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Amos 'n' Andy is an American radio and television sitcom set in Harlem, Manhattan's historic black community. The original radio show, which was popular from 1928 until 1960, was created, written and voiced by two white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who played a number of different characters, including the titular Amos Jones (Gosden) and Andrew Hogg Brown (Correll).

When the show moved to television, black actors took over the majority of the roles; white characters were infrequent. Amos 'n' Andy began as one of the first radio comedy series and originated from station WMAQ in Chicago. After the first broadcast in 1928, the show became a hugely popular radio series. Early episodes were broadcast from the El Mirador Hotel in Palm Springs, California.^[3]:168–71 The show ran as a nightly radio serial (1928–43), as a weekly situation comedy (1943–55).

Amos Jones and Andy Brown worked on a farm near Atlanta, Georgia, and during the first week's episodes, they made plans to find a better life in Chicago, despite warnings from a friend. With four ham-and-cheese sandwiches and $24, they bought train tickets and headed for Chicago, where they lived in a rooming house on State Street and experienced some rough times before launching their own business, the Fresh Air Taxi Company.^[8] (The first car they acquired had no roof; the pair turned it into a selling point.) By 1930, the noted toy maker Louis Marx and Company was offering a tin wind-up version of the auto, with Amos and Andy inside.^[19] The toy company produced a special autographed version of the toy as gifts for American leaders, including Herbert Hoover.^[20] There was also a book, All About Amos 'n' Andy and Their Creators, in 1929 by Correll and Gosden (reprinted in 2007 and 2008),^[21][22] and a comic strip in the Chicago Daily News.^[11]

Naive but honest Amos was hard-working, and, after his marriage to Ruby Taylor in 1935, a dedicated family man. Andy was a gullible dreamer with overinflated self-confidence who tended to let Amos do most of the work. Their Mystic Knights of the Sea lodge^[23] leader, George "Kingfish" Stevens, would often try to lure the two into get-rich-quick schemes or to tricking them into some kind of trouble. Other characters included John Augustus "Brother" Crawford, an industrious but long-suffering family man; Henry Van Porter, a social-climbing real estate and insurance salesman; Frederick Montgomery Gwindell, a hard-charging newspaperman; Algonquin J. Calhoun, a somewhat crooked lawyer added to the series in 1949, six years after its conversion to a half-hour situation comedy; William Lewis Taylor, the well-spoken, college-educated father of Amos's fiancée; and Willie "Lightning" Jefferson, a slow-moving Stepin Fetchit–type character.^[8] The Kingfish's catchphrase "Holy mackerel!" soon entered the American lexicon.

Controversy
The first sustained protest against the program found its inspiration in the December 1930 issue of Abbott's Monthly, when Bishop W. J. Walls of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church wrote an article sharply denouncing Amos 'n' Andy, singling out the lower-class characterizations and the "crude, repetitious and moronic" dialogue. The Pittsburgh Courier was the second largest African-American newspaper at the time, and publisher Robert L. Vann expanded Walls' criticism into a full-fledged crusade during a six-month period in 1931.^[39]
The paper, among other publicly stated efforts, published a petition to get the program pulled from the air, with a stated goal of one million signatures. While many prominent African-American newspapers refused to back the drive, the Courier found support from Bishop Walls, the National Association of Colored Waiters and Hotel Employees and several African-American fraternal orders. The NAACP national office declined to endorse the protest, although some of its local chapters stood behind the effort. Before the campaign was dropped, the paper claimed to have 675,000 names on its petition, although the figure was never independently verified. Gosden and Correll never commented on the Courier's efforts.^{[citation needed]}
Broadcast historian Elizabeth McLeod argues that the characterizations in the daily serial version were actually much more sympathetic and rounded than those of other shows of the period,^[8] which perpetuated nineteenth-century minstrel show stereotypes and did not equal the immense success of Amos 'n' Andy. Examples include the blackface act by the Two Black Crows, who did two-man comedy routines in vaudeville, short subjects and comedy records, and minstrel headliner Emmett Miller, who recorded a series of popular songs for Okeh Records in the late 1920s.^{[citation needed]}

It can also be noted that Andy and Kingfish's use of malapropisms (i.e. misuse of vocabulary) had been a comedic staple for centuries and was employed by a number of white comedians of the day, including Chico Marx, Lou Costello and Leo Gorcey.^{[citation needed]}

Gosden was born in Richmond, Virginia, the son of Emma L. (Smith) and Walter W. Gosden, Sr.^[3] During World War I, he served in the United States Navy as a wireless operator, which prompted his great interest in the young medium of radio. While attending school in Richmond, Gozzie worked part-time in Tarrant's Drug Store at 1 West Broad Street.
In 1921, Gosden first teamed up with Charles Correll to do radio work, presenting comedy acts, sketches, and hosting variety shows. They met in Durham, North Carolina, both working for the Joe Bren Producing Company. Their first regular show came in 1925 with their WEBH^[4] Chicago show Correll and Gosden, the Life of the Party. On this show, the two told jokes, sang, and played music (Correll played piano and Gosden banjo).^[5]
In 1926, Gosden and Correll had a hit with their radio show Sam 'n' Henry on Chicago radio station WGN. Sam & Henry is considered by some historians to have been the first situation comedy.
From 1928 to 1960, Gosden and Correll broadcast their Amos 'n' Andy show, which was one of the most famous and popular shows on radio in the 1930s. Gosden voiced the characters "Amos", "George 'Kingfish' Stevens", "Lightning", "Brother Crawford", and some dozen other characters.^[6]

Charles James Correll (February 2, 1890 – September 26, 1972) was an American radio comedian, best known for his work on the Amos 'n' Andy show with Freeman F. Gosden. Correll voiced the central character of Andy Brown, along with various supporting characters. Correll was born in Peoria, Illinois. Before teaming up with Gosden, he worked as a stenographer and a bricklayer. The two men met in Durham, North Carolina while working for the Joe Bren Producing Company.^[2] Both Correll and Freeman vacationed at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in the 1930s and would broadcast Amos 'n' Andy from there.^[3] From 1928 to 1934, the team never took a vacation away from their radio show.^[4] To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Amos 'n' Andy on the air, the broadcast of March 19, 1958 was done by Correll and Gosden using their real voices and calling each other by their real names; this had never been done on the show before.^[5]
Correll's first marriage to Marie Janes headed for divorce court on May 26, 1937; the couple had been married for ten years and had no children.^[6][7] On September 11, 1937 in Glendale, California, he married Alyce McLaughlin, a former dancer;^[8] they had six children, Dorothy, Charles, Barbara, John, and Richard.^[3] On July 5, 1954, John Correll, his seven-year-old son, died of what appeared to be an accidental poisoning.^[9] An autopsy determined the young boy died of an acute kidney infection.^[10] A baby girl born to the couple in 1939 died when she was less than a day old.^[11]
Correll died in a Chicago hospital following a heart attack; at the time of his death he was retired and living in Beverly Hills, California, just a few blocks away from his radio partner, Freeman Gosden.^[3][12][13]

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