The Iconic, Controversial Sidney Poitier: A Tribute for Black History Month

By David Haberstich

Actor Sir Sidney Poitier, Feb. 3, 1977, photograph probably by Robert Scurlock. Gelatin silver acetate  negative, Scurlock Studio Records,Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Above is a photograph from the National Museum of American History Archives Center’s Scurlock Studio Records, probably taken by Robert Scurlock, showing famed actor Sidney Poitier besieged by young fans seeking autographs. More than any other African American actor, Poitier (who died in January this year) helped to integrate Hollywood. I first saw him many years ago in his 1955 film, Blackboard Jungle, and recall his magnetic performance vividly. I viewed it again recently, perhaps finding fault with the screenplay, but no less awed by Poitier. He played an unruly teenager who comes to his white teacher’s aid during a deadly classroom brawl at the climax of the film.

Poster for "Lilies of the Field." Copyright © 1963 by United Artists. Scan via Heritage Auctions. Cropped from original image. Public Domain,

He was the first African American to win a “best actor” Academy Award for his performance in Lilies of the Field (1967). Despite the acclaim he received, he was not universally admired by African Americans. The Black critic and playwright Clifford Mason famously denounced him as “dishonest” in a New York Times article, “Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?” (Sept. 10, 1967):  “I submit that the Negro (or black, if you will), image was subverted in these films much more so than it was in the two films he seems worried about.” Playing Porgy in Porgy and Bess was one of the roles that concerned Poitier, supposedly accepting it against his better judgment as the price for being allowed to play such roles as the heroic Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night. What Mason liked about the Porgy character was that “at least we have a man, a real man, fighting [for] his woman and willing to follow her into the great unknown, the big city, poor boy from Catfish Row that he is.”

        “But he remains unreal,” Mason continued, “as he has for nearly two decades, playing essentially the same role, the antiseptic, one-dimensional hero.” The critic was disappointed that the Virgil Tibbs character had no apparent love interest to certify him as a “real” man. Furthermore, he minimized the significance of the famous slap which Tibbs gives a white bigot, complaining that it occurs only after the bigot slaps Tibbs first. Perhaps Mason had not yet heard Poitier declare that he had insisted that his character should respond with a retaliatory slap, refusing to continue without it. I found the scene riveting, not only for Tibbs’s sudden explosion of righteous pent-up anger, but for the expression of startled, befuddled disbelief on the face of the racist sheriff, played by Rod Steiger. At first I thought the tears and sniveling of the white “aristocrat” in the aftermath of the slap were overdone, but later decided his reaction was perfect symbolism. For the first time, these figures of white oppression were beginning to realize that their comfortable world might be crumbling.

Apart from Poitier’s acceptance of film roles that Mason and others found troubling, the actor’s life was a rags-to-riches story that I find inspiring. First, he nearly succumbed to a premature birth while his parents were working in Miami, Florida. As a barely literate Black teenager from Cat Island in the Bahamas, he suffered racist indignities in the Jim Crow South of Miami, then moved to a slightly more congenial New York City, where he toiled as a dishwasher while seeking a better job. He tried to join the American Negro Theatre, initially failing in humiliation due to his shaky reading skills. With timely coaching from a friend, he quickly solved this problem, then embarked on a personal campaign to suppress his Bahamian accent and hone his acting skills. Eventually he acted on Broadway, then found his niche in film, especially with his break-through role in Blackboard Jungle. His subsequent roles explored many aspects of the Black man in white society. His prominence in Hollywood echoed aspects of the real-life civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century, not only through the impact of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? on the previously taboo topic of interracial marriage. Moreover, he was an active participant in the civil rights struggle, risking arrest or worse by helping to deliver $70,000 to Freedom Summer volunteers in 1964.

Poitier’s achievements beyond acting are extensive, including directing films and publishing memoirs and a novel. He was also a diplomat, serving as Bahamian ambassador to Japan (1997-2007) and concurrently to UNESCO (2002-2007). He was even granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth in 1974. In 2009 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama. Perhaps his most satisfying honor was the acknowledgment by younger Black actors that he had broken ground and opened doors for them. Denzel Washington gratefully cited Poitier’s contributions while presenting him with the Honorary Academy Award in 2002. His remarks were followed by sustained, enthusiastic applause from the audience.

        Broadway theaters dimmed their lights in honor of Sir Sidney Poitier on January 19, 2022.

