Running Head: ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 1

Adjusting the Color: The Shattering of Blackness through Race Films 1916-1929

Paul Grammatico

San Jose State University

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 2

Abstract

This paper examines the genre from 1916 through 1929. This paper also

examines the early motion pictures of Thomas Edison and the introduction of racial stereotypes

of African –Americans, how D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation caused outrage in the black

community with its racist agenda, the rise of Race films to show a more accurate representation

of black life, the reasons for its decline, and how we must obtain and preserve the “lost” films

and the films we have already discovered in order to preserve this part of American history.

Keywords: film, race, stereotype, director, producer, cinema, theatre, preservation

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Introduction

Since the first motion picture created by Thomas Edison in 1894, African-Americans

bared the brunt of stereotypes in various nickelodeons displaying short films created by different

white directors as film aesthetics continued to grow. When director D.W. Griffith released the

first epic motion picture The Birth of a Nation, he showed African-Americans (portrayed by

white actors in blackface) as the following stereotypes: The Coon, the Mammy, the Tom, and

his own creation, the brutal Buck. These hurtful and degrading stereotypes gave rise to African-

Americans creating a more realistic version of black life through “Race” films. The term “Race

films” as scholar Pearl Bowser states in the 2006 commentary track on the

DVD Body and Soul (1925):

“The term Race film comes from the Chicago Defender – an African-American

newspaper at the time. They would use the term Race women or Race men. No one used the

word “black” at the time and the R was always capitalized. These were considered the

leaders…the doers for the benefit of the Race.”

How did these stereotypes arise in the films of early cinema? How did Race films

combat these stereotypes? This essay will attempt to explain how Race films emerged, the

monetary, censorship, and alienation these filmmakers faced in a white dominated media, and the

rise and decline of these Race films from 1915 – 1929. Many of these films are lost or of poor

quality and are in dire need of restoration and will be illustrated further in this article.

Early Depictions of Black Stereotypes in Film – 1896 - 1915

The period between the mid-1890s and 1915, when the movies became one of the most

important forms of mass entertainment in the United States, was a period in which racial libels

abounded (Leab, 1975, p. 7). When Edison started making short films for the nickelodeon peep

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 4

shows in the 1890’s, there became the emergence of black stereotypes in his short films as Ten

Pickannines (1904), showing African-American children dancing, and Watermelon Eating

Contest (1898) to which he followed up with Watermelon Contest (1900) that display African-

Americans devouring the fruit. As these hurtful stereotypes were developing and constantly

evolving well into the 20th century, three main stereotypes of black people emerged (mostly

portrayed by white actors in blackface):

The Tom

The Tom character first emerges in Edwin S. Porter’s film Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1903,

which was done by the Edison Motion Picture Company. Porter’s Tom was the first in a long

line of socially acceptable Good Negro characters. Always as toms they are chased, harassed,

hounded, flogged, enslaved, and insulted, they keep the faith, n’er turn against their white

massas, and remain hearty, submissive, stoic, generous, selfless, and oh-so-very kind. Thus they

endear themselves to white audiences and emerge as heroes of sorts (Bogle, 2001, pp. 4-6).

In Porter’s 12-minute film, based on the Harriet Beecher Stowe play of the same name,

shows Uncle Tom as a willing slave to the St. Clair family. When the character Eliza tries to

convince Tom that he should escape from the plantation, Tom refuses, remaining loyal to the St.

Clair family and is willing to bow and scrape to his master’s wishes. Tom also becomes a

surrogate parent to the St. Clair’s daughter little Eva, saving her from drowning, giving her lots

of attention and care, and grieves horribly when she inexplicably dies. When Tom is beaten

repeatedly in the film, he never fights back, somehow feeling he deserves each and every blow

that is given to him. Another strange feature of this film is that the other slaves on the plantation

dance no matter what circumstances they are in (even when they are up for auction!) as if this is

the only way they can communicate. When Tom is dying, the white family doesn’t bring him

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 5

into the house to take care of his wounds; he dies “heroically” in the hay in their barn as the film

ends with pictures of Lincoln and the end of the civil war in the background. For the character of

Tom it seems that filmmakers used white actors in Black roles when they wanted to elicit from

their white audiences a sense of sympathy for or identification with Black characters (Stewart,

2005). The Tom character also personifies the director’s longing for the “good old days of

slavery” and the days of the Good Negro, willing to lay his life on the line for the sake of his

white master, as opposed to the horrible day of emancipation and the current decades of

reconstruction.

