Remembering Ivan Dixon

from CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Nothing But a Man: Remembering Ivan Dixon
by Mark Anthony Neal

It would be easy to think of Ivan Dixon, who died recently in Charlotte, North Carolina, as just another brilliant black actor or actress who never received the recognition that they deserved. Indeed if you placed Dixon's career alongside those such as Rosalind Cash, Roscoe Lee Brown, Gloria Foster and Calvin Lockhart, you'd have just an inkling of a level of genius that was tragically underutilized and overlooked. But Dixon, distinguished himself even among those stellar talents, by playing critical roles--as an actor and director--in two films that will forever serve as the most evocative examples of black masculinity and black radicalism in mainstream American cinema.

For many, Ivan Dixon was simply the black guy on the 1960's sitcom Hogan Heroes. Set in a Nazi POW camp, the show poked fun at the very idea of Nazi imperialism at a historical moment, the 1960s, when the United States was the most resonant example of such imperialism. A critique of America's own imperialistic desire, was the not-so-deep meaning beyond the clowning of Colonel Klink--the hapless face of Hitler's ambition. Dixon's Sgt. James Kinchloe, though, offered the only so-called "black" perspective on Nazi imperialism that could be easily accessed in mainstream American culture in the 1960s. It's not like Band of Brothers gave any inkling of what the brothers were doing in Europe during World War II. For better or worse, Dixon's Kinchloe also presented one of the first African-American television characters who was defined by a more global perspective, an aspect of his career that frames his early success as the Nigerian exchange student Joseph Asagai in the original stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun.

Dixon's most stirring role though, would be much closer to home, geographically and politically. Nothing But a Man (1964) directed by then 35-year-old German-born director Michael Roemer, depicts the life of Duff Anderson (portrayed by Dixon), a wandering day laborer, seeking to escape the demands of marriage and fatherhood in the poverty stricken American south. Dixon's wife in the film was portrayed by the legendary jazz vocalist Abbey Lincoln. Critic John Nickel suggests that Roemer's film anticipated the infamous Moynihan Report on the black family, which argues that black families needed to embrace mainstream patriarchy in order be fully integrated into American society. In essence, future US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, argued that black communities were hamstrung by the overarching influence of black women.

Nothing But a Man's power come from also locating the impact of joblessness on the lives of black men (Roemer used NAACP field workers to help do research for the film), who felt as though they couldn't be men in their own households, if they weren't the primary financial providers in those households. Dixon brought a depth of humanity to this situation, particularly as he seeks out his own absentee father. Though Nothing But a Man lacks much of the nuance that three decades of black feminist scholarship has brought to bear on the dynamics of black gender relationships, the film remains a visual testament to the struggles of black men in the south, just as the Black Power Movement was about to erupt.

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