
I love action. And a lot of women said,
"Oh my God, my daughter was so inspired."
- Have I bruised your masculinity?
- You're sexy.
Pam: It wasn't called Blaxploitation
until a woman walked in the shoes of a man.
- I ought to take you. - Try me.
Pam: And a woman whistled at a man's behind
in some tight pants. And a woman flirted,
and a woman held a g*n, and she did what men did,
then it's exploitation - but it wasn't.
It was what, from a woman's perspective, liberation.
I called it black liberation.
- What are you crazy?
- He's ready sister. - No, you...!
Halle: I really understand how important those movies were,
especially for a black artist.
We had no opportunities. Those were our opportunities
and I know during the time they took a lot of hits.
People today still get caught in their feelings
about those movies, but the reality is,
as artists we needed outlets.
Director: Cut! Hold on the top!
Roll it! Action!
Lena H.: So, we had to take the bitter with the sweet,
you know? We had to take the exploitation
because it employed a lot of actors in Hollywood
wishing they had something to do.
- Ah!
- If Blaxploitation gives us Pam Grier,
I'll take it any day.
[Applause]
- I'm not gonna deal with any of the criticisms of "Sounder",
but I'm going to deal with awards.
Do you think it would be of any significant value,
say you were to win an Academy Award
for your portrayal of Rebecca?
- Well, I overheard several times of producers
and directors say, uh,
"Blacks don't want to see themselves that way."
Well, I was incensed because, you know,
my whole feeling is let me make my decisions
about what I want to see.
And we were not given a choice.
We were given one specific type of film and that was all.
Nobody said, "Well, this is 'Sounder',
and this is whatever the other film is."
You have your choice.
I demand a choice as a human being.
And I think that the success of "Sounder"
has proven them wrong so far.
And I hope that it will continue to do so.
Now, if I win it, it will be the first time in the history
of the academy that a black woman wins the award.
- The truly talented ladies nominated
for Best Performance by an Actress are:
Raquel: Liza Minnelli in "Cabaret".
Gene: Diana Ross in "Lady Sings the Blues".
- Maggie Smith in "Travels with My Aunt".
Gene: Cicely Tyson in "Sounder".
Raquel: Liv Ullman in "The Emigrants".
Gene: And the winner is...
Raquel: I hope they haven't got a cause...
[Laughter]
- Liza Minelli! - [Applause]
- Cicely Tyson has a series of really significant roles
in the 's.
The first is in the film "Sounder",
which comes out in .
The second is in the television film,
"The Autobiography of Ms. Jane Pittman",
which comes out in .
And then she has a small but quite significant role
in the opening episode
of the television mini-series, "Roots",
in .
[Baby cries]
- We have a very strong son.
Ruth: All of these productions were critical,
and commercial successes.
- I understand you were a sl*ve.
- These productions tell stories
of African American history.
- Lots of peoples were sl*ves.
- Well, I thought maybe you could tell me
what things were like in those days.
Ruth: And she portrays black women who are...
- In those days...?
Ruth: ...poor yet dignified.
Hardworking, committed to family,
who are helping the race survive.
- It was time for the black woman to appear
on the screen as a human being,
rather than as a Barbie doll,
a sex symbol, or addict,
all of the things that we have been forced to deal with
in the past few years in films.
Ruth: Cicely Tyson's roles really affirmed the strength,
and the power, and the love
that were central to black families,
and really pushed back against a widespread demonization
that circulated about black family since ,
when Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
who was then an assistant secretary of labor,
wrote what became known as the Moynihan report.
This was a document in which he was trying to diagnose
what was wrong with black families.
Moynihan argued that the main problems
that black families were facing,
had to do with matriarchal households
in which mothers were too strong
and were the cause of a lot of dysfunctional behavior.
- Ma! Ma! The social worker's here!
- Oh sh*t!
Ruth: The Moynihan report contributed to critiques
of welfare saying that black women were promiscuous...
- Honey, get rid of the TV and hide!
Ruth: ...and trying to scam the government
and just trying to get more and more money
from the federal government
so that they wouldn't have to work.
- So you're the gentleman
that's been keeping company here.
Ruth: The movie "Claudine"
was a direct as*ault on the underlying logic
of the Moynihan report,
and on the welfare system itself,
and the ways in which it policed
and sought to control black women's reproductive lives
as well as their work lives.
- But the Welfare is supporting Mrs. Price.
- Supportin'? Supportin' sh*t!
He gave me this. He gave me this.
Yes, he gave it to me.
And he gave me this.
Now we have to hide this sh*t.
You believe - yes, he gave me this, we have to hide this.
He gave us this too, but it don't work.
- That's right and I have to hide my man in the toilet.
Miss Kabak, do you hide your man in the toilet?
Jacqueline: In "Claudine", Diahann Carroll plays
a welfare mother living in Harlem.
She's got this kind of like slew of children and,
and she's engaged with the real struggle
with the welfare state.
with the welfare state.
- The film exposes the inequities
of the welfare system.
