Amos and andy tv episodes series#

To date, it has never been seen again on American television.īut was “Amos ‘n’ Andy” a racist show? The answer is…yes and no. In 1966, CBS announced it was permanently withdrawing “Amos ‘n’ Andy” from syndication. Other local stations found themselves besieged with demands (orchestrated in large part by the NAACP) that “Amos ‘n’ Andy” be removed from the air. The following year, a Chicago television station which was scheduled to air the old reruns abruptly changed its mind following viewer protests and boycott threats.

Amos and andy tv episodes series#

CBS sold the series to state-run television in the newly-independent Kenya, but the Kenyan government banned the show for being a disreputable depiction of black people.

In 1963, however, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” weathered new accusations of racist content from an unexpected source.

Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” reruns were a television staple. However, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” was successfully syndicated to local stations around America (which did not rely on corporate sponsorship for its advertising revenue) and was sold overseas (it was the first American TV show to play on the BBC). Yet the program only ran for two seasons–no company would sponsor the show, owing to its all-black cast, and the program’s lack of financial viability forced CBS to take it from prime-time. Despite the NAACP’s complaints, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” was a highly-rated show and even received an Emmy Award nomination for Best Comedy Series. Amos (Alvin Childress) had relatively little to do with the proceedings except to set up each episode’s opening narration and to appear midway through the show to comment on the predicaments swirling around him.įrom its beginning, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” earned the wrath of the NAACP, which charged the program with serving miserable racial stereotypes in the guise of humor. Andy (Spencer Williams) was the good-natured but gullible patsy who inevitably got suckered into Kingfish’s schemes, usually losing his cash and his pride in the process. Kingfish was endless source of get-rich-quick schemes which inevitably went badly awry, and his calamities inevitably raised the ire of his short-tempered wife Sapphire and her shrewish Mama, who lived with the pair (and paid most of their rent). The show debuted with great publicity on CBS in June of 1951.Īlthough the show was called “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the TV version actually focused heavily on a third character: George “Kingfish” Stevens (played by Tim Moore), the leader of the Harlem fraternal group the Mystic Knights of the Sea. Gosden and Correll clearly could not pull another minstrel show routine for television, so after a heavily publicized talent search they premiered a new version of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” with an all-black cast (a TV first). When television began to upstage radio as the primary entertainment medium, nearly all of the major radio programs were adapted for the small screen. The resulting productions were completely unlike the radio show: crude, unfunny and (tragically) blatantly racist. Gosden and Correll played their characters in blackface in a film called “Check and Double Check,” while a cartoon series based on the show was also produced. In fact, Gosden and Correll hired African-American actors to round out their cast, making “Amos ‘n’ Andy” one of the very few integrated shows in the golden age of American radio.ĭuring the 1930s, two attempts were made to take “Amos ‘n’ Andy” from the aural medium of radio to the visual medium of motion pictures. Despite the racial impersonation, Gosden and Correll never cheapened their material with overt racist humor. To bring life to their African-American characters, Gosden and Correll used exaggerated black speech patterns which fractured the language with improper grammar and syntax (later generations would dub this “ebonics”).

It was the creation of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, two white actor-writers who invented a series depicting the misadventures of two black cabdrivers and their wacky friends. “Amos ‘n’ Andy” originated on radio in the late 1920s. Even at this late date, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” is still banned from the airwaves. The most controversial program in the history of American television was broadcast more than a half-century ago and continues to generate endless debate for its content: “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the all-black sitcom which divided audiences between those who saw it as an entertaining comedy and those who viewed it as a blatantly racist travesty.