On this day in 1938, Fred "The Hammer" Williamson was born. Mr. Williamson is a former Marine and Oakland Raiders/Kansas City Chiefs football star who rose to prominence as one of the first Black male action stars of the blaxploitation genre through films like Hammer (1972) and Three the Hard Way (1974).

If you know his work (and shame on you if you don't) you probably know him as the title character in the crime drama Black Caesar (1973) and its sequel Hell Up in Harlem (1973). If you're a trivia nerd, you might remember him as Dr. Oliver 'Spearchucker' Jones in Robert Altman's 1970 film M*A*S*H*. And if your trivia-fu is strong enough, you might also remember his brief appearance in Star Trek TOS. 5,000 quatloos to whoever can name the episode and his character without consulting the interwebs! An additional 1000 quatloos is available to the first person who can name the Star Trek DSN character who also showed up in M*A*S*H*. (Offer void where prohibited. Offer good for 22nd century Terrans only. )

Today's video is the fairground scene from "Three the Hard Way" featuring Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Jim Kelly and Chicago in the mid-1970s.

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Round Up by driftglass of the Professional Left Podcast and Science Fiction University

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