Beulah Goes Gardening: The Mammy Stereotypes

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Recommended: Racial Tensions in 1920s America

The Beulah Show, airing on ABC in the early 1950s, is the first sitcom to star an African American actress who plays as a maid to the Henderson family (Bronstein). In the episode “Beulah goes Gardening”, the Henderson discuss Beulah’s demanding workload―housework and gardening―after realizing Beulah did all of their gardening. Beulah tells Oriole, her friend, about her rosebush problem, and the next morning, Beulah sasses Bill, her boyfriend, into helping her. While the show may seem revolutionary with an African American actress and an innocent representation of a 1950s family, this show in reality demonstrates the harmfulness of the lack of diversity and misrepresentation on television. Tropes like “Mammy” and the “sassy black woman” are …show more content…

The Mammy stereotype however comes from the Deep South to make slavery appear as beneficial for blacks and demonstrate that blacks enjoy being subservient to whites (Bronstein). Not only does this stereotype have racist connotations, it further shows how deeply ingrained slavery was in American culture and the inequality that existed during this …show more content…

To further show the injustice African Americans experience, African Americans and several other minority groups were barred from buying houses in desirable neighborhoods because African Americans, single white women, and elderly couples did not fit the ideal white middle class suburban family image (Haralovich, 76). The Hendersons are nicely dressed up for dinner―Alice is wearing a fancy dress and Harry is in a suit― in the pleasantly decorated dining room. Meanwhile, Beulah and Bill are less put together and less perfect; they are depicted eating in the plain kitchen wearing ordinary clothes. In addition, this recreates the slave and slave owner relationship from the Antebellum period. Indirectly supporting segregation, this shows the discrimination African Americans faced despite the massive efforts by various organizations to fight for equality. Beulah will never be shown eating with the Hendersons because her role is to be the maid: she is their employee, not their friend. However, because she is the Mammy, she will never pose a threat to the father’s masculinity or the family’s authority over

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