"Gone With the Wind" -- racism and changing times

There is no doubt:   "Gone With the Wind" was a novel and a film about racism, about the relationships between slaves and slave-owners, and about the civil war that resulted from a deeply divided nation's inability to agree that the profoundly moral wrongness of slavery must outweigh the economic claims for the entrenched system of cheap labor for Southern states. 

Such questions are beyond the scope of this brief blog today, which concerns the more mundane question of racism in the distribution and showing of the film.   In this 75th anniversary year of the film's premier, Emory University film studies professor Matthew Bernstein has extensively researched the files of the film's producer David O. Selznick.

Atlanta's mayor, William B. Hartsfield, was instrumental in getting the world premier to be held in Atlanta on December 15, 1939.   The opening followed three days of festivities, a grand parade of the stars down Peachtree Street, an antebellum costume ball, and a state holiday declared by the governor.

Bernstein also found letters and telegrams in Selznick's files that revealed the racial tensions between Selznick and the Atlanta officials, who had decreed that none of the black actors -- including Hattie McDaniel who later won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress -- would be invited to the premier.

Selznick, himself Jewish and mindful of the persecution of minorities, tried in vain to persuade Atlanta officials to include them -- but he finally dropped his protest after learning that Georgia's Jim Crow laws would prevent the black actors from being seated with the rest of the cast or included in any official social events.   Clark Gable was ready to boycott the premier, but Hattie McDaniel convinced him to attend.   She did later attend the West Coast premier in Los Angeles.

But here is the small detail that stands out today in all of its instructive irony about how the times have changed the racial climate.

The black actors could not be invited to attend as equals in Atlanta, but this did not stop local African-Americans from appearing at some of the events -- as entertainers.    According to Bernstein, "One of the most fascinating things about the festivities is that Martin Luther King, Jr., when he was 10 years old, actually appeared on stage at a charity ball dressed as a slave in front of a mock-up of Tara singing with the Ebenezer Baptist Church choir."   This has been confirmed by a spokesman for the King Center.

The irony:   24 years later (January 27, 1964) and Mayor Iran Allen had succeeded Hartsfield as mayor of Atlanta in 1962.   Allen was a champion for civil rights, having "white" and "colored" signs removed from City Hall on his first day in office and desegregating the building's cafeteria.    When Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the mayor helped organize a 1,500 person, bi-racial banquet to honor King and then persuaded business leaders to attend.   It was a turning point in race relations in Atlanta.

From playing a little black slave boy in a pageant glorifying The Old South at age 10 to being the honoree at a bi-racial banquet -- in the same city -- to honor him as a Nobel Peace Prize winner is quite a long journey in a short time.   A journey for the city of Atlanta, but also for the King family and the Ebeneezer Church that participated in an enactment of slavery in such an event in the first place.

Ralph