Why did the Amos 'n Andy show go on to become one of the most protested of television programs? Eventually, the controversy surrounding the television version of Amos 'n Andy would almost equal that of the popularity of the radio version.Ĭontemporary television viewers might find it difficult to understand what all the clamor was about. The program's portrayal of black life and culture was deemed by the black community of the period as an insulting return to the days of blackface and minstrelsy. The basis for these characters was derived largely from the stereotypic caricatures of African-Americans that had been communicated through several decades of popular American culture, most notably, motion pictures. The adventures of Amos 'n Andy presented the antics of Amos Jones, an Uncle Tom-like, conservative Andy Brown, his zany business associate Kingfish Stevens, a scheming smoothie Lawyer Calhoun, an underhanded crook that no one trusted Lightnin,' a slow-moving janitor Sapphire Stevens, a nosey, loud-mouth Mama, a domineering mother-in-law, and the infamous Madame Queen. It was the first television series with an all-black cast (the only one of its kind to appear on prime-time, network television for nearly another twenty years). The position of the Amos 'n Andy show in television history is still debated by media scholars in recent books on the cultural history of American television.Īmos 'n Andy was first broadcast on CBS television in June 1951, and lasted some two years before the program was canceled in the midst of growing protest by the black community in 1953. The significance of Amos 'n Andy, with its almost thirty year history as a highly successful radio show, its brief, contentious years on network television, its banishment from prime-time and subsequent years in syndication, and its reappearance in video cassette format is difficult to summarize in a few paragraphs. Amos 'n' Andy was conceived by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, two white actors who portrayed the characters Amos Jones and Andy Brown by mimicking so-called Negro dialect. Like many of its early television counterparts, the Amos 'n' Andy television program was a direct descendent of the radio show that originated on WMAQ in Chicago on 19 March 1928, and eventually became the longest-running radio program in broadcast history.
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