There are six film adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin from 1903 to 1927. When

Universal pictures filmed the 1927 version, the actor James B. Lowe was assigned the leading

role. He was the first African-American actor selected to play this character in order to fit in

with the “realistic demands of the times (Bogle, 2001, p. 6).

The Coon

Although tom was to outdistance every other type and dominate American hearth and

home, he had serious competition from the coon character (Bogle, 2001, p. 7). At first, the

coon was playful, dancing and young such as the character of Topsy –a female child coon- but

gender in coons is viewed as arbitrary and insignificant (Wallace, 1993). As the coon character

evolved, it changed into the most degrading of all black stereotypes. The pure coons emerged as

no-account niggers, those unreliable, crazy, lazy, subhuman creatures good for nothing more

than eating watermelons, stealing chickens, shooting crap, or butchering the English language.

Rastus was just such a figure (Bogle, 2001, p. 8).

In the 3-minute short film Rastus and the Game Cock (1913), directed by Mack Sennett,

shows the character Rastus in blackface with large white lips and bulging eyes, cheating other

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 6

blackface actors in a game of craps with Rastus supplying the dice, which are loaded. The scene

then shifts to Rastus betting on a cockfight where the best rooster is undefeated and is the best of

all the other roosters fighting. In a previous scene, Rastus is harassed by a “mammy” character,

which looks like a cross-dressing actor in blackface, to find a chicken so they can eat. Rastus

then steals a chicken from the cockfight and presents it to mammy. All hell breaks loose when

the prized rooster is nowhere to be found. Rastus, realizing his buffoonery has gotten him in hot

water, runs to save the rooster’s neck from the blade of mammy’s hatchet (the film cuts out there

as it is poorly preserved and thus considered a fragment).

This type of coon lingers on past the silent era and this central coon character paves the

way for the serial Amos ‘n Andy in the 1950’s and the greatest coon of all time, Stepin Fetchit

(Bogle, 2001, p. 8).

The Mammy

Mammy is so closely related to the comic coons that she is usually relegated to her ranks.

Mammy is distinguished, however, by her sex and her fierce independence. She is usually big,

fat, and cantankerous (Bogle, 2001, p. 9). Mammies are generally middle aged, and so dark, so

thoroughly black, that it is preposterous even to suggest that she be a sex object (Wallace, 1993).

This stereotype exists in many films such as the Rastus film listed above, but

unfortunately, the films that have been mentioned such as Coontown Suffragettes (1914) or Old

Mammy’s Charge (1913), both stated by Donald Bogle (2001, p. 9) and Jacqueline Stewart

(2005) respectively, cannot be located or retrieved. The mammy character may be linked to the

coon stereotype, but I also believe that it is kin to the tom character as well. Sassy and

cantankerous as she is, she is also loyal to the white family she slaves/works for. This stereotype

won an academy award for Hattie McDaniel when she portrayed the loyal house servant Mammy

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in the 1939 epic Gone with the Wind and became the most famous motion picture mammy of all

time (Stewart, 2005).

In Edward Mapp’s comments on the pre-World War II images of blacks in films:

“When the Negro was not made an object of ridicule s/he was portrayed as the devoted

slave who knew his/her place. Between 1910 and 1915 a number of such films were

made…there were virtually no favorable portrayals of Negros in this period”(Simpson, 1990, p.

20).

There is one film, however, that not only shows the Negro as a subservient stereotype to

the white Race, but adds evil and pernicious stereotypes to shred the perceived moral fabric of

the antebellum South. The film scholar, Peter Noble, summarizes these stereotypes as such:

“The treatment of the Negro mob rivals even the treatment of the individual. American

Negroes en masse are depicted with regularity as blood-thirsty, eye-rolling, demented creatures

with thick, blubbery lips, almost demented with hate and yelling for white blood” (Simpson,

1990, p. 20).

This film was D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.

The Birth of a Nation

D.W. Griffith was a son of a Confederate colonel and a Kentucky descendant of a long

line of southern military and political aristocrats who were left in economically reduced

circumstances after the Civil War. Between 1908 and 1913, he was the most renowned and

prolific filmmaker at American Mutuscope and Biograph Company. His directorial and

technical achievements and innovations in film were considerable. He also made several films

previous to Birth, which stereotyped ethnic groups. A few titles tell the story: Greaser’s

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Gauntlet (1908), The Romance of a Jewess (1908), and That Chink at Golden Gulch (1910)

(Young, Jr., 2003).

