This paper traces the evolution of African-American social standing in the United States through the lens of Black cinema. Beginning with the institution of slavery and moving through state-sanctioned oppression under Jim Crow, the paper argues that landmark films — from Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1920) to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) — function as documentary evidence of Black America's gradual struggle for dignity, representation, and equality. By examining the roles available to Black actors in each historical era, the paper demonstrates how Hollywood's treatment of Black characters shifted from stereotyping and marginalization to complex, leading portrayals, ultimately reflecting broader Civil Rights gains and culminating in the cultural conditions that made Barack Obama's 2008 election possible.
From the first African slave to set foot on American soil to the election of Barack Obama, there has been a tremendous metamorphosis of the African-American community's stature within the culture of the United States. Where Within Our Gates provided one of the first proverbial dips into the waters of African-Americans being able to express their genuine opinions, films such as Do the Right Thing and Shaft were vibrant expressions of passion and rage that pulled no punches. This dramatic change did not happen overnight, and to illustrate this, this paper will utilize films from the black film canon that individually signify the gradual steps African-Americans took to improve their social standing in the U.S. Much to the benefit of this paper, the most drastic social advances Black Americans made during their time in the U.S. occurred during the era of film, primarily the Civil Rights era.
In order to fully understand the era of black film, a conceptualization of the African-American condition since 1654 needs to be formed. By understanding the convoluted and painful history African-Americans have endured, the path that black filmography has taken will be all the more cohesive and logical. African-American history can be divided into three categories: (1) the era of American slavery, (2) the era of state-sanctioned oppression, and (3) the aftermath.
The era of African slavery in North America began with the first Black indentured servants arriving in Rhode Island in 1654 and theoretically ended with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The evils associated with slavery are well documented: complete control over individuals' identities, physical torture, the instillment of fear, and relegation to a subhuman social class are but broad classifications of the range of abuses seen under slavery. The suffering felt through physical abuse ends with the life of the person experiencing it. If a slave owner whipped his slave's back into a mass of scar tissue, that slave's anguish would stop with his death. Conversely, stereotypes and beliefs about an entire race last for generations and become self-reinforcing the more those stereotypes are propagated. If the American slave trade lasted for more than two hundred years, that is more than enough time for a litany of stereotypes to take root in American culture, no matter how outrageous any one claim may be.
After more than three hundred and fifty years, American culture still clings to stereotypes generated during this period: that Black people are inherently gifted in athletics (and thus place less emphasis on intellect); that Black people are not full human beings; and that Black people are prone to criminal behavior. This could be seen in early films that used Black characters in peripheral roles to emphasize white culture — especially white southern culture — such as the Civil War epic Gone With the Wind (Fleming, Dir., 1939). While it is impossible to diminish the accomplishments of actors like Hattie McDaniel, who played the role of Mammy, or Butterfly McQueen, who played the stereotypical role of Prissy, the house servant, their roles were nonetheless used to construct a stereotypical image of slaves in the South. Mammy was closest to the O'Hara family, charged with raising the young white daughters of the household, and is accordingly portrayed as more intelligent than her subordinates, such as Prissy, even though her dialogue consists of lines like, "Yessim, Ms. Scarlett." Prissy, however, is depicted as lazy, sluggish, and resistant to doing her chores, further propagating the stereotypical image of the slave who, without her master's compulsion to direct her, would otherwise linger in idleness.
The portrayal also furthers the false notion that slaves were so content in their servitude that they would forego freedom when it was available to them. In reality, those slaves who remained with their white masters were more often the product of fear about the outside world — a world that was a mystery to them and perhaps seemed more threatening than continued service within the pre-war environments they knew. There is no filmography that explores this kind of psychological struggle within the culture of black slavery.
The movies discussed further in this paper will give African-Americans a chance to intimately convey the effects of this legacy in a way through which the American public can piece together an understanding of how African-Americans came to exist in today's world.
While the Emancipation Proclamation put an eventual end to slavery, Jim Crow laws extended the history of relegating Black people to a class of inferiority from 1876 to 1965. African-Americans may have gained freedom from the physical chains of slavery, but what good was that freedom if they moved into a state of limbo where the laws of the land kept them trapped in perpetual poverty and social inferiority? This freedom transformed African-Americans from physical property to the lowest recognized class within society. When someone is viewed as property, the connotation of inferiority is a natural assumption given the nature of the owner-slave relationship. A slave is a slave because he or she is thought to be incapable of self-sufficiency without the guidance of a superior intellect. No matter how ludicrous this concept may sound today, it was a very real viewpoint shared by many Americans in the past.
Once African-Americans gained their freedom from slavery, a long journey would begin to reclaim the dignity and self-worth destroyed by centuries of external (physical) and internal (psychological) domination. That process continues to this day. From this point forward, the paper's focus revolves around the psychological impetus of Black Americans as a community recovering from a history of compounded abuses.
To watch Within Our Gates (Micheaux, Dir., 1920) today is to watch something foreign and primitive to contemporary senses. The actors make exaggerated facial expressions to convey the feelings and emotions of the unfolding storyline — a necessity of silent films in the 1920s. Yet these wordless conveyances are precisely what make this film especially interesting and valuable in black film history. Within Our Gates represents the first small step African-Americans took in reclaiming their dignity on a national scale. Created as an answer to D.W. Griffith's monstrously degrading Birth of a Nation, Within Our Gates showed the American public an African-American population that was cognitive, rational, and educated. It served as a massive correction of Griffith's portrayal of Black people as sex-crazed rapists and buffoons.
A scene depicting the rape of a Black woman by a white man was an unheard-of act of violence in early twentieth-century film. Violence perpetrated against Black women — as slaves and as freed women in the post-Civil War era — had remained unaddressed in film until Within Our Gates, and has largely gone unaddressed since. As a filmmaker, director Oscar Micheaux made a bold assertion: that white males, not Black males, have a long and prolific history of interracial sexual oppression. Images of docile, innocuous Black characters hold no shock factor today, but for a Black film made in the 1920s — just fifty-five years after the end of the Civil War — this was a mighty declaration in a sea of mistruths.
Old Ned, a poor Black preacher in the film, visits two white male acquaintances and is asked what he thinks about Black people possibly gaining the right to vote. Old Ned replies, "This is a land for the white man and Black folk got to know their place." After the two white men laugh and kick Old Ned as he exits the room, the scene becomes a powerful emotional expression that poignantly exposes the kind of psychological toll an Uncle Tom figure would have endured. The shining smile that hung from Old Ned's face in the presence of the two white men fades to an expression of defeat and fear — conveying the character's, and perhaps the actor's, true feelings. This was no doubt a scene not just on film, but one played out again and again in the reality of Black lives during the pre-Civil Rights era: "Again, I've sold my birthright, all for a miserable mess of pottage."
"Poitier's films and early Hollywood integration of Black stories"
"Shaft, Roots, and blaxploitation expand Black screen presence"
"Color Purple and Do the Right Thing reshape Black representation"
"Black stars enter mainstream; cultural and political culmination"
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