Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and Race during the Civil Rights Struggle

237 Pages·2001·0.832 MB·English

by  Allison Schoen

FRAMING
THE
S O U T H
F R A M I N G
THE
S O U T H
Hollywood, Television, and Race
during the Civil Rights Struggle
Allison
Graha m
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore and London
For Amanda Graham, who shared the delights and a ronts of a
southern baby boom upbringing and who made so much of this
work possible
© 2001 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2001
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Graham, Allison.
Framing the South : Hollywood, television, and race during the
Civil Rights struggle / Allison Graham.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8018-6615-4
1. Southern States—in motion pictures. 2. Racism in motion
pictures. 3. Afro-Americans in motion pictures. 4. Mountain whites
(Southern States) in motion pictures. I. Title.
PN1995.9.S66 G73 2001
791.43′6275—dc21
00-011533
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
1
Introduction: Remapping Dogpatch
O N E “The Purest of God’s Creatures”: White Women,
18
Blood Pollution, and Southern Sexuality
T W O Sentimental Educations: Romance, Race, and
54
White Redemption
T H R E E Natural Acts: Hillbillies, Delinquents, and the
81
Disappearing Psyche
F O U R Reeducating the Southerner: Elvis, Rednecks, and
116
Hollywood’s “White Negro”
F I V E Civil Rights Films and the New Red Menace:
1960 147
The Legacy of the s
195
Notes
209
Bibliographical Essay
217
Index
I L L U S T R AT I O N S
1
“Product of Imagination,” (Citizens’ council cartoon,
1956 3
)
2 1955 7
First day of school in Hoxie, Arkansas,
3 1955 8
Hoxie farmers watching school integration,
4
The end of rst integrated school day, Hoxie,
1955 9
Arkansas,
5 1955 12
Hoxie, Arkansas, school board,
6 1956 28
Baby Doll,
7 1952 30
Ruby Gentry,
8 1951 35
A Streecar Named Desire,
9
“The Paper Curtain” (Citizens’ Council cartoon,
1956 42
)
10 1957 46
The Three Faces of Eve,
11 1957 47
The Three Faces of Eve,
12 1957 66
The Incredible Shrinking Man,
13 1957 75
Sayonara,
14 1957 82
Segregationist assault in Little Rock,
15 1955 87
Blackboard Jungle,
16 1957 106
A Face in the Crowd,
17 1957 123
Jailhouse Rock,
vii
viii Illustrations
18 1958 132
Thunder Road,
19 1988 153
Mississippi Burning,
20 1963 155
Southern police gesture to ministers,
21 ffi 1960 68 157
The Andy Gri th Show, –
22 1962 161
To Kill a Mockingbird,
23 1962 163
Cape Fear,
23 1957 166
Segregationist agitator John Kasper,
24 1994 192
Forrest Gump,
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
This work grew from research begun over a decade ago
for a documentary lm on the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike of
1968
and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.The people who
lived through those days, and who spent many hours helping me to
understand the history of this region and the evolution of the civil
rights movement, have been thanked elsewhere, but I remain indebted
to them for setting me on a path that has proven to be constantly fas-
cinating and unfailingly meaningful.
A subsequent research project I began, which focused on the unique
history of Hoxie, Arkansas, convinced me that any recounting of post-
war civil rights history was incomplete without a consideration of the
complicated role of the national media and popular culture in shaping,
re ecting, and creating particular and often contradictory attitudes
toward race. I am extremely grateful to Andy Gri th, Roy Reed, Rich-
ard Stolley, and Bill McAphee, who graciously allowed me to interview
them at length as I struggled to make sense of several decades of media
1 9 5 5
h i s t o ry. A number of people who participated in the events of –
5 6
in Hoxie provided invaluable information to me over the past four
years: Howa r d Vance, Fayth Hil l - W ashington, Ros e m a r y Hill, Bill Pen i x ,
Jim Johnson, Herbert Brewer, Harry Ponder, and Helen Weir. Will
1950
Counts’s stunning work from the s helped me to understand the
role of photojournalism during that era more clearly, and I thank him
