re: #3 Learned Mother of Zion

I was talking about the Dumbo crows. And I ended up doing some research after I wrote the comment. My first thought was not, these are black people, but rather, who are these crows supposed to be. I checked out Cabin the the Sky, since I remembered a cigar chomping character in that movie—and would that movie be considered racist?—but Cabin was made after Dumbo.

Two of the crows had the moves of Willie Best and Steppin Fetchit. Steppin, or Lincoln Perry in real life, was very accomplished, became a millionaire in the 30s and 40s, wrote for the Black newspaper in Chicago, eventually became a member of the Nation of Islam. Before films, he owned a carnival, and was huge in vaudeville. It then occurred to me that radio was huge in those days, which led me to Amos ‘n Andy. The voice of one of the crows was definitely based off of Kingfish. But this show was like Andy Griffith in radio days, with sophisticated stories, and the kind of warmth that Mayberry was known for. Was the Andy Griffith show racist because no Black people lived in Mayberry?

I kept reading. The actual crow performers were contract players for Disney, I believe they were Black men—but that led me to questions about Disney himself. Nowadays, we can’t see the works of Lincoln Perry, or some Disney films because they aren’t politically correct. And Disney, we know his reputation. Turns out, Neil Gabler was granted access to the Disney archives and concluded that Walt was not the antisemite of legend.

However, in the process of all of this I found there were many Black vaudeville performers who we will never know about, just like there were many Black baseball players we will never know about, who where very popular and successful in their day. Not to mention that the reputation of performers who simply took the best available work, and did quite well, are not recognized as helping to bring about the changes in the later part of the century—when they helped a great deal.