Sandra Hernandez

April 11, 2007

The Adventures of Amos ‘N’ Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon

In his The Adventures of Amos ‘N’ Andy, Melvin Patrick Ely discusses the nation-wide phenomenon that was the Amos ‘n’ Andy radio show. Ely traces the origins of the show, which began in 1928, to the vaudeville/minstrel roots of both of its creators, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll. Ely details Gosden and Correll’s early years, their first radio program, and the reaction from both the white and African American community. Ely focuses on the success of Amos ‘n’ Andy both as a radio show and television show questioning the reason for its enduring popularity despite evident African American backlash and the questionable portrayal and message of the main characters on the program.

Ely begins the story of Amos ‘n’ Andy with brief histories of each of the creators. Charles Correll, a native of Illinois was of southern descent on his father’s side, a fact which did not affect his daily life. In fact, according to Ely, Correll “neither spoke with any trace of a southern accent nor became particularly adept at imitating one.” Correll also lacked first hand experience with the African American community. Most of what he knew about African American speech and mannerism he learned from the vaudeville stage. He worked at a vaudeville theater as a teenager and in school he excelled in stenography, both of which would be crucial to his work on Amos n’ Andy.

Freeman Gosden was born a decade after Correll and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond at the end of the nineteenth century was volatile and dynamic in its race relations. Segregation was common, and whites treated blacks paternalistically. White Richmonders believed that blacks needed to be taken care of since they could not take care of themselves. Gosden was raised in this environment and, unlike Correll, he did interact with African-Americans. He had a childhood friend named Garrett Brown, who would serve as the basis for the Sylvester character in Amos ‘n’ Andy. Sylvester was portrayed as intelligent yet innocent and gentle, characteristics that made him likeable to a white audience and remained true to Gosden’s childhood friend Brown. Gosden lost most of his family at a young age and decided to join the Navy during World War I. It was after his service in the army that he took a job as the head of the Joe Bren Company of traveling minstrels. The job allowed Gosden to travel, earn money, become acquainted with life on a stage, and would eventually introduce him to his partner Charles Correll.

In Chapter 3, Ely discusses the role that the minstrel shows of the 1830s and 40s had on the lives of Gosden and Correll. They participated in vaudeville shows that took much of their structure from these early minstrel shows. The vaudeville performers often took elements of the minstrel show such as “blacking up” or the romantic ballad and altered them. Some did not perform in blackface, which, according to Ely, served to “obscure the boundary” between black and white. Gosden and Correll both entertained on the vaudeville circuit, and they met in September of 1920 in Chicago after being assigned to work together for the Joe Bren Company. They traveled throughout much of the country directing the vaudeville shows. The shows depicted blacks as limited, sentimental, foolish characters, childlike in their innocence and in need of constant care. Those portrayed as dandies were depicted as such in order to be ridiculed. It was also popular in the vaudeville shows to present in black face those in high positions of power such as doctors, lawyers, and even mayors in order to show them as average everyday people willing to humiliate themselves, because to “black up” was humiliating and degrading. The Bren troupe took a variety of elements from different eras in order to create their shows, something which would be echoed in Gosden and Correll’s radio show.

The constant travel and rigors of the entertainment industry helped to create the radio show that would make Correll and Gosden famous. In chapter 4, Ely details how Correll and Grosden became involved in radio. The two settled down in Chicago in 1924 after a rigorous touring schedule. They remained part of the vaudeville shows with Correll writing dialogue for the shows and Gosden directing the Joe Bren circus. Ely gives the reader a history of how the radio began to grow in popularity during the 1920s becoming a legitimate means of transmitting news and information. Gosden and Correll began working for WGN radio station, and January 1926 they created Sam ‘n’ Henry, predecessor to Amos ‘n’ Andy. The show perpetuated black stereotypes and Gosden and Correll borrowed much from their vaudeville and minstrel training and spoke in “black” dialect. The series changed networks and names returning in March of 1928 to huge success. The show, now called Amos ‘n’ Andy, perpetuated the same stereotypes featuring lazy, mischievous Andy and simple, kindhearted, sentimental Amos. It became a huge success.

Ely discusses the Black Migration into the North during and after World War I and how it contrasts with the migration of Amos ‘n’ Andy to Chicago. Those who were moving to the North were escaping terrible working and living conditions, extreme poverty and violence. None of this was mentioned on the show. In fact, keeping with the minstrel tradition, Corrrell and Gosden portrayed both Amos and Andy as nostalgic for the south. There was little to no mention of segregation or any of the problems affecting blacks in the south or in the north for that matter. The show avoided volatile topics preferring to keep a squeaky clean image, which, as Ely discusses in Chapter 7, was one of the main reasons for the show’s popularity. Correll and Gosden also made sure to avoid controversial issues and even went so far as to keep their sponsors happy by not presenting any of their products in a negative light. The show tried to boost the country’s morale during the Great Depression and encouraged consumer spending. It expressed some political views, including those that viewed as negative such as socialism, but remained non-partisan. The political discussion always made Amos or Andy seem more ignorant than whites who discussed the same issues thus making it safe for two “blacks” to discuss politics.

Despite the success and overwhelming popularity of the show among both blacks and whites, there was backlash from the African American community, which Ely discusses in the last part of the book. The show received mixed reviews from the African American community, and there were those who believed it should no longer be on the air. In 1931 Robert L. Vann of the Pittsburg Courier led an unsuccessful campaign to remove the show from the radio. According to Ely, the campaign’s failure shows the complexity of the issue of race and the portrayal of African Americans among blacks. Ely addresses possible reasons for blacks enjoying the show ranging from feelings of superiority, support for comedians, or feelings of pride in being a southerner.

The show moved to television in 1950. The NAACP boycotted it, and the network cancelled it in 1953 due to poor ratings. Ely concludes the book with a discussion of the civil rights movement concurrent with the show going off the radio in 1960. He discusses the effect the show has had on current entertainment, namely those shows that have an African American audience yet are considered to have sold out to whites. This brings the book to contemporary issues affecting African American entertainers in an industry where one has the “burden of always having to react to whites’ attitudes, actions and demands.”