Back in February on the 29th I attended Cortland’s Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Ann K. McClellan’s presentation on Sherlock Holmes and the characters ties to Black Americans. Titled “The Sherlock Holmes You Never Knew: Black American Adaptations Then and Now.” The presentation, located in the colloquium of Old Main, highlighted the fame of the classic character of Sherlock Holmes and how Sherlock Holmes has had little-known differential representation aside from being an older white British male detective. She begun by discussing the character of Sherlock Holmes and how he has been the most portrayed character of all time, seen across films, stories, plays, etc. And through a majority of these renditions, Sherlock Holmes has been predominantly a white male, and has carried a remarkably white fanbase. It was noted that race had never been much of a question in regard to these stories, it was often unspecified or just assumed he was a white British male.
After McClellan’s extensive research, she claimed (from what she could find) that the first known record of a black Sherlock Holmes was written in the first African American stage musical on Broadway titled “In Dahomey” in 1903. The performance originally starred Bert Williams as “Shylock ‘Shy’ Homestead” and George W Walker as “Rareback Pinkerton.” These characters, of course, were in place of Sherlock and his trusty comedic sidekick John Watson. The show went on to tour the US and the UK, even preforming at Buckingham Palace for King Edward VII. Amidst our reading and studying of “A Raisin in the Sun,” I thought this was interesting in that it emphasized performance art, like musicals and plays, as another monumental piece in African American culture and recognition in and advocation for equality. “In Dahomey” was imbedded with anti-colonialist ideas, just as well “A Raisin in the Sun” was created not only for entertainment, but to highlight the struggling lives of African Americans, and create a reference to art in moving toward a freer, more liberated nation for all.
In concluding her presentation, a large part of the discussion was focused on the present-day rewritings and interpretations of the Sherlock Holmes character. McClellan looked at examples of fan fiction stories written on various public websites where anyone and everyone can publish their own renditions of their most favorited stories. One website, “Archive of Our Own,” has Sherlock Holmes listed within the top five most-written and developed storyline subjects published on the site. Yet, what I found most interesting was that through hundreds of thousands of stories, and many refined subject searches in the Sherlock Holmes realm of publications, approximately fifteen out of the thousands of fan fictions were based on an African American Sherlock, or a Sherlock of another race. So in a modern world where writing any situation or storyline is possible, and the possibility for a black Sherlock to exist, very few actually come to represent Sherlock other than a white British man. I thought this low representation for such a popular character was very shocking. It is disheartening to see that, even in a modern day where things are more reformed, there is still lack of representation in the black community.
