Search This Blog

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Chuck Clayton - Diversifying Riverdale Since 1971


This week's Saturday feature will be going back to the funny pages. In particular, the funny pages that could be found in a standard Archie Comics Digest.

I imagine that for some of you, my constant talk about everything Archie comics related might be a bit overkill, but as you might know, I have a huge soft spot for the comics.



I always saw Riverdale (the town that Archie and the gang live in) as the perfect place for anybody to live in. It's a town where everybody on the street greets each other with warmth and kindness. It's a town in which everyone seems to be welcome wherever they go. And, in recent years, it's been a town in which people of all backgrounds have been welcome.

Seriously, pick up any random comic book from Archie Comics dated 2013. There are white characters, black characters, Asians, and Hispanics. There are straight characters and gay characters. There are characters that have physical disabilities and there are characters who have learning disabilities. What is amazing is that no matter what the situation is, they are all there for each other unconditionally. Riverdale is a fictional representation of the perfect community, and I'm sure it's a representation that we all would hope to be a part of at some point in our lives. I know that in my life, I've wanted to be a part of something fantastic like that, and maybe someday I will be.

Of course, Riverdale wasn't ALWAYS this diverse.

The serial's first openly gay character only moved into Riverdale two and a half years ago. The comic's first Asian characters (that weren't blatant stereotypes) began appearing sporadically in the late 1980s/early 1990s). Frankie Valdez and Maria Rodriguez made history in the mid-1970s by becoming the very first Hispanic characters to be drawn into the pages of Archie Comics. And, the creation of the serial's first wheelchair-bound character, Anita, was part of the Jughead comic revamp in late 1991.

And, since this month is “Black History Month”, we'll be taking a look at a couple of African-American characters who have been prominently featured in Archie Comics for decades.

Just to put things into perspective here before I continue with this discussion, I want to tell you how Archie Comics first began.



Archie, Jughead, and Betty made their very first appearances in Pep Comics #22 (December 1941). Veronica and Reggie came later. If you want to see their first appearance, you can either pay $50,000 for the original comic book, or you can try to find the reprint in Archie Digest #236. One option is thousands of dollars cheaper, so I'll leave that with you as to what way you want to go about seeing it.

But when Archie Comics debuted in 1941, the world of Riverdale was very much a white bread world. Seriously, every citizen of Riverdale was Caucasian. And, this lasted during the 1940s, 1950s, and much of the 1960s. It wasn't until the late 1960s that a character of African-American origin began appearing in the pages of Archie Comics. That character, of course, was Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats.

In Riverdale, however, the wait would be just a little bit longer.



In 1971, Archie Comics released Pep Comics #257 (September 1971), and in that book marked the very first appearance of Chuck Clayton.

Unfortunately, I don't quite know what the story that featured Chuck in his debut appearance was all about (I have issue #255, but not #257). But I can tell you that Chuck marked the first time that an African-American character had a starring role in an Archie comic.



Chuck was introduced along with his father, Coach Floyd Clayton. Coach Clayton joined the faculty of Riverdale High School shortly after Chuck's first appearance, and as of 2013, he alternates with Coach Kleats (sometimes both coaches appear at the same time) when the stories involve the gang playing a variety of sports. Coach Kleats usually coaches the football team, but Coach Clayton almost always coaches track and field or basketball.

I do remember one thing about Chuck Clayton though. In some of the earliest appearances that I have seen of Chuck, his attitude was completely different. Chuck was almost like an African-American version of Reggie. He constantly got into trouble, he had an ego the size of Alaska, and he frequently challenged authority. In one case, he disrespected the vice-principal of Riverdale High (in the 1970s, it was Ramon Rodriguez), by calling him Choo-Choo, and opening his mouth a little too wide. In another, he bragged about being able to do what he wanted in the gym because his father was a coach...only for Coach Clayton to tell him off. And, in one hilarious story that I read, Chuck accidentally filled all the basketballs in the gym with helium, leaving a bewildered Coach Clayton to wonder how they were supposed to play the new game that Chuck invented.

Yes, early 1970s Chuck was kind of a jerk. And, I think that's why they gave Chuck a mini personality makeover in the mid-1970s. Why Archie Comics did this, I'm not sure...but my guess is that there was room for only one Reggie Mantle, and Chuck was just an imitator. But, I suppose that I could also see the argument that they didn't want to give off the wrong impression when it came to portraying a character of colour. Just a hypothesis though, I do not know for certain.



By 1976, Chuck became more of a heroic character, often a frequent face in the “Life With Archie” and “Archie at Riverdale High” titles. In many of the stories, Archie and Jughead are forced to help Chuck get out of hot water when he is accused of cheating on a test, or when rival high schools prevent him from competing in championship sporting events. But Chuck was also a key player in helping Archie uncover some of Riverdale's dirty little secrets, such as discovering corruption within Riverdale High, or exposing an international scandal, or trying to find out the truth behind why people acted the way they did. There's one fantastic story entitled “On The Mark”, which was released around the mid-1980s, which showed Archie and Chuck trying to help a boy named Mark who was illiterate.



The image makeover seemed to work, as Chuck quickly rose up in the ranks of secondary characters. He didn't quite appear as often as say, Dilton Doiley or Moose Mason, but he appeared in far more stories in the 1980s than he did during the 1970s. And, in late 1975, he was given a girlfriend named Nancy (one of the first female African-American character to attend Riverdale High), who made her first appearance in Pep #309 (January 1976).