In almost every way, The Birth of a Nation was a stupendous undertaking, unlike any

film that had preceded it. Up to then American movies had been two- or three-reel affairs, shorts

running no longer than ten or fifteen minutes, crudely or casually filmed. But The Birth of a

Nation was rehearsed for six weeks, filmed in nine, later edited in three months, and finally

released as a record-breaking hundred-thousand dollar spectacle, twelve reels in length and over

three hours in running time (Bogle, 2001, p. 10). While I felt that some of the first half of the

film was, to some degree, historically accurate (The Civil War and the Lincoln assassination),

the second half of the film, despite the White House screening when President Woodrow Wilson

exclaimed, “It’s like writing history with lightning!” The Birth of a Nation not only vividly re-

created history, but revealed the director’s philosophical concept of the universe and his personal

racial bigotry (Bogle, 2001, p. 10).

Along with the hurtful and ignorant stereotypes of the tom, the coon, and the mammy, in

this film Griffith generates fear with the incarnation of the brutal buck. The buck, according to

Bogle (2001) can be divided into two categories: the black brutes and the black bucks.

Differences between the two are minimal. The black brute was a barbaric black out to raise

havoc. Audiences could assume that this physical violence served as an outlet for a man who

was sexually repressed. In The Birth of a Nation, the black brutes, subhuman and feral, are the

nameless characters setting out on a rampage full of black rage. They flog the Cameron’s

faithful servant. They shove and assault white men of the town. They flaunt placards

demanding, “equal marriage.” These characters figured in the depiction of black Union soldiers

(p. 13). This is Griffith’s projection of his own fears of what reconstruction along with the

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migration of blacks from the sharecropping South to the industrial North, (especially during

World War I with the prospects of good jobs in places like Chicago); chaos will be wrought upon

the white race if the blacks are not kept “under control.” Thus the formation, and what Griffith,

in an interview with John Huston, stated “was necessary at the time”, of the Klu Klux Klan.

But, according to Bogle (2001), it was the pure black bucks that were Griffith’s really

great archetypal figures. Bucks are always big, baadddd niggers, oversexed and savage, violent

and frenzied as they lust for white flesh. Both the mulatto character Silas Lynch and Gus, the

renegade, fall into this category. Lynch and Gus were objects of horror and disgust to audiences

as they attempt to soil the alleged purity of white women, a symbol of white pride. Gus, with his

attempt to rape Flora, who is the Cameron’s youngest daughter, chases her through the woods.

Flora, in order to preserve her purity, throws herself off a cliff much to the dismay of Gus and

Ben, her oldest brother, who finds her at the bottom of the cliff and finds out about Gus as she

dies.

Silas Lynch, in his attempt at interracial marriage, asks for Elise’s, the daughter of the

abolitionist Congressman Austin Stoneman, hand in matrimony. Elise becomes shocked and

repulsed by the notion of marrying Lynch. Lynch, being the buck that he is, not only presses for

her hand, but of her pure, white flesh. When Elise passes out and Lynch puts his large arms

around her frail, white body, Bogle (2001) states that this is a masterstroke and a brilliant

contrast, one that drew its audience into the film emotionally into the film emotionally. Here

was the classic battle of good and evil, innocence and corruption. Griffith played hard on the

bestiality of his black of his black villainous bucks and used it to arouse hatred (p. 14).

James A. Miller’s essay (1993) sums this film up by saying that the film freely

appropriated some of the most virulent images of black life available in American literature and

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popular culture (this film was an adaptation of a popular Thomas Dixon novel and play entitled

The Clansman.) (p. 181).

The main stereotypes in the film are never portrayed by blacks themselves, but by white

actors in blackface. In the Ruth D. Johnson essay (2011), she states, “The Birth of a Nation

demonstrates how blackface performance may advance a racist agenda”. She also states that

Michael Rogin highlights the “grotesque, demeaning, animalistic blackface mask” which

achieved the “exclusion of actual African-Americans from their own representations” to argue

that “blackface took hold…because it replaced African-American performance” (p. 382).

