Black images in filmdom: Yesterday and today

New Crisis, The, Sep/Oct 2000 by St John, Michael

The fourth chapter of Genesis in Old Testament tells the story of how Cain and Abel, out in the wide open grasslands tending their flocks, offered sacrifices to the Lord from their cattle according to their individual desires. God looked with kindliness on Abel's efforts but with indifference and disdain on Cain's. So Cain, in a fit of jealously, killed Abel. And when the Lord came to Cain and asked him what he had done, he gave a pointed retort in the form of a question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God's reply was in the form of a positive affirmation. This is one of the first recorded instances in literature of emphasis on social responsibility. In this case it was an urgent demand for social solidarity, a state achieved only when people work together.

The integration of blacks into movies on the basis of equality was not considered a socially responsible thing to do in filmdom. From its infancy to middle age, the only concern of the movie industry was selling a socially acceptable product. And the portrayal of demeaning black characters, played mainly by whites in blackface, was acceptable. Through this new medium, white filmmakers not only protected their own and the public's negative beliefs about blacks but also perpetuated the racial stereotypes of the day.

It was different in the very beginning. In 1898, several months after the projection of moving images, the silent-era screen showed black soldiers boarding a ship for the Spanish-- Cuban-American War and West Indians assuming their daily responsibilities. But after the release of a 14-minute Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1903, the transfiguration of black characters into brutes, idlers, clowns and the like began. D.W. Griffith's silent film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), which is about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, was the epitome of such characterizations.

In 1918, The Birth of a Race, produced by Emmett J. Scott, personal secretary to Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute, responded to Griffith's inflammatory film. Although it failed commercially, it inspired the Johnson brothers, George P. and Noble, to form the Lincoln Motion Picture Company. The Johnsons wanted to produce films that presented the black character "in his everyday life, a human being with human inclination and one of talent and intellect." In pursuit of a black cinema, they completed and distributed films-The Realization of the Negro's Ambition (1916), A Trooper of Troop K(1916) and By Right of Birth (1921)-that featured successful and adventurous African Americans. Their pursuit failed, however, because of a nationwide flu epidemic that closed theaters.

After World War I, the movie industry responded to a call from California and gradually made its move to Hollywood. The subsequent Jazz Age still relegated blacks to stereotypical parts. The few authentic roles included the seaman performed by the boxer George Godfrey in James Cruze's Old Ironsides (1926) and the gray-haired hobo in Jim Tully's Beggars of Life (1928). The greater portion of blacks who secured parts were convicts, racetrack grooms, servants and chorus girls.

The dearth of positive images resulted in the advent of race movies produced by blacks, and even whites, for black audiences. These movies enabled black thespians to exploit their talents and to ply their art. Some of the films were black versions of such Hollywood genres as success stories; some were a voice of advocacy, such as the Philadelphia Colored Players' The Scar of Shame (1927), a melodrama about caste and class in black society; and some, especially those made by Oscar Micheaux, the most dominant black filmmaker of the silent era, explored such themes as lynching and color-based caste that Hollywood ignored.

Sound film emerged at the beginning of the Great Depression, and black filmmakers momentarily lacked the funds to invest in sound filmmaking or in wiring theaters in black communities. In contrast, white filmmakers, emboldened by sound, began to make socially engaged films that focused attention on the reality of black life. However, the making of these films was short-lived (1927-1933) because Hollywood reverted to its old habit of being only profit driven. Occasionally, Hollywood filled this void, for instance, with Louise Beavers' devoted mother and Fredi Washington's tragic mulatto in Imitation of Life (1934), Clarence Muse's rebellious slave in So Red the Rose (1935), Paul Robeson's kingly "Joe" in the remake of Showboat (1936) and Hattie McDaniel's independent maid in Alice Adams (1933) and cantankerous servant in Gone With the Wind (1939).

In the sound films, a convincing black dialect and "suitable musical talents of both black and white actors had to fit into the making of talkie motion pictures." Hollywood eventually phased out the blackfaced white actors and used "suitable" African Americans in black character roles, but it still failed to open the doors for the general participation of blacks as actors. The years 1929 through the 1940s marked an increase in the number of black thespians seeking work. During this period, Stepin Fetchit became known for his portrayal of stereotypical black minstrel characters; and Paul Robeson, as an eloquent actor and world-renowned singer. Also a civil rights activist and political radical, Robeson became disappointed with his film roles, saying that, with the exceptions of his parts in Song of Freedom (1936) and The Proud Valley (1940), his characters reflected "Stepin Fetchit comics and savages with leopard skin and spear."