uplift cinema by allyson nadia field

8/9/2019 Uplift Cinema by Allyson Nadia Field

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UPLIFT C INEMATe Emergence o Arican American Film and

the Possibility o Black Modernity

ALLYSON NADIA FIELD

Duke University Press · Durham and London · 2015


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© 2015 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS . All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States o America on acid-ree paper ♾

ypeset in Minion Pro by seng Inormation Systems, Inc.

Interior design by Courtney Leigh Baker.

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Field, Allyson Nadia, 1976–

Uplif cinema : the emergence o Arican American film and the possibility o black

modernity / Allyson Nadia Field.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical reerences and index. 978-0-8223-5907-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

978-0-8223-5881-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

978-0-8223-7555-5 (e-book)

1. Arican Americans in the motion picture industry—History—20th century.

2. Arican Americans in motion pictures—History—20th century. I. itle.

1995.9.454 2015

791.43′652996073—dc23 2014046259

Cover art: Film still courtesy A/V Geeks.

Duke University Press grateully acknowledges Harvard Studies in Comparative

Literature, which provided unds toward the publication o this book.


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or Werner


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CONTENTS

Preace · ix Acknowledgments · xvii Introduction · 1

1

THE AESTHETICS OF UPLIFT

Te Hampton-uskegee Idea and the Possibility o Failure · 33

2

“TO SHOW THE INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS OF THE NEGRO ALONG INDUSTRIAL LINES”

Uplif Cinema Entrepreneurs at uskegee Institute, 1909–1913 · 83

3

“PICTORIAL SERMONS”

Te Campaign Films o Hampton Institute, 1913–1915 · 121

4

“A VICIOUS AND HURTFUL PLAY”

Te Birth o a Nation andTe New Era, 1915 · 151

5

TO “ENCOURAGE AND UPLIFT”

Entrepreneurial Uplif Cinema · 185

Epilogue · 245 Notes · 259 Bibliography · 299 Index · 311


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PREFACE

A decade afer Booker . Washington’s death and the public outcry againstD. W. Griffith’s Birth o a Nation, Oscar Micheaux released his thirteenth film,

Body and Soul (1925). A major example o 1920s race film,Body and Soul be-

came amous or the screen debut o Paul Robeson and inamous or the con-

troversy over its representation o Black criminality. ypical or Micheaux’s

work, the plot is ar rom straightorward, and its convoluted structure in-

volves an array o figures that represent a range o character types—the ull

spectrum o Black humanity. Robeson plays twins who have opposite charac-

teristics: a charlatan masquerading as a preacher named Reverend Jenkins andhis brother Sylvester, an upstanding aspiring inventor. Te film centers on the

lives o Martha Jane (Mercedes Gilbert), a laundress, and her daughter Isabelle

(Julia Teresa Russell). Isabelle is in love with Sylvester but Martha Jane pushes

her toward Reverend Jenkins, not realizing that he is in act a con man. Jenkins

takes advantage o Martha Jane’s aith and assaults Isabelle. Because Martha

Jane is blind to the truth o her “pastor,” he is able to extort her hard-earned

savings rom her daughter. Knowing that her mother would never believe her

word over that o Jenkins, Isabelle flees to Atlanta and dies o starvation, but

not beore Martha Jane has ound her and learned the truth. No longer de-

ceived by Jenkins, she conronts him in the middle o a Sunday sermon and

turns his betrayed congregation against him. Escaping, Jenkins seeks orgive-

ness rom Martha Jane who relents, pardoning the con man. Showing no genu-

ine remorse, he goes on to kill a young male parishioner in a gruesome attack

in the middle o the woods. At this point, to add to the conusion, Martha Jane

wakes up and reveals that it was all a nightmare. Having learned a lesson rom

the dream, however, she blesses the marriage o her daughter to Sylvester, the

proper “uplif” man.


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x · Preace

On its release, the film was sharply criticized in the Arican American press

or its portrayal o a corrupt minister and inclusion o offensive scenes. In a let-

ter to the editor o the Chicago Deender , William Henry wrote: “I would beg

space to ask the many readers o our greatest Negro paper their opinion as to

which screen production does our people the most harm, Te Klansman, Birtho a Nation or Mischoux’s [sic] Body and Soul . . . ?” Comparing Micheaux to

Griffith, Henry exclaimed: “What excuse can a man o our Race make when he

paints us as rapists o our own women? Must we sit and look at a production

that reers to us as niggers?” Henry’s angry attack implies that it is unsurpris-

ing that Griffith would portray Arican Americans in a negative light, but that

Micheaux, as “the czar o Race filmdom,” ought to produce positive counter-

images to combat filmic racism. Micheaux, in effect, has an obligation to use

the medium o film to promote the public image o Black respectability—theassertion o Black citizens’ fitness or civic engagement and conormity to

middle-class ideals—and, perhaps most significantly, to present these traits to

whites so as to be what was ofen called “a credit to the race.”