Due to these inaccurate and dangerous portrayals, the release of Birth of a Nation in 1915

triggered massive protests in black communities throughout the country, often spearheaded by a

young NAACP, demanding censorship of racial slander (Miller, 1993, p. 181). Other black

groups and their white allies tried to have the film banned in its entirety or, failing that, to have

the more objectionable scenes eliminated (Leab, 1975, p. 37). Their protests went unheard, as

Birth became one of the most successful films of the silent era.

In the PBS documentary Midnight Ramble (1994), tells of Griffith giving a ticket to his

maid Cora to view Birth of a Nation in the theatre in his own seat (although this might have been

unlikely as blacks were segregated from whites in theatres). Cora comes back and tells Griffith,

“ Mr. Griffith, I’m ashamed of you. I’m really ashamed of you the way you treated my people.

And I wanted you to know that I named my son after you and I’m changing it today. Good-

bye!” Anecdote aside, this was a tame response as other comments followed.

Writer and activist Ida B. Wells response to the film is illuminating, because, although

she deeply resented Birth’s attack on the “racial integrity” of her struggling people, she did not

read the film as cause to dismiss the cinema entirely: “That [Griffith] should prostitute his

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talents in what would otherwise have been the finest picture presented in an effort to

misrepresent a helpless Race has always been a wonder to me” (Stewart, 2005). When Wells

talks of a “helpless Race”, she rightly declares that African-Americans had zero say on how they

were represented and could not prevent or stop Griffith (or any white director) from their racist

agenda.

Film scholar Thomas Cripps writes that writer W.E.B Dubois and educator Booker T.

Washington “shared the common goal of producing movies with black investments in the

plotlines, black characterizations with humane facts of dimensions, dramatic conflict based upon

the facts of American racial arrangements, and a conscious effort to make the tools of the

filmmaker speak to black needs” (Rhines, 2003, p. 48). Many African-Americans (along with

some white people) heeded this call with the birth of “Race” films.

The Birth and Rise of Race Films

Most film historians agree that the first major black independent film effort was The Birth

of a Race (1918), a direct response to the often crude and unflattering portrayal of black people

in Griffith’s Birth. Produced by Emmett J. Scott, the former secretary of Booker T. Washington

at Tuskegee Institute, he spent three years seeking funds from black and white sponsors (Miller,

1993, p. 181). Originally produced as a short film called Lincoln’s Dream, Scott expanded out

the film into an hour-long film that begins with the Garden of Eden and proceeds with black

accomplishments up to World War I. Despite its good intentions, the film became an uneven,

confusing patchwork of a film. The Birth of a Race remains such an embarrassment to present

day African-American film scholars, however, that they often refuse to show it in their classes

and rarely request its presentation at black historical film festivals (Rhines, 2003, p. 49). Despite

this failure, Race film production companies sprung up all over the United States.

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The Lincoln Motion Picture Company

The Lincoln Motion Picture Company was founded in 1916 in Los Angeles, California.

It was the first owned and operated black film company. Founded by the actor Noble Johnson

and his brother George P. Johnson, they released five films: The Realization of a Negro’s

Ambition (1916), The Trooper of Trooper K (1916), The Law of Nature (1917), A Man’s Duty

(1919), By Right of Birth (1921). The Realization of a Negro’s Ambition marked the first time

African Americans were presented in a feature film in leading roles without burlesque comedy

(Young, Jr., 2003). The first three films, with Noble Johnson in the leading role, made him a star

in these Race films as they were exulted by the black press for their uplifting Race themes.

However, in 1918, Noble Johnson came before the board of the Lincoln Film Company to resign.

There is a possibility that Noble’s resignation might have been due to outside pressure from

Universal Pictures. The Lincoln Pictures were shown in close proximity to theatres, which

featured Universal Pictures’ latest releases. Johnson appeared in movies for Universal, but did

not receive top billing as he did for Lincoln. Perhaps the big film concern did not appreciate the

competition (Young, Jr., 2003). The Lincoln Motion Picture Company officially closed its doors

in 1923. With the exception of a fragment of A Realization of a Negro’s Ambition, all of

Lincoln’s pictures have been lost, presumably in a fire

The Norman Film Manufacturing Company

In 1916, Richard E. Norman, a white producer and director in Jacksonville, Florida, made

the Green-Eyed Monster with an all white cast. In 1919, he remade the film with an all black

cast (Klotman, 2001, p. 168). He then went on to make five more Race films: The Bull-Dogger

(1921), The Crimson Skull (1921), Regeneration (1923), The Flying Ace (1926), and Black Gold

(1927). Since most of these films are lost, there has been a the only surviving feature film, The

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Flying Ace, has recently been restored and has had recent revival showings as it was shown

recently at the Black Film Center/Archive in Bloomington, Indiana.

