Black Power TV by Devorah Heitner (review)
Delphine Letort

Black Camera, Volume 5, Number 2, Spring 2014 (New Series), pp.
197-200 (Article)
Published by Indiana University Press
DOI: 10.1353/blc.2014.0003

For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/blc/summary/v005/5.2.letort.html

Access provided by Duke University Libraries (29 May 2014 13:51 GMT)

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Book Reviews

We won’t be fooled again! (We hope.) In an age when Samantha Power, evenafter a spectacularly undiplomatic campaign gaffe, can become U.S ambassador to the United Nations on the basis of an Atlantic Monthly article thatassumed U.S. benevolence and advocated for humanitarian intervention, theself-­critique advocated by Harrow is doubly necessary.
The volume will undoubtedly be useful for teachers presenting any of themany films analyzed in it, but this raises another question, that of pedagogicalstrategy for those teaching Ameri­can undergrads. Is it better to choose themost interesting recent Hollywood atrocity and critique it rigorously with theclass or to show an Af­ri­can film directed by a superb artist—Ousmane Sembéne’s La noire de . . . / Black Girl (1966), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s La Petite
vendeuse de soleil / The Little Girl who Sold the Sun (1999), Abderrahmane
Sissako’s La vie sur terre / Life on Earth (1998), etc.—and let the film seduce
the students into seeing Af­ri­can agency and his­tori­cal complexity? I’ve always preferred the latter method, screening the films with delight, and finding the discussions more productive, but I know that the two procedures arecomplementary, and it’s evident I’ve got to do them both. And that raises thequestion of how to choose between Hollywood films that will happily disappear if we don’t assign them, and ones that are worth addressing. This bookwill help teachers with such choices.

Note
1. Held at the 2007 Af­ri­can Studies Association (ASA) annual meeting in New York
City, and the 2008 Af­ri­can Literature Association (ALA) annual meeting at West­ern Illinois University, Macomb, IL.

•DEVORAH HEITNER, Black Power TV
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013
Reviewed by Delphine Letort
Drawing on the rare archival footage from four television programs madeduring the Black Power years (1964−1974), Black Power TV attempts to recover the cultural and economic dynamics behind innovative televisual endeavors that were produced in the wake of the Kerner Commission Report

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BLACK CAMERA 5:2(1968). Responding to the report’s call for more diversity on the small screen,
several stations opened up pub­lic space for Af­ri­can Ameri­can voices to reachout to television audiences. Whether they adopted a local lens like Inside
Bedford Stuyvesant (1968−1971) and Say Brother (1968−present) or werebroadcast nationally like Black Journal (1968−1970) and Soul! (1968−1973),
these programs delved into the Black experience: from documenting theeveryday life in Black neighbourhoods to debating local and national issues
affecting Af­ri­can Ameri­can communities, they “injected criti­cal Black perspectives into an overwhelmingly White televisual context, creating a Blackpub­lic sphere in an unlikely space” (2). The author endows her study witha lively touch by commenting on specific episodes, analysing how the anchors’ clothes and chosen settings influenced the construction of racial representations. Af­ri­can attire (in­clud­ing garments and hairstyles) reinforcedethnic identification, reflecting the merging of the po­liti­cal and the personal
as a means “to assert Black identity and pride” (5). Heitner’s investigation
into the paratextual documents of the period conveys a sociological perspective, reflecting an attempt to retrospectively assess the impact of these programs on Black and White communities. She strives to understand the audiences’ reception by reading and quoting from the letters, which producers
preserved among their personal archives. While some of the given examples
may seem anecdotal, they allow the author to capture the zeitgeist of the period. Her interviews with former participants (producers, reporters, editors)
enrich the narrative, highlighting practical details that emphasize behind-­the-­scenes power struggles between Black staff members and White executive producers.
The book points to the diversity of Black aesthetics through underlining the characteristics of each program, introducing a few stills that illustrate
the author’s argument. The study of the programs further sheds light on theideological context behind television screens: although producers agreed tointroduce more Af­ri­can Ameri­can voices, regional and structural barriers
constrained and restrained their creativity. Dependence on money donatedby White-­dominated institutions (such as the Ford Foundation) influenced
the first episodes of Black Journal, which producer William Greaves strove
to counter by promoting Black visuals as executive producer of the programfrom 1968 to 1970. While Black Journal suffered budget cuts when pressure
from the civil rights uprisings eased, leading the foundations and corporations that funded the program to curtail their donations (122), Say Brotherwas canceled for tackling controversial subjects—in­clud­ing charges of personal corruption that stained the reputation of influential pub­lic fig­ures (75).
Local censorship constituted another barrier in the south­ern states: somestations voluntarily scheduled Black Journal at late hours to restrict its audi-

