A collection of essays by academic scholars and media critics, “Sacred Sisterhoods: A Celebration of Black Women's Friendships on Television and in Film” is for Imani M. Cheers "a mirror for black women to see themselves in their totality and in all the nuances and complexities that they said they don't often see on television and film."
Cheers, associate professor of digital storytelling in the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs and editor of the just-released book, calls the project "a love letter.”
“It's an homage,” Cheers said. “I told each of the essayists they could write about anything they want. It was a kind of open call, and the work that came in was so powerful and poignant."
GW Today sat down with Cheers to discuss what authors discovered in television and film's characterization of friendships and relationships among Black women. The authors start with the premise that sisterhood has a special meaning for Black women and is a kind of sacred covenant among women of African ancestry, friendships that transcend traditional understandings of friendship. As authors Kandace Harris and Marquita Gammage wrote in the chapter "Best Friends Forever," these relationships are nurturing, supportive, noncompetitive and accountable among women who are often under threat because of "racial trauma that threatens our capacity to connect."
“Sacred Sisterhood” covers the explosion in television programming and film that showcases the lives of Black women and their relationships, the expanding role of Black women in the creation of content that delves into those friendships and the impact on audiences. These developments are traced back to powerful broadcast pioneers who arose in the wake of the Kerner Commission, the 1968 national advisory commission on civil disorder, which recommended integrating more coverage of African Americans in media.
"We began to see more representation of Black folks on TV and careers for Black women rising out of recommendations for greater participation in what was originally called the National Education Television, NET network, which broadcast from 1954 to 1970, the predecessor to PBS," Cheers said.
She writes about Black women such as Dorothy Brunson, in the Baltimore area, who used financial and managerial proficiency to salvage and purchase several radio stations, setting her on the path to becoming the first African American to own a television station; Cathy Hughes, from Nebraska, who later purchased WOL-AM radio station in Washington, D.C., and created the Quiet Storm radio format; and Sheila Johnson, who co-founded BET on cable television.
As a television scholar, Cheers said she has studied the "creative tandem of social and political strides" that parallel Black women's advancement in television and films, the election to the U.S. House of Representatives of Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan during the 1960s and '70s along with the progress inspired by the civil rights and feminist movements.
At each step, from media ownership to facing the camera to writing and directing, the stereotypical image of Black women as a single, poor and often angry figure has been retired. In their place, audiences were introduced to Starfleet Lt. Nyota Uhura in Star Trek, the beautiful, widowed single mother and nurse, Julia, played by Diahann Carroll, and the heroic figure in "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" as portrayed by Cicely Tyson—significant departures from roles as maid, housekeeper and streetwalker to which Black women had been relegated.
The essayists offer a breadth of examples, singling out 1970s sitcoms as the first to present Black people in more realistic and complex ways, drawing them into relationships with other Black people. Norman Lear is credited with "reclaiming actors," such as Esther Rolle, who transitioned from being a maid in the sitcom "Maude" to playing a wife and stay-at-home mother in "Good Times," surrounded by neighbors and a close friend, businesswoman Willona Woods, played by Ja'Net DuBois.
The height of Black representation in television for Cheers was the mid-1990s. "The Cosby Show,” “Family Matters,” The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “Living Single” and “Martin;” and the impact of Keenan Ivory Wayans, the producer of “In Living Color” and sketch comedy on cable, with Def Comedy Jam. "We had sitcoms, variety shows and comedies,” Cheers said. “It was a boom that led us into the 2000s. What that meant for me was seeing myself on television and the reason I became an academic, a professor and a storyteller to this day."
Black women as stand-alone figures, the girlfriend or sidekick, grew into women, sisters, with their own entourage who from one episode to the next sorted out the travails of imagined and real-life Black women in which friendships and romantic troubles often drove the plot.
The chapter "Rupture and Repair" by Andrene M. Taylor focuses on sisterhood with an analysis of "Girlfriends," built around conflicts that arise among four close friends. The central focus is the character Joan, an attorney played by Tracee Ellis Ross, joined by her legal assistant, her childhood friend and their college mate, with a male friend, "the fifth girlfriend," filling out the cast. The storylines often revolve around competition for dates, snarky insults and money issues that are resolved usually by show's end through a Black feminist code acted out in "all the subtle, knowing glances and subversive eye contact; the power of being face to face; gathering together at the table and sharing a meal" that leads to healing and repair.
The characters that began to emerge are evidence of Black women owning their story, Cheers said. Debbie Allen started out in "Fame" as a choreographer and went on to direct that show and others, including "A Different World" and "Grey's Anatomy," a production of Shonda Rhimes, whose foray into television began as an intern to an established Black film producer.
"When Black women are in the writer's room, when Black women are the show runners, when Black women are the actresses, that's a trifecta of authenticity that has been missing," she said.
The current generation of creatives—Quinta Brunson, Brunson, who writes and produces "Abbott Elementary," and Issa Rae, whose YouTube series "Awkward Black Girl" was the steppingstone to the HBO hit "Insecure," in which GW alum Yvonne Orji costars as her best friend—seem intent on carrying on the sisterhood of Black women in television and film.
For Cheers, the last episode in that series served as "a revelation that of all the relationships during the five seasons, the real love story was between these two best friends. That is what we as authors wanted to celebrate, that Black women friendships are sacred and that they are central and integral to our daily lives."