The Flying Ace is a melodrama about Captain Billy Stokes, World War I flyer-hero

(although black pilots didn’t exist until 1940) and former railroad detective, who is called upon

by his former boss to solve the mystery of a disappearing paymaster and the $25,000 payroll he

was carrying. With his partner (and one-legged sidekick), Stokes unravels the clues to the crime,

apprehends the villain, clears the stationmaster (who is falsely accused), and woos the

stationmaster’s daughter (Klotman, 2001, p. 162).

This is yet another film to shatter the black stereotypes that were portrayed by other white

directors. There are black heroes as well as villains as the film shows a ‘slice of life’ of the types

of work that regular African-Americans do in 1926 (the hero and the villain are pilots with the

hero also becoming a detective, a station master, a constable, etc.).

Black audiences, as Norman also showed black cowboys, which were never before seen

on screen, were well received. The Norman Film Manufacturing Company’s Race productions

ceased in 1927.

Reol Productions

Robert Levy, a Jewish film producer and former owner and operator of the Quality

Amusement Corporation, a Race theater concern that managed the Lafayette Players, was

throwing his hat into the ring of Race film productions. Levy and four other entrepreneurs

signed incorporation papers in New York county for the Reol Productions Corporation on 13

May 1920, with the intent to engage in the motion picture film manufacturing, exchange and

theatrical business aimed to produce ‘high class pictures with colored actors’ (Petersen, 2008, pp.

308-309).

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Reol Productions, according to the Petersen essay (2008), made twelve films: The Sport

of the Gods (1921), The Jazz Hounds (1921), The Call of His People (1921), The Secret Sorrow

(1921), Ties of Blood (1921), The Burden of Race (1921), The Simp (1921), The Leader of His

Race (1922), Easy Money (1922), Spitfire (1922), A Tuskegee Pilgrimage (1922), and The

Schemers (1922) (pp.316-321). Although there is written evidence that these films existed, the

films themselves are considered lost. Due to the films being lost, we cannot judge how they

represented African American life in the 1920’s. The second stems from Levy’s status as a

Jewish film producer looking to exploit or uplift the community. As the sole advertised force

behind Reol, yet an outsider of the Race, Levy’s central role as producer poses problems for

those looking to view Reol’s films in the same light as other Race pictures of the era – as

representations of the 1920’s black community by and for itself (Petersen, 2008, p. 309). Reol’s

productions possess the style of melodrama, which was popular at the time in film and theatre,

but the only evidence we currently possess is advertisements and still photographs of some of the

films. Perhaps, in the future, film footage will be obtained.

Colored Players Film Corporation

Colored Players Film Corporation, a Philadelphia-based production company, was a

leading maker of Race films in the late 1920’s, releasing four feature films between mid-1926

and early 1929: A Prince of His Race (June 1926), Ten Nights in a Barroom (November 1926),

Children of Fate (April 1927), and The Scar of Shame (April 1929) (Musser, 2001, p. 178).

These films received great critical acclaim for its depiction of the black community. The movies

were understood as heroic achievements – demonstrations of high levels of cultural

entertainment (Musser, 2001, p. 185).

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Colored Players Film Corporation was launched by European-American Jews:

producers David Starkman, Louis Groner, and Roy Calnek, who directed the first three films and

was part owner (Musser, 2001, p. 178). However, as Pearl Bowser states in the commentary on

the DVD of Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul (1925) that “the Colored Players had black writers

for their films ” (2006) thereby making it an interracial and at times, an interethnic collaboration

(Musser, 2001, p. 180). Thus is the case with The Scar of Shame.