David Haberstich, Curator of Photography

Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Hidden History, Part 2: Joy McLean Bosfield Sings at Kennedy Center Dedication

 By Jennifer Sieck

Joy McLean Bosfield framed this page from the score for “Gloria in Excelsis” signed for her by MASS composer Leonard Bernstein. She sang in the choir for MASS’s world premiere, conducted by Bernstein for the Kennedy Center’s dedication in 1971. Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

"Gloria in Excelsis" proclaims the title of this autographed musical score in prelude to the story of Joy McLean Bosfield (1924-1999), a musician, educator, and entrepreneur who lived in Washington, DC from 1962 to 1985. Like another accomplished African American musician in the District featured in a prior post on this blog, McLean Bosfield was instrumental in bringing the Kennedy Center into being. Her contribution took the form of singing in Leonard Bernstein’s MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers at the Kennedy Center’s dedication on September 8, 1971. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in memory of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, Bernstein riffed on the traditional Latin mass to honor the nation’s first Roman Catholic president in an operatic piece featuring more than 200 performers and choreography by Alvin Ailey. The Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary Season concludes with a new interpretation of MASS in September 2022.

Original Production of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS, 1971. Photo by Fletcher Drake. Courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Center Archives, 1971. Joy McLean Bosfield might be among the robed choir members above the dais, possibly the second singer in the first row to the right of the center aisle. The photo ran on the front page of The Washington Post on September 9, 1971.

The framed sheet music might have been especially meaningful for McLean Bosfield, as she had co-founded a business that prepared printed music for publication in 1959. This excerpt from “Gloria in Excelsis” shows the choral and orchestral parts for an exuberant response to the absolution of sin. Across the opening bars, Bernstein inscribed in red ink, “Gloria to Joy McClean!” [sic] along with his signature and the date. Significantly, it is the only framed item among the newspaper clippings (including Washington Post articles about MASS at the Kennedy Center), photographs, and programs in the Joy McLean Bosfield papers at the Anacostia Community Museum.

A photo from Joy McLean Bosfield’s scrapbook shows the cast of Porgy and Bess in Hollywood in 1954: left to right, unidentified man, Irene Williams, Leslie Scott, Joy McLean, LeVern Hutcherson. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

“Joy McLean” appears among the names in the MASS program along with other renowned artists, such as Alvin Ailey dancers Judith Jamison and Sylvia Waters. The name served as both her real and stage name for much of her career, including when she sang the role of Clara in an international touring production of Porgy and Bess that played a significant role in Cold War cultural diplomacy in the 1950s. 

Norman Scribner wrote a letter to the original MASS cast members on Kennedy Center letterhead, Feb. 16, 1972. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

McLean Bosfield’s papers also include a letter from Washington Choral Arts and MASS choir director Norman Scribner. Its salutation reads, “Dear ‘Original Cast’ Member,” and invites her to participate in a 1972 touring revival of MASS. Professional obligations likely prevented her from participating, such as her service as music minister for John Wesley AME Zion Church in the District’s Logan Circle. A church colleague, Rev. John R. Kinard, became the founding director of the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in 1967. Recognizing the value of her papers, he worked with Senior Curator Portia James to acquire them for the museum’s collection as McLean Bosfield prepared to retire to Mexico in 1985.

Annotated scrapbook photos show Joy McLean Bosfield teaching her choreography to youth in rehearsals for the Community League of West 159th Street’s Cotillion in New York City, 1958. Courtesy of The Joy McLean Bosfield papers, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Joy McLean Bosfield.

Born and raised in New Jersey, McLean Bosfield came of age artistically in New York City. Like Bernstein, she performed and conducted at Lincoln Center. Her scrapbooks attest to a wide-ranging repertoire rooted in African American musical traditions, including those of her mother’s birthplace of Demarara, British Guiana (Guyana, in 2022), alongside fluency in mélodie (French art song), classical compositions, and Broadway showtunes.

A verse on a handmade card congratulating McLean Bosfield on her college acceptance concludes with the double entendre, “Let Joy Be Unconfined.” Her archive and students bear witness to a legacy of unconfined Joy.

In harmony with this post and in honor of Black History Month, McLean Bosfield’s scrapbooks are being relaunched on the Smithsonian Transcription Center. Digital volunteers can refine prior transcriptions, which proved challenging due to the scrapbooks’ varied and fragile materials. Check out the scrapbooks: here and here.