- What is this? Am I not supposed to see a man?
What am I? A damn nun?
- No, but if you've been sleeping with a man
and he's been giving you things,
I'm sorry but I have to know. - Do you sleep with a man?
- Now that's none of your business!
- It's none of your business either.
- You're wrong Mrs. Price! It is our business!
- "Claudine" to me is such an important piece on cinema
just because of how grounded it is in the story telling,
in the fabric of it, and the,
the, the, the humanity in it.
And I think that's because James Earl Jones
and Diahann Carroll are such dignified people
that they can't help but bring dignity
to these roles and these characters.
- We'd love to see you get married.
- Yeah, I'm hip you would!
It would take the government off the hook and put me on.
Jacqueline: When Diahann Carroll makes "Claudine",
in many ways, it seems as though she's trying to respond
to some of the criticism that she received for "Julia".
Playing a welfare mother, in Harlem,
rendering some of the challenges
that poor women face.
- Fighting! Beating up on somebody!
That makes you a man, right?
Screwing all the broads and making babies,
that makes you a man! Big man!
Jacqueline: She wanted to demonstrate to the public
that she had the capacity to stretch in that way,
but then also wanting to be responsive
to the frustrations of the black community
with regard to a kind of whitewashing
of black characters in media.
- I loved doing "Claudine".
It was demanding to reach a little further
and away from glamor.
Being flirted with by someone that I like very much,
and how do I hold that in place
while raising my children?
Jack: Diahann Carroll for "Claudine".
[Applause]
And Faye Dunaway for "Chinatown".
[Applause]
Valerie Perrine for "Lenny".
[Applause]
Genna Rowlands for "A Woman Under the Influence".
[Applause]
And the winner is... Ellen Burstyn in
"Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore".
Diahann: It was, uh, fabulous to learn
that I had been nominated.
It was almost unbelievable in the beginning.
There's so few black actors, actresses
who were nominated ever,
and I felt it was a blessing from above.
I am bursting with pride
because I think maybe this is the beginning
of roles that have a little more dimension
than we've been exposed to before.
I hope so.
- Well, after "Claudine",
we don't see Diahann Carroll on screen for a long time.
She is victim of a larger kind of pull back
on black representation in film
that happens after the fall
of the so-called Blaxploitation cycle.
As Hollywood interest in serving black audiences
began to wane in the mid to late s.
♪♪♪
She comes up again in the amazing role
of Dominique Deveraux on "Dynasty" in the s.
- I saw Jane Wyman,
who was nasty and mean and rich and powerful.
And I saw Joan Collins,
who was nasty and mean and rich and powerful.
And I said, "You know what I wanna be?
I wanna be nasty, and mean, and rich, and powerful!"
Right? Audience: [Laughs]
- What's wrong with that? - That's the American Dream!
- That's the American Dream! - [Applause]
- Absolutely.
- Welcome to La Mirage Ms...? - Deveraux.
- Let's see. [Keys clack]
Yes, we have a beautiful junior suite
ready for you on the second floor.
- Junior suite?
I specifically asked for a two-bedroom suite.
I don't sleep in my clothes,
nor do I sleep with them.
I require one bedroom for my wardrobe and one for myself.
- Dominique Devereaux
is really a white man.
She lives in that world
and it's primarily about money.
- Do your lies never stop?
- Are you calling me a liar?
Oh, I find that very amusing.
Well, I suggest that you check it out
with Garrett Boydston yourself
because he gives a new meaning to the word liar.
- Alexis? - Yes.
- I didn't thank you for your present.
[Slap] - Ow!
Diahann: I wanted the audience to say,
"Who is this mean woman?"
I didn't want to like my children;
I didn't want to have a good relationship with my husband.
I thought it was nice for a change
to see someone who was not wonderful who was black.
♪♪♪
- When we tell our stories,
we get to be the hero. [Laughs]
And, but we also get to be the villain,
and I think both are important.
- You are not fit to be a king!
[Metallic thuds] - Ha!
[Attack cry, fighting sounds]
Pam: The studios wanted me to do the same thing,
be redundant. I said, "I can't."
I don't want to bore my audience,
I got to give them something different.
Something that shows that we can do anything.
I really wanted to bring the Dorothy Dandridge story
to screen, but then the studio were saying,
"If no one knows of her, then no one's going to come."
So, okay. Next.
Mary Fields, the first black female stagecoach driver.
It's action - we make it like a Clint Eastwood movie.
"Good, Bad, and the Ugly".
"Oh, that sounds kind of - nah".
No one's gonna believe that there was
a black female stagecoach driver.
We went through Ella Fitzgerald,
women's jazz bands, women airline pilots.
You know, we went to all of them who have my catalogue,
who produced for me. And they said,
"No, that's, keep doing what you're doing."
- We are going to see the senator.
I wanna ask him a few questions,
and I want some no jive answers.
- To what?
- To where are all the black leaders?
- I was happy to see Pam Grier make it out of,
you know, the blaxploitation section of film.
