Posted on 02/02/2023 12:19:51 PM PST by nickcarraway
Because he was such an icon, he was able to have Black artists on TV when they were often not welcomed nor wanted elsewhere.
I cannot recall when I first heard the name Ed Sullivan, but it certainly had to have been when I was a ghetto youth coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s. I initially connected his name with music superstars Elvis Presley and The Beatles, and their now legendary appearances on his variety show. I was intrigued by how he introduced musical guests, his mightily distinctive diction, his genuinely low-key demeanor. But I had no clue, truly, who the man was, why he was such a major force in entertainment, and why for so long, until after I reached adulthood.
That recognition likely began when I studied Black history and Black culture while in college, and in the years that followed when I became a journalist, particularly as a documentarian of music and other art forms. And by the time I was hired to be a senior writer at Quincy Jones’ Vibe magazine in the 1990s, I found myself perpetually scanning “The Ed Sullivan Show” for footage after footage of Black performers like The Jackson 5, like Mahalia Jackson, like the legit who’s who of Black genius in song, dance, film, theater, and comedy. It was almost as if Ed Sullivan had been intentionally curating Black history on television, knowing that Black lives not only mattered then, but would matter to those to come, like me.
Watch all the latest archival videos from The Ed Sullivan Show on the program’s official YouTube channel.
Indeed, it was somewhere between my Vibe years and the past decade or so that I learned how invested Mr. Sullivan was in equality. Perhaps it was because, as a young man, he was a serious and great athlete, and had encountered Black folks on the sporting field as gifted as he, and it left an impression – one that taught him not to view any people as inferior, as was commonly believed in Jim Crow America, just because of the color of their skin. Perhaps it was because he was Irish and knew there was a time in this nation where there were loud proclamations that the Irish were considered the absolute bottom of the immigrant barrel. Perhaps it was because the love of his life, his wife Sylvia, was Jewish, and he saw first-hand the anti-Semitism those like her endured.
These and other factors are likely why The Ed Sullivan Show was converted into the performance arm of the Civil Rights Movement. Because he was such an icon and such an influencer, he was able to have Black artists in that theater when they were often not welcomed nor wanted elsewhere.
How else would you explain The Temptations and The Supremes doing their massive pop hits in that hallowed circle, accorded the same treatment as White musical innovators? And, yes, how else could Motown have become “the sound of young America” without allies and accomplices like Ed Sullivan?
How else do you explain Mr. Sullivan, a close friend of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the tap dancer who was once the biggest Black star in Hollywood, arranging the funeral service for a Black man who had the sad misfortune of dying broke, and doing so in a manner that suggested, strongly, this Black man was worthy of a grand send-off?
How else would you explain Mr. Sullivan, a White man, walking matter-of-factly into the yellowed and hateful teeth of racism by kissing Pearl Bailey on the cheek, or shaking the hand of Nat “King” Cole, on his TV show, knowing such gestures would savagely anger many White viewers, especially those in the American South who believed, without apology, in “For Whites Only” and “For Coloreds Only” in every way conceivable?
For sure, we know that The Ed Sullivan Show was the longest-running variety program in American TV history. We know that Mr. Sullivan became a star as big as the biggest stars he had on that program. But we also know that the Civil Rights era, roughly 1955 to 1968 – from the murder of Emmett Till and the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the assassination of Dr. King – means that Ed Sullivan had a front-row seat to the most dramatic upheavals sweeping America.
Here he was, someone who had spent considerable time digesting the Black talent in Harlem and via the “chitlin’ circuit,” with this gargantuan platform before there was social media, before there was cable or streaming, before there were all-music outlets like MTV, quite literally broadcasting Black history into the living rooms of everyday Americans year after year, from the World War II generation to the Baby Boomers, from nonviolent sit-ins and freedom rides to city after city burning in rebellion.
This is why I believe Mr. Sullivan did two things of great significance near the end of his remarkable television run. When he learned that Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the jazz multi-instrumentalist, was challenging the power structure to have more jazz on the airwaves, Mr. Sullivan did not do what others were doing: shucking and jiving and avoiding. He gave Mr. Kirk a slot with his makeshift band that included jazz giant Charles Mingus, and it remains one of the most searing and surreal mini-concerts ever seen on TV.
But history is not history if it does not also acknowledge the traumatic that happened in real-time. Two years after the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. was tragically gunned down in Memphis, America remained a divided and burning house. Yet there was a regal and soft-spoken Coretta Scott King, MLK’s widow, in that Sullivan moment, introducing clips from two of her late husband’s most famous speeches, and declaring the kind of America it needed to be. An emotionally raw Ed Sullivan greets Mrs. King at the end, kisses her on the cheek and grabs her hand, a fearless middle finger to anyone who believed, and still believes, that White people and Black people should not even touch each other, that our histories are not intertwined, when they are.
Without question, Ed Sullivan could have lived a life awash in White male privilege and power and ignored what was happening around him. Instead, he chose a path of purpose, of substance, not knowing that there would be, say, an African American like me, in a completely different century, who would religiously watch his show on YouTube and elsewhere, and see not just my people and our whole selves, with great pride and dignity, but also see what is possible if history is inextricably linked to a sense of humanity, to a great love for all.