Jennifer Sieck, Ph.D., Collections Researcher

Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum

Tomlinson D. Todd and the Institute on Race Relations

Jennifer Morris
Archivist
Anacostia Community Museum

Tomlinson D. Todd (far right) interviewed this unidentified group of young people on his “Americans All,” radio program, circa 1950s. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

Issues with race and racial equity have a long history in the United States, and so do interracial organizations forming to combat discriminatory practices and demand social justice for all Americans. The story of the Institute on Race Relations, founded by Tomlinson D. Todd (1910–1987), is an example of a substantive but understudied history of collaborative anti-racist activism in the District of Columbia.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Tomlinson D. Todd grew up in Washington, DC in a middle-class family. Todd’s father, Rev. Williams W. Todd, served as pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church and his mother was a schoolteacher in Virginia before marriage. Both parents were college educated and Tomlinson, similarly, pursued higher education after attending Armstrong High School. He graduated from Lincoln University in 1936, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree before studying sociology at Howard University.

Mr. Todd fought against racial injustice and believed bringing people together across racial lines would assist with harmony and understanding among the races and foster greater economic and political achievement in America. He started the Institute on Race Relations in August 1943 with the aim to establish “true democracy” in the nation’s capital.

One of the organization’s first undertakings was to protest discriminatory practices and Jim Crowism in several restaurants and theatres in downtown Washington, DC. They arranged for interracial groups to enter selected restaurants and request service to test segregation and other inequitable policies, strategically scheduled sit-ins with law enforcement to avoid arrest if managers contacted authorities. The organization also secured letters of support from local restaurants that catered to all people regardless of race. The statements were then provided to other heads of companies to persuade them to adopt non-discriminatory policies.  

A letter of support from Arthur Capper (1865-1951) to Tomlinson D. Todd.  Capper was a U.S. Senator from Kansas whom Mr. Todd interviewed on “Americans All,” broadcast before he retired from the U.S. Senate in 1939. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

The Institute considered it important to shed light on public spaces that denied service to African American soldiers. In 1945, the group ran an ad in the Washington Star newspaper (February 12, 1945) depicting two wounded war veterans, one black and one white, being refused entry together to DC cafes and theaters. In addition, the ad featured accounts of Black soldiers’ heroic deeds and their contributions to the war effort.

This ad denouncing discrimination in the nation's capital also appeared in the Evening Star newspaper on February 12, 1945. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

After several months of testing policies of discrimination and publicizing their findings, the Institute on Race Relations began sponsoring a series of activities to gain public support. They organized mass meetings at churches; held interracial parties; international fashion shows; intercultural dances; and banquets. The banquets were community forums led by senators, college presidents, civil rights leaders, and other government officials.

The Institution on Race Relations sold tickets to several of their events to garner financial support for the organization. Henry P. Whitehead Collection, Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

On March 31, 1946, the Institute started sponsoring Mr. Todd’s weekly Sunday night radio program, “Americans All.” The program aired from 1946–1962 on various Washington, DC radio stations including WOOK, WWDC, and WGMS. The broadcast featured dramas, interviews, addresses, roundtable discussions, and renditions from well-known musical aggregations. The program documented a range of perspectives on race and race relations and garnered a large radio audience, while enlightening the city to the injustices of segregation and racial discrimination.

In the wake of  the Institute on Race Relations’ work to bring racial justice to the nation’s capital, the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of D.C. Anti-Discrimination Laws, led by activists Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) and Annie Stein, brought a lawsuit against the Thompson Restaurant. On June 8, 1953, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the Thompson Restaurant case that restaurants in the District of Columbia must accommodate all people, regardless of race, color, or creed. The decision ended discrimination and segregation in DC restaurants.

In 1952, Tomlinson D. Todd interviewed activist Mary Church Terrell (1863- 1954) on her 89th birthday. 

The activism of Tomlinson D. Todd and the Institute on Race Relations deserves further examination for its role in ending discriminatory practices in Washington, DC, and opening a space for interracial conversation and collaboration on a range of issues that affected the lives of all Americans.     

Help us make the records of the Institute on Race Relations more accessible and searchable through transcription on the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers Transcription Center:  here!

Transcribe with Style: Tips from a Smithsonian Transcription Center Volunteer

If, like me, you do lots of transcribing within a single Smithsonian Institution project, you may find it challenging to try to remember all the little things. That guy’s last name: Is it Buckwalter or Buchwalter? What’s the deal with that lowercase F that keeps cropping up in handwritten documents? How do I transcribe the numeral one half so it appears as ½ instead of as 1/2? There are just too many things to keep track of!

