Today, February 29th, 2023 at 6 PM in Old Main on the Second floor in the Colloquium Room, SUNY Cortland Provost Ann McClellan provided the audience a presentation of facts and ideas calling the idea that Sherlock Holmes throughout history is almost always portrayed as a straight white male and that’s who we picture in our minds when someone says the name out loud. However, she challenged that agenda with evidence in film and records saved and published back in the 1910s and 1920s showing movies that portrayed and cast African Americans instead of the typical Caucasian white male. I found this part extremely interesting because I never knew there was ever a movie or a book where Sherlock Holmes was portrayed as an African American. Provost Ann McClellan explained that the reason we had just seen Sherlock Holmes depicted as an African American just now and not earlier in our lives was due to systematic racism. In the 1900s, especially the earlier parts, Hollywood and movie producers tried their absolute best to stay away from casting African Americans into roles as a way to avoid controversy with the public. It was seen as better to suppress African Americans from equal opportunity in the film industry than it was to take backlash casting them. Since film producers didn’t want to cast African Americans to play roles in movies or films, they decided to have white characters use dark makeup and burnt cork on their faces to make themselves look African American. This was extremely offensive because the white people who used black faces would use it as a method to mock and make African Americans look unintelligent and uncivilized.
Despite backlash and hatred from those with racism, the post-Reconstruction Era led to an increase in race films trying to show the everyday lives of an African American family living a normal life just as a white family would instead of the rude stereotypes that white people using black faces tried depicting them as. Phillip Brogdon was a big Sherlock Holmes fan. He was the first ever African American to be selected to be a part of the mostly white Sherlock Holmes society also known as the Baker Street Irregulars. He wrote a short text titled “ Sherlock in Black” challenging the idea that race and color define the human and not the character despite novels of African American versions of Sherlock Holmes books having them wear the same outfit as the white Sherlock Holmes. The first ever Sherlock Holmes that had an African American playing the lead role was in 1903. It helped connect with the Harlem Renaissance because of the music and the sense of unification through dancing and singing and not color. Later on, filmmakers tried to use a method called color-blind casting which meant that people who would be in the movies would not be able to be picked based on race or color and they would be completely random. This was seen as a way to balance or make everyone have more of an equal opportunity.
