First black president?

[Ghost]

I keep seeing a quote from Dennis Haysbert, the guy who played the president on 24, about how his role made America ready for a black president. He wasn't the first black actor to portray the president, was he?

[Sam_Spade]

I found this from the LA Times,http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ne ... k=ntothtml

It's the 1972 film "The Man" that is largely credited with being the first serious treatment of a black man becoming president. Based on an Irving Wallace novel, the movie starred James Earl Jones as the Senate president pro tem who suddenly ascends to the Oval Office after the untimely deaths of the president and speaker of the House and the illness of the vice president.

In the poster for the film, Jones is pictured taking the oath of office at a ceremony populated by white politicians. The tag line for the movie reads "The first black president of the United States. First they swore him in. Then they swore to get him."

I'd be very surprised if there were not earlier portrayals, at least in book form

[Rob]

Morgan Freeman played a black President in the 1998 asteroid movie Deep Impact.

I think you could see "first portrayal of a black President" as two separate categories. You've got (1) Earliest portrayal of a black President, which, by the nature of it being a ground-breaking topic, is going to be a movie about the first black President (James Earl Jones, The Man).

The second category, which I think Morgan Freeman wins in Deep Impact, is: First portrayal of a black President where race has nothing to do with the story, they just needed someone to play the President.

(You could argue that that one should go to Tommy Lister for his bit part in 1997's Fifth Element, but the future dystopia he is President of is never named, and is not necessarily America.)

Dennis Haysbert may feel he made Americans "comfortable" with a black President because he played one who was tough on security issues, maybe? Or maybe because he was the first black President on a TV series (which I think he is) as opposed to movies. Either way, he's not the only one who thinks that, I've seen the "Haysbert made it OK" idea debated on political blogs.

[Delle]

Maybe Dennis Haysbert was the first Black President the unobservant would have spotted.

I've seen Deep Impact, more than once, but I don't remember the President being black. I also don't remember the President in Fifth Element being black (actually, I don't remember a President in Fifth Element at all), whether it was of America or not. I did, however, manage to spot that Dennis Haysbert was black, posibly because 24 made a big deal about it, whereas Deep Impact and Fifth Element didn't?

[Guest]

I've seen Deep Impact, more than once, but I don't remember the President being black.

Are you possibly thinking of Armageddon (the Bruce Willis asteroid movie)? In Deep Impact, Morgan Freeman had a reasonably significant supporting role. He appears throughout the movie, has scenes with the main character (Téa Leoni), and ultimately gives a rousing speech in front of -- ahh, I can't do spoiler tags here. Well. He gives a rousing speech, anyway.

[Delle]

I've seen Deep Impact, more than once, but I don't remember the President being black.

Are you possibly thinking of Armageddon (the Bruce Willis asteroid movie)? In Deep Impact, Morgan Freeman had a reasonably significant supporting role. He appears throughout the movie, has scenes with the main character (Téa Leoni), and ultimately gives a rousing speech in front of -- ahh, I can't do spoiler tags here. Well. He gives a rousing speech, anyway.

No, I really do mean Deep Impact. It was Morgan Freeman was it? I don't even remember him in the movie (I do remember the boy on the motorbike and Téa Leoni). The President being black in that movie just didn't make any impression on me.

Is the President in Armageddon black too? Is there a President in Armageddon? (I have seen that more than once, as well, but again, the details aren't seared on my brain).


By the way, I don't think we really need to bother with spoiler tags for a movie that's over 10 years old. If you haven't seen it by now, you probably weren't that bothered anyway.

[olthar]

i think its more that 24 made a huge issue out of it, not to mention that he was on tv to millions of viewers weekly for 3(+) years and still is on reruns. The movies came and went, even good movies are only seen once in a while by people

[Gandalf]

I could be wrong, but is it maybe that 24 was the first show or film to portray the election process of a black president, as well as him actually being president? I think all of the other films mentioned here have just shown a black president. The Man sounds like it showed how he got there, but it doesn't sound like he was elected by the American public, at least not to the role of President (sorry if I got the facts wrong, I haven't actually seen it). 24 showing both the election of a black president and him actually running the country well, might be a first.

[hi_there_again]

Strikes me there's a chicken and egg issue here: did 24's casting of Haysbert as the President actually make the idea of a black president more "acceptable," or did it merely reflect a shift in the wider culture that was already underway? I'd say it's at least as important that, while 24 was on the air, two successive, high-profile Secretaries of State were African American, in a Republican Administration no less.

Also the "is America ready for a black president" meme is really starting to bug me. The underlying point is well taken, but the actual phrasing strikes me as a weak euphamism for the real question, "Are Americans still too racist to elect a black president?" Maybe I've just been reading too much colonial history lately, but it strikes me that the rather pernicious undercurrent of the "is America ready" phrasing is to present the state-sanctioned racism of the past as somehow morally acceptable. "Well, it's ok that millions of Africans were imported into this country for use as agricultural machinery, because 'America' wasn't ready to see black people as human beings yet." In other words, Americans past and present bare no culpability for the consequences of their racist attitudes because "America wasn't ready" to elect a black president or allow blacks to vote or to stop counting blacks as 3/5s of a person, as if the systematic denial of human rights is ok so long as the country isn't ready to recognize those rights. Which is total bs, because "America" is made up of Americans. The past is another country, as they say, but it's one thing to acknowledge they did things differently there, and another to say that you'd want to live there. That's taking historicism a step too far into moral relativism for my tastes.