Stars for Freedom: Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement

Stars forFreedom

EMILIE RAYMOND

HOLLYWOOD,BLACK CELEBRITIES,

AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS

MOVEMENT

Stars forFreedomHOLLYWOOD, BLACK CELEBRITIES,AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

EMILIERAYMOND

STARS FOR FREEDOM

4.Raymond, Stars.indd 1 1/28/15 2:34 PM

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Stars forEMILIE RAYMOND


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Freedom

A Capell Family BookA V Ethel Willis White Book

University of Washington PressSeattle and London

HOLLYWOOD, BLACK CELEBRITIES, AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT


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Publication of Stars for Freedom was made possible in part by grants from the

V Ethel Willis White Endowment, which supports the pub lication of books on

African American history and culture, and the Capell Family Endowed Book

Fund, which supports the publication of books that deepen the understanding

of social justice through historical, cultural, and environmental studies.

© 2015 by the University of Washington Press

Printed and bound in the United States of America

Design by Thomas Eykemans

Composed in Chapparal, typeface designed by Carol Twombly

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information

storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

University of Washington Press

www.washington.edu/uwpress

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Raymond, Emilie, 1973–

Stars for freedom : Hollywood, Black celebrities, and the civil rights movement /

Emilie Raymond.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-295-99480-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. African American political activists—History—20th century. 2. African American

entertainers—Political activity—History—20th century. 3. Politics and culture—United

States—History—20th century. 4. African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th

century. 5. United States—Race relations—History—20th century. I. Title.

E185.615.R36 2015

323.1196'073—dc23 2014046332

The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements

of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for

Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.∞


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For my parents


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CONTENTS

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixAcknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

ONE Cleaning Up Catfish Row: Black Celebrity and the Making of Porgy and Bess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

TWO Sammy Davis, Jr.: Daring, Deferential, and “Money”. . . . . . 40

THREE Harry Belafonte and the Northern Liberal Network . . . . . . 75

FOUR The Arts Group and the March on Washington . . . . . . . . 113

FIVE Dick Gregory and Celebrity Grassroots Activism . . . . . . . 143

SIX Stars for Selma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

SEVEN Celebrities and Black Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

Epilogue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305


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ix

PREFACE

Speaking at the event on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, the actor Jamie Foxx recognized the singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte for his commitment to the civil rights move-ment. “He marched,” said Foxx, “and he bailed Martin Luther King, Jr., out of jail so he could march.” Urging a new wave of celebrity civil rights activism, Foxx beckoned to such contemporaries as the actors Will Smith and Kerry Washington and the musicians Jay Z, Alicia Keys, and Kanye West to “pick it up now, so when we’re eighty-seven years old, talking to other young folks, we can say it was me.”1 Such a call is not a fantastical goal; it is rooted in past alliances. A strong celebrity contingent partici-pated in the 1963 March on Washington, including Belafonte; the actors Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Sidney Poitier; the comedian Dick Gregory; and the consummate entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. And this was only one of these celebrities’ many civil rights activities. This group—whom I refer to as the Leading Six—would prove to be the movement’s most out-spoken, effective, and consistent celebrity activists, seemingly unafraid of the potential consequences to their careers. The Leading Six received help from a small interracial coalition in Hollywood that included such stars as Theodore Bikel, Marlon Brando, Diahann Carroll, Dorothy Dan-dridge, Charlton Heston, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, and Frank Sinatra, among others. These “Stars for Freedom,” as King would call them, contributed to the civil rights movement by devel-oping its financial infrastructure and mobilizing constituents in its support.2 While small in numbers, these stars changed the racial climate in Hollywood and helped establish a blueprint for celebrity politics that has only become more significant in contemporary political culture.


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x PREFACE

That Hollywood celebrities were engaged in the civil rights movement is generally well-known, but few historians have appreciated the degree to which they were involved or the effect they had. In Just My Soul Responding, Brian Ward focuses on R&B artists’ involvement in the move-ment and describes the commitment of Hollywood actors and personali-ties, while in Freedom Sounds, Ingrid Monson highlights the activism of jazz singers and musicians.3 Both Ward and Monson note that fear of economic or physical reprisals led many celebrities and artists to avoid overt and consistent activism. This book aims to show how the Stars for Freedom, responding to the constraining political and racial environ-ment of Hollywood, contributed to the success of the civil rights move-ment. It also aligns with those scholars who have emphasized the role of Northerners in civil rights histories.