In response to such criticism, Micheaux deended himsel vigorously. He

did so, however, not by avoiding the charge o negative representation but by

placing it in the context o a readily recognizable figure: “I am too much im-

bued with the spirit o Booker . Washington to engraf alse virtues upon our-

selves, to make ourselves that which we are not. Nothing could be a greaterblow to our own progress. Te recognition o our true situation will react in

itsel as a stimulus or sel-advancement.” Micheaux’s vehemence concerning

realistic representation was matched by the ardor with which he insisted on the

significance o his filmmaking or Arican American progress as “the greatest

achievement ever made by the Race.” Te debate about representation and

progress turned on the meaning and viability o a concept central to the think-

ing o Washington, Micheaux, and Henry alike: uplif.

Put simply, uplif was an idea, a project, and a rhetorical strategy promoted

by Washington and his allies, in which individual sel-help was the key to collec-

tive progress o Arican Americans. Uplif philosophy began to emerge during

Reconstruction, and by the turn o the century it was the main political, social,

and economic program or Arican American advancement. For its propo-

nents, uplif meant that material improvements (and the ensuing elevated social

status) would be attained through individual striving and the sel-sufficiency o

the race—rather than political or social equality with whites created through

legal means. Tus, uplif involved a complex negotiation o ambition and obse-

quiousness, and o assertion and retreat, along with virtuosic rhetorical gym-

nastics required to speak concurrently to two divergent audiences.


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Preace · xi

In Black communities the uplif project oregrounded a bootstrap men-

tality that put the burden o advancing the race on the achievements o the

individual. While ignoring some orms o collective action, it posited each

individual as potentially significant to the race at large. In so doing, uplif in-

verted the white paternalistic view o Black dependency by insisting on the

possibility o individual, and thereby collective, transormation. Micheaux’s

lie—especially his work as a writer, filmmaker, and distributor—exemplified

the uplif ideal, as he worked toward economic independence in an industry

that was more hostile than hospitable to Arican Americans. All the same, as

Henry noted, Micheaux did not portray a straightorward notion o Black re-

spectability in his films, nor did he singularly celebrate the advancement and

achievements o heroic individuals. For Henry this was in conflict with Wash-

ington’s vision, but Micheaux argued—accurately—that the uplif project had

always been ambivalent about notions o respectability and Black society.

Although projecting respectability was a key component o uplif rhetoric,

Micheaux’s response to critics o Body and Soul points to a different aspect o

the uplif project: the explicit acknowledgment o negative eatures prevalent

in the popular imagination o white Americans, particularly Black criminality

FIG. P.1 Booker . Washington,

rom Charles Victor Roman,

American Civilization and the

Negro: Te Aro- American in Rela-

tion to National Progress (Philadel-

phia, PA: F. A. Davis, 1916).


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FIG. P.2–P.5 (above and at right ) Body and Soul (Oscar Micheaux, 1925).


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xiv · Preace

and lack o industriousness. Tis aspect suggested that the worst eatures o

Black lie had to be acknowledged so that progress could be shown. Micheaux

was able to deend himsel by emphasizing Washington’s reusal to champion

“alse virtues,” arguing (however implicitly) that realist representation not only

had veracity, but it was also a strategic principle designed to reflect the stereo-types held by many whites. As a result, he implies, his film will be able to over-

come, rather than merely contradict, those negative images.

