Welcome to the first edition of #InTheMiddleWithLouisHilton, a segment where I share my research on culture, politics, labor and organized crime in the 1920s-1980s Midwest. This edition focuses on culture, the comedic genius of Redd Foxx, and his pioneering show, Sanford and Son. The groundbreaking sitcom premiered 52 years ago today on January 14, 1972.

Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson in Sanford and Son. *Photo by NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal*

Growing up my favorite network was TV Land. I watched it all: Green Acres with Gsa Gsa Gabor; All in the Family with Archie Bunker; I Dream of Jeannie; Gilligan’s Island; Leave it to Beaver; The Brady Bunch; The Jeffersons; Good Times; I Love Lucy, Cheers; Bewitched; Happy Days; Father Knows Best; and The Andy Griffith Show. TV Land is also where I fell in love with Cher on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.

I love sitcoms and the comedians who star in them. Guaranteed laughs in thirty minutes? Count me in. I find the sitcom genre masterful because, in thirty minutes, you can turn on the television, laugh, destress and check in with characters who begin to feel like family. I love comedy because it holds a mirror up to society, reflecting the good and the bad. Most of all, I love comedy for the historical archive it provides. I view sitcoms as a form of oral history.

I began writing this piece on November 18th, before the December 5th death of Norman Lear, the famed producer of our nation’s most popular sitcoms. There is little doubt we have Norman Lear to thank for the popularity of the genre. He brought not only political and social awareness to American living rooms, but also, in my opinion, the lived experiences of Black Americans to homes across America. In doing so, Lear made us laugh while making us understand each other a little better. Rest in Peace Norman Lear.

One of Lear’s most famous works is Sanford and Son, the groundbreaking sitcom featuring Redd Foxx that premiered on this day 52 years ago. In this first edition of #IntheMiddleWithLouisHilton, I want to shine a light on Foxx, an unabashed son of the Midwest, and one of the world’s comedic greats.

On its surface, Sanford and Son is about a junk salesman, his son and the family business, but it represents so much more. For the past few months, I have been rewatching the show from start to finish. As I watch, I am transported back in time to the precarious and culture-shifting 1970s United States. As a nation, we were not far removed from the civil rights era, segregation of space and people, and landmark legislation meant to right centuries of immoral wrongs. We were still healing from the loss of many: innumerable lives in Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and countless civil rights martyrs like Muhammad Ali’s first lawyer Alberta Jones, murdered in Kentucky. Additionally, school integration continued as school districts across the nation continually defied the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision; our metropolitan areas were also going through massive changes after the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Watergate was afoot. The decade’s synonymity with counterculture is indisputable as cultural norms were being shifted, reimagined and overturned.

Amid this cultural maelstrom, enters Sanford and Son in 1972. In the show, Fred, played by Redd Foxx, lives in Watts, Los Angeles, but he is originally from Saint Louis, Missouri. This reflects Foxx’s actual life, originally from Saint Louis and raised in Chicago, Redd Foxx would relocate to Harlem, New York, and eventually Los Angeles. Yet, he was always unapologetically midwestern, and his midwestern roots and upbringing were a theme throughout the show.

For instance, Redd Foxx is the only person I know who has referenced and eaten a snoot on television. What is a snoot you ask? Outside of East Saint Louis and Saint Louis, they are not well-known. But as a kid, a trip to East Saint was not complete until my grandfather welcomed us to the city with a brown paper bag of snoots and a bag of orange sodas. A pig snoot is the pig’s nose that is grilled to a crisp and drenched in barbeque sauce. Having a snoot in my mother’s hometown was commonplace, but looking back, I love the uniqueness of it, and the ode it lends to the meat packing, slaughterhouse and hog industries that bolstered many Midwestern cities like East Saint Louis. In season four, episode six of Sanford and Son, Foxx references this delicacy. In the episode, he is holding a bowl and a character in the show asks: “What is that?” Fred responds:

“This is pig feet, pig snoot - see the one with the holes in it? That’s snoot. Sardines, oysters and a quart and a half of mayonnaise and a smidgen of garlic.”