Granted, Chuck and Nancy dating each other was no surprise, given the backlash that surrounded interracial dating at the time. It actually wasn't until 2010 that interracial dating made it into the pages of Archie comics, when Archie began dating Valerie in a Josie and the Pussycats crossover story...but Chuck and Nancy are also one of the most stable couples in Archie comics history, with the couple going on strong for thirty-seven years and counting!

In the late 1980s, Chuck's personality began to develop even further, as one of his hobbies was created to increase the amount of stories that he would appear in. When Chuck developed an interest in art and cartooning, many of his stories featured Chuck drawing and painting. He painted murals and store windows for cash in one episode, and used his art skills to appear as a contestant on a spoof of “Win, Lose, or Draw”. Unfortunately, his artwork would often be seen as a crutch in the relationship between Chuck and Nancy, as Chuck would often choose painting a mural, or attending a comic book convention over taking Nancy out for dinner, or dancing.

But the new design in character for Chuck paid off again, as Chuck was brought to the forefront in special issues.



Take Riverdale High #5, for example. Chuck is the star of the whole comic book, as he creates a new comic serial called “Animal Krackers”. The characters are based off of the Archie gang. The cover is up above. See if you can guess which animal corresponds with which character. On a related note, the Reggie and Jughead characters are quite funny.



Or, how about Pep #624, in which Chuck and Archie have to investigate a mysterious happening at the San Diego Comic Convention (where the character of Wendell looks awfully familiar).



And, in Archie & Friends, there were multiple story arcs which featured Chuck doing his artwork, and getting involved in various conflicts that cause Chuck to make some interesting choices.



Even in the Life With Archie Magazine, which depicts Archie and the gang years into the future, Chuck and Nancy have opened up a comic book store together. So, it's nice to know that Nancy has eventually grown to accept Chuck's love of comics as they grew older.

And, there you have it. Our spotlight on Chuck and Nancy from Archie Comics. It may have taken them three decades to get drawn into the pages of Archie comics, but they were the lynchpin characters that opened up the world of Riverdale just a little bit more...and made it a happier place.

Friday, February 15, 2013

The Cosby Show


I honestly couldn’t continue on with “Black History Month” without doing a special feature on one of the most successful sitcoms of the 1980s.  In fact, many critics and fans of this NBC series credit this show with breathing new life into the genre known as the sitcom, and over its eight years on the air, it brought fans many laughs, raked in the awards, and completely shattered any possible stereotypes that may have lingered at the time.

It seems hard to believe now, but there was once a time in which NBC was the home of “Must See TV”.  As far as I’m concerned, when “Friends” and “ER” were cancelled, the network began its plummet into the depths of the ratings, with both CBS and ABC surpassing them by the time the 2010s rolled around. 

During the period known as the 1980s, it seemed as though almost every household had to tune into the network, as some of the most talked about programs to ever air during the 1980s aired right on NBC.  “Hill Street Blues”, “L.A. Law”, “Miami Vice”, “The Golden Girls”, “The Facts Of Life”, “Diff’rent Strokes”, “Family Ties”, and “The A-Team” were all humongous hits during the time period known as the 1980s.  In fact, I think I remember being a kid in the 1980s, and always having our television set on channel six (before we got cable, NBC was on Channel 6 on the dial), because the best shows aired there.


And, that also included “The Cosby Show”, the topic of discussion for today.  Have a look at one of the eight different introductions below.  This particular one is the one that I remember the most.


That was one way in which “The Cosby Show” stood out.  Each time a new season began, the opening was tweaked around.  Sometimes the theme song would change, while other times the whole opening was redone.  At least this way when you were watching it in reruns, you could tell what season you were watching because of the opening.

Of course, the opening wasn’t the most important breakthrough that was showcased on “The Cosby Show”.  But, before we get to that, let’s talk a little bit about the show creation.


“The Cosby Show” was created by Bill Cosby, and aired on NBC between September 20, 1984 and April 30, 1992.

(Ironically enough, the show ended smack dab in the middle of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots that erupted after the controversial conclusion of the Rodney King trial.)

Anyway, “The Cosby Show” was largely based off of Bill Cosby’s comedy routines, and focused on the fictional African-American Huxtable family of Brooklyn, New York.  Cosby played Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable (though in the pilot episode, his name was Clifford), an obstetrician.  The rest of the members of the Huxtable family we’ll meet a little later, but each one was based off of a real-life member of Bill Cosby’s family.

The show itself was groundbreaking in that it depicted African-American families in a light that many people had never seen on television before.  In previous television sitcoms that had a predominantly black cast, they were portrayed as being working class citizens (heck, Redd Foxx’s character worked as a junk dealer on “Sanford and Son”).  Very rarely were African-Americans portrayed as being rich and successful.

“The Cosby Show” changed all that.  As mentioned before, Dr. Huxtable was a successful obstetrician.  His wife Clair was a powerful lawyer.  They lived in a beautiful Brooklyn townhouse and raised a son and four daughters together.  In a way, the show destroyed a lot of stereotypes by telling people that anybody could have it all, no matter what their skin colour was.  In many ways, “The Cosby Show” helped open the doors for other television shows featuring a predominantly black cast to be featured on the air, which included “Amen”, “227”, “Living Single”, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, “Family Matters”, and “Sister, Sister”.

The show was ranked the #1 television show in ratings between 1985 and 1990, and even when the show went off the air in 1992, it was still a Top 20 hit.  It’s one of the very few television sitcoms to keep its time slot for all eight seasons (Thursday nights at 8:00pm), and the show also spawned a spin-off program called “A Different World”, which also aired on NBC for six seasons between 1987 and 1993.

