Records in sports are a tricky thing. With each new generation comes new training methods, new equipment, sometimes even new rules. When someone breaks a record someone else will inevitably point out that it wouldn't have been possible under the stricter rules twenty years earlier. Or perhaps if someone holds on to a record long enough, we also accept that maybe the record has stood so long because the situation was so different when it was set. In baseball especially, the argument has long been that into the forties the Major Leagues and the Negro Leagues did not compete against each other so all of their records are suspect. If Babe Ruth had to face off against Satchel Paige would it have seemed so easy for him? If Josh Gibson had to stare down Bob Feller would he have hit so many home runs himself? Or more importantly, if the Babe and Josh had to face, in an integrated league, a Satchel Paige followed by a Bob Feller week after week what would have happened? Given the extraordinary talents of both Ruth and Gibson, most likely not much would have been different. But there is one difference that cannot be denied: Ruth is in the record books, Gibson isn't. For that matter we don't even know accurately how many home runs Gibson hit. Such was the lot for the African-American ballplayer, even into the fifties, several years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.
A similar problem was occurring in the arts for much of the twentieth century but unlike athletics, its sins of omission cannot be so easily quantified into numbers and statistics.
After the first films starting showing in the late 1800's countries all over the world got into the act. The leader, in both quantity and quality, quickly became America. But like sports, only white people were let into the gates. As movies became big business just a little over fifty years after the Civil War, African-American men and women were bitterly oppressed, pushed back by Jim Crow laws that effectively kept them in servitude. As a result, black faces on the big screen were often white faces in disguise. And more disturbingly, no one seemed to mind. An extensive essay on The Birth of a Nation was written previously on these pages, entitled The Myth of a Nation, detailing the cornucopia of horrors in that film and how readily it has been accepted in the pantheon of film history. But what wasn't discussed was just how many other films swam in the same sewer. As Donald Bogle details in his introduction to the excellent book, A Separate Cinema, such early short films included Wooing and Wedding of a Coon (1905) and The Dancing N*g (1907). Others he didn't mention were Tossing a N***er in a Blanket (1898) and A N***er in the Woodpile (1904). And if you don't think racism was pervasive consider this: The latter film's entire plot concerns the theft of a woodpile, an explosion and discovery of the thief, a white actor in blackface. There was absolutely no need to make the thief black except it seems so they could use that particular word in the title.
The book A Separate Cinema, edited by John Kisch and Edward C. Mapp, phd., is an excellent chronicle of the film history of what were known as "Race Movies." These were movies made for and by African-American filmmakers dedicated to getting a more honest portrayal of their lives onto the screen. That history is chronicled in the extensive introduction, written by the aforementioned Donald Bogle. The remainder of the book is a collector's dream: Page after page of Race Movie posters, rare and antiquated, treasures to behold.
The poster themselves are an important look into the history of the race movie as the movies themselves have not been properly preserved and few remain in good condition today. Even fewer are available on DVD to the home viewer. A search for Oscar Micheaux, the foremost race movie maker of his day, on DVD reveals only a smattering of titles available: Body and Soul (1925) Lying Lips (1939) and Murder in Harlem (1935) to name three with only the last two available on the DVD giant, Netflix. It is a subject many would love to study more but with so few films available it is a difficult task indeed. For now, most will have to rely more on books and posters than celluloid itself.
By the forties Hollywood had only produced a select few movies geared towards Black audiences (Hallelujah! (1929), The Green Pastures (1936), Cabin in the Sky (1943)) and even
fewer movies with central black characters geared towards both black and white audiences (Imitation of Life (1934)). Of course, all of those movies are much better known than Lying Lips or Murder in Harlem. Hollywood had the budget and the talent to put out polished efforts that the black filmmakers could only look upon in envy. While Oscar Micheaux had to scrape together whatever financing he could for his efforts, movies like The Green Pastures and Cabin in the Sky were given sizable studio budgets and top black talents like Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and Rex Ingram. Anderson and Ingram worked in race movies too, at reduced salaries, but the quality of those films suffered due to the lack of the technical magic a major Hollywood studio could provide. However, as Bogle notes in the introduction, because of this the films take on an odd "realism", using actual locations rather than sets, that gives them a more modern feel at times then their Hollywood counterparts.
After World War II Hollywood began producing more films focusing on racial themes like Home of the Brave (1949), Intruder in the Dust (1949), No Way Out (1950) and Bright Victory (1951) which spelled the end for the race movie studios as black audiences were seeing those films in much larger numbers. Eventually black filmmakers and actors like Melvin van Peebles and Pam Grier would revive the spirit of the race movie with films like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) and Coffy (1973), films anyone could enjoy but clearly designed for black audiences.
It's been nearly fifteen years since I bought my copy of A Separate Cinema and since that time the collection managed by Kisch and Mapp has only grown. They have a website where you can view much of the artwork as well as find out details about upcoming exhibitions. Currently they are supervising the exhibit "Chicago's Black Film History" at the DuSable Museum in Chicago, Illinois. It began May 10th and runs through September 3rd of this year. If you're in the area give it a look. It's a largely forgotten part of our collective film history but one that richly deserves to be remembered.
