Amos N' Andy

There were two distinct versions of Amos 'n' Andy, one the logical outgrowth of the other. The version that most baby boomers saw on television in the early to mid-'50s with an all-Black cast (a broadcasting first, incidentally) was the second version, one of the medium's earliest sitcoms. As the old joke goes, there were two versions of the African-American comedy team of Amos 'n' Andy, and one of them wasn't. The original version of the team was the brainchild of white comedians Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden, who played the characters -- both on-stage and on radio -- in...