Micheaux’s engagement with Washington resonates urther in the orm o a

portrait prominently figured in the interior o Martha Jane’s home. In this por-

trait, an image ound in many Arican American homes o the day, Washing-

ton serves not only as a symbol o industriousness and striving but also as an

observer o the domestic drama (figure P.1). Although the portrait is certainly

a “visual tag to identiy laudable character traits,” as Pearl Bowser and LouiseSpence claim, it has a more complex role, serving as an aloo witness to intra-

racial crimes o rape and extortion. Micheaux, then, can also be read as using

the portrait o Washington to make a pointed critique o the ambivalences o

the uplif project and its filmic components. In Body and Soul , as in the politi-

cal enactment o uplif, all manner o sins are overlooked or disregarded in a

strategically calculated compromise in service o the promotion o the race

(figures P.2–P5). It is, perhaps, a criticism o uplif smuggled into the rhetoric

o realism it employed.o better understand how this complex and nuanced iconographic valence

could make sense in Body and Soul and other films o the time, we need to ac-

count or the larger media presence o the uplif project. In particular, we need

to look at how moving pictures took up its visual aspects, using them to give

those working or the advancement o the race an image o sel- ashioning.

Likewise, we need to examine the tensions that film, as a more generally useul

medium, generated or uplif as a whole. In other words, i we are to address

the complex genealogy (representational, stylistic, and political) o Black film-

making in the first part o the twentieth century, we must reconstruct the his-

tory o uplif cinema. Tat is the purpose o this book.

Te prominence o the portrait o Washington in Micheaux’s mise-en-

scène provides an occasion to rethink the aesthetic and political strategies o

early Black filmmaking. Te portrait resonates beyond the visual rhetoric o

the image, evoking an entire cinematic practice that preceded it. Despite the

act that no examples o uplif cinema are known to be extant, the orms and

strategies o uplif cinema lef an enduring and visible legacy in Black film-

making—carrying with it all the tensions and ambivalences that composed

the uplif project as a whole. Uplif cinema, however hidden, has had deep and


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Preace · xv

lasting significance or the development, dissemination, and public engage-

ment o motion pictures with the advancement o Arican Americans, a legacy

that extends to the broader efforts o Black intellectuals, educators, and entre-

preneurs to advance claims to racial, political, and economic progress in the

twentieth century and beyond.


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Tis book is the product o years o thinking about the role o cinema in shap-ing Arican American modernity. It took many institutions, archives, and indi-

viduals to develop this project, not only to excavate this history but to under-

stand its significance and give it meaning. At a undamental level, research

support was provided by the University o Caliornia, Los Angeles (),

through its Department o Film, elevision, and Digital Media; Office o Diver-

sity and Faculty Development; Council on Research; and the Hellman Fellows

Program. Tis book was also subsidized in part by Harvard Studies in Com-

parative Literature, and I am grateul to the aculty o Harvard University’s De-partment o Comparative Literature or their continued support o my work.

Te Dr. Penny Kanner Next Generation Fellowship at ’s Center or

the Study o Women provided the unding or a manuscript workshop at a

crucial time in the genesis o this project. For their detailed eedback, thanks

to Kathleen McHugh, the staff o the center, and the workshop participants:

especially, Anna Everett, Jacqueline Stewart, and Gregory Waller, as well as

John Caldwell, Sarah Haley, Darnell Hunt, Arne Lunde, Samantha Sheppard,

and Richard Yarborough. Teir generous engagement with my work helped me

hone my ideas and shape them into this book. Kathleen in particular helped

me find ways to better articulate my arguments, and I am deeply grateul or

having such a generous colleague and riend.

Tis project has its roots in my doctoral work at Harvard. It was in the

stacks o Widener Library that I first came across a reerence to the Hampton

pictures in the Booker . Washington Papers. From there, a number o indi-

viduals and organizations at Harvard—the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute

at the Hutchins Center, the Radcliffe Institute or Advanced Study, and the

Graduate School o Arts and Sciences—generously supported my research to


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xviii · Acknowledgments

ollow the threads to the corpus o works discussed in these pages. Tanks to

Harvard’s Graduate Student Council, Department o Comparative Literature,

Department o Visual and Environmental Studies, and Department o Arican

and Arican American Studies or the resources they made available to me as I

worked on this project. Tanks especially to Cynthia Verba and the FellowshipsOffice or their generous support o my work.

At Harvard, Werner Sollors, David Rodowick, and Giuliana Bruno were

incredible advisors who oversaw the early version o this project as a portion

o my dissertation. I want to thank the members o the ollowing workshops

and colloquia: American Literature in Comparative and Ethnic Perspectives,

American Literature Colloquium, Film Studies Graduate Student Workshop

(especially Eric Rentschler), Comparative Literature Dissertation Seminar,

and Word and Image Graduate Student Workshop. I am also grateul or theeedback o Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jonathan Crary, Lee Grieveson, Dominique

Bluher, Despina Kakoudaki, Laura Murphy, Jessica Callaway Smolin, Julia Lee,

Erin Royston Battat, Namwali Serpell, Roxana Popescu, Phoebe Putnam, and

Michael Vazquez. Christina Svendsen, comparatist extraordinaire, has been

there rom the beginning as a writing buddy and critical thinker on modernity.

