We’ve been at this game of human history for a long time, and yet in just the past few years we’ve witnessed hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda, in Kosovo, in Bosnia, and elsewhere tortured and killed in the name of ethnic differences. We have a history whose centuries are replete with genocide and attempted genocide.
What humanity has perpetrated goes by different names at different times. What began in Central and South America in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella culminated at the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee. We called it “exploring the New World,” but it caused millions of deaths and the absolute elimination of cultures.
Today, maybe the majority of countries aren’t involved in such cruelties, but the majority of countries rarely have been.
It’s generally one country, and then another, and then maybe a war between three or four countries. So here we are at the dawn of a new millennium, and how much closer are we to the enlightenment that would take us beyond such behavior?
It might very well be that all we’re going to get is an opportunity to rail against the darkness, and to hope and dream and imagine and expect that one day our species—in the form of our children, or our grandchildren, or some progeny in generations to come—will arrive at that place.
In 1964 I was awarded the Oscar for best actor for my performance in
Lilies of the Field
, the first African-American so honored. Did I say to myself, “This country is waking up and beginning to recognize that certain changes are inevitable”? No, I did not. I knew that we hadn’t “overcome,” because I was still the only one. My career was unique in all of Hollywood. I knew that I was a one-man show, and it simply shouldn’t be that way. And yet in a way I found the accolade itself quite natural. I wasn’t surprised that such good things were happening to me, because I’d never seen myself as less than I am. When I realized that I could be a better than utilitarian actor, I realized that I had the responsibility, not as a black man, but as an artist, to exercise tremendous discipline. I knew the public would take my measure, and that was constantly in my calculations.
By this time my family had moved to a seven-acre estate in Pleasantville, New York, a huge place in a very upscale community where we were treated very well. I remember the ladies who came as a welcoming committee, all white, and told us
about the community. Our kids played with their kids, and our kids had no difficulties in the public schools.
In the 1960s and 1970s, I stayed at many of New York City’s finest hotels. Always without incident. Treated with respect on every occasion. Likewise in restaurants, stores, theaters, and, of course, all public-supported venues. None of which should be taken to mean that racism wasn’t painfully evident in other ways, in other forms. Still, while that great city was no racial paradise, she was, without question, seductive as hell. She was, in addition, a clear-cut improvement over Mississippi.
There was, of course, no city or state that didn’t have its atmosphere of racial attitudes. Black artists traveling could still have problems with accommodations, for example—and that, of course, was nothing compared to the struggles of millions of ordinary black folks in this country who were having a very hard time. Love for Duke Ellington or Nat Cole couldn’t obscure the shameful treatment of others.
But it was out of that persistent set of difficult circumstances that the student activists came. It wasn’t the artists who carried the day; it was these brave young people who said, “Wait a minute. We’ve come to the table with all the respect we can muster, and you’ve done nothing. Now you
will
pay attention to us. How much more you gonna do to us? You can kill us. You can turn dogs on us and beat us, but you’ll have to drag us away ten at a time, and there will be hundreds more to take our place.”
The country just couldn’t fathom it. To many, this upheaval seemed to come out of nowhere, because for such an unbearably
long time no attention had been paid to problems of racial inequality.
Sammy Davis, Jr., Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lena Horne, Sidney Poitier—we weren’t leading the charge. We weren’t at the forefront, getting our heads cracked open, though our careers were a reflection of what was possible when attention
was
paid. Twenty-five years earlier it hadn’t been widely expected, with opportunities so meager, that blacks could be scientists, statesmen, artists. Every time I stepped out, I felt the responsibility to do whatever I could to make pending successes seem a natural expectation.
During the mid-sixties I was approached for another project by Pandro Berman, the filmmaker who had produced
Blackboard Jungle
. Now, ten years later, he wanted to do something called
A Patch of Blue
.
Guy Green was to be the director. An English film editor who had gone into directing and had done some really impressive films, he had fallen in love with this material. I don’t recall whether he had brought it to Pandro Berman or Pandro Berman had brought it to him. But when I was approached about a part, I read the script very, very carefully before having a talk with Guy Green as to how he saw the material. Because this was a delicate matter, though a wonderfully original idea—a blinded white girl and a black guy who comes into her life. You know, it was pregnant with all kinds of interesting possibilities, but it was also very tricky in terms of how society would receive it. There were many, many miscarriages that would have to be avoided in order to make something that was not only entertaining but useful.
I came away with the sense that this guy might have a good fix on the subject matter. Why did I feel this way? Was it because he was English? I don’t think so, because the English are no less subject to frailties on questions of race than anybody else. But there was a humanity to the guy—I mean, I got really good vibes from him about how he saw the world—so I signed on.
I went to rehearsals in the prefilming preparation period and met a young lady named Elizabeth Hartman. She was a plain-looking, warm, delicate, and apparently fragile person, ideal for the part. I wasn’t aware then, when I met her, that she had dressed herself down for the role. She was quite an attractive girl. She was also a well-trained young actress who had developed a strong technique.
We started rehearsing, and I was struck by the magnificent work Elizabeth did. As for myself, I was traveling over ground I had never covered before—you know?—and I was dipping into emotional pockets that were new to me. This was a white girl, and we were in 1960s America. This was a revolutionary attempt at filmmaking, so I was mentally awake in every way. I had my eye out, my ear out, and I was quite primed to make sure that nothing untrue, uncomplimentary, or stereotypical occurred. I wanted to make sure that the story was told with dignity and respect for the questions involved. This wasn’t the story of an interracial couple, mind you. This was simply a guy trying to help a young girl who was in need. It was a very human story.
