TV’s most racist show
The Amos ’N’ Andy show began life as a radio serial in 1928, the all-black characters being performed by the show’s white creators, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, with other white actors, in the minstrel tradition.
The show featured three main characters: naïve but honest Amos was a hard-working family man; blustering Andy was a dreamer with overinflated self- confidence who tended to let Amos do most of the work; and George Stevens, also known as the Kingfish, was a con-man trying to make an easy dollar, always trying to lure the two into get-rich-quick schemes.
The show was a comedy routine composed of malapropisms, mispronunciations and misunderstandings, based around African American stereotypes.
Amos ‘n’ Andy was attacked by African American Civil Rights groups for many years before it appeared on TV. In 1931, the African American press petitioned the Federal Radio Commission to cancel the show because it was an unfair representation of African Americans.
The Amos ’n’ Andy TV show was brought to the small screen in June 1951 by national U.S. TV network CBS. It was sponsored by Blatz Beer of Milwaukee and featured an all-black cast. The principal roles were played by Alvin Childress (Amos), Spencer Williams (Andy) and Tim Moore (Kingfish). A total of 78 episodes were made.
The civil rights organisation NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) responded with a boycott of Blatz Beer and issued a series of complaints against the programme, including: ‘It tends to strengthen the conclusion among uninformed and prejudiced people that negroes are inferior, lazy, dumb and dishonest.
‘every character in this show with an all negro cast is either a clown or a crook. Negro doctors are shown as quacks and thieves. Negro lawyers are shown as slippery cowards, ignorant of their profession and without ethics. Negro women are shown as cackling screaming shrews, in bigmouthed close-ups using street slang just short of vulgarity. All negroes are shown as dodging work of any kind.’
In April 1953, Blatz cut its sponsorship and CBS announced: ‘The network has bowed to the change in national thinking’, but the series was never actually banned. CBS recouped its investment by selling it to other networks and it remained in syndication for 13 years, airing on 218 local networks in the U.S. as well as in Australia, Bermuda, Kenya and Nigeria. The show was finally pulled from the schedules in 1966.
In the Seventies, CBS renewed its copyright of the show, but has thus far chosen not to release the programme on DVD.
Terry Marsh, Leeds.
QUESTION
Why does the reception on my pocket digital radio cut out whenever I’m near a supermarket’s self-scan checkouts? DIGITAL audio broadcasting was originally promoted as being less prone to interference and it’s true that compared with AM and FM radio, reception is less likely to be affected by pirate transmitters, stations on adjacent frequencies or multi-path (reflected) signals.
But there’s now a long and growing list of devices blamed for interfering with DAB radios, including microwave ovens, LeD lighting, LeD displays, laptops and laptop power supplies, LCD TVs, mobile phones and power line networking.
The interference is usually caused by the electronic ‘driver’ circuits, which convert mains electricity to the low voltage AC used to power LeDs — probably the case here.
A. Bell, Nuneaton, Warks.
QUESTION
Does anyone recall The Great Daylight Fireball of 1972? What might have happened if the meteor had collided with earth? The Great Daylight Fireball appeared in the skies over the western United States and Canada on August 10, 1972. It was witnessed and filmed by a large number of people, mainly tourists in Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier national parks. eyewitness accounts came from Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Alberta.
The object was detected at around 20:30 GMT. Designated US19720810, it’s technically called an earth-grazing meteoroid, in that it entered the earth’s atmosphere then left again. It passed within 35 miles of earth’s surface, travelling at 9.3 miles per second.
An eyewitness in Missoula, Montana, saw the object pass directly overhead and heard a double sonic boom. In addition, the object became hot enough to be detected by a U.S. Air Force satellite. It was spotted at an altitude of about 45 miles, tracked as it descended to about 32 miles, and then tracked as it climbed back out of the atmosphere.
Analysis of its appearance and trajectory showed it was either a meteoroid of about 10ft in diameter if it was carbonaceous chondrite (stony meteorite), or 46ft in diameter if made of less-dense cometary ice.
This object is still in an earth-crossing orbit around the Sun and passed close to the earth again in August 1997.
Small objects frequently collide with earth. Stony asteroids/meteoroids with a diameter of 10-13ft impact earth about once a year; they all vaporise in the upper atmosphere. Asteroids with a diameter of 20-25ft enter earth’s atmosphere about every five years. While it has been estimated that they contain as much kinetic energy as a small nuclear device they also explode in the upper atmosphere, and most or all of the solids are vaporised.
Scientists are more concerned about larger objects in the order of 150-170ft in diameter. These might strike earth about once every 1,000 years. The last event of this nature took place above Tunguska in Russia in 1908. even this did not strike earth. The heat generated by compression of air in front of the body (ram pressure) as it travels through the atmosphere is immense and even objects this size explode before they reach the ground.
In this case, the air burst is thought to have occurred about five miles above the earth’s surface. however, its impact was massive; it is thought to have exploded with a power about 1,000 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima, knocking down around 80 million trees.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION
A man was recently fined for swallowing a goldfish (Mail). Was there a goldfish eating fad in the Twenties? FURTheR to the earlier answer, a good trick at a party used to be to go over to the fish tank, dip a long slice of carrot into the water and, with a great flourish, lean your head back shaking the carrot and drop it into your mouth and swallow. Always good for a laugh!
Bob Phillips, Bristol.