- We're going to have a baby. - That's good.
- You're not mad, are you? - I love you Mary.
- If you had the chance to walk away
with a half million dollars, would you take it?
Yolonda: To have Quentin Tarantino make a film with her,
that was the epitome right there
'cause she, showed herself to...
to carry this film, to play this part.
Jacqueline: When Quentin Tarantino does his homage
to Pam Grier in the film "Jackie Brown",
that gives us a sense of how important it is
to recognize that these films...
- Are you scared of me?
Jacqueline: ...have an impact beyond the audiences
that they were primarily made for.
- Ehh...
Jacqueline: It also kind of gives us a sense
of what these actors have the capacity to do.
- You think you're smart! Huh? Do you? Do you?
Jacqueline: One wonders, what could've happened
if she was able to kind of demonstrate that
in a larger body of work.
Russell: And the Oscar goes to...
Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball"!
[Applause]
♪♪♪
Woman: This is the first Oscar for Halle Berry!
Halle: I am an actress who now lives and works in an industry
that was far better than when I started years ago.
This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge,
Lena Horne,
Diahann Carroll. [Applause]
It's for every nameless faceless woman of color
that now has a chance
because this door tonight has been opened.
[Applause]
But I've struggled since I'd won that Academy Award
to back that up
because there's just a lack of material
and roles for women like me.
You know, we celebrate the black stories that we have,
but if you had any idea how many people try
after year after year after year and fail,
I think it would be staggering.
[Applause]
Samuel: It's changed so much.
I mean Hattie McDaniel went to the Oscars
and they sat her by the kitchen, and she won.
You know, now, if I go to the Oscars,
they put me in the front row.
They won't put me by the kitchen.
It doesn't mean they don't feel the same way.
Jacqueline: Filmmaking has been a nepotistic profession.
If you're already sort of inside of the network,
then you have opportunities.
And of course, this means that African Americans
have had a tremendously difficult time
breaking into the industry.
Many of the great black writers
who were interested in Hollywood.
Zora Neale Hurston wanted to write for film.
Langston Hughes wanted to write for film.
- You don't really have a choice, do you?
You don't really got no choice though, do you?
- And take out, "Y'all the ones who k*lled the cop."
Lena W.: I always wanted to be a television writer -
adding a voice and being a part
of a sea of voices
on a T.V. show.
But then as I got older, I started to dream bigger.
You know, when I saw people like Shonda Rhimes,
and Debbie Allen,
I wanted to be calling the shots,
and so I was able to dream a bigger dream because of them.
I was very impacted by "A Different World".
And it was a great moment for me when, uh,
Jada Pinkett's character was introduced on
"A Different World", and her name was Lena James,
and she was named for Lena Horne,
and Lena Horne came and did a guest spot on the show
and it felt like a sign
that I was on the right path.
- Lena's in the building! Lena's in the building!
- Lena? Oh!
[Applause]
- I'm Whitley Gilbert-Wayne,
the head of the student welcoming committee, Ms. Horne.
- Honey get up off the floor.
I'm not the Queen of England. [Audience laughs]
- Hi, my name is Lena,
and I'm so proud to be named after you.
- Thank you.
- And you're still as beautiful as my father said.
- Oh please.
Jacqueline: It's absolutely crucial
to have more artists of color
working behind the camera
who can reflect the broad experiences of people of color,
- Get on the ground now! Get on the ground!
Jacqueline: and of African Americans, in particular.
- Black storytellers have a right to tell their story.
Uh, "Pariah" is through the lens of Dee Rees.
"Twenties" is through the lens of me.
"I May Destroy" you is through the lens of Michaela.
"Insecure" is through the lens of Issa Rae.
- All this sounds bad, but it's actually really good.
- Cut! Close up!
- The exposure of art transforms people;
reaches into you
and can change you.
Diahann: It's exciting to watch black women
in the practical side of business today.
The words were not even in our sentences
when I was coming along.
Alicia: We wanna see truth. - Congratulations!
Alicia: We wanna see a variety of it,
and we're gonna have to continue to fight for it
by the way.
- Next month on December th,
[Laughs]
I'm going to be -years-old.
[Cheering and applause]
This is the culmination of all those years
of have and have-not.
♪ I wish I knew how
♪ It would feel to be free ♪
Lena W.: All of these women knew
that they were doing it
for those that were coming behind them.
That we would be freer-er than they would be.
- The kind of strength that these young people have
is so fearless that it's so strong and so beautiful.
- And what we do with that freedom is very important,
because we need to free up those
that come after us as well.
Salamishah: Black women artists mustered the courage
to use their platform to make a difference
and are really carrying the torch.
- We are artists! We are activists!
We are entrepreneurs!
We rise!
[Cheering]
♪ I found out
[Playing piano]
♪♪♪
♪ How it feels
♪ I know how it feels
♪ To be free
♪♪♪
[Plays final notes]
♪♪♪
[Applause, cheering]
[Applause, cheering]
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
[Clap]
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How It Feels To Be Free (1986)
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