solely on the basis of the promise of a metaphysi-
cal reward in his future life, as well as Stowe and
her descendants for presenting a “lie more palat-
able than the truth” (16).
Baldwin’s attack heralded the rise of social pro-
test of the 1960s CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT and the
popular effective resistance to the Sambo image.
For example, bowing to this pressure from civil
rights groups and adverse publicity, the Philadel-
phia Shriners New Year’s Day Annual Mummers
Parade’s customary blackface was discarded in
favor of goldface. The Sambo pancake restaurant
chain, one of the last overt markers, succumbed to
protest and pressure in the 1970s. The 1970s also
saw copies of the popular 1899 children’s book Lit-
tle Black Sambo removed from most public librar-
ies. However, the book is still in print and readily
available today.
One of the last challenges to these images of
America’s antebellum origin in the 20th century is
black filmmaker Spike Lee’s Bamboozled. The film’s
protagonist believes Sambo to be so repulsive to
the American psyche that he instantly rejects his
“New Millennium Minstrel Show,” a sketch com-
edy show set on a cotton plantation with black ac-
tors in blackface. The show, nevertheless, is a huge
success; the film satirizes the television industry at
the end of the 20th century as still promoting min-
strel images. The dancing Sambo and pious Uncle
Tom continue to undergird American popular
media into the 21st century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baldwin, James. “Everybody’s Protest Novel.” In Notes
of a Native Son, 13–23. Boston: Beacon Press,
1990.
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies,
and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in
American Films. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
Boskin, Joseph. Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an
American Jester. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986.
Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and
the American Working Class. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
Mahar, William J. Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early
Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American
Popular Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1999.
Ray BlackSanchez, Sonia (Benita Driver) (1934– )
With more than 20 books to her name, poet, play-
wright, essayist, and educator Sonia Sanchez was
born Benita Driver in Birmingham, Alabama.
Her father, Wilson L. Driver, was a musician and
teacher; her mother, Lena (Jones) Driver, died when
Sanchez was a baby. By the time Sanchez was six,
her grandmother, who had become her surrogate
mother, also died. The consequences of these pain-
ful losses included stuttering, which Sanchez de-
veloped at an early age. At age nine Sanchez moved
with her father to Harlem, New York, where she
completed secondary school. She graduated from
Hunter College with a bachelor of science degree
in political science, after which she studied poetry
with Louise Bogan at New York University. Writ-
ing poetry became a form of healing and a venue
to address her speech impediment. At the height
of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT, Sanchez added her
self-empowered though often maudlin and haunt-
ing voice to that of male architects AMIRI BARAKA
and LARRY NEAL, becoming a central player, along
with NIKKI GIOVANNI, MARI EVANS, SARA WEBSTER
FABIO, and CAROLYN RODGERS, in its formation
and definition. Her voice matched Baraka’s in his
militant “Black Art.” One of her speakers declares,
“us blk / niggers / are out to lunch / and the main
course / is gonna be... white meat.”
Initially committing herself to the fundamental
goals of the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, although later
growing skeptical of mainstream culture, Sanchez
joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
However, blacks, she concluded, were required to
pay too high a price for integration; she uses as an
example the Supremes, Motown’s singing divas led
by Diana Ross, who, Sanchez noted in her poem
“Memorial,” had to “bleach out their blackness.”
After teaching at New York’s Community College,
Sanchez moved to California, taught at San Fran-
cisco State College and became heavily involved
in efforts to make black studies an acceptableSanchez, Sonia 447