African Americans in Film Collection, 1919-2000

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Summary

Abstract:
The African Americans in Film collection includes ephemeral materials, especially posters and pressbooks, promoting and advertising motion pictures featuring Black actors, directors, and production companies.
Extent:
15 Linear Feet
Language:
English.
Collection ID:
RL.00019

Background

Scope and content:

The African Americans in Film collection includes ephemeral materials promoting and advertising motion pictures featuring Black actors, directors, and production companies. Materials in this collection include press books, posters, promotional booklets, campaign books, advertising manuals, programs, lobby cards, and other formats. The films documented include silent films, Blaxploitation films, blockbuster action films, musicals, documentaries, and dramas, from smaller Black owned and operated companies to major studio productions. Actors frequently featured in films documented here include Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Jim Brown, Brock Peters, Fred Williamson, Ruby Dee, Brenda Sykes, Sammie Davis Jr., James Earl Jones, and many others.

Description often includes the format of the material and/or one or more of the Black stars featured in the film. Some description provided by George Robert Minkoff Inc., the dealer from whom part of the collection was purchased, is provided in quotes. Some of that description may have originated from the books Blacks in American films and television: an encyclopedia. and Toms, coons, mulattoes, mammies, and bucks: an interpretive history of Blacks in American films., both by Donald Bogle. The majority of the materials are from the United States, but a few items were created by or for audiences in other countries such as Japan, Denmark, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and are noted as such.

Biographical / historical:

Motion picture films have been created in the United States, primarily in southern California, since the very early 20th century.

The Norman Film Manufacturing Company was created in the late 1910s by Richard Norman and produced films with all-Black casts, known at the time as "race films". Race films were those movies made specifically for African American audiences and with African American casts. The studio produced silent films including The Green-Eyed Monster (1919), The Love Bug (1919), The Bull Dogger (1921), Crimson Skull (1921), Regeneration (1923), The Flying Ace (1926), and Black Gold (1928). The company and studio was located in Jacksonville, FL, along with a number of other studios in the 1910s and 1920s, but when the film industry adopted talking films and shifted to Hollywood, CA, the Norman Film Manufacturing Company moved to distributing films, then exhibiting films, before shutting down in the 1940s. The only surviving film is the Flying Ace, which was restored by the Library of Congress and is available for viewing online.

Pressbooks were marketing and promotional tools created by film distributors and sent to movie theaters. Pressbooks usually included images of posters, lobby cards, and other advertising materials available to promote the film, as well as suggestions or guides for advertising and promotion. Pressbooks came in a wide variety of sizes and could also include additional information about the film and cast itself. Pressbooks were commonly produced by major film studios from the 1910s onward.

Acquisition information:
The African Americans in Film Collection was received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Manuscript Library as a purchase from George Robert Minkoff Inc. in 2001, 2009, 2010, and 2014, and Michael Bowen in 2020, 2022, and 2023.
Processing information:

Processed by Rubenstein Library staff

Completed September 26, 2002

Encoded by Joshua A. Kaiser

Updated by Alice Poffinberger, and Paula Jeannet, August and December 2010, and May 2014.

Collection rearranged to accommodate new acquisitions and collection-level notes updated by Tracy M. Jackson, December 2022, February 2023.

Accession 2023-0059 added by Leah Tams, September 2023.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged alphabetically by film title.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Contents

Using These Materials

Using These Materials Links:

Using These Materials

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Terms of access:

The copyright interests in this collection have not been transferred to Duke University. For more information, consult the copyright section of the Regulations and Procedures of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

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Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], African Americans in Film Collection, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

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