NONFICTION - Aug. 4, 1991

THE ADVENTURES OF AMOS ‘N’ ANDY: A Social History of an American Phenomenon by Melvin Patrick Ely (The Free Press: $22.95; 322 pp.). The early 1930s was the first time America could measure its enthusiasm for a media event clearly: stores, restaurants and movie theaters were empty as people stayed home to listen to the radio adventures of African-American men from the rural South who were making their way in the big city. As author Ely tells us in this expertly researched social history, the white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who played Amos and Andy, were linear if sophisticated descendants of a then-100-year-old tradition of white performers darkening their skin to play blacks. The nation’s awareness of race shifted during the 20 years of “Amos ‘n’ Andy’s” popularity, as did its media technology, so that when CBS put the program on television in 1951, many black groups protested what they termed the racial stereotypes fostered by the show, and it was forced off the air. The irony was that all its actors were African-Americans.