Black Power, Chicano Power, Gay Liberation, Womenâs Liberation, the American Indian Movement - the slogans of the era were about minority empowerment. It both annoyed and terrified television networks. Try as they might, it was now much harder to ignore the very objections they had dismissed just a few years earlier.Â
When ABC Television announced a new series that would frame General Custer as an American hero, Native activists like Vine Deloria Jr. and Amos Hopkins-Dukes were livid. The program wasnât about his time in the Civil War. This was a celebration of Custerâs role in the Indian Wars.
âGeneral Custer was a madman, the Indianâs worst enemy,â said Amos Hopkins-Dukes. âWe are lodging a complaint to ABC, petitioning sponsors of the series to boycott it. We hope the nationâs 600,000 Indians and all persons interested in the welfare of Indians will protest the Custer series.â Â Â
Like Davy Crockett before him, Custer was sanitized for home entertainment. In a letter sent to ABC-TV by the National Congress of American Indians, Custer was described as âthe Adolph Eichmann of the nineteenth century.â Â
The series carefully avoided anything Custer actually said. To anyone who had read Custerâs autobiography - the reasons were obvious. Custer wrote, âThe Indian ⌠we see him as he is - a creature possessing the human form but divested of all other attributes of humanity, and whose traits of character, habits, modes of life, disposition, and savage customs disqualify him from the exercise of all rights and privileges, even those pertaining to life itselfâŚâ  Â
Wayne Mauder was cast in the title role and rejected the idea that Custer was racist. âWe definitely are not anti-indian and I donât believe Custer did those things this Indian [Hopkins-Dules] is talking about. I mean massacring village after village of Indians. Iâm sure he was not as bad as people have been led to believe.â Â Â
The producer Frank Glicksman agreed, âFrom my reading and from people we consider authorities, I judge that Custer was a man of heroic proportions.â However, his own staff of writers felt otherwise. âWe would tell them [the writers] what we wanted,â said Glicksman, âand some of them would say, âOkay, but Custer is our hero?â And weâd send them home to write. But when they came back with scripts, Custer was a heavy.â Â Â
Tribal lawyer James Hovis suggested that the various Native nations file for âequal timeâ under the FCCâs Fairness Doctrine, which granted equal airtime to opposing political parties.Â
âAs tribes in different areas began to move, ABC through its affiliate board, arranged a trip to California to discuss the program with the NCAI,â recalled Vine Deloria Jr.. âSeveral tribes filed against local affiliates of ABC and did receive some air time to present the Indian side of the Custer story during the brief run of the show. Later we heard that it would have cost ABC some three thousand dollars per complaint if every tribe had gone ahead and demanded FCC hearings on the controversy.â Â
ABC instead hoped to placate its detractors by adding a verbal disclaimer over the closing credits: âTonightâs episode has been a fictional drama.â Â