Watch all the latest archival videos from The Ed Sullivan Show on the program’s official YouTube channel.
Kevin Powell is a poet, journalist, human and civil rights activist, filmmaker, and the author of 15 books, including the poetry collection Grocery Shopping with My Mother. He is also the writer of a forthcoming biography of Tupac Shakur. Kevin lives and thrives in Brooklyn, New York.
Ed Sullivan was a jump off point for every popular Motown act in America. I loved every minute of it, and still do.
For the most part, Sullivan just featured black entertainers who were already popular, so I don’t think he was a huge civil rights pioneer. I think Jack Benny’s Rochester (Eddie Anderson) was more of a groundbreaker. Rochester talked back, was sassy, and had a distinct and entertaining personality. I don’t remember another black actor being a regular in a sitcom or drama of that time.
Garbage article. My take, Ed Sullivan didn’t see people’s skin color, he saw their talent. So nothing racial about it.
I tend to agree. Sullivan just wanted the best performers, whoever they were.
Not true. He brought in a lot of acts he saw in Harlem, and acts that had never been on television before. And he shook hands with Nat King Cole, and kissed Pearl Bailey, which some of the big sponsors didn't like.
I don't see why you have a problem with that? That's the point. Some sponsors didn't want some of the performers, for reasons that included race.
He also brought on a lot of country music acts before it got much attention on TV.
> Jack Benny’s Rochester (Eddie Anderson) was more of a groundbreaker. <
And Jack Benny deserves a lot of credit for that (more credit than he usually gets). A quick story:
Anderson was denied a room at the hotel where Benny and his staff were planning to stay in Saint Joseph, Missouri. When it was announced that Anderson could not stay there, Benny replied: “If he doesn’t stay here, neither do I.” The hotel allowed Anderson to remain as a guest.
It was not the only time a hotel refused Anderson a room. Soon after he became part of the permanent show cast, the program went on location to New York. When a couple from the South complained about staying in the same hotel as Anderson, the hotel manager tried to get him to find a room somewhere else. Hilliard Marks, the show’s producer and also Jack Benny’s brother-in-law, told the manager that Anderson would leave the hotel the next day. When he did, Jack Benny and the entire radio show cast and crew totaling 44 people, joined Anderson in checking out of the hotel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_%22Rochester%22_Anderson#Progression_of_race_relations
I don't have a problem with it, but he wasn't striving for racial equality like the writer suggests. He put on talent, and much of the "talent" was a shock to sponsors and editors etc. Nothing to do with skin color.
(I always thought Topo Gigio and Senor Wences were corny, but I guess they all can't be winners.)
The author I believe uses the term as an equivalent to the whole "equity" push by Leftists and Blacks. It's not like he was a civil rights pioneer, basically he could care less what you looked like or even acted like if he believed you had cutting edge talent.
I don’t remember another black actor being a regular in a sitcom or drama of that time.
The Beulah Show (1950-52)
Eddie Anderson made the show. His Rochester character was the best. The funny thing is he is the original Butler because of a car accident, decades before it appeared on Seinfeld.
I would not filter a search based exclusively for (black) skin colored talent appearing on Ed Sullivan any more than I would search exclusively for (white) skin colored performers having performed.
Give me a break fool. It is most likely that Ed Sullivan, with no consideration of skin color, knew talent when he saw it. Dear Lord when will people ever stop seeing everything by the myopic lens of skin color?
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."Nowadays, we are told we must see skin color and give deference to it.
AMOS & ANDY WAS MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE SHOW! NEVER THOUGHT THAT THE SHOW WAS ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE...IT WAS THE MISADVENTURES OF A HUSTLING GET RICH QUICK CON MAN, HIS GULLIBLE GOOD NATURED BUDDY, AND OFTEN THEIR ALMOST LAWYER ALGONQUIN J. CALHOUN, ALSO AN IDIOT! RALPH KRAMDEN AND ED NORTON IN A DIFFERENT PART OF TOWN! THE CANCEL CULTURE MURDER OF THAT SHOW IS AN ATROCITY COMMITTED AGAINST THE HISTORY OF EARLY TV COMEDY, RACIAL BROTHERHOOD (THERE WERE LOTS OF CHARACTERS THAT WERE BLACK THAT WERE JUDGES, POLICE DETECTIVES, BUSINESS OWNERS, AND COMPLETELY UNLIKE THE TWO NITWIT MAIN CHARACTERS...AMOS THE CAB DRIVER, WHO WAS SHARP AND A PILLAR OF SOCIETY...BUT NOT A VERY COMICAL GUY!)
LOVED THAT SHOW! MURDERED BY LEFTIST RACISM! DAMNED SHAME!
HERE’S TO TIM MOORE, THE BELOVED KINGFISH!...HIS LONG SUFFERING WIFE SAPHIRE, AND HER MAMA, TOO. (TALK ABOUT THE MOTHER-IN-LAW FROM H*LL!)
BTW, I’M NOT SHOUTING...JUST EYE PROBLEMS.
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