Who was the first African American performer to host a U.S. TV variety series?

Being an international star as a jazz pianist and very gifted vocalist, Nat King Cole became the 1st major black performer to host a network variety series. "The Nat King Cole Show" was a bruising experience for him. It was a part of TV history that illuminated the state of race relations in the U.S. at the dawn of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

“The Nat King Cole Show” premiered on NBC in November 1956. Initially it was a broadcasted on TV for 15 minutes on Monday nights. It had a prime timeslot, indicating that NBC had high hopes for the show. But there was a major problem from the very beginning. When the 1st broadcast of Nat’s show hit the airwaves, it did so without any sponsor. NBC was willing to eat the costs of the initial broadcasts in the expectation that once potential sponsors saw the quality of each show they would run to get on board.

The show had very high quality and great people in staff and support jobs. Still major TV advertisers remained unimpressed. Nat would say, "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark." The show failed!

It took ten years for another similar show to appear. It was "The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show" which also failed. It was the first musical variety program hosted by a black entertainer since "The Nat King Cole Show". It lasted only four months before being dropped, but it established a model for later shows with Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, Pearl Bailey, etc.