So, you can see how “The Cosby Show” changed the course of television for years to come, and why people regarded it as one of the best sitcoms of the 1980s.


Now, let’s meet the characters of “The Cosby Show”.  We’ll learn which member of Bill Cosby’s real life family they were based off of, some of the storylines that they got caught up in while they were on the show, and if I’m able to find any clips, I’ll post those as well.


Why don’t we start with Clair Huxtable (played by Phylicia Rashad)?  Clair is probably the very definition of elegance and intelligence.  She displayed both in almost every episode.  But, she didn’t have an air of arrogance associated with her.  She treated everyone as an equal, and in a lot of cases, she could let her hair down and be goofy and playful if the situation called for it.  It should come as no surprise that the character of Clair was loosely based on Bill Cosby’s real-life wife, Camille.

Believe it or not, when “The Cosby Show” was being plotted out, Clair was supposed to be a stay-at-home mother who took care of the couple’s children.  However, it was decided in a mutual agreement by Cosby and Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey to make Clair a lawyer instead.  And, though we only saw Clair inside of a courtroom once during the whole series, we saw her “attorney side” working at the household.  After all, she was the main disciplinarian of the Huxtable household, as this clip below will show you.  Let it be a lesson to all of you.  If you’re Clair Huxtable’s daughter, don’t go to Baltimore.


TRIVIA:  Between 1984 and 1985, Phylicia Rashad was credited as Phylicia Ayers-Allen.  She changed her name when she married NBC sportscaster Ahmad Rashad in 1985. 


Next, we have eldest Huxtable daughter, Sondra (Sabrina LeBeauf).  Now, Sondra’s an interesting case.  In the pilot episode, she does not even exist, as Clair and Cliff talk about their four children, and Sondra didn’t make an appearance until the middle of season one!  It was later explained that Cosby wanted to add Sondra to the cast to show that they did have a child who had successfully graduated college.

Sondra’s your typical overachiever and wildly intelligent, which earns nothing but respect from Cliff and Clair (well, except for that one time she told Clair that she was skipping law school to open up a wilderness store with her love, Elvin).  Other than that, she’s the most responsible one in the whole Huxtable family.  Unfortunately, she was also one of the most invisible, only appearing in a handful of the 202 episodes that were filmed.  But in the episodes that she was present in, she played a huge part.  She married her long-time love Elvin Tibideaux midway through the series, and gave birth to twins Nelson and Winnie (named after Nelson and Winnie Mandela).  She is loosely based off of Cosby’s oldest daughter, Erika.


TRIVIA:  Would you believe that Whitney Houston was once considered for the role of Sondra?  And, would you believe that Sabrina LeBeauf was only ten years younger than Phylicia Rashad (which almost caused her not to get the role)?


Next up is another Huxtable who popped in and out of the show.  Denise Huxtable (played by Lisa Bonet), is the Huxtable child that could be considered the square peg of the bunch.  She’s quite bohemian, and marches to the beat of her own drum.  She loves music and fashion, but not enough to want to go to college to pursue a career in them.  She was always portrayed as popular, having a different boyfriend in nearly every episode of the first two seasons, and she would often come up with some bizarre ideas that made Cliff or Clare stare at her in disbelief.


Denise was the Huxtable that kickstarted the spin-off series “A Different World”, in which her character began attending Hillman College (based off of the real-life Spelman College).  At some point, she returned to “The Cosby Show” only for her character to venture off to Africa for a year.  When she returned home, she was married to a man named Martin Kendall, and became the stepmother of little Olivia (Raven-Symone), who became a permanent cast member in the latter part of the series. 

TRIVIA:  The reason why Denise was written out of “A Different World” was because she had gotten pregnant during the show’s first season.  She gave birth to daughter Zoe in 1988.  The father?  Singer Lenny Kravitz.


Middle child Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) was the only male child in the Huxtable family, and was based off of Cosby’s only son Ennis (who was tragically murdered in 1997).

Now, in many ways, Theo could be considered the Huxtable child who ended up getting the most attention, and therefore ended up with the most interesting storylines.  Many people didn’t know this, but Ennis Cosby was dyslexic, and before he was killed, he was working on becoming a teacher.  Because of that, the show also opted to make Theo a dyslexic.  On the first episode of the series, Theo was a straight-D student, and received a very memorable lecture from Cliff.  By the series finale, he was a student teacher helping other children overcome their learning disabilities, and graduated from New York University with a degree in psychology (the show itself was one of the few sitcoms to film entirely in New York City).

TRIVIA:  One of Theo’s friends was played by future NCIS star Michael Weatherly, and Theo’s girlfriend Justine was played by the late Michelle Thomas, who also starred as Steve Urkel’s obsessed girlfriend Myra Monkhouse in Family Matters.



Huxtable daughter number three is Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe), and the one thing that I can say about her is that she is like a Chatty Cathy doll with a permanent on button!  She talks and talks (though not nearly as much as her friend Kara), and gets into typical teenage mischief.  She is also the Huxtable kid who almost always gets involved in some sort of trouble (she’s the one that you saw getting schooled by Clair earlier).  She was also the Huxtable who found herself in situations involving drugs and alcohol.  Although she wasn’t smoking when Theo caught Vanessa’s friends smoking cigarettes in her room, she did take part in a drinking game that involved twenty-six letters and a lot of liquor.  And this prompted Vanessa’s parents to teach her a lesson.  Vanessa was loosely based off of Cosby’s daughter, Ensa.


