Forgotten Great Black Actresses: “Race Films” in Early Hollywood

Evelyn Preer, who Black audiences would call “The First Lady of the Screen.”

 

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

In the early 1900s, up until about 1950, roughly 500 films were made featuring all-Black casts for predominately Black audiences. These films, known as “race films,” were typically independently financed and produced by white filmmakers outside of the Hollywood studios. Notably, the first film to feature an all-Black cast (A Fool and His Money, 1912) was directed by Alice Guy-Blanché.

Since these films were outside of the studio system and were not created for the mainstream white gaze, film history has largely ignored their impact, and not even 100 of the films remain intact. Pioneering filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux (whose Within Our Gates was a scathing response to the racist The Birth of a Nation) are not immortalized like their white counterparts have been, but their contributions were remarkable.

In these early days of feature films, Black actors and actresses may not have had leading roles in mainstream Hollywood, but the existence of a booming market of race films allowed for all-Black casts full of complex characters and story lines that differed greatly from the stereotypes audiences would typically see–and would continue to see for decades.

While some actors and actresses got their start in race films and then went on to mainstream Hollywood success (including Hattie McDaniel, Lena Horne, and Dorothy Dandridge), many of the Black actors and actresses found a dearth of roles. After race films ended (due to Hollywood’s conglomerates were broken up in an anti-trust case, leading to desegregation, and World War II gave opportunities for Hollywood to recruit Black actors for propaganda and war films), three-dimensional, leading roles for Black actors and actresses plummeted. I’ve written before about the roles that have won Black actors Academy Awards–maids, villains, con artists, slaves, musicians, athletes, impoverished single mothers, and “helpers” for white characters seem to be the “safe” roles.

However, in early race films, actors and actresses were able to break those stereotypes and be fully realized complex characters.

Here are a few of the actresses–whose names you might not know, but should–and some of their films.

 

Evelyn Preer

Evelyn Preer (1896 – 1932): Homesteader, Within Our Gates, Birthright, Ladies of the Big House

 In Within Our Gates, Preer’s character has to fight a predatory white man, which answered the portrayal of lecherous Black men in Birth of a Nation

 

 

Ethel Waters

 Ethel Waters (1896 – 1977): Rufus Jones for President, Cabin in the Sky, Pinky

 Ethel Waters and Eddie Anderson in Cabin in the Sky

 

 

Edna Mae Harris

Edna Mae Harris (1910 – 1997): Spirit of Youth, Lying Lips, Paradise in Harlem, Sunday Sinners

 Edna Mae Harris in Lying Lips

 

 

 Nina Mae McKinney

Nina Mae McKinney (1912 – 1967): Hallelujah, Safe in Hell, The Devil’s Daughter, Dark Waters

Nina Mae McKinney in Hallelujah

 

When films are able to be made that feature complex women and women of color, actresses are allowed to actually act to their full abilities. Just like I noted about pre-Code female anti-heroes, if many of the above films were made today, we would be aghast and how progressive they were. We tend to think that what happens now, in the 21st century, is breaking barriers. But if we think seriously about our history and our present, we know that Within Our Gates isn’t a film that Hollywood would touch with a ten-foot pole even now–even though it’s our history. Race films (while certainly still products of their cultural context, which could be problematic) provided an opportunity for Black actors to shine, and the women above are just a few of those who were empowered by having acting careers that allowed them to play a myriad of characters. 

Read more about them. Watch their films. Remember who and what has been too easily forgotten.

Recommended:

A Cinema Apart: a website dedicated to early Black films

Here is an excellent YouTube playlist of African American films, and it includes Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates, among others referenced. I recommend Elsa Barkley Brown’s viewing guide. 

Netflix has the documentary Black Cinema: Silence to Sound .

Amazon offers a few collections of race films.

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