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ence, whereas others chose to defy the Fairness Doctrine rather than broadcast Black programs on their channels—in­clud­ing Ala­bama ETV (10).
The book nonetheless underscores the positive input of these programs,
which gave Af­ri­can Ameri­can technicians access to television making, thuspaving the way for their future media careers. The heart and soul of the bookresides in its analyses of striking moments in the shows, which the author
presents with great attention to visual and aural details that have an immersive power. The author dedicates numerous pages to recovering the culturaldynamics that made the newest developments in music, poetry, theater, andfilm (152). Black Journal was “designed to foster a shared vision of a national Black community by transcending regional, generational, and classdifferences in its coverage” (85) whereas Soul! included live performancesthat helped promote the creativity of the Black Arts Movement. Throughthe program-­specific focus of each chapter, the author identifies the po­liti­
cal underpinning of cultural productions that aimed to counter the negative
stereotypes that the 1965 Moynihan Report had generated about the Blackfamily. The focus on a specific Brooklyn neighbourhood in Inside Bedford-­
Stuyvesant allowed anchors Roxie Roker and James Lowry to provide an inside view that challenged dominant discourses on the ghetto. By referring tospecific episodes that incorporated filmed encounters with prominent Af­ri­can Ameri­can pub­lic fig­ures—Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka, Black nationalist Sonny Carson, Brooklyn Panthers lieutenant Aponte, artists with rootsin the neighbourhood—or prompted local experts to address specific issues(in­clud­ing education, housing, etc.), Heitner emphasizes the potential civicrole of television in educating the public. The filmed participants took advantage of the offered screen time to voice personal and po­liti­cal views, thus
advancing alternative understandings of the Black experience.
Through her detailed analy­sis of the programs, Heitner prompts us torediscover “the role of Black culture, in the forms of music and fashion, inkeeping the men’s spirits up and fostering a sense of in­di­vidual and collective resistance to the military’s racist and dehumanizing practices is a pervasive theme of the documentary” (105). Although Black Power TV celebrates
the creative process behind these innovative programs, the short time spancovered—­between 1964 and 1974—points to their limited impact on thetelevision industry. Heitner notes that the development of new media may
offer additional venues for Af­ri­can Ameri­can voices to assert themselves,
but she also contends that the “filter bubble” provided by search engines restricts the audience to interested viewers (158). Her study fails to examine thelegacy of Black Power television in terms of cultural and aesthetic politics.
She evokes the career opportunities offered by working on these shows, yetmore needs to be said on how Black Power television influenced the filmmak-200

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ing of St. Clair Bourne, Stan Lathan, Madeline Anderson, William Greaves,and others. By addressing a neglected aspect of television history, Heitnerbrings to light programs that have long passed unnoticed, which suggeststhat there might be more images to retrieve from the television archives. She
uncovers a gap that calls for further research to evaluate the visual legacy ofBlack Power television. To conclude, Black Power TV provides a challenging
experience to contemporary viewers, who are invited to imagine a different
television image, which can also be recovered through the Internet, offeringa glimpse into the activist past of Black television.1Note
1. Selected short clips from Say Brother are available at http://www.wgbh.org/basicblack/episodeDetail.cfm?featureid=33851&rssid=1&subonstate=sayBrother.