It was an amazing journey down memory lane watching clips from Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Red Foxx, Flip Wilson, Nipsy Russell, etc. and all the way back to the first notorious, trivial and scarred black comedians named Lincoln Perry aka Stepin Fetchit. Personally, I had never heard of him however a friend of mine had and his story was most remarkable even though he has been dubbed "the laziest man in the world". His rise to fame and millionaire status undoubtedly paved the road for future black entertainers however, he paid an embarrassing and demeaning price. One that would leave a legacy of abandonment of his works as entertainment art and although he was extremely intelligent, he was an opportunist of the times. The catch was that he had to conform to the beliefs of white society of the 1920's and 1930's and that was through the ridicule of his minstrel character. The following article briefly depicts a bittersweet account of the success and demise of Lincoln Perry's climb to fame and fall from grace in the hands of the NAACP and Hollywood.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5245089
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