Word: rastus
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...about the lack of ethical or aesthetic standards on TV. Aided by his skeptical, ambitious assistant (Jada Pinkett Smith), he hires as his stars a homeless tap dancer (Savion Glover) and his pal (Tommy Davidson). Renamed Mantan and Sleep 'n Eat, they are given a supporting cast of Topsy, Rastus, Sambo and Aunt Jemima--enough reminders of racism to spur protests from an enraged citizenry. Guess what? The show is a smash. Audience members show up in blackface. The unknowns become stars. America loves Mantan...
...later, Atlanta, it is said, has finally shaken off the dust of Georgia. What had been Forrest Street -- named for General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Grand Wizard of the original Ku Klux Klan -- is now named in memory of Ralph McGill, the anti-racist newspaperman who was once derided as Rastus McGill by people who now speak reverentially of his contribution to the community. The city's best-known monument is not a statue to the Confederate fallen but the grave of Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights activists who once used Atlanta's airports to travel the South, organizing...
...Rastus. Only when an outrageous act angered him did McGill drop his civility. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, he assailed the "abscesses in America's society-the jackals, the cowards, the haters, the failures who hate achievers, the yapping feist pack that tries to drown out truth, those who dislike Jews, Negroes, Catholics, liberals." He won a Pulitzer Prize for a 1958 editorial that deplored the bombings of an Atlanta synagogue and a newly integrated Tennessee high school as the work of "rabid, mad-dog minds" and warned: "When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people...
...judged by the enemies they make, McGill was pained by the hatred he drew. His mailbox and front yard were bombed and raked by rifle fire. Telephoned threats often awoke him throughout the night. Crosses were burned outside his home. Redneck politicians drew votes by railing against "Rastus McGill," "Red Ralph (only a kaw-muh-nist talks like thet)" and "those lyin' Atlanta papers." McGill could detest the ideas of his enemies, but not the men themselves, nor could those who got to know him fail to respect him. In the '30s and '40s McGill and Georgia...
Assuming that you can take the country out of a country singer, there was a lot to take out of Glen Campbell. His home town, Billstown, Ark., is about as country as you can get. The downtown section still consists of a grocery store, where Rastus Williamson sits on the feed sacks and talks to Sewell and Sissy Dabbs all day long every Saturday. Color television has come to town, though - in the form of the set that Glen gave his parents for Christmas. This week, in fact, relatives and friends will be gathered at the Campbell home to watch...