With Richard Roundtree’s, “Shaft’s,” Death Passes Part of a 20th-Cent Ideal of Black Manhood

On Wednesday October 24, Richard Roundtree, the man who portrayed Shaft, the eponymous star of the1971 iconic Black action film, died. The news, which “CBS Mornings” presented as a teaser, was a shock to me. “Shaft” was released before I was born.

People die; I know this. No one lives forever. Mr. Roundtree’s portrayal of John Shaft became an idol and icon is something else. Because we expect or need that cultural idol to live and fuel us. 

Upon seeing the news, I wept. 

I was too young to have seen “Shaft” in theaters. Before I was born, Black beauty, and pride were cultural forces. They sprang up to fight the prevalent white conviction and racist imagery of Black as ugly and worth less. I was born after James Brown’s “Say it Loud; I’m Black and I’m proud in 1968, and Della Reece’s “Black is Beautiful” song. 

That Richard Roundtree died feels like something that cannot be. Mr. Roundtree, who brought to life an ideal and role model for Blackness and Black manhood has died. I took that for granted. John Shaft was an ideal and an idol at once, the notion, which cannot die.

My eyes moistened anyway on Wednesday morning. Roundtree’s death makes the notion I and many Blacks hold of an immortal idol of Black beauty and pride, feels more fragile.

The death affected CBS Mornings co-hosts Nate Burleson and Jerika Duncan so that he said “he was a bad mother…” She responded “hush yo’ mouth,”! quoting lyrics from the film’s iconic theme. Then Ms. Duncan said “and that wasn’t on the prompter”. As of Friday, sadly, CBS News scrubbed that video from YouTube as “private”.

Fifty years, and the Obama presidency afterward, many of us take for granted the ways Mr. Brown and Ms. Reece’s songs, and Mr. Roundtree’s John Shaft on lifted and roused Black pride and beauty. “Shaft” and Roundtree’s portrayal of him were exemplars and emblems of that beauty, dignity and pride which dared to percolate within American culture. 

I was too young to yearn to feel and wear this as a part of my own biracial Blackness. The icon permeated Black and wider American culture. This, as I grew into a curious biracial Black youngster, young man, then man. Idol Shaft was underlied it.