But this was also the time of the March on Selma, the first Civil Rights Act, and the sit-ins. A lot of stressful stuff was
coming down. The question of race was rattling the country to its very foundation, so everything in me was on the lookout. I had already predetermined what my character should look like from my point of view. I could be honest to my craft, and I could deliver this character in full. I mean
really
in full, including all of his weaknesses and all of his shortcomings. He would be a human being in total, not a one-dimensional cardboard replica of a human being, as is the case in too many movies—particularly movies about racial questions in America.
I couldn’t control how the rest of the movie would go. I didn’t know how Shelley Winters was going to sketch the character of the girl’s mother, for example. It was none of my business. I could raise objections only if I saw something that struck me as totally off the mark. But Shelley was a professional, and not only did she bring to bear all the shortcomings of that character, all the prejudices of that character, all the imperfections of that character; she added more. And the
more
she added included character details of a fairly despicable person, but none of the characteristics were completely foreign to other human beings as well.
The part of my brother was played by Ivan Dixon, a tremendous actor. He sculpted that part beautifully, so that all the things I wanted to come out of the sequences between the two of us, Dixon and myself, they just flowed. And then there were, of course, peripheral characters, such as Elizabeth Hartman’s grandfather.
So everyone in the cast was doing super-duper work. And then, about a third of the way through, I really tuned in to
where the director was coming from, and I relaxed completely. I knew that I was in good hands. I knew that his take on the material was such that he was going to be absolutely faithful to the story, but he was also going to be absolutely faithful to the humanity that was implied in the story.
I’m not always satisfied with my work in every scene in every picture. But in
A Patch of Blue
I was coming from a different place, and the performance, by my measurement, was absolutely on target; and I felt that all the way through. Much of this had to do with what I was getting from the other actors. They really kept me reaching for something that I hadn’t even been aware was in me. I saw the movie, and by God, it was a
picture
, a performance that was better than I thought I could manage.
I mean, it was
good work
. The actors around me were really cooking, and much of their brilliance reflected on my performance, whether it was deserved or not. It
had
to reflect on my performance because I was the central character with this girl, and how things were with me and her, collectively and individually, was what those other characters were about.
I played a likable guy. I played a good, decent, useful human being—and mind you, much of what was being made in Hollywood at that time, with very rare exceptions, wasn’t complimentary from the black perspective. It was a proud moment for me, especially when I thought back to Butterfly McQueen, Stepin Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, and Mantan Moreland.
The Hollywood of an earlier day had made questionable use of such fabulous talents as Lena Horne and Rex Ingram
and Ethel Waters—talents that were never given the respect of a truly objective evaluation. I mean, these were
actors
. I had been introduced to many of them when I was a youngster starting out. I had met Louise Beavers. I knew something of Mantan Moreland; I had met the man. I knew Rex Ingram, Bill Walker, Juanita Moore. I knew so many of those people. I had met them and found them three-dimensional human beings. Some were articulate, some were very ordinary in their speech patterns, some were quite erudite, some were just plain interesting people—but they all were reduced by the requirements of a racist society and an industry that knew how to reflect the society racially in only that one way. I mean, there were no parts for black schoolteachers, for example. And if there were schoolchildren, they were all pickaninnies with their hair combed upwards as if their scalp had been electrified, and giggling and rolling their eyes like Buckwheat in the
Our Gang
comedies.
Back in Los Angeles, in the bowels of the film industry, these people were close at hand, right over there in West Los Angeles toward the Central Avenue area, Adams area, Crenshaw area. And I saw the dignified homes they lived in, and I was in some of those homes, and I gotta tell you, it had to have been some massive negative attitude operative in society (and, consequently, in this industry) to characterize a people without the slightest acknowledgment of their humanity anywhere evident.
These artists were very much like the black actors and actresses I know today, only they were chained to stereotypes when many of them had the wherewithal to soar. They simply
got no chance. They lived and died, lived and died, never having had an opportunity to express their genuine talent.
I’m not racially sensitive to the point that I want to foist untruths on my history. As a matter of fact, I’m more inclined to critically examine that which I know to be the truth. So when I look at my history through the black actors and actresses who preceded me, I need to be fair to those actors and actresses, but I also need to be fair to the society, you know? What good did the participation of blacks in the movie industry do for the actors and actresses who represented their race, and
to
those actors and actresses. What
harm
did it do to them and to generations unborn? I put all that in the mix, and even so, all I can conclude is that Hollywood was a really insensitive place when it came to black people.
We needed alternatives. In New York City there were people like Oscar Micheaux, a black man making movies there—but he had to put the finished product under his arm and go around from place to place to find cinema houses for black people, and there weren’t very many of those. He was on the road all the time. Whenever he finished a picture, he went off traveling, putting his work in black theaters. He has become a kind of a father figure for the current black filmmakers in America, though of course they know of him only through the legend of what he did.
There were other black film personalities making black pictures. There was a guy named Ralph Cooper in New York, who was a very, very big film personality. He was an actor who played all kinds of parts, including romantic parts and
gangster parts. There was even Herb Jeffries, the black singing cowboy.
The studios wouldn’t go near that kind of stuff in those days. So Mantan Moreland, Stepin Fetchit, Butterfly McQueen, and Hattie McDaniel—they could only dream of a time when there would be a Denzel Washington, a Wesley Snipes, an Angela Bassett, a Will Smith, a Samuel L. Jackson, and a Morgan Freeman, when there would be an invention called television to harbor a legend named Bill Cosby. They would have to stretch their imagination pretty far to be able to dream in those terms.