Headline: Forest Whitaker Delivers Oscar-Quality Performance in Emotionally-Searing Civil Rights Saga

Eugene Allen (1919-2010) served eight presidents over the course of an enduring career in the White House during which he rose from the position of Pantry Man to Head Butler by the time he retired in 1986. In that capacity, the African-American son of a sharecropper felt privileged to be an eyewitness to history, since his tenure coincided with the implementation of most of the landmark pieces of legislation dismantling the Jim Crow system of racial segregation.

Directed by two-time Oscar-nominee Lee Daniels, The Butler is a father-son biopic relating events in Allen’s life as they unfolded against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement. This fictionalized account features Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker in the title role as Cecil Gaines, and his A-list supporting cast includes fellow Oscar-winners Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Williams and Melissa Leo, as well as nominees Terrence Howard and Oprah Winfrey.

From its formation in the late 19th Century until well into the 1940s, Major League Baseball operated in accordance with an unwritten rule that the sport was to remain strictly segregated. The tacit understanding among the owners stipulated that no Blacks were to be signed by any clubs, thereby frustrating the aspirations of many African-Americans who dreamed of playing professionally.

In the wake of World War II, however, this untenable state of affairs came to rankle Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), a man who fervently felt that to remain the national pastime, baseball needed to integrate. After all, thousands upon thousands of African-American soldiers were returning home to widespread discrimination based on skin color despite having been willing to die for their country in the conflict overseas.

So, in 1945, Rickey decided to challenge the status quo by being the first GM to put a Black ballplayer on the field. However, he also suspected that pursuit of that landmark moment might be met with considerable resistance, given the virulent strains of racism still running rampant through much of the nation.

Keep the faith, baby! is the title of the 2002 film (directed by Doug McHenry) about the life and times of the first Black New York Congressperson, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., starring Harry Lennix and Vanessa Williams.  “Keep the faith, baby!” was the favorite saying of this charismatic, revolutionary leader of Harlem, and much of Black America, in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. Surely Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.’s motto must have kept his son, Adam Clayton Powell IV, going as he doggedly strove for ten long years to get his father’s story told. The film is a masterpiece. However, I remember thinking when I first sat down to watch it, “Here we go again, another Hollywood flick purporting to tell our story, but with the obligatory subtle little twists and digs to distort and demean us.” It was no such thing. It is as straight and pure a history of the man and his times as you could want to see.

The CDs are not presented in any particular order. You can find most of them on www.amazon.com , .ca or www.barnesandnoble.com.