The friend then asks: “What do you call it?”

Fred responds: “The Mayo Clinic.”

That was Redd Foxx as Fred Sanford. Delivering irreverent punch line after punch line, with a dose of nostalgia. So Midwestern.

Foxx’s Midwestern roots and how they showed up in his comedy, is what I enjoy the most about his work. His often cantankerous tone, belligerent demeanor, and inflammatory wordplay, are a reflection of his life and the times he endured.

Remember, this is Redd Foxx, born in 1922 Missouri, the land of promise for his parents who migrated from their hometowns of Kentucky and Mississippi. And having been born in the North’s “Show-Me State,” many would surmise that Foxx fared better than his Southern ancestors; he endured austere prejudice and rigid segregation all the same. The north still had a color line and Foxx grew up in a time where traversing it could get you killed. In Foxx’s Midwestern world, you simply operated within the segregated landscape that was mandated to you, and you developed your customs and biases as a result. Therefore, when I watch the show, as he delivers his bigoted retorts and uncompromising punch lines, on the surface, they are insular and intolerant, but I see a Black man raised in an environment when bigotry and prejudice were codified in the law.

Also, I admire Redd Foxx for his steadfast belief in his self-worth and his penchant for instilling it in his fellow comics (there are countless stories about how he served as a mentor to rising comics like Pryor and Mr. Miyagi). There are a handful of episodes in the third season where Sanford’s character is absent. Foxx wanted an ownership stake in the series; NBC refused, so he walked off the show. Eventually, Foxx got his way: $25,000 per episode and 25% of producer profits. However, I still enjoy the episodes where Foxx is not present because his friends, who are show regulars, get their moment to shine: LaWanda Page, Whitman Mayo, and Slappy White to name a few. According to Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by David Henry and Joe Henry, LaWanda Page, who played Bible-thumping Aunt Esther, was Foxx’s childhood friend who was raised in East Saint Louis. Page, Foxx, and one of my all-time favorite comedians, Richard Pryor, played at the Faust Club together in East Saint Louis.

In Furious Cool, the authors also note that Pryor’s:

“Path led him through a dizzying patchwork of transient Americana, from touring all-black clubs on the midwestern Chitlin’ Circuit . . . [to] crossing paths with ‘X-rated comics such as Redd Foxx.”

I love this quote. When I read it I am transported to middle America when industry, smoke, and grime signaled opportunity; where jook joints, hole-in-the-wall clubs, and pool halls were abundant. We must remember that America was born and melded from iron, steel and ore, and the Midwest’s packing and slaughterhouses were in full swing. In terms of Foxx’s X-rated label, this is true at a surface level. I simply contend that his art was a reflection of the segregated world he was raised in and which he was forced to navigate and thrive in nonetheless.

As I thought about Foxx’s life and career, I was not content with what I initially uncovered in my research; I wanted to know more. From what I can gather, there is no comprehensive biography, autobiography or documentary on Redd Foxx. So, I turned to a source that used to be ubiquitous: newspapers. Remember those? Delivered on your doorstep and consumed with your breakfast, they hearken back to a time when we all consumed the same news, at the same time, every day. I was curious to see what Redd Foxx news people in the Midwest consumed back in the day. And because Louis Hilton is part time capsule, a major portion of #InTheMiddleWithLouisHilton will include me recounting the research I unearth in the digital archives of Midwestern newspapers, dailies and weeklies. Below are a few quotes, summaries and my shorthand notes of The Michigan Chronicle’s coverage of Foxx. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past as much as I did!

“If You Can Straighten Up: Redd Foxx Wows Em’ with Special Brand of Humor” (February 12, 1960).

The article declares that: comedy is making a comeback” and mentions “the equally significant development [of] the field of Negro humor.”
Dootsie Williams, President of Dooto Records, and producer of classic Redd Foxx albums in party record circles, says “From all appearance, 1960 is going to be the biggest year yet for recorded Negro comedy.”
Declares that “Foxx currently is negotiating for a television series, he’s landing important work in motion pictures, and his albums are in tremendous demand.”

