Free Film Screening: Carib Gold Starring Ethel Waters and Cicely Tyso

Before Cicely Tyson would star in the classic films Roots and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, she’d kick off her career as an actress in the rarely viewed 1957 film debut Carib Gold. Although the movie had previously been lost for decades, the limited release motion picture will be screened at Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum this month!

In the movie, a hard-working shrimp boat crew runs from trouble after discovering a sunken treasure. Led by by legendary jazz singer Ethel Waters and heavyweight boxer Coley Wallace, the cast also features a debut from another future silver screen and Broadway star- Geoffrey Holder. Appearing in a small role as a voo doo dancer, Holder would go on to perform in Josephine Baker’s  musical review in 1954 and win two Tony Awards in 1975 for his direction and costume design of Broadway’s original The Wiz.

The maritime-themed film was had its segregated debut in nearby theaters on Duval Street in Key West, Florida where the majority of the movie was shot. The Strand theater hosted the whites, while the Monroe theater hosted the blacks. Although there was no national release date for the maritime-themed film it was approved for release in New York in 1957 and articles from the Los Angeles Mirror News indicate that it ran in Los Angeles until June 1958.

For more information on the film:
IMDB
Wikipedia

To see for yourself, come down to the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum (4130 Overland Avenue, Culver City, CA 90230) on July 28, at 4 p.m. For more information: (310) 202-1647 or visit http://www.claytonmuseum.org/.   

Maria Cole, Nat King Cole’s Widow Passes Away at 89

Maria Cole, widow of music legend Nat King Cole, passed away Tuesday of cancer at the age of 89. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, Maria met Nat while she was singing as the opening act for the Mills Brothers in New York’s Club Zanzibar. The couple married in 1948. That same year they made headlines after sparking a homeowners protest from white residents of the affluent Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles where they chose to purchase their first home.

Pictured above is a photo of Nat and Maria Cole’s two story brick Tudor style house that was the cause of contention. This photo is just one of the many items on the Cole family that can be found amongst the photos, scrapbooks, periodicals and newspapers in the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum collection.

After Nat Cole passed away in 1965 of lung cancer, Maria, who’d previously sang with Bennie Carter,  Count basie and Duke Ellington returned to her singing career and even began hosting a live afternoon conversation-variety show with Stan Bohrman on KHJ-TV (Channel 9) in Los Angeles for two years (headshot above).

For more information on Maria, Nat Cole and their family make an inquiry with the Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum today!

This Week in Black History: The Long Hot Summer of 1967

This week marks the 45th anniversary of the Long Hot Summer, a series of civic uprisings  that plagued America’s cities during the summer of 1967.

Beginning in June with disruption in Atlanta, Boston and Cincinnati, as well as Buffalo, New York and Tampa, Florida, the unrest spread like wildfire, breaking out in Detroit, Birmingham, Chicago, New York City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Rochester the following month. Two of the most violent riots took place between July 12 and 17 in Newark, New Jersey and left more than 26 people dead and hundreds injured.

None of these events were as widely covered or remembered as the Los Angeles Watts Riots that preceded them by two years.

In addition to a host of books on the topics of race riots and civil unrest in the African American community, the Mayme A. Clayton library and museum also has other materials from the period of social unrest like a pamphlet entitled “Race Riots Aren’t Necessary” commissioned by the American Council on Race Relations- one of the first organizations to promote the scholarly study of racial issues intended to be used in reports to assist the government and private institutions in alleviating issues in the inner cities and an issue of SEPIA magazine which dedicated its entire November 1965 spread to articles on the social and political climate of Los Angeles in the aftermath of the infamous Watts Riots.

Written by American sociologist Alfred McClung Lee, the “Race Riots Aren’t Necessary” pamphlet provided theories on why the so-called race riots were happening and how they could be stopped. Well thought out and well researched, the pamphlet provides some good theories on solutions among some language that reflects a gap in understanding of issues that we now know to be integral causes of the unrest. Reflecting the paranoid climate of American politics in the aftermath of the red scare as it stood under the surveillance of the FBI’s  Hoover administration, the pamphlet provides a unique look into the time period.

Fashioned along the lines of LOOK or Ebony magazines, SEPIA was a photojournalist periodical founded in 1948 that peered into the lives of African-Americans until the early 80s. The special issue on the Watts Riots presented numerous features stories on the City of Angels including “Los Angeles: The Myth of Paradise West,” “Race Relations in L.A.,” “Police Brutality in L.A.,” as well as an article on Police Chief W.H. Parker, an eyewitness report on the riots, and many other articles on advanced education opportunities, black business owners, and other issues related to quality of living in L.A.

For more information on the riots in the summer of 1967, as well as the riots here in our backyard in Watts in 1965 and L.A. in 1992 come for a visit or make an inquiry with the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum at 310-202-1647.