Stars for Freedom: Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement by Emilie RaymondMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
If you want a revolution, you have to read this book!
How do you fund a civil rights movement? Can popular entertainers lend a hand? Who's ready to give of their time, or their money, or their talent, or their home as a secure meeting space -- or all of these? Who's ready to risk damage to their careers -- or to their own personal freedom and safety, or to that of their family's? Can they honestly change hearts and minds? Who's ready to stand and fight, no matter what the consequences -- and what consequences were indeed suffered by some? Raymond focuses on the six African American entertainers who contributed various combinations of these, starting with Harry Belafonte, responsible for both giving and raising funds to bail out jailed civil rights protesters and who allowed his apartment in New York to serve as a kind of central headquarters for strategy meetings with the various civil rights organizations. Raymond moves on to Sammy Davis Jr., questioning the insincerity of commitment to civil rights bestowed on Davis by a previous biographer, when simple accounting records of funds received from years of Davis-headlined benefits and concerts produce a more compelling counter-narrative; her research restores to the Davis persona his being a proud black entertainer (something which arguably never should have been questioned of a survivor of Jim Crow and the so-called Chitlin' Circuit in the first place, but I digress). Most eye-opening is the spotlight Raymond places on comedian Dick Gregory, who was beaten and jailed along with the rank-and-file protestors. His comedy evolved as his participation increased, becoming the most heralded of the celebrities among the protestors -- a burning commitment to the struggle that continues to this day. While Belafonte and Gregory agitated, the paths of Sidney Poitier, and Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, ran more within the Hollywood system, while Sammy seemed to walk a fine line between them. Poitier and the cast of the 1959 Porgy and Bess, which included Sammy, ran interference on Dorothy Dandridge's behalf with director -- and former lover, taking advantage of that to treat her shamefully on set -- Otto Preminger, while also standing up and demanding changes to the script and production, including upgrading the dialect dialogue. Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were each fixtures on their own, but were at their most formidable when together, whether acting on stage or speaking at a rally or casting indelible African American images on film and television for decades to come after the civil rights movement; an inescapable structure of excellence -- models to follow as the struggle continues.
View all my reviews
