Race and Early American Film: The Birth of an Industry

Catalog description

American cinema became an industry at the turn of the twentieth-century during the period of legalized racial oppression and terror known as the Jim Crow era. Each of several important technical innovations in film production was introduced in blockbuster films that re-enforced narratives of white supremacy: the development of long-form narrative in The Birth of a Nation (1915) by D. W. Griffith: the synchronization of sound in The Jazz Singer (1927); and the introduction of color film in Gone with the Wind (1939). African-American filmmakers such as the director Oscar Micheaux responded with films that contested these representations, e.g., Within Our Gates (1920) and Body and Soul (1925). His work and that of other directors, producers, and critics gave rise to the development of Black cinema that fought for survival as Hollywood became the dominant force in the industry.