Darnell Williams Gains Success On A Daytime Drama

For actor Darnell Williams of All My Children, the popular ABC-TV daytime soap, television stardom can be at times a heavy crown to wear. Especially when overzealous fans recognize him in public or go out of their way to seek him out.

While interviewing him in his dressing room at the ABC Television Center on West 67th Street [in Manhattan], I asked Darnell if he was by nature a private person. "More private now than I was before. I like to be outside now. I live in Brooklyn and it's a black neighborhood and black people are overenthusiastic. There was a time when they were at my door and knew where I lived and that kind of stuff. I can't deal with it. A couple of people got my phone number. My roommate was at the butt of all that attention  because I'm  hardly ever there. He works a different shift. One week he works a night shift, one week he works the day shift. He'd be sleeping. Ding dong. Twelve, fifteen girls."

"The visibility of an actor," explains Darnell, who plays Jesse Hubbard, the 17-year old black streetwise kid, "is just incredible. Even more so than movies because there are so many people that watch soaps and see it every day. [They] see me two or three times in a week. I'm on often enough to be recognized constantly. In the beginning, it's great. Me and my brother were trying  to go out and count how many people recognized me. But after awhile, after a year, it just gets to be a pain in the ass. A regular person can't deal with that stuff [excessive recognition] and they [the fans] don't understand. I wish there was a way that they could understand." But despite the agony of being "recognized constantly," whenever a fan approaches him for an autograph, "I usually smile, show my teeth, and sign," says the 5-foot, eleven-inch actor who was nominated for (but did not win) the Daytime Emmy for Best Supporting Actor.

Darnell, who describes  himself as a "nice, easy-going, soft-spoken" person, was born in London, England on March 3, 1954, the second of eight children. And because his father was a career Air Force officer, the family moved all over the globe which offered Darnell the chance to experience and appreciate other cultures. (This probably explains his liking for Japanese food.)

Darnell appeared in several school plays and in 1974 he began acting professionally, a decision he came to after watching the old TV series Lost in Space. (Although as a kid he dreamed of becoming a teacher.)

The year 1975 found him studying under the tutelage of veteran black actor Glynn Turman who "was my first acting teacher. He had a great impact on me. To me, he was great."

Darnell believes that acting study is a way of "sharpening your craft. It's like keeping your car tuned. Some people feel they don't need it. I felt that way for awhile, too."

The one thing Darnell had prior to acting study was confidence. "I just knew it was a matter of time, a matter of a vehicle, a national vehicle before everybody would say 'Hey, this guy is great.'"

During this early stage of his career, Darnell felt and was told by others that he "had the instinct for an actor."

This instinct and skill led him to play roles in such TV productions as The White Shadow and Rich Man, Poor Man. And eventually All My Children, which was conducting a routine audition. "Fred Hudson down at the Frederick Douglass [Creative Arts] Center produced a play I was doing, Maurice Hines's Reach for the Sky, and some months after the show had closed he called me and said 'Listen, they're looking for Jesse.'" And, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

"This soap opera," says Darnell, "has a tremendous black following. It's probably even doubled since I've been on the show. Jesse has caught on like wildfire. It's time for them [network brass] to sit up and check out the demographics."

The Jesse character and storyline has caused a lot of controversy in spite of Darnell's comment that all of his "feedback has been positive," which would include his fan mail. The controversy arose, writes Linda Yearwood in the Amsterdam News (August 8, 1982), "for reasons ranging from his [Jesse's] overt, anti-white militarism to his quelled love affair turned platonic, with a local white maiden (the rumor flying around the daytime circuit was the viewer response was so vehemently opposed to this romantic entanglement, that the writers were forced to find Jesse a soulmate." Says Darnell: "The more controversy the better. I'm here for awhile, it can't do me any harm." (Williams has a three-year contract with AMC.)

Has his popularity on the show resulted in any movie offers? "I haven't been offered a wet sock yet," he replies. "If someone offered me a movie and it was pretty much like Jesse, [but] there was no positive growth, then I wouldn't do that."

