I get quite a few comments on my blogs and appreciate all of them. Also, I usually do not respond in a blog to them, but the one I recently received has caused me to do just that. Someone sent the following comment:

      “I was loving this article until I saw featured a prolific rapist, Bill Cosby. How violent to dismiss the sixty women who stand as witness and cry out about their rapes, and men like you just ignore them. Where is the noble masculine?”

Many of you might recall the blog I posted “Why We Celebrate Black History Month,” explaining, from my perspective, how the millions of Black Americans who over the years have brought us as a race to this place in history. Of that million a few have stood out in their contribution to give us hope, as we plow forward in a constant battle against the evils our people confront in this country. One of those individuals happened to be Mr. Bill Cosby.

Whatever you think of Mr. Cosby, his good works will stand as an individual testament to the great contributions he has made to the race. From September 15, 1965, to April 15, 1968, he thrilled the entire Black world, in his role as Alexander “Scotty” Scott with Robert Culp who played Kelly Robertson in the spy thriller I Spy. Finally Black America could watch a television series featuring a handsome, articulate Black man, and not the usual Amos and Andy characters that the white control media loved to feed us. Through Cosby’s brilliant performance in that spy series, he effectively put an end to what roles Blacks could play and opened the door to many actors that followed in his footsteps.

Mr. Cosby’s next outstanding creation in the media world was the character Fat Albert. The series, Fat Albert and the Cosby Boys ran from September 9, 1972 until October 4, 1981 and then from September 1, 1984 until August 10, 1985 on Saturday mornings, and always featured an educational lesson. For ten years young children, both Black and other races received a lesson in math, English and other subjects that helped them in their educational growth. Andrew Wyatt of Purpose PR who is now Mr. Cosby’s public relation and crisis management representative (I know you all have seen him arm and arm with Mr. Cosby on many occasions) told me that as a young boy growing up in Bessemer, Alabama, he never missed Fat Albert on Saturdays because it helped him with his ABC’s.

By the year 1984, all of Mr. Cosby’s media successes had made him a revered and household name throughout Black America. But what took him over the top and put him in a category all his own of greatness among Black America was The Cosby Show which ran from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992. Mr. Cosby drew up the blueprint for the show that featured a Black upper-middle class family living in Brooklyn, New York. It was refreshing to watch a television fictionalized show that was not about drugs, crime, and the negative portrayal of our people. We know it exists, but we do not need a constant stream of stories that do nothing to encourage our young to seek better things in life. That is exactly what The Cosby Show did. Today if you could take a poll, you would find a segment of successful Blacks in law, medicine, education, and business who found their encouragement to do better through that show. Today also with the out of control and exorbitant number of murders among our young we could use another Bill Cosby show to do what he and his cast did for those important years in the late nineteen-hundreds.

To my writer friend who feels because I featured Bill Cosby as one of the great heroes of our race, I am ignoring violence perpetrated against women in this country and where is my noble masculinity, this blog was not about that subject but about the great men and women who have helped bring my race up the rough side of the mountain of racism and bigotry, and Mr. Cosby is certainly one of the many who have done just that. If you care to hate Mr. Cosby as your response so indicates that is on you. But for me I will concentrate on his good deeds and many good things he has done to deserve a special place in the hearts and minds of all my people. If that makes me less than a masculine person, “Let it be, Let it be, LET IT BE!”