The Scar of Shame, directed by Frank Perugini with cinematography by Al Liguori, both

Italians, tells the story of Alvin Hillard, a musician who believes he is a credit to his Race, saves

Louise Howard from the clutches of her drunken stepfather and the villain Eddie Blake. To save

her from their clutches, Hilliard decides to marry her, despite she is not in his “set” or “caste” as

he feels she is of lower class. When the stepfather and Blake send Hillard a fake telegram,

stating that his mother is very ill, Hillard leaves Louise, telling her that he has not told his mother

about their marriage. Louise tears up their marriage license, leaves the ring, and tries to depart

with Blake. Hillard and Blake have a shootout with Louise being wounded and Hillard sent to

jail. Hillard escapes jail and goes under an assumed name. He runs into Louise at a party and

Louise threatens to tell his fiancée and his soon to be father-in-law about his past if he doesn’t

come back to her. Hillard refuses, leaving Louise heartbroken. She then commits suicide, but

not before she sends notes to the father-in-law explaining the truth about Hillard but to be

merciful, and to Blake to tell the truth and exonerate Hillard. All is forgiven as Hillard marries

his fiancée much to the father–in–law’s delight.

Despite the critical acclaim for this and other movies, the Colored Players Film Company

came to an end in 1929. Their films paralleled another filmmaker who was concerned about the

advancement of the Race: Oscar Micheaux.

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Oscar Micheaux

The Oscar Micheaux Book and Film Company, with Micheaux as president and

recognized in his time as the foremost African-American filmmaker of this period (Bowser,

Gaines, Musser, 2001, p. xvii), with offices in New York, Chicago, and Sioux City, Iowa

(Young, Jr., 2003) began with the film in 1919 (based on his novel written in

1917. Despite being approached by an African –American film company (The Lincoln Motion

Picture Company) that wanted to film the novel, Micheaux decided he would write the

screenplay, produce and film it himself (Green, 1998, p. 17). Micheaux went on and made

approximately fifteen silent films (along with approximately 14 sound films). Of the surviving

silent films, only three are known to exist: (1920), The Symbol of the

Unconquered (1920), and Body and Soul (1925). Amongst these films that respond to Griffith’s

Birth of a Nation and the incorrect and hurtful stereotypes it viewed as “history”, the best one by

far is Within Our Gates as it is the withal the biggest protest against Race prejudice, lynching,

and “concubinage” that was ever written or filmed (Musser, et al., 2001, p. 234).

Within Our Gates begins with the story of Sylvia Landry, an educated African-American

woman living in Boston, who, after a failed engagement to her fiancée, migrates to the South to

help out the Pitney Woods School, and then heads back up North to raise funds in order to save

the school.

Meanwhile, a scholar by the name of Dr. Vivian, who saves Sylvia from a purse-snatcher,

has fallen in love with her but does not know of Sylvia’s hidden past. Sylvia’s cousin Alma

reveals the secret of Sylvia’s stepfather, Jasper Landry, being accused of killing the white

landlord Griddlestone (he is innocent as Griddlestone is shot by a white tenant through the

window). As Jasper, his wife, and Griddlestone’s black servant Efram are lynched by an angry

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 17

white mob, Sylvia, not knowing that this is happening, is being chased and raped by

Griddlestone’s brother. As Griddlestone is about to consummate the rape, he sees a scar on

Sylvia’s breast. He realizes that this is his daughter from, as the intertitles suggest, “a legitimate

marriage of someone from her Race” (although this is highly unlikely as miscegenation laws

existed for some time). Griddlestone pays for her education but never tells her that she is her

daughter.

After hearing this, Dr. Vivian asked for Sylvia’s hand in marriage, which she accepts.

Micheaux becomes the only Race film director to make it through the sound picture era,

making his last film The Betrayal in 1948. It is unknown where Micheaux’s lost films are but it

has been stated that Micheaux’s wife, Alice B. Russell, bitter over her husband’s destiny, burned

all his business papers and filmmaking memorabilia and junked the remaining prints of his

pictures (McGilligan, 2009). However, there is no evidence to support this.

The Decline of Race Films

The decline of Race films began to decline in the early to mid 1920’s with the last silent

Race film The Scar of Shame in 1929. There are several factors for the decline and demise of

Race films in the silent era:

Lack of funding

Movie making was as expensive then as it is today. Making the Birth of a Nation would

be like making Lord of the Rings today: the equivalent of a $100 million effort (Rhines, 2003, p.

48). Not possessing this type of budget nor anywhere close to what Hollywood would provide a

film, these independent filmmakers’ budgets were far less than $100 million. For example,

Micheaux’s stock offering had proposed a rock-bottom budget of $15,000 for the production

costs of his first film The Homesteader. The Birth of a Nation cost an estimated $100,000 before

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 18

prints and advertising, making its budget more than ten times that of The Homesteader

(McGilligan, 2009). Given the crude way they these films were done due to lack of funding as

opposed to when Hollywood portrays black life in films, the ill-informed images of blackness

seemed more believable that black sources (Miller, 1993, p. 181).