Williams has not yet reached the point in his career where he can pick the roles he wants to do--"It's about getting whatever is there"--but he hopes some day he'll be able to do so.

One goal he has in mind once he's finished with AMC is to "produce and direct eventually." If black actors and actresses want to bring about change in the entertainment industry, says Darnell, "they have to stop acting and start producing and directing." He does feel, however, that the image of blacks on TV is "changing a little bit but not as quickly as it needs to."

Money coming in is certainly not a worry for Darnell Williams anymore. Being on All My Children, says Darnell, has made him "a little sure, able to pay [my] bills on time and [able to] buy a few things for [myself]. It just makes [me] a little more positive, a little more secure."

This is an excerpt of an article that was originally published in the Harlem Weekly newspaper (February 16-22, 1983).

The Firing of Amsterdam News Editor Provokes Protest

Thursday, October 20 [1983] was a cold and windy day. But despite the weather 25 to 30 demonstrators, under the watchful eyes of a handful of uniformed cops, came out to carry picket signs and shout anti-Koch and anti-Amsterdam News slogans in front of the black weekly paper's offices in Harlem to protest the firing of  executive editor John F. Davis.

The firing took place on Friday, October 14 and is believed by many, including Davis himself, to be the result of an editorial response Davis wrote to an op-ed article by Mayor Koch in the same issue of the Amsterdam News. Koch, obviously attempting to pacify the black community, listed his administration's achievements and wrote off his poor relations with the black community to personal style. "...[C]omments and ideas," wrote Koch, "will make me a better mayor." Davis, taking the mayor up on his offer, wrote in an editorial: "The Koch problem is not one of style. Mr. Koch's problem is his abiding contempt for Black people and Black life. There are no words that can erase the memories of his gross insensitivity. We need deeds, we need to see changes in behavior and attitudes."

Wilbert Tatum, the paper's board chairman who owns 30 percent of the Amsterdam (co-owners John Procope owns 35 percent and John Edmonds, a friend of Davis's, as well as the one who hired him two years ago, owns 35 percent) in a letter to Davis stated that it became necessary "to terminate your employment with the New York Amsterdam News due to the severe economic pressures we are presently undergoing."

Davis, in a written statement, pooh-poohs Tatum's economic explanation as "nonsense." He goes on to say: "The Amsterdam has had severe cash flow problems ever since my association with it. The simple truth is that Mr. Tatum wants to silence the anti-Koch voice of the Amsterdam News for personal reasons. He has in every way possible interfered in editorial matters. His attempt to provide Koch with a forum in the black community was and is an outrage to me. I do not dispute the right of Tatum and Procope to determine the editorial policy of their paper. I do, however, challenge their right to represent their actions as in the best interest of black people. Ed Koch is one of the most anti-black political figures on the political landscape in America today. It is a measure of their own contempt for black New York."

Even though Tatum in a signed editorial claimed that "management wholeheartedly supports the views expressed in the Davis editorial" and that "[o]n numerous occasions during the last year Mr. Koch's administration has been justifiably criticized," Jack Newfield of the Village Voice, one of the picketers, believes "Tatum is trying to bring the Amsterdam into the Koch office." In fact, Village Voice writer Joe Conason reported that "Tatum...denied that his outside business interests had influenced his decision" to get rid of Davis. But then in the next line Conason mentions those "outside business interests" and creates the question of whether Tatum has a conflict of interest in the termination of Davis's tenure as editor: "He is the second largest shareholder in Inner City Broadcasting, whose cable TV subsidiary holds part of a franchise to wire Queens; he is a senior vice-president of HIP, which has health insurance contracts covering city workers; and he is developing a parcel of real estate on the Lower East Side, plans for which require Board of Estimate approval." It should be pointed out that the mayor sits on the board.

Co-owner John  Procope, writes Conason, "also has a reason to placate the mayor." Despite the fact that his insurance company's contracts with the city "have been terminated because of abuses alleged by the Department of Investigation, his agency wasn't permanently barred from doing business with the city." And Procope, Conason continues, "still sits as a mayoral appointee on the Industrial and Commercial Incentives Board."

