The January 18th issue of the New York Times featured an article entitled: “How the Movies Made a President” which paid tribute to the power of film to influence the consciousness of the nation. They stated that evolving cinematic roles have prepared the country to be ready for Barack Obama.

There is still much refusal to embrace black artists totally in Hollywood, but in the 47 years since President Obama was born, black men “have traveled from the ghetto to the boardroom, from supporting roles in kitchens, liveries and social-problem movies, to the rarefied summit of the Hollywood A-List,” witness Will Smith—who now is the number one action hero, plus an American savior and messiah in several films. 

Filmmakers Charles Burnett, Spike Lee and John Singleton have helped that transformation and created truer and richer images of black life, since the first black man to be truly accepted in film, Sidney Poitier’s day. For much of the 60’s, Sidney Poitier bore the burden of being the only one, until Denzel Washington and Halle Berry won the second oscars for  black actors in 2002. 

Several fine black actors have also played President. “Barack Obama is only half-black,” and in a sense is a racial blend of many cultures. He is “working from a script that has yet to be written…but the fantasies of black heroism that pervade our culture give some sense of what the country hopes for in its new leader, whose burden is not the same as the one taken up by the 42 white men who preceded him.”

Excerpted in part from the New York Times by ATMA NEWS Editor, Sharon Hart