The Ancestral Significance of Chadwick Boseman

                                          

 As countless tributes pour in celebrating the life and career of  Chadwick Boseman, his Black Panther cast mates eulogize their film anchor with the ultimate tribute: How do you honor a king? I'll humbly offer mine. Simply put, Boseman represents the totality of Black history's Holy Trinity---past, present and future. 

He also evokes another regal film super hero: Sidney Poitier. While faces of Gable and Grant, Bogart and Wayne were being etched on the granite of Hollywood's Mt Rushmore, Poitier changed the depiction of Black actors onscreen, slowly moving a film industry that was in lockstep with American conservative views on race.

Subservient roles as inept servants and buffoonish comic relief cloaked the true talents of Black performers of the 1930s and 1940s they way vaudeville comedian Bert Williams' genius was masked by the burnt cork of blackface. 

During the decade of Poitier's arrival, Hollywood still struggled to project positive Black images without losing white audiences.Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Poitier keenly curated roles the way Boseman would later on, injecting African Americans with a sense of pride as no-nonsense detective Virgil Tibbs in In The Heat of the Night (1967). In Black Panther, Boseman does the same. His creative ancestral deja vu runs deep.

          

                                                Video: Sidney Poitier's Mr. Tibbs gives it as good as he gets.

Boseman's brilliant Sgt. Stormin' Norman Holloway in Da 5 Bloods echoes standout performances from seminal Black actors James Edwards and Howard Rollins in the military-themed films Home of the Brave (1949) and A Soldier's Story (1984) that explored racial issues.          

 

 

 

           

 An early template for the modern Black male actor, Edwards was the model for Poitier, Rollins and Denzel Washington. Predating Boseman's marriage of creativity and activism, Edwards was a screenwriter, playwright and versatile performer in dramatic stage productions and onscreen. Like Boseman, he directed and taught acting. He doctored scripts for classic Hollywood films on a stipend while executives got rich.

 Securing an apprenticeship with director Otto Preminger on the set Carmen Jones, he lost it after Preminger---famous for tormenting Dorothy Dandridge in the same film---verbally disrespected him, prompting Edwards to grab a camera handle and chase him around the set.

A CORE and NAACP affiliate--acts considered subversive in the Fifties, Edwards refused to appear at anti-Communist hearings to confirm his political leanings. Now blacklisted he'd lose roles to Poitier whose career took an upward trajectory while Edwards was relegated to supporting roles for the rest of his life. Racially profiled by police and dogged by"racists, segregationalists and anti-communists hot on his heels,"  Edwards lamented the success Poitier achieved that always seemed always just beyond his grasp, Edwards languished into alcoholism and died at 51.

                                                                       

 For a time Rollins seemed destined to be Poitier's second coming. Delivering explosive performances in films like Ragtime, the proud Rollins rejected menial roles. eventually hitting pay dirt bystarring in the Poitier television version of  In the Heat of the Night for six years before his career spiraled into substance and alcohol abuse. Like Edwards, he'd die early at 46. 

                                                                                             

                            Video: Seminal fifties Black actor James Edwards in Home of the Brave (1949)

                                                                        

                                                           Video: Howard Rollins in A Soldier Story (1984)

Today, Edwards and Rollins are literal unknowns. Banished to Black history's peripheral sideline. Motion picture footnotes. Casualties from eras where Black actors were criminally underutilized and creative vehicles best suited for their talents didn't exist. Edwards and Rollins' tormented souls can finally rest. Boseman's career accomplishments absolves their unfulfilled legacies.

Underutilization best described the fate of performers with Boseman's similar theatrical roots. Performing in political and socially conscious productions exploring African American themes and  honed their craft doing off-Broadway and Shakespeare. The stage was the main portal actor like Boseman and other Black actors traveled through on the way to film and television. For actors landing in Hollywood in the 70s and 80s, blaxploitation roles, comedy sitcoms, period pieces and occasional film/TV bit parts become career high points.

                               Video: Actress Rosalind Cash discusses her career challenges in the 70s/80s.

                                               "I refuse to deal with the industry when interpreting my worth"

On the heels of stage play Purlie Victorious, Sherman Hemsley was hired for a role that led to an eleven-year stint on The Jeffersons. Despite earning hundreds of thousands of dollars for playing one of the most beloved characters in television history, Hemsley's signature role brought up bad memories: "It was hard (playing George Jefferson), but it was the role. I hated it."   

During his own career come-up, Denzel Washington tangled with Jewish producers auditioning for a role where he was electrocuted and hung from a rope. Torn between earning $600,000 or maintaning his dignity. After consulting Sidney Poitier's advice, Washington passed. Others weren't as fortunate. For every Nell Carter who went from Aint' Misbehavin and Dreamgirls to playing Gimme A Break, there were others, teetering between pride and paying the rent. Boseman's successful segue from stage to playing substantial roles on screen softens the blow of  sacrifices, short lived careers, broken dreams of those who toiled in obscurity.

