Description
In this column published in The St. Louis American, Bayard Rustin delivers a sharp critique of the American motion picture industry, accusing it of systematically distorting and shallowly exaggerating Black history. He notes that while the 1930s relied on harmful stereotypes like the happy, dancing slave, modern films frequently fall into the trap of magnifying and glorifying the most brutal parts of ghetto life. Rustin celebrates the recent CBS television broadcast of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman as a rare and memorable exception, praising the film for achieving an almost painful honesty while tracing the ennobling qualities of the minority freedom struggle.
The column details how the movie avoids sugar-coating historical realities, depicting unvarnished scenes of Klan lynchings, vigilante murders of newly freed slaves, and the police assassination of civil rights workers. Rustin explains that this violence is not gratuitous because the post-slavery caste system was fundamentally brutal, proving to audiences that Black Americans were never submissive and fought back with whatever meager means they possessed. He highlights the balanced political philosophy written into the characters, noting that the protagonist's godson, Ned, reminds his followers that the root of slavery was human ignorance rather than the innate evil of white people. Rustin praises actress Cicely Tyson for her deep artistic integrity, applauding her decision to live among the rural Southern poor to prepare for the role and highlighting the powerful final scene where her character defiantly drinks from a "white only" water fountain.
Historical Context
In the early to mid-1970s, the visual representation of Black life in mass media was dominated by the rapid rise of the "Blaxploitation" film genre. While movies like Shaft and Super Fly provided Hollywood with massive financial returns and featured independent Black protagonists, civil rights leaders frequently critiqued them for glorifying urban crime, drug trade, and hyper-violence. This cinematic environment left older integrationist leaders searching for projects that anchored the Black experience in accurate historical struggles rather than sensationalized commercial scripts.
This cultural debate directly influenced how television networks approached minority programming in the wake of the civil rights movement. The production of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in January 1974 represented a major corporate risk, requiring companies like the Xerox Corporation to step in as sponsors to bypass standard Hollywood hesitation. Tyson’s historic performance won multiple Emmy Awards and proved that mass television audiences were eager for serious narratives regarding the Jim Crow system. By evaluating this text, researchers can see how Rustin sought to leverage high-quality public art as an educational tool for structural social change, reinforcing his belief that visual media should highlight the shared humanity and dignity of working-class people.
Rustin, Bayard. "Bayard Rustin Tells It Like It Is: Artistic Honesty and the Black Experience." The St. Louis American, undated [c. 1974], p. 9.
