One woman continues to fight for the legacy of her father and his collaborators who brought African Americans onto the silver screen.
This article is largely derived from material sent to That Park Place from Valerie Stewart. We are happy to continue presenting her struggle for her family’s legacy.
Nick Stewart was one of the first African American voice actors. Today, he is largely ignored by Hollywood because he comes from a time that is “problematic” for the icons of the day. He and others, such as James Baskett and Hattie McDaniel paved the way for millions of actors later on, yet they a movement is afoot to strip them from memory.
This fight with Disney is similar to our fight with the city redevelopment agency which demolished our theater complex on my birthday in 1998,” says Valerie Stewart, daughter of the voice actor who played Bre’r Bear in Song of the South. She has battled for years to protect her father’s legacy and the legacy of the other African American trailblazers who made it onto the big screen at a time when it was nearly impossible for most minorities.
She recalls an article that speaks to the struggle her own father faced as he fought to defend their own historical projects as government and corporations:
Nick Stewart sits on the left, uninvited to participate, as local dignitaries congratulate themselves about the Ebony Showcase demolition and the start of the new building. It’s a photo by Annie Wells for the L.A. Times that appears on the the Getty Images website. The copy on the Getty site:“Tenth District Councilman Nate Holden and Mayor Richard Riordan raise their arms in a gesture of solidarity as they agree to begin building the new performing arts center that will be on the site of the former Ebony Showcase Theater. Nick Stewart, the original owner of the Ebony, left, in the wheelchair, with his son Christopher next to him, showed up uninvited and unannounced to show their disapproval of the project. They claim that the city tore down the original building unnecessarily and that the city was illegally using the copyrighted name, Ebony Showcase Theater.”Thanks to Valarie Stewart for locating the shot in the Getty collection. She comments: “It is interesting to note that the caption of the photo states that we showed up uninvited to a public event. My father passed away exactly one week to the day of the event.”
https://losangelestheatres.blogspot.com/2020/06/ebony-showcase.html
Just like destroying an original African American owned theater was done in the name of “progress,” so too have we forgotten the actors and actresses who changed the world just by appearing in film and major roles.
The first woman was Joan Blondell and the black woman was Etta Moten. This song is included in one of the documentaries below.
The Bonus Army: How a Protest Led to the GI Bill
Mrs. Stewart likens the situation battling The Walt Disney Company to preserve her father’s legacy to a little-remembered incident when the army cleared out a veteran’s camp in Washington D.C. with images that shook the nation.
“John diJoseph was a wire service photographer in Washington. He remembers the night they burned everything.
“The sky was red,” he says. “You could see the blaze all over Washington.”
Within a week, the images of that night were all over the country. In every little town, people watched the newsreels, and they saw the tanks in the street, the tear gas, and MacArthur driving out the troops that had won the first World War.
“The reaction to it was, we can’t let that happen again,” author Tom Allen says.
Four years later, the WWI vets received their bonuses. And in 1944, Congress passed the GI Bill to help military veterans transition to civilian life, and to acknowledge the debt owed to those who risk their lives for their country.
According to Ms. Stewart, there was more to the story than just the army attacking veterans. She says:
“The armed forces were segregated until after World War II. The government didn’t like the fact that the black and white Bonus Army veterans were united and friendly toward one another.”
Those events may have been in the past, but they echo what we are seeing in the present. Too often we are watching as a movement grows which wipes away the people who truly sought peace, harmony and representation… all because they don’t match the pristine expectations of a new belief system that fundamentally defies those who are in any way different from their ideology. As we prepare to watch Splash Mountain be destroyed and replaced with something more pristine, as we watch Disney hide Song of the South from audiences around the world, let us not forget the African American actors and workers who made such works possible. They were the stepping stones for a potentially better present day — and now, we all too often just step upon them.
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