The Stars for Freedom, as residents of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York—far removed from the Deep South—do not fulfill the standard trope of Southern, workaday activists that is emphasized in traditional narra-tives. Such works highlight dramatic confrontations in the South between nonviolent demonstrators and Southern authorities, such as the Freedom Rides and the Selma campaign, and massive demonstrations such as the March on Washington, in the effort to stop Jim Crow segregation and win voting rights for African Americans. Celebrities assisted at these events, using their gifts as “dramatists.” However, as the historians Thomas Sugrue and Martha Biondi have pointed out, a Northern network of financial, legal, and spiritual support was just as crucial to the success of the move-ment, and the Stars for Freedom played a major role in shaping this net-work.4 Additionally, their efforts in desegregating Northern entertainment venues, promoting better cultural images of African Americans, opening up economic opportunities for them in the film industry, and agitating for open housing in California adds to the growing body of literature about national discriminatory patterns.5 Fighting such widespread racism required a broad civil rights agenda and many different types of activists. The Stars for Freedom did not define the civil rights movement so much as fill an important niche as well-connected spokespersons and fund-raisers. None of them saw their participation as being more important than that of the everyday activists who devoted their lives to the cause. Poitier points out that celebrities “weren’t leading the charge. We weren’t at the forefront, getting our heads cracked open.”6 Nevertheless, due to their visibility and influence, they fulfilled important functions that few others could.


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PREFACE xi

The Stars for Freedom served first and foremost as patrons of the movement, raising or contributing from their own pockets hundreds of thousands of dollars. They spearheaded and participated in a creative array of benefit programs—from film screenings and concerts to comedic acts and house parties—that generated substantial profits for a number of civil rights organizations. The philosophy behind a benefit was simple: stars drew crowds to a performance, entertaining the spectators while generating profit and publicity for the civil rights organizations spon-soring the program. Further funds could be raised through VIP parties, in which, for an additional fee, program attendees could mingle with the stars before or after the show. Stars also raised money through direct mail campaigns, signing their names to “Dear Friend” letters that appealed directly to the recipients. Finally, stars frequently wrote sizable personal checks to their favorite civil rights organizations. Sammy Davis, Jr., con-ventionally and mistakenly regarded as an “Uncle Tom,” raised the most of any star, establishing his role as the “benefactor” of the movement. This money was crucial in sustaining the civil rights movement. The costs associated with lawsuits and demonstrations, as well as maintaining administrative offices, were enormous, and most civil rights organiza-tions struggled to balance their accounts and pay their administrative staffs. For activists in the Deep South, an infusion of cash could literally mean the difference between life and death.

Stars also played a significant strategic role in the civil rights move-ment. Several meetings took place in stars’ homes, most frequently in the New York apartment of Belafonte, who had a close relationship with King and was the chief “strategist” of the Leading Six. Celebrities deliberated with activists about where, when, and how demonstrations should proceed, and discussed how they, as stars, could participate. Most commonly, their role was to raise a substantial sum of money before an event, both under-writing an otherwise improbable march, demonstration, or campaign and helping to stage it. Sometimes celebrities used their clout to pull strings with the politically powerful, as both Sammy Davis, Jr., and Belafonte did with John and Robert Kennedy, or to bring together disparate individuals within the movement. Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee acted as important inter-mediaries between mainstream organizations and the radicals Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, serving as important “facilitators” in the move-ment. Stars could also play a valuable role in attracting the sympathies and financial contributions of white Americans. King considered white support


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xii PREFACE

crucial to the success of the movement, and in instances in which he felt that sentiments might be tenuous, he counted on stars who had already been successful in winning over white audiences for assistance.

