56 Nights for Chadwick

I love being black, but damn it hurts sometimes.

It’s 5:43 AM, and I just woke up because I went to sleep a little early last night. See, I’d just gotten in from the March on Washington (because not even a pandemic can stop the police from disproportionately killing black people) and was a bit tired, so I took a “nap.” I woke up to messages of people checking on me; one from my dad and a couple from some friends. 

Chadwick Boseman died. 

The Black Panther died right in front of our eyes. 

I can’t even put into words how that feels. Or what that means.

But i’ll try. So forgive me if this comes & goes in parts. 

My first experience with the Black Panther came by Netflix, actually. My family and I had Netflix before it became a streaming service, when it was still a website where people ordered dvd’s to the crib. My dad & I used to hop on, find some nerdy animated movie and watch it. My dad found an old BET adaptation of Black Panther. The show had a  pretty low budget, but the source material it was adapting was gas, so it still changed my life, somehow. The show adapts Reginald Hudlin’s take on the iconic character, which was illustrated by John Romita Jr. The show introduced me to Wakanda, T’Challa and to his iconic villain, Klaw. If, during this time you want to watch some pretty good Black Panther content, I linked it above. Also, here’s my favorite scene from it, it starts at the 5 minute mark. 

Finding out about Black Panther changed my whole outlook on black heroes. At this point, I only knew of Static Shock, John Stewart, & Icon. An African nation being the most advanced in the world thus making it unconquerable? Amazing. I took time to dive into Priest’s run before his and really enjoyed the Ultimates 2 taking place in Wakanda.

Chadwick played a bunch of minor roles in stuff that I loved as a kid (Third Watch, Cold Case, The Express), but as an adult I really don’t remember his appearance in any of them. In my mind, Chadwick introduced himself to the world when he played Jackie Robinson. I’ve always been obsessed with Jackie, I even had his jersey as a kid & Chadwick nailed that part. Right after that, he played one of my mom’s favorite musicians ever, James Brown. When I say favorites, I mean that I grew up on hearing The Big Payback on Saturday mornings and knowing I’d have to clean. 

It’s kind of hard not to take this one personally.

Black Panther was announced at the Marvel Phase 3 Event back on November 4, 2014. The day after, Marvel announced that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing Doctor Strange. Chad didn’t audition to be T’Challa. He told Marvel what he wanted to do with the role, they agreed, and then they paid the man. That was it. At this time, I was almost midway through my junior year at North Carolina A&T. The funny thing is, back when I was a freshman, I changed my display name to T’Challa and people on campus thought it was my real name. I’ll never forget somebody near the cafe trying to pronounce it. So when the news broke, I finally had a visual aid other than a comic book and a low budget tv show to get people into Black Panther! And Chadwick Boseman was playing him! At this point, we all knew Chad was determined to play every black hero to exist.

I remember thinking “damn, he went to Howard? That’s cool, but he shoulda come to the T.”

For all my Marvel heads, here’s what the release schedule looked like at that time according to Deadline: 

May 5, 2015: Avengers: Age Of Ultron

July 17, 2015: Ant-Man

May 6, 2016: Captain America: Civil War

November 4, 2016: Doctor Strange

May 5, 2017: Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (previously July 28, 2017)

July 28, 2017: Thor: Ragnarok

November 3, 2017: Black Panther

May 4, 2018: Avengers: Infinity War – Part I

July 6, 2018: Captain Marvel

November 2, 2018: The Inhumans

May 3, 2019: Avengers: Infinity War – Part II

Civil War dropped back in 2016 right in the middle of Marvel’s battle at the box office with DC’s Batman v. Superman (lol). This was our first look at Chad as T’Challa and I was eating. The suit looked sleek, his attitude was as arrogant as I remembered and King T’Chaka died in a way we hadn’t seen in the comics yet. All in all, Civil War was everything I needed when it came to introducing T’Challa.

