ABSTRACT
In the fall of 1999, the then-new television schedule was announced and “none of the twenty-six new fall programs starred an African American in a leading role, and few featured minorities in secondary roles” (Williams, 2000, p. 100). This absence caused the National Council of La Raza to organize a protest called a “National Brownout” in which they advised their members to refrain from watching television during the week of September 12, 1999 (Fletcher, 1999; Kolker, 1999). At the same time, Kweisi Mfume, the President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),1 threatened a boycott and legal action against the networks’ broadcasting licenses based on the belief that the networks were violating the 1934 Communications Act. The major networks scrambled to add actors of color to their previously all-White shows.