TRIVIA:  Tempestt Bledsoe later went on to host a short-lived talk show in the 1990s.


The final child in the Huxtable family tree is Rudith Huxtable (Keshia Knight Pulliam), otherwise known as Rudy.  And, I have to admit that when I was growing up, Rudy was my favourite...probably because she was the closest in age with me (the actress that played her is only two years older than I am). 

Rudy was based off of Cosby’s daughter, Evin...but it was originally planned for Rudy to be a male character instead of a female.  Jaleel White (who later played Steve Urkel on Family Matters), once admitted that he auditioned for the role of Rudy at the time!

Anyway, as the youngest child in the Huxtable family, Rudy didn’t have a whole lot of big storylines (in the first season, she skipped out on her goldfish’s funeral to watch television), but keep in mind that Knight Pulliam was on the show between the ages of five and thirteen, which meant that she reached puberty while on the show.  I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must have been for her to have the whole world watching her come of age!

TRIVIA:  Keshia Knight Pulliam became the youngest nominee for a primetime Emmy Award ever in 1986.  Unfortunately, she did not win the award.  But still, it must have been an honour to be nominated...especially at the age of seven!

So, that’s our look back on “The Cosby Show”.  Now, I will open the floor up to you.

BONUS QUESTION:  Which Huxtable character was your favourite?  And, which episode was your favourite?

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott


Okay...so today is February 14. And, apparently it's a day that is supposed to be about true love and devotion, when in reality, it's all about making sure that you buy jewelry, roses, and chocolate hearts filled with Reese's Peanut Butter.

But, in today's blog, I want to do my Thursday Diary Entry on somebody incredibly special. Someone whose face has been associated with the modern civil rights movement. Someone who stood up for her rights, and ended up changing the course of history forever.

And, if I ever fell in love with someone who had the same strong determination for what she believed in...I could consider myself lucky.

February 14, 2013

It has been quite a long time since I have boarded a bus. Do you know that?

Of course, I currently live in a small community where bus service runs for a limited amount of time (I can't say for certain, but I'm probably not wrong in saying that buses in town rarely run past seven o'clock in the evening on weekdays). And besides, in my town, I can get to almost anywhere I want to go in as little as half an hour by walking.

Back in the days when I used to live in Ottawa, Ontario (circa 2001), I would ride OC Transpo nearly every day to get to where I wanted to go. It was a really easy system to navigate back in those days (though I am sure that there will be some who will disagree with me). You would give the bus driver your bus fare (or bus pass if you owned one), and you would get a ticket. That ticket doubled as a bus transfer pass, so that if you needed to change bus routes during your trip, you could within a two-hour window.

Some people in Ottawa really hated taking the bus, and you could definitely see it in their faces as they squeezed into the available seats. I can understand, having been one who frequently had to stand in the aisles of the bus because there weren't enough seats available. But the thing is that I didn't mind. It was cool to look around the bus and see people of all different backgrounds chatting away.

It just seems so hard to believe that there was once a time in history in which that wasn't always the case.

Take the city of Montgomery, Alabama for example in...oh, let's go with 1955. Back in those days, the ugliness known as segregation was rearing its ugly head. Kids who were white could ride the bus to their schools while black kids had to walk. There were separate eating establishments and boutiques for people depending on what colour their skin was. Believe it or not, even drinking fountains were segregated. It was not a great time period in history, and I can't even begin to imagine how hard it was for people who were of African-American descent back in those days.

Even seats on buses were assigned according to race. In most cases, the front seats of the bus were reserved for white people, while people of colour were seated at the back of the bus. Most of the times, this went without incident, but if more white passengers were on the bus at the time, then the sign that divided the seats was pushed back by the bus driver in order to accommodate the white riders. If you happened to be black, you did not get the same treatment. In fact, black passengers had to enter the bus through the rear door instead of the side door! It seems absolutely crazy to picture passengers boarding a bus from the rear, but back in the 1950s, it was normal. It was unfortunately also normal for black passengers to be thrown off the bus if the bus was overcrowded.

And, this was the case until December 1, 1955, when one woman decided that she wasn't going to take it anymore.



Mind you, this was not the first instance in which Rosa Parks fought back against the unjust laws surrounding the public transit system and its laws in Montgomery, Alabama. Twelve years earlier, in 1943, a thirty-year-old Parks boarded the bus, paid her fare, and sat down in the section reserved for black passengers. However, she had entered through the side door of the bus instead of the rear entrance, and the bus driver on duty, James F. Blake, told her to follow the city rules. Parks left the bus and approached the back of the bus...only for the bus to pull away before she could get back inside. She ended up having to walk home in the rain. Nice, huh?

Well, wouldn't you know it? A dozen years later, and she found herself once again on a bus driven by James F. Blake. And, this time around, she was not going to let him walk all over her.

On that fateful December day in 1955, Parks once more paid her fare and sat down in the row that was directly behind the “whites-only” section of the bus. During the course of the ride, the seats that were reserved for white passengers filled up very quickly, and by the time that the bus pulled up for its third stop of the route, there was a problem.

The bus driver had noticed that the entire white section of the bus was filled, and that two or three white passengers were left standing in the aisle of the bus. So, Blake got up once the bus was stopped, moved the “Coloured People Only” sign back a row (the same row that Parks was seated in), and ordered the four black passengers in the row to give up their seats so that the white passengers could sit down, keeping in mind that if any of the black passengers refused to give up their seats, they could be arrested and sent to jail.

