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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

80 YEARS OF STRUGGLE. 80 YEARS OF REJECTION. 80 YEARS OF PROMISE AND POTENTIAL. 80 YEARS OF "ALMOST." UNTIL NOW.

Finally, there was a Black man in command of his destiny, in front of the camera and behind it. In a big-budget Hollywood studio film, on thousands of screens in wide release.

This was a dream deferred for nearly a century, marked by lowlights that began with 1915's brutal depiction of Blacks in D.W. Griffith's seminal yet racist Birth Of A Nation and suffered through a litany of maids, butlers, slaves, coons and other demeaning depictions.

There he was, on a 80-foot-tall IMAX screen, the last man on Earth, with a plan to save us all: Will Smith.

Watching Smith battle carnivorous vampires in full digital splendor wasn't just thrilling because of the special effects or force of his personality. Much more was at stake. Sure, carrying a major movie by himself for the first two-thirds of the film, joined only by his assault rifle, a Bob Marley CD and a dog, sure, it was laudable--it hadn't been done since Tom Hanks in Castaway. But it was bigger than that.

Up on that screen was rat; unapologetic Black power, in control, moving at 24 frames per second. Everything was on the line.

Smith's company, Overbrook Entertainment (with Black producer James Lassiter), co-produced the film. He handpicked the director. He had final script approval. He had all the control he needed.

Yet, even with all of his star power and a row of successful movies, with $200 million dollars on the line ($20 million of it Will's salary, plus part of the back-end revenues), the movie was still a risk. If the audience didn't come out, or got bored with the scenes where Will washed his dog and dreamt about his family, or decided this wasn't the kind of "happy-go-lucky" Will they loved in Hitch, he would never have this much power again--and perhaps neither would any other Black filmmaker.

"It's gonna be real scary if I Am Legend doesn't work," Smith was quoted saying shortly before the film's release, "because I got everything I wanted."

Then just before Christmas, I Am Legend opened. Well, it didn't just open--it blew the doors off the hinges.

In its first weekend, the film made $77.2 million dollars, a bigger December debut than Lord Of The Rings or Titanic. In the first 24 days of its release, the film earned more than $228 million domestically, on track to pass the box-office success of two of Smith's previous blockbusters, Men In Black and Independence Day. And even though Hollywood insiders still insist that films starring Blacks don't "travel," the film has so far grossed a total of about $400 million worldwide.

And, it appeared that Smith and Legend success, while unusual, was not isolated.

During the closing months of 2007, American Gangster, This Christmas and Why Did I Get Married, all films featuring largely Black casts, were released within weeks of each other. All of them were distributed widely, all of them marketed by genre and none of them were pitched exclusively as traditional "Blacks" films. Both American Gangster and Why Did I Get Married hit No. 1 mad This Christmas reached No. 2.

These projects appear to be succeeding not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Right?

The issue buzzed all over town, even in the midst of a debilitating Writers Guild strike. As actors and producers jetted off to various locales for the Christmas break, a question kept coming up: Have we indeed finally arrived in Hollywood? Or is this just another celluloid illusion?

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE

Since Denzel Washington's Best Actor Oscar for 2001's Training Day (38 years after Sidney Poitier's Best Actor win--the first for a Black man--for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field), two other Black men have duplicated the feat in the last seven years: Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker. And each time they won, one of the runner-ups they beat was a fellow Black actor: Don Cheadle or Smith. In 2006, Terrence Howard was nominated for playing a pimp; he was so compelling, people looked past the controversy and applauded him for the quality of his performance.

Even Black women, often ignored by the Academy, have gotten a bit of recognition lately. Last year, Jennifer Hudson won Best Supporting Actress for her stunning Dreamgirls debut and in 2002, Halle Berry was the first Black to win Best Actress for Monster's Ball (2001). Even a summer blockbuster like the Pirates of The Caribbean franchise featured up-and-coming Black actresses Zoe Saldana and Naomie Harris. However, since 2000, they, along with Queen Latifah (Chicago) and Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) are the only four African-American women nominated in the Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress categories, out of 70 slots.

Still, 12 years after the Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a boycott of the 1996 Oscars--citing "institutionalized racism" in the morion picture industry--Blacks appear to be making some strides behind the scenes as well as in front of the camera.