“Overflow Crowd Sees Redd Foxx” (December 12, 1964)

300 people turned away to see Redd Foxx perform at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit.

“Redd Foxx Cleaned Up” (September 25, 1965)

A New Foxx party record produced by Dooto, called “Naugties But Goodies” is forthcoming.
Foxx is due to appear in Detroit on October 8 at the Masonic Temple.
Sales for Foxx and Dooto’s albums skyrocketed after an appearance on Johnny Carson.
With a $50k advertising campaign, sales are expected to top $1 mil a year for the Dooto Record Catalogue. The firm expects to top last year by 69.9%.

“Redd Foxx: The Terrible Price Paid For Fame: He Skirted Death On Way To Top” (June 17, 1978)

“For more years than he cares to remember, Redd Foxx was just another Black comic struggling for a comic struggling for acceptance (sic) on the chitlin circuit.”
“Today he’s fond of cracking an endless stream of one-liners about being poor. They’re funny now but they weren’t when Redd was actually living in St. Louis, and Chicago without two nickels to rub together.”
The article mentions the publishing of a book called B.S. (Before Sandford).
Tells the story of how Foxx got out of serving in WWII (a rite of passage for the majority of poor Black men). He ate half a bar of soap before his meeting with the Army recruiter in Harlem and the heart palpitations labeled him 4-F, not qualified for military service.
Foxx delivered dresses in New York City’s garment district while sleeping on rooftops.
While working at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, he met Malcolm X, and they supplemented their meager income by selling stolen suits. Admits that he had to dodge the law for survival.
Told the story of his two friends who went to buy heroin. Foxx said he was not interested and wanted to finish his game of pool. Later he went to join his friends; he found them both sprawled out dead on a bed.
Highlights that even though Foxx’s life served as fodder for his jokes, and he can laugh at the bad times, he remembers them vividly, and the price he had to pay to get where he is.

“Tube Time for Redd Foxx” (October 30, 1971)

“Redd Foxx FINALLY made it. TV has scooped him up and now offers him the chance to becoming famous via the brite tube in a way that has become the happy and profitable norm with another Black comic, Flip Wilson.
And Foxx will be doing his show not under his stage name of Foxx, but under his real name, Sanford. He will be billed as Redd Foxx in “Sandford and Son.” And playing his son in the TV show which was taped before a live audience at NBC Oct 24 will be Demond Wilson.
The cast will be Black. True, it’s to be a pilot filming, but high hopes are held by Norm Lear and Bud Yorkin of “All in the Family,” for a full-blown TV series to result from the pilot. Lear said his firm is doing seven scripts now.
The show will be based on the English laughter “Steptoe and Son,” but will cast Foxx and Wilson as two garbage collectors.”

There are dozens of other articles referencing Foxx in the Michigan Chronicle, the historic African-American weekly newspaper in Detroit, but ending our first edition of #InTheMiddleWithLouisHilton with an article referencing Sanford and Son’s debut seemed fitting.

I would be remiss if I did not thank the Detroit Public Library for its digital newspaper archive. Do not forget to visit your local library and get a library card!

In that vein, I have read several biographies and autobiographies on or by comedians that I recommend and wanted to share here with you:

Born a Crime, Trevor Noah
Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World that Made Him, David Henry and Joe Henry
Why Not Me? Mindy Kaling
Pryor Convictions, and Other Life Sentences, Richard Pryor
Born Standing Up, Steve Martin
She Memes Well, Quinta Brunson
The Essential Dick Gregory, Dick Gregory
Bossypants, Tina Fey (I am currently reading this one!)

I also recommend these documentaries:

Love, Gilda
Whoopi Goldberg, Presents Moms Mabley
I Am Richard Pryor

And of course, watch Sanford and Son available on Peacock.

#InTheMiddleWithLouisHilton: Redd Foxx & Sanford and Son

February 11, 1990: Madiba Is Free