According to Jitu Weusi of the National Black United Front, one of the organizers of the protest, the circulation of the paper had increased under Davis's editorship by 58,000 copies. However, Davis does not believe "there is any real way of determining that. One of the problems of the Amsterdam News is they don't know what their circulation is. The union drivers who distribute the paper oftentimes don't return the copies that are not sold. They fill in an affidavit to indicate they got it [the paper] back from dealers. The Amsterdam News doesn't have anybody going around to spot check those affidavits to find out if those returns are accurate. They don't really know what their circulation is other than what they estimate from the drivers. But I would say that there probably was an increase up to the period of the strike."

The strike earlier this year lasted six months and was called because management wanted the employees--Newspaper Guild members--to take a cut in pay and agree to personnel layoffs. The workers felt management should also make some sacrifices. The New Alliance, a progressive newspaper, in a recent story on the Davis firing described the hiring of Davis with his "militancy and progressive outlook on domestic and international affairs" as a good arrangement "until August 1982, when Tatum, backed by a third partner, John Procope, took over the running of the [Amsterdam] News and started to wreck the carefully nurtured plans of Edmonds and Davis to make the [Amsterdam] News a successful political and financial venture."

However, the New Alliance's praise of Davis was non-existent during the strike when, says Davis, "they wrote vicious columns against me. Totally without a shred of fact as though somehow I was the owner of the paper, [as if] I was doing the negotiations. I didn't have a thing to do with the negotiations. I crossed the picket line and went to work because I have a job. For me to go on strike meant for me to resign my job."

Davis, who is 43 years old and a graduate of the New School for Social Research and Rutgers Law, calls Tatum's "plea of poverty...[a] plea of mismanagement." For example, says Davis, "They voted John Procope's $25,000 severance pay. Whoever heard of paying an owner $25,000 in severance pay?" (There was a chuckle in his voice.)

The Voice's Newfield called Davis's editorial writing "the most eloquent and inspiring and insightful writing in the city" which, in the words of Jitu Weusi, "gave a sense of pride and direction to the Amsterdam News" despite the fact that as executive editor he earned an annual salary of $25,000, a tiny sum compared to what other editors in the city earn.

According to one source, whose statement was later confirmed by Davis , he does not intend to return to the Amsterdam News even if the boycott and petitioning are successful in getting him reinstated. He does not wish to continue in journalism and is considering job offers outside of the field.

"A newspaper," writes Earl Caldwell, in the New York Daily News, "when at its best, is a powerful vehicle. When it is independent and with leadership that is not afraid, it can lead people." John Davis was providing that leadership in his editorials. Unfortunately for the paper and the black community his forum was snatched away from him because, says black labor leader John Butler, president of the Hospital Workers Union, Local 420, "he don't bow to Mayor Koch, he don't dance with Mayor Koch, he tell it the way it is."

This article was originally published in the Guardian newspaper (New York) in 1983.

Note: John Davis, a black gay man, wrote an editorial in the Amsterdam News supporting the passage of a gay rights bill by the City Council.

Street Vendors on 125th Street

I wrote and sent the following unpublished letter-to-the-editor to the New York Amsterdam News. It was written on July 31, 1992.

Dear Editor: Although Karen Carillo's article (July 25) regards the street vendors on 125th Street favorably, seeing them as entrepreneurs following a time-honored tradition in Harlem, she overlooks the fact that the proliferation of these vendors has gotten completely out of hand. For shoppers and other pedestrians walking down 125th Street is equivalent to an obstacle course. instead of a pleasant urban mall-like environment, pictured in the artist's conception during the redesigning of the area, we now have a zoo. Nowhere else in Manhattan do you see this type of situation.

It seems as though the black press, the community, and civic leaders are afraid to say anything critical for fear of being labeled politically incorrect.

People need to earn a living and should be encouraged in their entrepreneurship, but the situation that exists now is intolerable. I'm certain that the merchants, who pay rent and taxes, would be the first to welcome an alternative to what is happening in front of their stores.

Perhaps the best solution to the problem is for the community and civic leaders to provide more indoor sites like mart 125* for the vendors rather than having them sell their wares on the street which creates a health and safety hazard for the public.

