! 456! traditional parties. It granted equal time and serious attention to Black Panthers, Black Nationalists, and Black Separatists.93 One of the program’s most powerful interviews was with the singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte. Days before his appearance on the show, Belafonte penned a stinging critique in the pages of the New York Times. Belafonte’s April 21, 1968 editorial lambasted the nation’s media outlets and their treatment of African Americans. No stranger to shining a light on media intolerance, Belafonte argued that for African Americans, television was, [a] medium . dominated by white-supremacy concepts and racist attitudes. TV excludes the reality of Negro life, with all its grievances, passions, and aspirations, because to depict that life would be to indict (or perhaps enrich?) much of what is now white America and its institutions.94 Days later, in an interview with Jim Lowry and local young people, Belafonte continued his admonishment of the national media. He cited Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s shoestring budget and dismal broadcast times as further evidence of the power of the white media to control black expression. Calling for the removal of filters that presented sanitized !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 93 Writer-Producer Charles Hobson helped save the series from certain extinction after he met a former producer of the series at a Ford Foundation event. The two men discussed the uncertain resting place of the original episodes. This conversation set Hobson into motion. He eventually tracked the series down to a New York warehouse. The manager of the site knew that the material was important and set it aside so that it would not be destroyed. The series has been transferred and digitized. Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s remaining twenty-three episodes, several commercials, and unaired performances and interviews can be found at the Paley Center For Media’s Archival Collection in New York City. 94 Harry Belafonte, “Belafonte: ‘Look, They Tell Me, Don’t Rock the Boat,’” New York Times, April 21, 1968, D21. Just three days earlier, CBS announced its intention to add African Americans to its new shows. See: Robert Windeler, “C.B.S. Will Seek To Add Negroes: Network Planning To Pay For New-Show Development,” New York Times, April 19, 1968, 95. Belafonte recounted an incident from March of the same year in which advertising officials stormed off the set of a television special he was taping because Petula Clark, a white woman, touched Belafonte’s arm during a duet. See: “The Touch,” Newsweek, March 18, 1968, 93, Robert E. Dallos, “Incident at TV Taping Irks Belafonte,” New York Times, March 7, 1968, 87. Responses to Belafonte’s editorial can be found in: Charles Alston, “Letter to the Editor: Some Bravos for Belafonte,” New York Times, May 5, 1968, D21, Mrs. Thomas R. Long, “Letter to the Editor: Sudden Fury,” New York Times, May 5, 1968, D21, Charles Baskerville, “Letter to the Editor: Hypocritical,” New York Times, May 5, 1968, D21, .