The Forty Year Black Female Review: From Get Christie Love to Olivia Pope

• In Event: Scandalous Representations: Across Four Decades of Black Women in Primetime Television

Abstract

In 1974, Teresa Graves made history as the first African American female lead in a network television drama in the show, Get Christy Love! Praised for her role of depicting Black women in a brave and professional capacity while remaining feisty, Teresa’s character, Christy Love, aimed to negate the stereotypical Blaxploitation roles that ghettoized African American female actresses for decades. Disappointing to think that it has taken nearly forty years and hundreds of network television dramas to finally have the second Black female lead, Kerry Washington, in a television network drama. Kerry Washington plays Olivia Pope on the show Scandal. Applauded for her depiction of a complex, Black woman that defies the stereotypes of Black women on television, this paper will analyze the evolution of the African American female lead role in a network television drama comparing the presentation of Christy Love to Olivia Pope and the development of Black female leadership in television.

Author

• Creshema Rekuise Murray, University of Houston-Downtown