Censorship

Several states and many individual cities had all-white censorship boards that officially

licensed films showings and that added to costs. Fees had to be paid, sometimes palms had to be

greased; it was all par for the course if the film was ultimately approved. Race pictures rarely

passed without some problems. Everywhere in America, but especially in the Deep South, Race

pictures were scrutinized for every conceivable violation, any inference that defied the prevailing

social order. In some parts of the South, anything black people did on screen would be greeted

as an affront by the local white authorities. The censors introduced an inevitable red tap to the

process, and mandated cuts from nearly every Race picture (McGilligan, 2009).

The film Within Our Gates, director Oscar Micheaux had a two-month battle getting

approval from the Censor Board. The concern of the Chicago Board of Censors was that another

riot would ensue if viewers saw the film, owing to a scene, which showed the lynching of a

Black man. On that basis, Micheaux’s permit was originally denied. A permit was finally

granted when Louis B. Anderson, one of Chicago’s more powerful African-American politicians,

successfully argued that the existing conditions in America dictated that such issues should be

aired before the public (Young, Jr., 2003). It was struggles like these that put the squeeze on

independent Race film producers, both mentally and financially.

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 19

Distribution problems

Producer Richard E. Norman of The Norman Film Manufacturing Company sums up the

frustration in getting Race film distributed into theatres in the following letter:

“White pictures have a possible distribution of over 150,000 theatres, including all

colored theatres. Colored Pictures have a distribution of a bare 100 theatres. The greatest

colored picture ever produced played in only 105 theatres in boom times” (Klotman, 2001, p.

177).

This lack of distribution may have been due to the segregation of white- owned theatres.

In places like Durham and other North Carolina cities, there were designated sections that

confined blacks to the galleries or the balconies and were often referred to as “Buzzard’s Roost”,

deliberately designed to segregate blacks from whites. In some instances, African-Americans

were even required to enter through a separate ‘black’ entrance (Regester, 2005, p. 113). Most

of these theatres would not allow Race films to be shown at all or, in some theatres, these films

were shown at midnight, called “Midnight Rambles”. Because of these factors, Race film

producers had a difficult if not impossible undertaking of recouping their production costs with

each film they made.

Emergence of sound films (“talkies”)

When the first sound feature film entitled The Jazz Singer came out in 1927, it

revolutionized filmmaking. Silent films were not yet dead in 1927, but they had received a

terminal prognosis with only months to live (McGilligan, 2009). With the exception of

Micheaux who was the only Race director to make it into sound production (with the help of

Jewish and white backers), the other Race film producers couldn’t mount productions of sound

films due to the additional equipment and processing of sound films. Also, sleepy Hollywood

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 20

was slowly waking up to black America as the studios began to producing a flurry of “talkies”

targeting black audiences, often singing-and-dancing “short subjects” designed to precede the

major attraction (McGilligan, 2009). This was one of the major blows that sounded the death

knell for Race pictures in the silent era.

Conclusion

Many of these Race films are either considered lost or in poor condition. Granted, there

has been some restoration of some of these films such as Within Our Gates, Symbol of the

Unconquered, and Body and Soul but this is paltry compared to the numerous films that need to

be revived. Some examples are of Micheaux’s sound films such as Veiled Aristocrats, which is a

fragment of 48 minutes long and The Notorious Elinor Lee, where the sound is clear a quarter of

the way through the movie and then becomes silent which is indicative of the optical track that

produces the sound on a film is either damaged or missing. However, there is some hope as

Within Our Gates was recovered with Spanish intertitles in the 1980’s, and that a second film

Symbol of the Unconquered, later was found in Brussels at the Cinematheque Royale

(Gustafsson, 2008, p. 30) so there may be hope that we may find some of these films overseas.

We must do our utmost to try and recover some of these lost films and restore what we

have in our possession to keep this part of cinematic history for our future. If Birth of a Nation is

being preserved by the Library of Congress to show the ugly side of America through racial

stereotypes, then we must preserve the true and realistic side of racial culture and identity

through these Race films.

ADJUSTING THE COLOR: THE SHATTERING OF BLACKNESS 21

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