for allowing me to reprint one of his photographs here.
I particularly appreciate the kindness of friends and colleagues who
read portions of this work or who encouraged me throughout the proj-
ect:Will Brantley, David Chappell, Barbara Ching, Ken Goings, An-
ix
x Acknowledgments
gela Hague, Elizabeth Higginbotham, Sha r on Monteith, Susan Scheckel,
Barbara Ellen Smith, and Brian Ward. David Appleby, as usual, helped
me in innumerable ways, both as a fellow investigator of the Hoxie story
and as a thoughtful colleague. Moira Logan was a wonderfully sup-
po r ti v e administrator, and department chairs John Bakke and Larry Fre y
generously provided essential research materials. A number of gradu-
ate assistants helped me plow through decades of lm arcana: Danny
Linton and Tuba Gokcek unearthed tomes of material, and Mary T.
Easter was a dream assistant, taking it upon herself to track down ob-
scure and always interesting archival leads. All of these contributions
helped me prepare early drafts of several chapters for publication. Some
material from the Introduction appears in “Remapping Dogpatch:
Northern Media on the Southern Circuit,” in the Arkansas Historical
56 3 1997
Quarterly , no. (autumn ); a portion of Chapter One, entitled
“The Loveliest and the Purest of God’s Creatures: The Three Faces of
Eve and the Crisis of Southern Womanhood,” will appear in Dan i e l
Ber n a r di, ed., Classic Wh i t e n e s s (M inneapolis: Uni v ersity of Min n esota
Press, forthcoming); and a very early version of Chapter Five will appear
in Brian Ward, ed., Media, Culture, and the Modern African American
Freedom Str ug g l e (G ainesville: Uni v ersity Press of Florida, forth c o m i n g ) .
My friend and northern colleague Luciana Bohne, always ready for
any venture into her adopted homeland’s strange history, jumped at
the chance to drive the backroads of Mississippi with me in search of
haunted terrain—something no sane southerner would agree to in
mid-August. Our wanderings through the crossroads at Money, the
Neshoba County Courthouse, Medgar Evers’s last neighborhood, and
the thickets along the Tallahatchie River created a connection to this
region’s history for me that is still mysteriously vivid and profoundly
moving, and I thank Lucy for the experience.
Several archivists and librarians went out of their way to make my
work easier and more productive. I cannot imagine more knowledge-
able and courteous professionals than Bobs Tusa and David Richards
at the University of Southern Mississippi’s McCain Archives. Cassan-
dra McCraw in the Special Collections at the University of Arkansas in
Fayetteville was wonderfully helpful. For ten years now, Ed Frank has
been patient, kind, and immensely generous to me as I’ve worked in
the Special Collections at the University of Memphis McWherter (for-
merly Brister) Library. In the nal stages of manuscript preparation, I
Acknowledgments xi
felt fortunate to work with the gracious and knowledgeable Susannah
Benedetti at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
I would not have been able to devote full attention over the years
to this project or to make necessary res e a r ch trips had I not been awarde d
research grants from the Arkansas Humanities Council, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of Memphis, as
well as faculty development leave from the College of Communication
and Fine Arts at the University of Memphis.
I am particularly indebted to Robert Brugger at the Johns Hopkins
University Press for his un agging support of this project, his remark-
able patience, and his uncommonly sound advice and good taste. I
thank Melody Herr for her consistently courteous and professional
help during the preparation of this manuscript and Celestia Ward for
her elegant copyediting.
Finally, I would like to thank James West for reintroducing me to
the surreal pleasures of Brother Dave Gardner, helping me navigate
through mountains of Sovereignty Commission documents at the
McCain Archives, and bearing with grace and humor the home screen-
ings of countless, sometimes awful, lms from a bygone era. For not
sticking it out through all thirty-one Elvis lms, he is forgiven.