Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness

Originally broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens series, Llewellyn Smith's documentary focuses on the controversial sociological work of Melville J. Herskovits (1895–1963), whose research into African culture and its connections to African-American society created the foundation for academia's approach to black studies. In 1948, Herskovits founded the African studies program at Northwestern University, the first of its kind. His books, most notably The Myth of the Negro Past (1941), challenged the then-popular racist notions of nonexistent or painfully primitive cultural development among people of color. While Herskovits opened the debate on questions relating to racial identity—the Black Panthers would later cite his work as a foundation for their movement—he received mixed and often rancorous reception from African-American scholars, most notably W.E.B. DuBois and E. Franklin Frazier, who questioned his motives and theories. The son of immigrant Austrian Jews, Herskovits also faced anti-Semitic prejudice from supposedly learned academic peers, and the film wonders whether this experience shaped the focus of his studies, but never truly provides a conclusive answer (although Herskovits was once an aspiring rabbi, he abandoned Judaism after World War I military service, so the harping here on his religion seems somewhat overstated). While the documentary features a selection of clips from Herskovits' anthropological films—taken during trips through Africa and the Caribbean—very little of his writing is quoted, making this portrait feel more like a half-told story. Optional. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)