‘Freeman’ (1977): A Retrospective on an Overlooked Classic

When we think of 1970s Black America, we tend to think of Afros, bell bottoms, Soul Train, disco and funk music, and long-chassis cars that seemed to take a half hour to round a corner. But the reality is that it was a time when we were emerging from the Civil Rights years and the hot summers of urban social unrest to find that we really hadn’t "overcome" after all.

This scenario was the circumstance that served as the background of a brilliant 1977 teleplay first aired by Los Angeles station KCET called Freeman, which has surfaced on YouTube. It's a bitter yet sobering portrait of a Black family, race, class, a man’s ambition, and his failure that is relatable across the generations.

Written by playwright Phillip Hayes Dean, it was first produced in 1973. The television version stars an ensemble cast of actors who were well known in the 1970s including Chip Fields, Lou Gossett Jr., Richard Ward, Paulene Myers and Dick Anthony Williams in the title role. It brings together some of the best stage and screen talent of the day. Dean and every member of the cast except Fields has now passed on.

In the time period this play was set, unemployment was still very high for Black people, as was the cost of living. Families were being torn apart by an increasing divorce rate. Crime was worsening in every city because cities were running out of money for social programs, and  jobs were disappearing to overseas factories. The political response to the frustration was more rhetoric and fewer solutions.

Fiction Mirrors Reality

This is the setting Freeman Aquila (Williams) finds himself in. He is a 32-year-old man who works in the same foundry where his father, Ned (Ward), has worked for 30 years in a Michigan town that has few opportunities. His mother, Teresa (Myers) works as a nurse and is nagged by her husband about retiring, and she is contemplating it. Meanwhile, his pregnant wife, Osa Lee (Fields), a naive young Southern girl, hopes for better in her life but slowly learns that she has migrated from Southern country mundanity to Northern industrial dysfunction.

It’s worth noting that Dean grew up in Pontiac, Mich., an industrial suburb of Detroit, which sits about 30 miles to its north, so the setting would not be unfamiliar to him. At the time the play was published, Pontiac was nearly completely dependent on a General Motors plant there that has since closed.

Freeman is ambitious, petulant and impatient, but sees his lifelong friend, Rex (Gossett), as a means to escape the socioeconomic chains he believes he is in. But Rex, who was raised in the same home after his mother’s passing, has managed to go a different path and is not only a doctor, but is part of the city commission.

This sets up a dichotomy in which Freeman goes from urging Rex to go into business with him to buy a building to turn into a small factory, to his running for the city commission himself. In a world in which Freeman had prepared himself for such lofty goals, these things might have worked. But for reasons his parents reveal later in the play, he was in no position to realistically aspire to the stations in life he sought.

The dramatism of the story is reminiscent of Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun in which the main character “Walter Lee” is also ambitious, but hasn’t the education or money to move himself and his family forward and winds up making a shoddy investment that leaves his loved ones wincing in disgust at him.

But Freeman takes a different direction by showing us an ambitious Black man whose ideas are broader than Walter Lee’s. He wants to create jobs for the community and Black ownership. He envisions ways to empower the people of his community, who he sees as victims of a racist hegemony. He also sees himself as a rebel against the system who in one fell swoop can change everything.

But Rex, who is educated and well-networked, sees things in more practical terms. When Freeman brings up his business idea, Rex tells him to outline his plan, which irritates him. Later, when he runs for city commission and loses, Freeman tries to prove that he was cheated. But Rex, who was never behind his campaign, shows him that no such impropriety occurred and Freeman explodes in anger against his parents, who despair over his future, and his wife who coldly realizes the dangerous extent of his hubris.

This makes Freeman still relevant today because social media has allowed us to see people create hype machines around themselves, turning themselves into celebrities or influential figures but eventually imploding under the weight. The name for it is the Dunning-Kruger Effect and it’s when cognitive bias has someone thinking they are more competent or skilled than they really are.

An example that comes to mind is conservative Alan Keyes, a Maryland politician who ran for president in 1996, 2000, and 2008. Although he had seen some political success, he was nowhere near prepared to take the stage as a presidential candidate. Each time he ran, the other major GOP candidates basically patted him on his head.

Not a Bad Guy

So it comes down to how Freeman and Rex see Ned. Rex, who followed a path of professional success, looks at his foster father as a hard working man who made a way for himself and his family, avoided impoverishment and earned a comfortable life. But Freeman, who simply chose to waste critical young years, looks at his father as a man who worked himself into old age with little to show for it and he is desperate to sidestep the same fate.

Now, is Freeman a villain? No. He is just a man who believes his own hype, drinks his own Kool-Aid and winds up thinking he’s everyone’s victim. Rex may come off as unsupportive or even backstabbing to some viewers, but he sees things in very practical, realistic terms and is not willing to go along with what he views as nonsense. For him there is no revolution that instantaneously overthrows “the man.” There is only working smart to reshape the system to one’s own advantage, hence his position on the city commission.

In the end, Freeman’s son is born and he is left without much choice, probably realizing he didn’t have it to begin with and that he has no real skill set. He has to take a demeaning job with a bloated title that Rex set up for him, having quit his other one to go on his quixotic political quest. But their friendship ends with this and he is alone while at the same time surrounded.

Other portraits of working men and the decisions they were faced with were prevalent in this period. Taxi Driver with Robert DeNiro; Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon both with Al Pacino, and my personal all-time favorite film, Blue Collar with Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto and Richard Pryor in his finest performance.

But Freeman is a play that takes a look at what Black men truly hope for in life and how disappointment seems to find its way in despite their best intentions. It’s also about seeing a door open, but not walking through it, although there’s no reason not to.

There doesn’t seem to be any reviews from the time available online about the teleplay, so it’s hard to tell what critics thought about it then, but critics applauded Freeman when it debuted Off Broadway in 1973. Bill Cobbs, who recently passed away, originated the title role in the stage version. The New York Times called it “fascinating” and said Dean is a “is a black playwright of far more than usual interest. He has fire.”

Fans will recognize Ward and Myers from their multiple television roles through the decade. But the most familiar cast members are Fields, who today is known as a director and acting coach (and is mother to actors Kim and Alexis Fields); Williams who portrayed Pretty Tony in The Mack and his many roles on Broadway; and Gossett, who starred in Roots as Fiddler that same year, and went on to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman in 1982.

Madison Gray is a New York City-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in multiple publications globally. Reach out to him at madison@starkravingmadison.com.