With the threat of an arrest record, three of the four passengers immediately forfeited their seats. Wanna take a stab as to which one didn't move?

Rosa Parks had just worked a super long day. She was not about to give up her seat as quickly as the others. If anything, she moved to a window seat so that it would make it harder to get out! Blake was furious, and practically ordered Parks to give up her seat, but she was not going to. She was tired of being pushed around, and she was tired of having to settle for second-best because of the colour of her skin. She wanted equality for everyone.

Blake even threatened to call the police on Parks if she didn't move. And when Parks held firm on her stance, that's exactly what Blake did. She later explained in her autobiography “My Story” that the reason she chose not to give up her seat wasn't because she was physically tired. She was tired of giving in to the social stigma that seemed to be present throughout the Southern states during the mid-1950s.



Parks was charged with a violation of the segregation law of the Montgomery city code (even though she technically didn't break a law as she was sitting in a seat reserved for a black person before the bus driver moved the sign), and you can see her mugshot above.

But if you think the story ends here...you're mistaken.



The arrest of Rosa Parks prompted the event known as the “Montgomery Bus Boycott”.

The plans for the boycott began preparations on December 4, 1955 (three days after Parks was arrested). Jo Ann Robinson (a member of the Women's Political Council) mimeographed several thousand copies of the paper announcing the boycott, and the paper was distributed around black churches. The announcement also made the pages of “The Montgomery Advertiser”, and the people who lead the boycott made it clear that it would continue until black bus drivers were hired, and until seating was given on a first come, first serve basis.

On December 5, 1955 (the same day as Rosa's trial), the boycott officially began, and although there was a bad rainstorm that day, African-American passengers stayed off the buses. Some carpooled, some took cabs, but the majority of the people opted to use their feet. Some people even walked to their destinations for miles and miles, just to support Rosa Parks!

And, do you know just how long that boycott lasted? Three hundred and eighty-one days! That's just a little over one year! Can you imagine just how much money that system lost because of this? Kind of makes one rethink the whole idea of segregation, doesn't it?



In the end, the boycott was well worth it. On December 21, 1956, a new law was passed, which allowed Montgomery's public transit system to become completely integrated. Of course, while Rosa Parks' standoff on the bus kickstarted the movement, it was helped along by the Montgomery Improvement Association, which among others had a future civil rights activist on its team...Martin Luther King Jr.



As for Parks...well, she was charged with disorderly conduct, and violating a local ordinance, and after a trial that lasted a mere half hour, she was fined ten dollars, plus an additional four more for the trial cost. But her arrest also helped integrate an entire city's transportation system. So, I suppose it was a nice tradeoff.

Now, Rosa and her husband had to leave Montgomery in 1957 after they both lost their jobs because of the case...but they eventually settled in Detroit, Michigan, where Parks lived the rest of her life. She suffered a lot of hardships during her time in Michigan (including losing her husband, brother, and mother all died within a very short period), but she was always a crusader for the civil rights movement. She worked for an African-American United States Representative named John Conyers as his secretary until the 1980s, and co-founded the Rosa L. Parks Scholarship Foundation in 1980. She was a co-founder of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in 1987, and published two memoirs in 1992 and 1995, detailing her life and times. I would actually encourage everyone to read both books, because she was one interesting lady.

Perhaps one of the coolest stories that I remember hearing happened in 1994, when the Ku Klux Klan wanted to purchase a stretch of Interstate 55 for clean-up. The state government of Missouri couldn't refuse the KKK's sponsorship...but they could decide what to name the stretch of road. And, so, the stretch of highway was renamed “Rosa Parks Highway”!

How's that for irony?

Rosa Parks passed away of natural causes in Detroit, Michigan on October 24, 2005 at the age of 92. And, in those ninety-two years, she helped change the face of the world forever simply by refusing to give up her seat on a bus fifty years earlier. I only wish that I could do something half as memorable if I ever live that long.

This past February 4, Rosa Parks would have turned one hundred years old. And, because of that, several places all over the world held 100th birthday celebrations in memory of Rosa and her contributions. But, I'm sure that if Rosa were still alive today, she'd probably act all embarrassed by the honour. After all, she never did what she did for the fame, or the money, or the personal karma. She did it to make it easier for people of all races to enjoy life and live life, and not have to worry about who they were any longer.



Rosa Parks...I salute you.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Potato Chips - Good To The Last "Crum"


I have a feeling that before this entry is out, I will be looking at a particular snack food a lot differently. And, I also have a feeling that when it comes to the story behind the invention of said item, it may open up some discussion about who “really” came up with the idea. From the various amount of sources that I have found, many seem to point to one man in general, and it is enough reason for me to spotlight this tasty treat as part of our special look at “Black History Month”, though some people have tried to dispute that claim.

And, yes, I will be talking more about that as we proceed.

I know that this is the day in which I am supposed to be featuring a toy, a game, or a book in this space. But, I was also thinking to myself that it has been a really long time since I put a food item in the blog as a spotlight. I almost considered making one of the days of the week a food themed day, but I didn't think I would have enough topics to make it last. However, I will say that today's topic was inspired by a Facebook application/contest that I decided to enter on a whim. Heck, the grand prize is cash if your entry is selected, so what do I have to lose right?



Today's entry is all about the snack treat (and sometimes food) known as the potato chip.

Now, I won't link to this contest that inspired the selection of topic for today (mainly because I don't want any competition), but the contest allows you to create your own brand new flavour of potato chip. If you come up with the most creative flavour, they will not only give you money for the idea, but they will also manufacture the flavour and have it be readily available for public consumption.

