Amos‘n’Andy

   The longest-running radio program in broadcast history, at the height of its success in the 1930s Amos ‘n’ Andy attracted audiences of 30 to 40 million and was aired six times a week. The show was written and first performed in 1928 in Chicago by two white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, playing the roles of African Americans in the style of old blackface comedy. It was broadcast nationally by NBC beginning in 1929 and by CBC beginning in 1939. The show moved to television in 1951, where it became the first television program with an all-black cast. However, its portrayal of demeaning racial stereotypes always attracted criticism, first from the Pittsburgh Courier and other black newspapers in the 1930s, and later from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The protests helped bring the program to an end in 1953.