Shout out to my dawg @derpdevil for this edit

I don’t think any of us were anticipating the Black Panther hype. I’ve seen most comic book movies ever, and the sheer excitement for Black Panther was something truly phenomenal i’d never seen before. I remember when we found out it was releasing during Black History Month, we immediately started planning out fits on the internet. I’ve never seen so many pictures of Isaac Hayes’ furs in my life, but it got me to take a deep dive into his music. Black people didn’t know how to act leading up to its release. Blue Check Black Twitter couldn’t have been more annoying with their t-shirts but all of it made me smile. Years ago, I couldn’t have imagined this type of hype. Marvel was rolling it out beautifully. There were commercials and ads everywhere, reprints of classic runs, deals on comixology, figures, toys, and so much more. If you wanted to learn more about T’Challa before the movie, you could. I knew so many people who’d never seen a Marvel movie that were buzzing about this superhero movie with Angela Bassett. Black people’s anticipation for this movie was clearly palpable.

The week before the movie was released, the soundtrack dropped. I remember how the internet blew up over Future’s verse on King’s Dead & how Jay Rock went absolutely insane. The album to this day is still really good. When it dropped, I was actually on my way up to NY to see all my friends. I rode over the Brooklyn Bridge to Seasons that morning. The peace I felt in that moment still comforts me today.

That next week, my guy Miles went to see Black Panther the Wednesday before release. I trust Miles’ taste in just about everything but sports (cause he’s a Bears fan) but this was his reaction when he saw it.

He sent me this because I definitely wasn’t about to scroll back two years in our texts lol

This sent me into a fever pitch. I took an hour of PTO so I could get to the earliest screening the next day (did this maybe a month ahead of time, lol). 

I came out of that theater obsessed. I called it my favorite Marvel movie immediately (which I later redacted but am now reconsidering). I went to see it again the next day. Then I took a break that Saturday. Then I snuck and saw it again on Sunday.

The scene where T’Challa comes out of the cave in order to take on challengers is what sticks with me the most. The King walks out of a cave to a cove of singing & smiling beautiful black faces on the edge of a waterfall.  

All those black faces. For a superhero movie.

I’d dreamt my entire life for that. And it was beautiful. 

The scene in the ancestral plane is so different knowing now what Chadwick knew then while filming it. The idea of him coming face to face with his own mortality and understanding that death is only the beginning...man. 

Chadwick poised himself very much so as a King. Every scene he appeared in felt as though T’Challa himself had arrived. Narrative decisions or third act issues aside, I wholly doubt it’ll ever leave my top five superhero movies. 

Marvel finally figured out what HBO’s been trying to tell everyone for decades; bet on black, you’ll always make it back. I remember the sheer joy people felt when the news broke it was on track to make a billion. People that’d never seen a superhero movie before made it a point to step out two or three times to see Black Panther and push it to that mark. One billion dollars. 

There’s so much more about the impact of that movie that I could express. But this article isn’t about the movie, it’s about Chadwick himself. I recently watched Da 5 Bloods, where Chad plays a fallen comrade in Vietnam looking to guide his brothers home. It’s as if he knew what was coming next, and give us a message from the other side. 

I’m not going to lie, it’s taken me two months to write this. I started on August 28th, and it’s currently October 23rd. The press frenzy on Chadwick has passed and he’s only mentioned as a cautionary tale as respecting people while they’re alive. Yet every day I still think about him. I think about how he only took roles that he wanted because he knew his worth. I think about all those children with cancer he visited, knowing he too was fighting the same fight. I think about the quiet strength he had to endure all of this.

I also think of what a tragedy it was that he felt he needed to keep it to himself. To this day, his reasoning is unclear but black men hiding sicknesses and pain is something all too familiar. He still had the courage to marry the woman that he loved, despite what he was fighting and that’s the type of strength in love I aim to find for myself.

Chadwick was a role model, an icon, a humanitarian, and a civil rights activist. He used his movies and the roles that he picked as his activism. He made it a point to show us all the different people we’ve been and who else we’re capable of being. I hadn’t met him, but the pure outpouring of new information about him after he passed makes me feel like I did.  

Chadwick’s passing is a tragedy, and I am grateful for all that he gave me.

An original piece by Jordan Moss for LowPreaux

-E.