Image Awards
| NAACP Image Award | |
|---|---|
 48th NAACP Image Awards
|
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| Awarded for | Excellence in film, television, music, and literature by outstanding people of color |
| Country | United States |
| Presented by | NAACP |
| First awarded | 1967 |
| Official website | www |
An NAACP Image Award is an accolade presented by the American National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to honor outstanding people of color in film, television, music, and literature. Similar to other awards, like the Oscars and the Grammys, the over 30 categories of the Image Awards are voted on by the award organization's members (that is, NAACP members). Honorary awards (similar to the Academy Honorary Award) have also been included, such as the President's Award, the Chairman's Award, Entertainer of the Year and The Image Award Hall of Fame.
The award ceremony was first presented in 1967 and was first nationally televised in 1994 on the Fox Network. There was no awards ceremony in 1973. The first live broadcast of the event, also on the Fox Network, occurred in 2007 for its 38th edition (up until 2007, the ceremony had been broadcast with tape delay) and the annual ceremonies usually take place in or around the Los Angeles, United States area, in February or early March. The 44th edition aired on NBC. Sources have had trouble verifying the winners in the top categories from 1983-1995.
The New York firm Society Awards manufactures the trophy since its redesign in 2008.
In 1987 the NAACP came under fire for dropping their Best Actress award for that year. They defended this position, citing a lack of meaningful roles for black women. In 1990, they were criticized once again for not awarding Best Actress. This was the fourth time it could not find enough nominees for Best Actress. Sandra Evers-Manly, president of the organization's Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch, said "The [film] industry has yet to show diversity or present realistic leading roles for African-American women."
The NAACP Image Awards have been the subject of controversy due to prior claims that certain nominees were undeserving of NAACP attention. In response, parties have argued that the quality of an artist's work is the salient issue, with factors such as criminal charges inconsequential in this regard. For example, in 1994, Tupac Shakur was a nominee for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture for the film Poetic Justice following sexual assault charges in December 1993. More specifically, Shakur was accused of felony counts of forcible sodomy and unlawful detainment in New York City, when a woman alleged that Shakur and two other men held her down in a hotel room while a fourth man sodomized her. Shakur was also indicted with two counts of aggravated assault in an unrelated incident in which he supposedly shot and wounded two off-duty police officers. In the same year, Martin Lawrence was criticized for winning outstanding actor in a comedy series and outstanding comedy series and the show was criticized for its sexual controversy. In 2004, R. Kelly's Chocolate Factory was nominated for Outstanding Album while he was under indictment for charges related to child pornography.
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