Stars for Freedom: Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement by Emilie Raymond (review)

Our understanding of slavery, the civil rights movement, and American identity has arguably been made more complete since the publication of major works like Winthrop D. Jordan’s The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States (New York, 1974) and Susan Courtney’s Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race (Princeton, 2005). This understanding is greatly enhanced by the insightful stories told by Emilie Raymond in her wonderful new book Stars for Freedom: Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement.

In this well-structured, exceptionally researched, and highly enlightening book, Raymond’s primary concern is “to show how the Stars for Freedom,” including Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Dick Gregory, and Sammy Davis Jr., by “responding to the constraining political and racial environment of Hollywood, contributed to the success of the civil rights movement” (p. x). Indeed, as one of Raymond’s secondary arguments illuminates, “Without the involvement of the Stars for Freedom, the civil rights movement [would have been] far more isolated, insolvent, and persecuted, and … far more protracted” (p. xv). These are substantial contentions, yet Raymond’s storytelling exceeds these assertions in many ways.

Although Raymond begins her examination of the Stars for Freedom with a must-read exposé on the making of the 1959 film Porgy and Bess, where we are first introduced to, among others, Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge, it is Raymond’s substantial discussion of Sammy Davis Jr. and Belafonte in chapters 2 and 3 that amplifies the substance of the civil rights movement. The stimulating stories reflecting on Davis’s involvement with the Frank Sinatra–led “Rat Pack” and the negative publicity that surrounded his attempts to assimilate with white audiences and mainstream television pale in comparison to Raymond’s articulation of his performances and benefit concerts for various civil rights events. Even a casual reading of Stars for Freedom conveys that Davis was an essential component of the success of the civil rights movement.

Just as interesting are Raymond’s declarations on Belafonte. It is important to note that Belafonte’s struggle to balance his commercial success with his desire to be a facilitator of social change was a critical part of what propelled his influential involvement with the civil rights movement. Not only was Belafonte instrumental in shaping the development of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, at one point earmarking his television appearance fees to go directly to the organization, but he also facilitated the development of the professional relationship between John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Throughout the book, Raymond’s interpretations, whether in speaking of the 1963 March on Washington or in her chapters on the “Stars for Selma” and “Celebrities and Black Power,” are so compelling that readers feel the intensity coming through the pages (pp. 175, 208). Stars for Freedom is a worthy addition to the historiography on civil rights scholarship and an exceptional book for every library.