Why Black Representation Matters in the Movies

From “Gone with the Wind” to “Wakanda Forever”

Nov 14, 2022

"Mammy" (1939) and "Princess Shuri" (2022)

Issue #177 OpEd November 14, 2022

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I am a child of the 1950s. I came of age in the 1960s. I was finally a real adult in the 1970s. There were many social, political, and cultural changes during those decades, but what stayed the same throughout those years was how Black people were portrayed in the movies.

Yes, in the 70s there were those “Blaxploitation” movies that featured pimps and other unsavory “hood” folks in high-heeled platform shoes and big hats, but...

There were other movies in the 1940s - 1960s that featured Black movie stars, such as Stormy Weather in 1943, Carmen Jones in 1954, and A Raisin in the Sun in 1961.

However, most of the movies that featured Black stars were not widely distributed by the major studios.

Sidney Poitier, who was the first African American to win the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Lillies of the Field in 1964, had a very successful career in more mainstream movies, and is especially remembered for his role in 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, in which he delivered the “slap heard around the world.” He insisted that that specific scene be written into the script. Those were the exceptions.

The first Black person to receive an Academy Award was Hattie McDaniel, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind in 1940. Neither she nor the other Black actors in that film were invited to the official premieres of the film, and at the awards ceremony she had to sit by herself in a rear corner of the auditorium.

Of course, in Gone with the Wind, all of the Black people were slaves, and “happy darkies” at that. Almost all of the Black people in mainstream movies since that time were slaves, savage and backward Africans, musicians, and domestics or other servant-type characters. Sidney Poitier broke down that wall in the 1960s with his roles as a teacher in To Sir With Love and of course, as a police detective in In the Heat of the Night.

Even on television, it wasn’t until Diahann Carroll played a nurse on Julia in the 60s and then, of course, Bill Cosby as “Dr. Huxtable” on The Cosby Show in the 80s, and a few others that casting Black people as successful professionals became more the norm.

Before “Black Panther” was released in 2018, most movies about Black people were about slavery or the Civil Rights Movement, and so on. Even Denzel Washington won his first Best Actor award for his role as a narcotics detective, not for his exceptional portrayal of Malcolm X.

This brings us to Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and why those movies mean so much to Black people in the Diaspora.

First of all, what many people do not know is that the Black Panther character was introduced by Stan Lee in the Marvel Comics enterprise way back in 1966. The popularity of the character, including being part of the Fantastic Four and then the Avengers, ebbed and flowed in the decades after that until the character was re-introduced in 2016 in a storyline written by award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates. Also, in 2016, Chadwick Boseman was cast as the Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe release of Captain America: Civil War, as Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019).

Director Ryan Coogler brought Wakanda to spectacular life in 2018 in Black Panther, but this was so much more than another Black superhero movie. The fictional country of Wakanda showed Black people a place where Black people were not subjected to colonialism, and because of that, the people flourished and because of the mineral Vibranium with energy-manipulating properties, Wakanda became the most technologically-advanced country in the world. Even the United States did not want to risk going to war with Wakanda. Protecting the sacred mound of Vibranium was the charge of King T’Chaka and his son, King T’Challa.

Seeing beautiful Black Africans in these powerful positions and an African country as a mix of tradition and Afro-futurism that refused to be taken over by “the colonizers” is what most Black people were so excited about, after decades of being portrayed in mainstream movies as 2nd or 3rd class sub-humans who had to beg for recognition, help, and agency from white people.

Another powerful theme of both movies was the place of strong and brilliant women: Queen Ramonda, of course, but especially the scientific genius of Princess Shuri and Riri “Ironheart” Williams, two young Black women. This is happening while right-wing school boards are banning the “Black Girls Who Code” books, as well as almost all books by and about Blacks as too “woke.”

After the death of Chadwick Boseman, Marvel decided that his role as the Black Panther would not be re-cast. That is what set the stage for Wakanda Forever: how would the death of the Black Panther change Wakanda? Chadwick Boseman died from cancer, and the Black Panther died from a “disease.”

Dealing with and healing from the death of Chadwick Boseman was another important part of this movie. It is cathartic.

Another person missing in this movie was Stan Lee, who started the Black Panther and Wakanda phenomenon in Marvel Comics and died in November 2018. He always had a cameo role in his Marvel movies, and he lived to see his Black Panther become such a worldwide success, but not long enough to see and appear in the sequel.

In 2018, Black people all over the world dressed in African outfits and even as the Black Panther character and as the Dora Milaje, the fierce team of female bodyguards drawn from all the tribes of Wakanda.

In 2022, many people dressed in white when attending the movie showings, reflecting the white outfits worn by King T’Challa’s family and the entire country at his funeral. We are all still in mourning.

Except for the winning of the Academy Award by Hattie McDaniel, there was nothing that made Black people proud in Gone with the Wind. In the Black Panther movies, there is so very much to be proud of, including the ability to see ourselves as we feel we should be seen instead of how “the colonizers” have seen us all of these centuries.

NB (note well): When you do see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, make sure to stay after the first credit roll. (This is important for all Marvel movies.) If you leave too soon, you’ll miss something very important at the actual end of the movie.

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