As far as I know, you can enter as many flavours as you want, so I decided to submit a couple of entries. One was Canadian Pizza, and the other one was Spaghetti and Meatballs. As far as I know, they do not have either one of those flavours in any chip form, so I think that it would be interesting to try and replicate it.

But even if my flavours are not selected as the winning entry, at least I tried. These days, you can find potato chips in almost every flavour underneath the sun. Of course, the most basic flavour is original, but I've seen Barbecue, Sour Cream and Onion, Cheddar, Dill Pickle, Salt and Vinegar, Au Gratin, Roasted Chicken, Guacamole, Jalapeno, Sea Salt and Pepper, and Ketchup.

And, that's not even counting tortilla chips, corn chips, pretzel chips, and Ritz Chips.



These days, I really don't eat that many potato chips. When I was a child, I loved them a little too much. You know that slogan that Lay's had? The one that went “betcha can't eat just one”? That was true with me...only in my case, that slogan was amended to “betcha can't eat just one bag”!



But considering that I am trying my best to avoid junk food, I have limited myself to only eating Baked Lay's Dill Pickle chips. They might not be the most healthiest option out there, but at least they're slightly better than the full fat potato chips.

And, yes, I am totally justifying my stance on Baked Lay's.  

So, this leads to the question...how did the potato chip come to be?

Well, I believe that I have found an answer. It's the one that appeared the most in all of the sources that I have come across...and just to verify it as being mostly true, I logged onto snopes.com to make sure that it wasn't an urban legend. It seems to be a mostly true encounter, so I'm going with it.

We're going to go back to the summer of 1853 for this tale, which takes place inside of a restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York.



The restaurant was located inside the Moon's Lake House, and the head chef at the time was African-American George Crum.

On one particular August day in 1853, it began normally, and it was business as usual...until Crum had an encounter with a rather unhappy customer. The diner had ordered a plate of french fries with his meal, but when Crum served them, the customer was angered at the quality of the fries, stating that they were cut too thick and that they were much too soggy. The customer was insistent that Crum take them back and prepare them differently.

Now, I don't know about you, but one of the last things that I would do is send back a meal if it wasn't cooked properly. Because depending on the attitude of the chef cooking the meal, I would probably be afraid that they would spit on the food, drop it on the floor, or sabotage it in a way that I would be eating something disgusting, and I would never know the difference. Of course I am not suggesting that all chefs would do this...but I've heard of examples where this is the case.

The reason why I bring this up is because George Crum did not take too kindly to the customer sending back his food. And, George decided that he was so angry at the customer that he would send him out a treat that he would never forget.

Since the customer wanted his fries to be cut a lot thinner than what he was given, George obliged in a huge way, cutting them paper thin in thickness. He then over-fried them purposely so that the potato would appear incredibly crispy. No soggy mess that way! To top it all off, George liberally seasoned them with approximately twice as much salt as to what he would normally use, in order to make them especially unappetizing.

Or, so he thought.

When Crum brought out his newest culinary condition to the disgruntled diner, he believed that he had executed the perfect payback against the person who dared insult his cooking. He waited with baited breath expecting the customer to exclaim that his dish was the worst thing ever.

However, to Crum's shock, the minute he tried one, he responded with a smile. He thought that they were the most delicious things that he had ever tasted, and promptly finished the rest of them.

So, Crum decided to take his new creation and profit off of them. After all, if they had the power to turn a constant complainer into a satisfied customer, they just had to be worth trying to make a living off of, right?



Marketing his new creation as “Saratoga Chips” (named after the geographic location where they were made), they quickly became a popular item on the menu, and the resulting profits were enough for Crum to open up his own restaurant in the 1860s.

Saratoga Chips remained popular throughout the Prohibition Era (I suppose substituting the vice of liquor with the vice of junk food is one way to deal with it). Soon after, an entrepreneur by the name of Herman Lay decided to market the product in the Southwest United States, and soon after, the product became well known as a global snack food. Why else do you think that the Frito-Lay company is one of the largest manufacturers of potato chips today?

Of course, as the snopes.com entry on the potato chip reads, every true story leaves some room for embellishment. And sure enough, there have been several urban legends that have been associated with this factual account, such as the following.



01- Saratoga/Potato Chips were once marketed as being an aphrodisiac. Now, I have no idea how truthful this was because I was not alive during the Prohibition era. However, I cannot recall ever being put in the mood because I happened to come across a bag of Lay's Sour Cream and Onion potato chips. Especially since Sour Cream and Onion potato chips cause you to require half a package of Tic Tacs to get rid of the aftertaste!



02- According to some legends, the cranky customer that cranked Crum's chain all those years ago was a famous face...railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. While it would have been a fascinating angle to an already fascinating account, it is sadly not true. In all likelihood, that cranky customer was just an average Joe. The kind that you might see at the Target customer service desk trying to explain how the item he was trying to return was brand new despite the fact that 8-track tapes have been out of style since the 1970s.

03- There have even been reports that Crum was not the actual founder of potato chips. There are some sources that state that it was actually his sister who created the dish, while others report that the Crum family had no ties to the discovery at all, with the potato chip being reportedly created long before the Saratoga Chip came to be. But, I'm going to give Crum the benefit of the doubt and name him as the sole creator. I found more evidence to support Crum than refute him while researching this blog entry.

So the next time you find yourself eating a potato chip, thank George Crum. Certainly a detail of “Black History Month” that can make your mouth water.

And, since we're talking about chips, how about some more facts about them to close this entry off?