Never fear! As a former librarian, I’m here to assure you that you don’t have to keep all those nitpicky details in your head – that’s simply impossible! Rather, you just need to know where to look to find what you need, when you need it. And that’s where a style sheet comes in.

A “Cheat Sheet”? More Like a Neat Sheet!

In essence, a style sheet is a “cheat sheet” that professional editors and proofreaders use so that they make consistent changes when they mark up documents. These wordsmiths develop style sheets to establish the conventions for the document they’re working on, such as its grammatical style. Then they refer to their guide as they work to ensure that they always follow the typographical and grammatical “rules” of the document.

When I was a proofreader for a prominent Canadian advertising agency, I was responsible for proofreading material from over 30 companies, and without my style sheets I’d have been sunk. Some companies used American spelling; some used Canadian (or British) spelling. Some used Oxford commas; some hated them. And each had their own particular rules about when to use trademark symbols and how represent other legal information. My style sheets made my job a whole lot quicker and easier – they eliminated much of the guesswork right off the bat, giving me confidence that I was adhering to the company’s wishes as I reviewed its documents.

If you decide to concentrate on a particular area of SI transcription, you may find it helpful to put together your own handy road map. Use it to note anything that is helpful to you as you work.

What follows is the format I use, which includes sections for items I need to keep track of. You might find it more logical to organize your style sheet differently, and that’s perfectly fine. Your style sheet is a very personal document – and it should be a work in progress. This is your tool, so make it your own.

Here’s how I’ve been organizing my style sheet for documents within the Freedmen’s Bureau Transcription Center projects. (We’ve currently just started to work on the state of Mississippi, so I’ve been adding things as I find them.)

Usage

Here’s where I put the “big stuff” about SI preferences, such as not inserting returns at the ends of lines. I also might note things like unusual handwriting conventions (the dreaded “long s”*) or any major thing that crops up again and again in the project I’m working on.

* In handwriting from the 19^th century and earlier, authors often handwrote double-s (“ss”) as what looks like “fs”; that f-looking letter is called a long s. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s)

Dates and Numbers

This part of my style sheet includes whatever I notice about how dates and numbers are represented in original documents. (For example, letters written by Quakers within the North Carolina section of the Freedmen’s Bureau Project used a different style of dates.) I also use this section to keep track of SI Transcription Center preferences for dealing with numbers in transcriptions.

Punctuation and Typographical Style

I use this section to note punctuation anomalies – things to watch out for. For example, “&c.” is commonly used for “etc.” in Freedmen’s Bureau documents.

Permitted Double-Bracketed Notations

In this area I put all information about “tags,” those double bracketed bits, in one place so that I use them consistently.

Alt Codes for Special Typographical Characters

Alt-codes are useful for inserting special characters into transcriptions, such as ½, or long dashes (—), or the “pipes” (|) that separate columns within tables. Here I note the ones I use most often.

Useful Web Sites

I list the URLs of web sites I often refer to in this part of my style sheet. (I also bookmark these URLs in my browser for even quicker access.) As part my reviewing process I often try to verify the spellings of place names and personnel, so I like to have good reference sources at my fingertips. (Note: If you discover anything really unusual, make sure to contact SI staff so that they’re know about it and can pass along the information to the rest of us.)

Still Up a Stump? An Alphabetical List of Words and Phrases Is Handy

I list things like unusual spellings of words, surnames that have the potential of being misspelled, abbreviations, or unfamiliar expressions alphabetically. (“Up a stump”? Huh?)

So, are you ready to add some style to your transcriptions? Give my cheat sheet idea a try and let us know if it helps your process. And be sure to use the notes field of the transcription pages to share your discoveries with other volunpeers. #WeAllLearnTogether.

-Beth Graham, Smithsonian Transcription Center Volunteer

The label "lifelong learner" describes Beth Graham best. She thrives on new challenges, and has held positions as varied as children's librarian, advertising agency proofreader, crochet pattern designer, and Crafty/Bluprint Instructor. Currently, Beth keeps busy by volunteering on the Freedmen's Bureau Project in the Smithsonian Transcription Center, knitting ever more socks for her overflowing sock drawer, and playing clarinet in the local New Horizons band. A native of California, Beth lives in Ontario, Canada.

* This is the second post in a series of blog posts from long-time volunpeer Beth Graham (see her first post here). While transcribing and reviewing over 4,000 pages of TC projects, Beth has gained insight & knowledge, and uncovered fascinating historical details. Follow along in this series to learn from Beth as she shares her personal motivations, expert tips, and transcription discoveries!