Celebrities also drew publicity to issues and events. By virtue of their star stature, celebrities could attract the media to stories that they might not have found interesting otherwise. For example, Gregory drew atten-tion to school desegregation efforts and voter registration campaigns by purposefully getting arrested and going to jail. Such activities made him a virtual “field secretary” for the movement. Not only could stars attract attention, but it was generally favorable, a factor that should not be overlooked. Civil rights organizations continually struggled to publicize their messages and all too often found themselves at the mercy of the media, being pummeled by negative and inaccurate journalism, particularly in the South. The media gave stars a wide berth. They could directly attack racism using language that would have created ire if delivered by a workaday activist. One leading activist said of Gregory, “We usually asked him to come in when things were getting too much out of control, because he could say the same things that everybody else was saying, but it kind of lessened the tension in terms of his performance and his political jokes.”7

Celebrities also affected the civil rights movement by providing moral support to activists who worked for the cause. Full-scale activism could be psychologically difficult to sustain, as demonstrators dealt with indif-ference at one extreme and violent hostility on the other. A celebrity’s support showed not only that a famous and successful person agreed with them but also cared about them. Stars also provided entertainment during rallies and marches. These song, dance, and comedic routines kept demonstrators focused and optimistic. They also had the added bene fit of easing tension among crowds that had the potential to grow restless. The civil rights movement counted a disciplined, nonviolent crowd as one of its strongest weapons, and stars helped foster such an atmosphere. Of course, “morale” is difficult to quantify, but it was important enough to the activist Stokely Carmichael that he stated that the value of support from figures such as Poitier “was beyond measure,” especially because they were “the kind of folk you respected greatly but never really imag-ined you’d ever get a chance to meet.”8 As the most successful Hollywood actor of the Leading Six, Poitier served as the movement’s “icon” and was a resolute and elegant spokesman.


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PREFACE xiii

Hollywood restrictions had impeded civil rights activism among the previous generation of black actors. Before World War II, the six major studios that monopolized the film industry had promoted a “star system” that demeaned African Americans. The studios portrayed white stars as glamorous and captivating personalities in fan magazines and gossip columns (indeed, extensions of their onscreen characters) out of the belief that audiences idolized the actors more than the films. Corpora-tions and politicians, recognizing that white stars could mobilize public desires for consumer products or ideological causes, recruited film stars for their advertising and political campaigns, particularly during World War II.9 However, black actors did not have an equal place in the star system. The film historian Donald Bogle identifies the five typical char-acters played by African Americans: the loyal Tom, the foolish coon, the tragic mulatto, the asexual (and often obese) mammy, and the brutal buck.10 Often relegated to menial roles, such as maids, porters, butlers, and the like, black actors often served as comic relief by using improper dialects and engaging in exaggerated mannerisms and outright foolish-ness. Their roles reflected the second-class position of blacks in Holly-wood. Their pay was substantially less than that of their white costars, and the studios employed no black crew members, producers, or direc-tors.11 When the publicists for Gone with the Wind (1939) ignored the actor Hattie McDaniel’s protests of their promoting her as a real-life maid play-ing a mammy, they were simply following industry norms.12 African American actors struggled to build public images that they could be proud of, while advertisers and political figures did not value the public perso-nas they projected.13

In fact, civil rights organizations often considered black actors to be impediments. In 1942, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) executive secretary Walter White began pres-suring Hollywood studios to improve their portrayal of African Ameri-cans, but did so at the expense of such familiar character actors as Hattie McDaniel, Clarence Muse, Bill Robinson, Louise Beavers, and Lincoln Perry (known by his stage name Stepin Fetchit). White rarely included these actors when meeting with the studio chiefs and went so far as to blame them for the dismal state of affairs in Hollywood, declaring, “One of the most important elements in [achieving] progress will be the behav-ior of Negro actors themselves in playing their roles with sincerity and dignity instead of mugging and playing the clown before the camera.”14


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xiv PREFACE

In White’s view, the willingness of these performers to play stereotypes compromised the civil rights cause, and the black press tended to follow his lead. White began promoting the sophisticated nightclub performer Lena Horne as the “proper” model of an African American screen per-sona.15 In an unsuccessful attempt to force White out of the film debate, preserve their livelihoods, and forge better roles for themselves, McDan-iel, Muse, and other “old guard” actors formed the Hollywood Fair Play Committee.16 Such squabbling did little to promote constructive change in Hollywood. The studios became wary of hiring African Americans at all, which further reduced their opportunities to use the cult of celebrity for civil rights gains.