*Update: Mart 125, across the street from the Apollo Theatre, has been vacant for several years. Eighteen years after I wrote the above letter, street vendors line both sides of 125th Street (in some places) from St. Nicholas Avenue as far east as Lexington Avenue in all kinds of weather.

A News Commentator's Homophobia

I wrote and sent the following unpublished letter-to-the-editor to the New York Amsterdam News. It was written on July 31, 1992.

Dear Editor: Sylvester Leaks's front-page story (Aug. 1) about Mike Tyson's prison life enumerates the "horrors" that Tyson has either "observed or was told about." Instead of including the act of gang rape, which Tyson fears, as one of those prison horrors, Leaks would rather throw in the old bugaboo homosexuality, which he considers "licentious and criminal."

Leaks's attitude is what feeds the homophobia that is rampant in the black community and gives gaybashers the green light to go out and victimize gays and lesbians.

Black gays and lesbians, many of whom are among our best and brightest, end up withdrawing or withholding the skills, knowledge, and financial support that the black community needs because of the hostility from people like Leaks.

At a time when the black community is in dire straits on all levels, it makes no sense to ostracize and vilify a significant, albeit not very vocal, segment of the community whose sexuality has never been a matter of choice.

Helter-Swelter

http://fb.me/BOnT3abgA perfect movie to watch during this heatwave is Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989), set during a sweltering summer day in Brooklyn, New York.
Like the newspaper headlines featured in the movie, the Amsterdam News, a weekly African-American newspaper based in Harlem, made the current heatwave that has gripped the Northeast Topic A with a banner headline that screamed "SWELTERING!"

Elinor Tatum: Future Radio Star?

Elinor Tatum, the publisher/editor-in-chief of the New York Amsterdam News, appears every Thursday on Reverend Al Sharpton"s syndicated radio show in a segment on media coverage of news stories in the black community.
It's a safe bet that before too long Tatum will be doing a radio show of her own, maybe even graduate to television. Sharpton's show is just a stepping stone.

The Black Press's Role in Homophobia

The following is a letter-to-the-editor that I wrote (but never sent) to Elinor Tatum, publisher and editor-in-chief of the New York Amsterdam News regarding an article by then executive editor Jamal Watson about the promised participation of gays and lesbians at the tenth anniversary of the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. The letter, dated October 27, 2005, underscored the lack of consistent coverage of gay and lesbian issues in the black press (print and electronic).

Dear Ms. Tatum:

Jamal Watson's article "Ten Years Later...Another Million" (October 13-19, 2005) is a prime example of the poor journalism that is practiced at the Amsterdam News with regard to gay and lesbian issues. At the tail end of the article, he wrote: "For months, the organizers of the event have been dogged by allegations that Black gays and lesbians would be excluded from the gathering. In an interview with the Amsterdam News, Minister Louis Farrakhan dismissed the charges , saying that Black gays and lesbians would not be denied a role." Nowhere in the piece does Watson quote anyone from the black gay and lesbian community. He takes Farrakhan at his word.
Later I heard an interview with a representative from the National Black Justice Coalition on "The Laura Flanders Show" (on Air America Radio) say that black gays and lesbians were denied access to the podium. So what Farrakhan said was a lie. But I doubt the Am/News will follow up on the story.
I think the NBJC should expand its campaign against homophobic black preachers and include the black press which is as complicit in the perpetuation of homophobia in the black community as the black church. The Am/News should be at the top of the list of publications targeted in a letter and e-mail blitz. A picket line shouldn't be overlooked either.
It's time that the voices of black gays and lesbians are consistently heard from in the black press. As the black lesbian poet Audre Lorde once put it: "There is no hierarchy of oppression." Homophobia is just as bad as racism. Both stem from hatred and ignorance.

Author's Note: When John Davis, an openly gay man, was the executive editor of the Amsterdam News (for a short time), he wrote an editorial supporting the passage of a gay rights bill in the New York City Council. This would be around 1983. Since then I have not seen any pro-gay editorials in the paper.