Negroes argue about image

L.A. Times/Washington Post Service

The American film industry, which with a few honorable exceptions made little or no use of Negro talent for so long, is running into trouble now that finally it is beginning to do so. American Negroes are hypersensitive about their image on the screen, especially where any of their recent hero figures is concerned.

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Already there have been protests from an organization called the Association To End Defamation of

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jected filming of William Styron's best-selling historical novel, "The Confessions of Nat Turner," the imaginative reconstruction of a slave revolt of 1831.

Two Negro actors, Ossie Davis and Godfrey Cambridge, who are prominent members of the association, claim that Styron "murdered the spirit of Nat Turner, one of the great ethnic heroes of black Americans, by making Turner out to be obsessed with visions of white women and a

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Black People at the prohomosexual as well.

One Negro intellectual who seems to disagree with the protesters is writer James Baldwin. He is a friend of Styron's and he wrote of the book: "It's a very courageous book that attempts to fuse the two points of view, the masters and the slaves. It is impor-

tant for the black reader to see what Styron is trying to do and recognize its validity."

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At the same time Baldwin, who is in Hollywood working on the screenplay of a film about Malcolm X, is said to be very unenthusiastic at the idea, popular with the film company concerned, that Sidney Poitier should play Malcolm.