The Black Pack: When Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Paul Mooney, Robert Townsend and Keenen Ivory Wayans Rewrote American Comedy

Amid social tensions in the 1980s, five comedic pioneers — Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Robert Townsend, Keenen Ivory Wayans and Arsenio Hall — formed a creative alliance known as the “Black Pack.” Working together as writers, consultants, producers, directors and actors, they brainstormed ideas, wrote scripts and created an array of socially charged films and television shows that revolutionized popular culture and changed the face of American comedy.

The Black Pack detonated their signature comedic style in Hollywood, fusing politically Black satire with edgy, defiant humor. Drawing on stand-up, sketch comedy and narrative cinema, their work transformed social anger into art and reimagined Black life on-screen. At their peak, they produced a defining run of provocative, commercially successful and enduring late 20th-century comedies, including Coming to America, In Living Color, Hollywood Shuffle and The Arsenio Hall Show. For nearly a decade, the Black Pack wielded comedy to confront an industry built on exclusion. They challenged hiring practices, fought for creative control and built cultural platforms that amplified Black voices and expanded artistic possibilities for new generations while critiquing the American racial condition.

Inspired by the new book The Black Pack: Comedy, Race, and Resistance(opens in a new tab) (Rutgers University Press, 2025), this five-night series explores how humor operates as both creative strategy and cultural insurgency. Alongside screenings of landmark Black Pack productions, the series features lectures and conversations that situate their work within histories of stardom, media labor and social critique, revealing how comedy became a site of power, authorship and civic imagination.

Series programmed and notes written by Artel Great (UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television ’10), associate professor, San Francisco State University School of Cinema; Public Programmer Beandrea July; and John H. Mitchell Television Curator Mark Quigley.