  • Americans reportedly eat more than 1.2 billion potato chips each year!
  • March 14 is known as “National Potato Chip Day”!
  • The first potato chip factory was built by Cleveland's William Tappenden in 1895.
  • It takes nearly a thousand pounds of potatoes to make 350 pounds of chips.
  • While Canada and the United States call potato chips “chips”, in the UK and Australia, they are known as crisps (mainly because those countries refer to french fries as chips).
  • Apparently Canada isn't the only country to have unique flavours of chips. You can apparently buy them in paprika, mint (India), Kebab (Egypt), and mayonnaise (Japan) flavours.
  • Engineering professor William Lee actually holds a patent in potato chip technology!



  • Have you wondered how Pringles were made? They're actually dehydrated mashed potatoes that have been reconstituted into a dough!

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

February 12, 1946


Sometimes in order to appreciate what we have in the present, we have to take a trip back to a time in which things weren’t always so nice and diplomatic.  Such is the case with our look back on February 12.  And, since you already know that this is the special “Black History Month” that the blog is observing all month long, you know that it has something to do with that.

Before we begin that discussion though, we have some other things to get out of the way first.  I hope you will all join me in wishing the following famous faces a happy February 12 birthday.  Happy birthday to Franco Zeffirelli, Joe Garagiola, Charles Van Doren, Maurice Filion, Annette Crosbie, Bill Russell, Joe Don Baker, Judy Blume, Ray Manzarek (The Doors), Moe Bandy, Maud Adams, Cliff DeYoung, Ray Kurzweil, Mike Robitaille, Michael Ironside, Steve Hackett (Genesis), Michael McDonald, Joanna Kerns, Nabil Shaban, Robin Thomas, Bill Laswell, Chet Lemon, Arsenio Hall, Brian Robertson (Thin Lizzy), Bobby Smith, Larry Nance, Sigrid Thornton, George Gray, Ed Lover, Jacqueline Woodson, Michel Petit, Ruben Amaro Jr., Christine Elise, John Michael Higgins, David Westlake, Josh Brolin, Gregory Charles, Chynna Phillips, Meja, Brad Werenka, Jim Creeggan (Barenaked Ladies), Scott Menville, Ajay Naidu, Tara Strong, Scot Pollard, Jimmy Conrad, Jesse Spencer, Sarah Lancaster, Christina Ricci, Carlton Brewster, Brad Keselowski, Peter Vanderkaay, Saskia Burmeister, Mike Posner, and Jennifer Stone.

And, here’s a list of some of the events that happened throughout world history today.

1541 – The city of Santiago, Chile is founded by Pedro de Valdivia

1554 – Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason just one year after claiming the throne of England – for a total of nine days

1733 – James Oglethorpe founds the colony of Georgia (the last of the Thirteen Colonies), and also founds the first city in Georgia (Savannah)

1771 – Gustav III becomes the King of Sweden

1809 – English naturalist Charles Darwin and future American President Abraham Lincoln are both born on this date

1816 – The oldest working opera house in Europe (The Teatro di San Carlo) is destroyed by fire

1832 – Ecuador annexes the Galapagos Islands

1851 – Edward Hargreaves announces that he has found gold in Bathurst, Australia, kicking off the Australian gold rush

1855 – Michigan State University is founded

1894 – Anarchist Emile Henry throws a bomb inside Paris, France’s “Cafe Terminus”, killing one and injuring twenty

1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded

1914 – The first stone of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. is placed

1934 – The Austrian Civil War begins

1935 – USS Macon crashes into Pacific Ocean and sinks

1947 – A meteor crashes into the Soviet Union near Sikhote-Alin, leaving a large crater behind

1968 – Phong Nhi and Phong Nhat massacre

1974 – The 1970 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, is exiled from the Soviet Union

1976 – Actor Sal Mineo is stabbed in West Hollywood, and dies of his stab wounds at the age of 37

1990 – Carmen Lawrence becomes the first female Premier in Australian history

1994 – A group of four men break into the National Gallery of Norway and make off with Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”

1999 – Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial

2000 – Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz passes away in Santa Rosa, California at the age of 77, just one day before his final Peanuts strip runs

2002 – The trial of Slobodan Milosevic begins

2004 – San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom directs the city to begin granting licenses for same-sex marriages

2009 – Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashes into a house in Clarence Center, New York, killing one on the ground and all passengers aboard

2011 – The writer of this blog undergoes a critical surgery which saw him lose his entire gall bladder and one-quarter of his liver

(Hey, it’s important to me...why wouldn’t I celebrate it?  J )

2012 – A primary election is held in Venezuela to choose the opponent of Hugo Chavez

So, as you can see, that is a lot of history associated with the 12th of February.  But there’s one more event that I really want to talk about in greater detail.  And, this look back in the Tuesday Timeline this week is a story that is not a pleasant one to hear.  But as I talked about at the beginning of this blog entry...sometimes you have to look at some of the most disgusting events of our past in order to truly embrace the things that we all have now.



We’re going back to February 12, 1946 in this look back through time.  And this story begins in the state of South Carolina, where a young man named Isaac Woodard was making his way on a Greyhound bus to visit relatives in North Carolina.  He had boarded the bus from Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, and aside from an argument with the bus driver in which he requested to use a restroom the bus ride wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

That is, until the bus made a trip through the area now known as Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina, and an incident happened that would change Woodard’s life forever.

