Stepin Fetchit

Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry was the birth name of the first black American actor in Hollywood, Stepin Fetchit.

Born on May 30th 1892 (although he preferred to say he was born in 1902) in Key West, Florida, USA, Stepin became known for his degrading portrayals of black people on screen. His humble and ingratiating style of acting became the stereotype for black actors during the early years of cinema.
Up until the age of 12, Stepin attended a Catholic boarding school before starting work with the Royal American Shows plantation reviews. He then joined the vaudeville circuit along with his friend, Ed Lee. They performed a minstrel act called 'Step n Fetchit: Two Dancing Fools', and it was rumoured he took his stage name of Fetchit from a favourite racehorse. In the early 1920s, Stepin decided to go solo.
When he got to Hollywood, Stepin got roles in which he played slow, dim-witted fools characterised by bugging out eyes and slow speech. Stepin did however have superb timing and excellent comic know-how and this won him the admiration of people such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. He gained a lot of positive reviews from white critics, but black people hated his portrayal of his race. It got to the point that at the height of his career, many civil rights groups protested against his roles.
Fox Films signed Stepin to a lucrative contract and he was kept busy being featured alongside white stars such as Will Rogers. He had one starring role during his time with Fox and that was in the movie 'Hearts in Dixie' (1930) that featured an all black cast.
Due to his success as an actor, Stepin had a very extravagant lifestyle, which included him owning 16 cars at one time. Sadly in 1947, he declared bankruptcy.
Between 1927 and 1976, Stepin appeared in over 40 films including 'In Old Kentucky' (1927), 'Show Boat' (1929), 'Miracle in Harlem' (1934) and 'Steamboat Round The Bend' (1935) to name just a few.
During the 1960s, Stepin converted to Islam and became a Muslim. He still defended his work suing CBS in 1970 for defamation of character when the network showed clips of his films that he felt were out of context.
Stepin died in Woodland Hills, California, USA on November 19th 1985 and not much is known about his personal life and whether he had a wife and children. It's sad that his film roles portrayed black people in such a negative light, but then we have to realise that at that time, would Hollywood have given decent roles to a black actor?
In the aftermath of slavery, the views held by white people on blacks were no doubt still ignorant and as such, they would expect those types of characteristics to be inherent in any role played by a black actor in a movie. As such, we have to recognise that although Stepin Fetchit compounded the stereotypical views of blacks for the time, he also started the ball rolling for the black actors we see in Hollywood today.


Sources:http://www.imdb.com/M/person-exact?Fetchit,%20Stepinhttp://www.africana.com/Articles/tt_087.htm