Early Race Filmmaking in America

Barbara Lupack

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317434245
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

The early years of the twentieth century were a formative time in the long history of struggle for black representation. More than any other medium, movies reflected the tremendous changes occurring in American society. Unfortunately, since they drew heavily on the nineteenth-century theatrical conventions of blackface minstrelsy and the "Uncle Tom Show" traditions, early pictures persisted in casting blacks in demeaning and outrageous caricatures that marginalized and burlesqued them and emphasized their comic or servile behavior. By contrast, race films—that is, movies that were black-cast, black-oriented, and viewed primarily by black audiences in segregated theaters—attempted to counter the crude stereotyping and regressive representations by presenting more authentic racial portrayals. This volume examines race filmmaking from numerous perspectives. By reanimating a critical but neglected period of early cinema—the years between the turn-of-the-century and 1930, the end of the silent film era—it provides a fascinating look at the efforts of early race film pioneers and offers a vibrant portrait of race and racial representation in American film and culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 “Put Together to Please a Colored Audience”: Black Churches, Motion Pictures, and Migration at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
• 2 The Birth of a Nation, Melodramas of Black and White, and Early Race Filmmaking
• 3 The Ambitions of William Foster: Entrepreneurial Filmmaking at the Limits of Uplift Cinema
• 4 In-and-Out-of-Race: The Story of Noble Johnson
• 5 Evelyn Preer as a Vehicle of Victimization in Micheaux’s Films
• 6 Capitalizing on Race: White Producers of All-Black Cinema
• 7 “Busting ’Em Wide Open”: Richard E. Norman and the Norman Manufacturing Company
• 8 Mediating Black Modernity: The Influence of the Race Press on Race Films
• 9 The Lafayette Theatre: Crucible of African-American Dramatic Arts
• 10 The Great Migration and the Rise of an Urban “Race Film” Culture
• 11 Race Cinema, the Transition to Sound, and Hollywood’s African-American-Cast Musicals
• 12 Preserving Race Films
• List of Contributors
• Filmography
• Index