          Video:Denzel discusses turning down "the nigga they couldn't kill" role offered to him.

Linked the closest to Washington, Boseman's protrayal of James Brown, Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall intersects with Washington's Malcolm X, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and Melvin Tolson. Boseman's spiritual creative link extends to  Cecily Tyson and Angela Bassett, Black actresses who played real-life/historical -based figures.

In the 1970s and 80s, Tyson was a dominant fixture on television thanks to her roles as Chicago educator Marva Collins, Harriet Tubman, Kunte Kinte's mother in Roots and the centennial-aged slave Jane Pittman. A decade after Tyson---Bassett played Black matriarchs Katherine Jackson, Betty Shabazz, Voletta Wallace and Tina Turner.    

 Boseman's box office triumph in Panther pushes back against the career shortfall of gifted actors like Louis Gossett, Jr. Like Boseman, Gossett's career was rooted in Black theater. Performing in the stage and screen adaptation of the Poitier vehicle Raisin in the Sun (1961), Gossett built a solid if not spectacular career. All that would change in 1977 when Gossset at 42---won an Emmy for his role as Fiddler in Roots. 

In his 2010 memoir An Actor and a Gentleman, Gossett recalls the decline of African American employment post-Roots and the blaxploitation era: "the word around Hollywood was that's enough for Black actors. They've done more than enough. Let's get back to normal." Five years later, Gossett would win Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for  Best Supporting Actor for his brilliant protrayal as Sgt Emil Foley in An Officer and A Gentleman (1982). 

Taking home the Oscar, Gossett anticpated bigger paydays and opportunities to leverage his Oscar win and bring stories of Black heroes to the big screen, he experienced neither.  

Typecast in movie roles and paid significantly less than his co-stars---even when he was lead actor.  Relying on cocaine and self-affirmation ("You will not become a bitter man. You will be a better man.") to cope with being "ripped off" by managers failing to advocate financially on his behalf---Gossett embarked on a tragic path that James Edwards embarked thirty years prior. 

When he insisted on better compensation, he lost roles. At the height of his career, Gossett racially profiled while driving his Rolls Royce in an affluent LA neighborhood. Detained by a police officer who chained him to a tree---Gossett urinated on himself before being released.                               

 Fulfilling Gossett's quest to bring Black heroes to the big screen, Boseman took it a step further. He injected African reality to Black Panther. In certain scenes he spoke in the South African Xhosa language---which he learned in one day. Boseman insisted that his character speak English in a natural African-accented dialect---eliminating the negative stigma aimed at the Black diaspora (and immigrant) relationship with language.When he moved on from Panther, Boseman continued to embrace his groundbreaking character without fear of being typecast or chained to the role. 

 

Boseman wore his crown comfortably unlike actors Richard Roundtree and Ron O'Neal who distanced themselves from their signature John Shaft and Youngblood Priest roles from Shaft (1971) and Superfly (1972). At red carpet events, instead of suits and tuxedos, Boseman wore African/non-Western  attire. 

 

While promoting La Borinquena, a comic book about a Puerto Rican female superhero, graphic artist Edgardo Miranda-Rodriquez attempted to set his reality-based creation apart from "fictional" locations like Wakanda (the video interview starts at the 8:05 mark) reflecting the general  tendency of outsiders to look at African/Black culture  through Eurocentric eyes.  

 

While a fictional location, Wakanda is a symbolic metaphor of the African continent. Beneath the onscreen special effects and majestic imagery Panther's story line explores exploitation, tribalism and colonialism still plaguing Africa today. 

Killmonger's arms trafficking is a take on the infiltration of weaponry by outsiders to divide the continent.When Letita Wright calls a character a "colonizer," it's almost a wink and nod to audiences in the historical know.

 Finally, Panther flips the script. Reframing Africa's unbalanced relationship with Europe and America---T'Challah arrives at the United Nation to state Wakanda's case---but not as a leader of a destitute country looking for a Western benefactor to provide foreign aid or assistance. 

For those who fail to recognize Panther's resonance with Black audiences around the world, it goes beyond the joy of seeing a superhero of African descent on the the silver screen. It means liberation. The iconic arm lock and "Wakanda Forever" affirmation liberates Jimmie "JJ" Walker and Gary Coleman (RIP) from signature minstrel-like catchphrases they were eternally chained to. It liberates us from blackface. From Gone With The Wind. From the tom,coons, mammies, tragic mulattoes, coons and buck film roles that were a means to an end for countless performers.. 

Chadwick Boseman's career was short on quantity but long on quality. In life, he gave us life. In death---he checkmated the entertainment world's celebration the potential of prematurely departed stars like James Dean and other Hollywood heroes. Boseman trumps them all. One word can only encapsulate his ancestral journey enroute to the stairway to heaven---fulfillment.