The bus driver had contacted the local police (which at that time included Chief of Police Linwood Shull), and the police boarded the bus with the purpose of forcibly removing Woodard from the bus.  The police had insisted on seeing Woodard’s discharge papers, as Woodard had been given an honorable discharge from the United States Army.

Just to backtrack a little bit before I continue with the story, Isaac Woodard served in the armed forces between 1942 and 1946, where he served as a longshoreman in a labor battalion.  During his time in the forces, he was bestowed several honours which included a battle star, a Good Conduct Medal, a Service Medal, and a World War II Victory Medal.  So, we have a real war hero in our tale.

So, how was this veteran treated by the police force back in 1946?  Well, once he was escorted off the bus, he was taken into an alleyway, repeatedly beaten with the nightsticks of the policemen, and arrested on the alleged charge of drinking beer in the back of the bus with other soldiers.


There were no reports of any provocation by Woodard to justify the amount of force that was used against him by the police officers who beat him, but one thing remained clear.  The attack caused Woodard enough damage that he was left with only mild recollections of what really happened that day.  What was worse, the attack left Woodard permanently blinded, due to the damage that was caused to his eyes after being repeatedly beaten.

The morning after the attack, Woodard was brought into the judge’s chambers, where he was fined fifty dollars after the judge ruled that he was guilty.  Still in rough shape, Woodard asked to see a doctor, and he eventually did...two days later!  He eventually did get some treatment at a South Carolina hospital, but by then, it was too late to reverse the damage caused to his eyes.

It actually took twenty-one days before any of Woodard’s relatives discovered him at the hospital, and was rushed immediately to an Army hospital to recover.

But this was one case that refused to die.  And with Woodard’s case being covered extensively in the media, and the NAACP campaigning for the state of South Carolina to address the issue, the public outcry began to grow from a whisper to a shout.


Woodard’s story became so huge that even broadcaster/filmmaker Orson Welles voiced his displeasure, openly calling for punishment against those who perpetrated the assault against Woodard, and also criticized the reaction of the Governor of South Carolina for attempting to sweep the case under the rug. 


Seven months after the attack on Woodard, on September 19, 1946, NAACP Executive Secretary Walter Francis White met with President Harry S Truman at the White House to discuss the case, and Truman reportedly exploded in a rage after he found out that the government of South Carolina did nothing to aid Woodard.  One day after that meeting, Truman composed a letter to Attorney General Tom C. Clark demanding that action be taken to address the state’s reluctance to take the case to trial, and less than a week later directed the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation on the case.

The case took a twist on October 2, 1946, when Shull and his officers were indicted in U.S. District Court in the city of Charleston, South Carolina.  Because the beating has occurred at a bus stop on federal property, and because Woodard was in uniform when the beating happened, the courts felt that there was enough reason to start up a trial. 

Unfortunately, the trial was a failure of epic proportions.

The trial (which was presided by Judge Julius Waties Waring) featured a local U.S. Attorney failing to interview any witnesses (aside from the bus driver who drove the bus that fateful February day in 1946).  This decision alone earned the wrath of Waring, who was a civil rights proponent.  In fact, Waring was later noted as making a statement that he was “disgusted by the hypocrisy of the government”.

The defense attorneys were no better in the case, with one even going so far as uttering racial slurs at Woodard...something that Judge Waring put a stop to almost immediately, and making comments to the jury that if they ruled against Shull, that South Carolina should secede from the union.

Shull, for his part, denied any wrongdoing after hearing Woodard testify as to what happened on February 12, 1946.  He claimed that Woodard had threatened to shoot him, and that was what provoked the attack.  He also admitted to repeatedly striking Woodard in his eyes.

Sounds open and shut, right?

The jury deliberated for thirty minutes before coming back with a “not guilty” verdict for Shull, despite his admission that he was responsible for blinding Woodard.  The failure to convict Shull was seen as a failure on the part of the Truman administration, and frankly, I would imagine that the verdict left behind a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths.  Though Truman would end up getting re-elected (barely) in 1948, he was still challenged because of his fight for civil rights, and his approval rating plummeted.

However, the case did inspire a couple of positive changes.


Truman promulgated Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, which was put in place to ban racial discrimination against soldiers of African-American descent in the Armed Forces.  The case of Isaac Woodard inspired Welles to make a film based on the events, 1958’s “Touch of Evil”.  And, Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded a song entitled “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard”, which he performed to a crowd of 36,000 people at Lewisohn Stadium, which netted him the loudest applause he had ever gotten in his whole career!

As for the key players in the case, Linwood Shull remained in Batesburg, South Carolina and died at the age of 95 in December 1997.  Isaac Woodard relocated to New York City shortly after the trial to live out the rest of his days.  He died on September 23, 1992 in The Bronx, New York at the age of 73.  He was buried with military honours at the Calverton National Cemetery in Calverton, New York.

What happened to Isaac Woodard in February 1946 was unimaginable, and incredibly unjust.  But what was most horrifying about the whole situation was that back then, this was considered to be absolutely normal!  Do any of you think that this would have happened had Woodard been white?  I have a hard time swallowing that one.

However, it was because of this incident that the Civil Rights Movement began to find its voice and make themselves heard.  And though it was too late to help Woodard, I’m sure that over the years that have passed since, there have been great steps to ensure that these events happen a lot less frequently.

Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world, and there are still cases of people being discriminated against because of the colour of their skin, or their sexuality, or something else that they have no control over.  But thanks to what happened with Isaac Woodard, people no longer have to suffer in silence.

I guess if you want to look at it this way, Woodard gave up his sight, so that others could find their voices.

And, that’s what happened on February 12, 1946.