I’M THINKING IT BEGAN with Diana Ross and the Supremes. As a white boy growing up in Memphis in the early 1960s, there were no beauty models as such for black women. The society I grew up in taught me that Negroes were an inferior people, an inferior race, and that their perceived ugliness wasn’t just about their dusky skin and kinky hair, but their broad noses and big lips as well. Not to mention their big, glistening white teeth and protruding eyeballs when they were frightened. Even the way they walked and talked was eccentric and funny.
As a child I remember my playmates and I kidding around with each other and asking if we would ever kiss a (you know what). Invariably we would feign sickness at the thought and say, “Ugh! Never!” You’ve got to remember that a version of apartheid was in effect when I was in grade school and very few of us knew blacks on any intimate basis. No one in my Bethel Grove neighborhood, which was solidly blue collar, had black maids or nannies. They simply couldn’t afford them. Maids and nannies were for rich people.
Many children when I was coming up repeated the known scientific fact that blacks had purple blood. Several I knew swore they had seen it.
“Why do niggers run so fast?” I remember someone asking. “Because white people chase them all the time.”
Here is a typical schoolyard rhyme:
I see your heinie
So black and shiny
It makes me giggle
To see it wiggle
I cannot remember when I first became aware of Lena Horne. I do recall how she was considered a great beauty, perhaps the most beautiful black person in the world. I also remember—and still think—that her features were remarkably white. (Don’t demur. The great critic John Simon said virtually the same thing about Halle Berry, that she looked like a Caucasian with a nice tropical tan.)
I recently watched the film that put Lena Horne on the world stage, Cabin in the Sky, where she, the femme fatale in the story, was pitted against the dowdier Ethel Waters. Sitting bejeweled in a black nightclub she indeed radiated great beauty but looked almost nothing like the cast surrounding her, particularly Waters. Miss Waters, who was notoriously protective of her turf and her persona, did everything on the set of Cabin in the Sky except stab Horne in the back, literally that is. She worked overtime to undermine the dazzling up-and-comer. Which led to some fantastic fireworks on screen between them. Had the two been the same age—Miss Waters was nearly twice the age of Horne—I have no doubt who would have blown the other right off the camera. Waters in her youth—called Sweet Mama Stringbean when first starting out—not only was one of the best shimmy dancers in Harlem, but had a voice that could make the angels weep. She was slim, curvy, and a stone cold knockout. And ain’t nothin’ about her that looked white. In her later years when Waters toured with the Billy Graham Crusade a lot of younger people, myself included, had no idea this wonderful grandmother type, beloved by millions, had once upon a time been the hottest thing on long legs. Miss Waters’ religiosity was no put on; she had a prayer room in every place she lived. But she lived life explicitly on her own terms. I can’t help but wonder if the Billy Graham organization was aware that Miss Waters kept male and female lovers her whole life and felt her private affairs were her private affairs. She saw nothing wrong with her sexual appetites and inclinations.
And just for the record, the song Lena Horne is most identified with, “Stormy Weather,” was Ethel Waters’ hit long before Hollywood let Horne have a go at it.
About the time I learned a thing or two about the birds and the bees, around the age of ten, the refrain had changed from would I kiss a black woman to would I do something a good bit naughtier. The response was still the same. “Ugh!”
Until we all saw Diana Ross and the Supremes on television, that is. The Motown record label did much more than simply make great records. They were a Detroit-based industry that heavily promoted their full product line and that included selling their artists as stars. Motown head Berry Gordy was a black businessman who knew that in order to reach its full potential Motown had to crossover to the far larger, far more lucrative white market. To do that his artists had to appeal to white tastes. To that end Motown artists were carefully groomed, coiffed, and outfitted. They were taught how to speak the Queen’s English, which fork to use, and how to stick out one’s pinky while sipping a cup of tea. Gordy took a special interest in Diana Ross. There were many who thought the other Supremes, Florence Ballard in particular, were better singers. But it was Ross who had the eye appeal, the one the camera loved.
With their sequined gowns, long eyelashes that seemed to beckon “come hither,” slinky stage moves, and breathy vocals, the Supremes broke through the “would you?” barrier.
We would.
We would, we would, we would.
It wasn’t long before the world seemed to be full of gorgeous black women. Closer to my age was Millie Small, the Jamaican sensation, who introduced the world to what would evolve into reggae music with her smash hit “My Boy Lollipop.” Millie was just a teenager, dressed in the mod fashions of the day, and was a white boy’s vision with her delicate curves and ripe Jamaican patois, which was deliciously exotic.
Mattel’s Lt. Uhura Barbie doll. Still sexy after all these years.
But none of them had the effect that Nichelle Nichols did on Star Trek. Nichols, of course, played Lt. Uhura, bridge officer on the crew of the Starship Enterprise. I was fourteen years old when Star Trek first aired and like every teenaged boy in America I never missed an episode. Each show was endlessly discussed with classmates and a lot of the conversation centered around Uhura. I don’t think there was a white boy alive at the time who didn’t have a crush on Lt. Uhura. Not only was she inarguably beautiful by whatever standard, not only did she have legs up to there barely covered by her mini-skirted uniform, not only did she have a voice that purred, but she was formidably smart too, an indispensable crew member who kept right up with the emotional captain and the imperturbable first officer, Spock. She could be one of the boys but she was most definitely one of the girls.
Then there was the episode where Captain Kirk kisses Uhura, which was long-believed to be the first interracial kiss on American television until an earlier kiss or two were found in some long-buried archives. The Star Trek episode, “Plato’s Children,” as I recall took place on a planet where aliens entered the minds of the crew of the Enterprise. Thus when the kiss occurred it was not consummated by the free wills of Kirk and Uhura. I suppose that made it all right.
Reportedly, the network braced itself for a deluge of protests and hate mail, which did not materialize. Why? My take on it is that everyone wanted to kiss Uhura and felt that Captain Kirk was one lucky sonofabitch. Nichelle Nichols, who was a well-known singer and stage actress prior to Star Trek, wanted to leave the show after the first season. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. met Nichols and told her how much he admired her on Star Trek she told him her plans for leaving the show. He told her in no uncertain terms that she shouldn’t do that. He told her that she may not realize it, but she was a great role model for blacks, particularly black females. She was treated as an equal as a crew member of the Enterprise, integral to the ship’s mission to explore “strange new worlds.” She wasn’t a sex object (even though she was damned sexy). She wasn’t servile. She was a professional. Her role as a military officer was never questioned or in doubt. Like that future spaceman Neil Armstrong would suggest a year later, Lt. Uhura was a small step for racial progress, but a giant leap in terms of racial perceptions.