How Curtis Mayfield and Gladys Knight Created a Sound for Working-Class Black America
"More than anything, Claudine felt like a reprieve; the film, directed by John Berry and released in 1974, gave audiences a compelling alternative depiction of Black life from those about Black drug lords and mafia dons fighting over real estate in the years before gentrification would make such battles even more cartoonish than the films themselves. In the early 1970s, the single Black mother—stereotyped as the “welfare queen,” the lazy woman living off the fat of the land—was already becoming the trope blamed for undoing the Black family and thus the Black community, and the mythical figure would later be cited by conservative politicians like Ronald Reagan as an excuse to roll back public assistance to the poor and working class. Claudine offered refreshing insight into the humanity of those Black women, their children, and their struggles and joys. And the film’s soundtrack, written and produced by Curtis Mayfield and performed by Gladys Knight & the Pips, was a large part of its achievement."