Although changes in the film industry after World War II (especially the breakdown of the studio system and the advent of television) would give rise to improved roles and more alluring public images for black actors, epitomized by Dandridge and Poitier, many of the old stereotypes and attitudes remained. Thus, this book will open with the story of the making of the film Porgy and Bess (1959), which illustrates the complexi-ties of black celebrity and the need to apply movement pressure to Holly-wood. The next five chapters are devoted to individuals and events that particularly exemplify the influence of the Stars for Freedom on the civil rights movement and the guidance provided by the Leading Six: Sammy Davis, Jr.’s fund-raising efforts; Harry Belafonte’s strategic work with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com-mittee; the Arts Group that brought a celebrity delegation to the March on Washington; Dick Gregory’s grassroots work; and the Stars engaged in the Selma campaign and its aftermath. The final chapter discusses celeb-rity activism and ongoing developments in the film and television indus-tries during the Black Power era. The book ends with the story of the making of the film Buck and the Preacher (1972), which illustrates how Hollywood was important in the pursuit of the economic opportunities and cultural goals of the broader civil rights agenda. To start with Porgy and Bess and end with Buck and the Preacher, both of which starred Poitier, highlights the new opportunities and ongoing challenges in Hollywood.

The Stars for Freedom proved serious in their intent and effective in their execution, undermining the generally negative way that scholars have portrayed the effects of celebrity culture on American society. Their assumption is that celebrities, and the entertainment industry from which they hail, have “trivialized America” in a sad effort to “amuse our-


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PREFACE xv

selves to death.”17 However, the sociologists Robert D. Benford and Scott A. Hunt show how social movements often rely on dramatic strategies such as scripting, staging, and performing to succeed. The historians Steven J. Ross, Donald T. Critchlow, and Kathryn Cramer Brownell dem-onstrate the contributions that stars have made to the national political debate on conservative and liberal issues alike. As the sociologist Chris Rojek asserts, “Celebrity culture is the expression of social form.”18 In other words, celebrities can become symbols of meaning shaping the broader political discourse—a possibility fulfilled by celebrities in the civil rights movement.

Celebrities’ careers rely on public opinion, and their involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, which was neither a politically nor a publicly popular cause, should not be underestimated. The Stars for Freedom helped provide mainstream legitimacy to the movement, and in doing so opened new channels of star activism for other controversial issues, such as the Vietnam War, gun rights, and global warming. Without the involvement of the Stars for Freedom, the civil rights movement would have had been far more isolated, insolvent, and persecuted, and the struggle to achieve its political, economic, and cultural goals would have been far more protracted.


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xvii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Support for this project came from a tremendous network of institutions, colleagues, and friends.

The College of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty Research Council at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) provided research funding, as did the American Philosophical Society. That VCU also granted me leave time proved extremely helpful. Robert Holsworth and Catherine Ingrassia were two early champions of my work at crucial times.

Many archivists at research institutions across the country helped me track down important documents, and I am truly in debt to Barbara Hall, formerly with the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Readers for journals and on conference panels provided insightful feedback that helped me develop this project in even its roughest stages. Thank you to Greg Schneider, Lary May, Randal Maurice Jelks, Aram Goudsouzian, and the late Richard Iton.

That numerous civil rights veterans gave their valuable time to talk with me was simply humbling, and I am thankful to have engaged in these consultations.

I am grateful to have colleagues who are genuinely enthusiastic about my work, and I particularly want to thank my VCU colleagues Lisa Abrams, Ryan Smith, Norreece Jones, Brooke Newman, Gregory Smithers, Carolyn Eastman, John Herman, Ted Tunnell, Joe Bendersky, Karen Rader, Tim Thurber, Antonio Espinoza, and John Kneebone; Katie Brownell Cramer and Donald T. Critchlow, two scholars also engaged in the conflation of Hollywood and politics; Joshua Farrington, a young scholar kind enough


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xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

to share documents with me; and Robert M. Collins, whose position as my graduate school advisor has evolved into a lifetime role.

My editor Ranjit Arab has been a superb champion of this project from the beginning and has offered thoughtful feedback and given great atten-tion to detail through every draft.

I am lucky to have so many terrific people in my life, who are support-ive in various ways. My parents Gary and Judi Raymond have given me strength and assurance. My husband Craig Dober is a terrific sounding board on myriad issues and a wonderful partner. My young daughter Rebecca’s schedule required me to be remarkably productive at odd hours of the day, and she inspired me to keep plugging away. And finally, my friends Kim Baker, Laura Cavender, Kathleen Gacek, Jill Gasper, Kristin Swenson—you are my heroes!


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Stars for Freedom: Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement

Documents

Transcript of Stars for Freedom: Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement