HBO’s ‘The Gilded Age’ Offers A New Perspective All Season 3

HBO’s The Gilded Age, created and written by Oscar and Emmy winner Julian Fellowes, is more than just an American drama.

The series explores how storytelling and various narratives shape the collective memory as the show reframes history by combining the old with the new.

In Season 3, the show invites its viewers to see The Gilded Age through a new perspective that is often overlooked.

Peggy Scott, played by Denée Benton, receives an invitation from Newport, Rhode Island, to address her cousin’s women’s group about Jim Crow and suffrage.

In an episode, viewers are introduced to a new Gilded Age —a Black Gilded Age —one that is vibrant and thriving.

The media plays a powerful role in shaping not only our perspectives, concepts, and understanding of reality, but also how we understand the history of our past.

What we see is what we believe, or at least it helps make it easier for us to believe.

That is why shows like The Gilded Age are important because they offer an alternative reality to the cultural history of Black and African Americans, one that goes against the harmful stereotypes portrayed by the media.

Instead, The Gilded Age offers a new and different perspective and reality that is rarely seen, told, or perhaps was never fully considered.

One of the first families of Newport’s Gilded Age was the Downing family. While their roots are located in New York City, they are one of many prominent families that inspired The Gilded Age.

Patriarch Thomas Downing was a war veteran of 1812, an abolitionist, and a restaurateur who popularized oyster, earning the nickname “New York’s Oyster King.”

His son, George T. Downing, moved to Rhode Island, where he grew his father’s restaurant business, opened a hotel, and constructed the Downing Block, where he rented an upper floor to the United States Naval Academy during the Civil War.

Amongst many of these prominent families many of the characters were drawn from significant and historical figures, such as, Julia C. Colins for Peggy, who was a novelist along with Susan McKinney Steward, the first Black female doctor in New York, Ida B. Wells, a famous journalist and activist, and Sarah Mapps Douglas, an educator, writer, and abolitionist.

Nevertheless, the inspiration for Dr. William Kirkland, played by Jordan Donica in HBO’s The Gilded Age, was inspired by Van Hornes and Marcus Wheatland.

Van Hornes was another prominent figure who inspired The Gilded Age, who found common interest with George Downing on issues related to civil rights.

After becoming the pastor for the Society Union Colored Congregational Church and achieving much success in campaigning, Horne became the first Black legislator from Rhode Island serving as a three-term Representative, followed by a diplomatic career as Consul General to the Danish West Indies appointed by President William McKinley.

Additionally, Horne’s son, Alonzo Van Horne, was also the first African American to practice dentistry in Newport after graduating from Howard University College of Medicine in 1897.

Marcus Wheatland also attended Howard University’s Medical School and graduated in 1895. Wheatland became one of the first to own an X-ray in the state of Rhode Island, where he diagnosed and treated patients, as well as used an X-ray as a diagnostic tool for lectures, among his duties and activities.

In 1909, Wheatland was elected President of the National Medical Association and married Irene De Mortie, the granddaughter of George T. Downing.

These are only just a few of the historical and notable Black figures who inspired the characters of The Gilded Age.

While the characters and storytelling may be fictional, they are significant as they tell a new narrative to viewers, one that opens a new perspective and reality to the truths we once thought we knew.