My research was made possible by staff members at a number o archives,

especially Hampton University (thanks to Donzella Maupin and her staff) and

uskegee University (thanks to Dana Chandler). Tanks also to Rob Hudsonat the Carnegie Hall Archives. Te George P. Johnson Negro Film Collection

at has been an invaluable resource. As I was completing this book, the

Media History Digital Library came online and provided essential access to

many crucial early trade publications (thanks to David Pierce and Eric Hoyt

or spearheading this valuable resource). Images were generously supplied by

the Indiana State Library, the Boston Public Library, the Library o Congress,

the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Hampton University,

Harvard College Library, and the University o Caliornia Southern Regional

Library Facility (thanks to Diane McMorris and Peter Lacson or the microfilm

scans). Mark Quigley provided guidance on rame grabs.

As I was completing this book, I was ortunate to share my research with

a number o audiences whose responses and eedback shaped my thinking:

at the Chicago Film Seminar thanks in particular to Cynthia Blair who was

a thoughtul and helpul respondent; the Visual and Media Cultures Col-

loquium at the University o Caliornia, Santa Cruz; the Cinema and

Media Studies Colloquium; the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana Uni-

versity, and its conerence on Regeneration in Digital Contexts: Early Black

Film. Several additional invitations came at key times in the development o


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Acknowledgments · xix

this project: rom the conerence and symposium on Oscar Micheaux: Arican

American Enigma sponsored by Columbia University and the Lincoln Center

or the Perorming Arts; the Columbia Film Seminar; the Institute or Arican

American Studies at the University o Connecticut; the Department o Visual

and Environmental Studies at Harvard; and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute orArican and Arican American Research. I am also grateul or the eedback I

received at the Society or Cinema and Media Studies annual conerence, the

Berkeley Conerence on Silent Cinema, Visible Evidence, and Domitor.

As this project developed over a number o years, I have been ortunate

to work with incredibly dedicated research assistants: Brian Brown, Heather

Collette-VanDeraa, Jess DePrest, Jessica Fowler, Lindsay Giggey, Artel Great,

Andrew Hall, Brandon Harrison, Jane’a Johnson, Daniel Langord, Marissa

Leotaud, Ernie Mitchell, Matthew Perkins, Katy Ralko, and Saundarya Tapa.In particular, Daniel Langord oversaw the final details o the manuscript

preparation, and I am grateul or his organization, thoroughness, and atten-

tion to detail. In deep and proound ways, my teaching and scholarship have

been enriched by the presence o Samantha Sheppard.

Tis book was written while I was teaching in the Cinema and Media

Studies Program at , and I am grateul to my colleagues or their enthu-

siastic engagement with my work and their support o my research—not least

in providing me the necessary time to complete the manuscript. I list themhere: Deans eri Schwartz and Bob Rosen; Chairs Bill McDonald and Barbara

Boyle; and Janet Bergstrom, John Caldwell, Chris Horak, Steve Mamber,

Denise Mann, Kathleen McHugh, Chon Noriega, Jasmine rice, and the late

eshome Gabriel. Vivian Sobchack has been a spirited interlocutor and riend.

I am also grateul to the students and aculty and staff members o the Moving

Image Archive Studies program, the Arican American Studies Department,

and the Ralph J. Bunche Center or Arican American Studies or creating a dy-

namic environment o intellectual inquiry at . I am especially grateul or

the collegiality and riendship o Richard Yarborough, who has been a patient

and engaged sounding board through my time at , and the best com-

rade and moviegoing companion I could wish or. Diana King, Peggy Alexan-

der, and Mark Quigley have been tremendous resources or research at ,

and I am deeply grateul or the work they do.

Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but it’s ar rom lonely. I have been or-

tunate to have a number o colleagues and riends who read drafs, discussed

issues, and helped me shape my thoughts about the ideas in this book. Chon

Noriega, Cara Caddoo, Joseph Nagy, Jennier Zwarich, Richard Yarborough,

and Jaimie Baron all generously read portions o the manuscript and offered


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xx · Acknowledgments

their expertise and valuable insights. Paul McEwan, my guru on all things Gri-

fith, provided key eedback on chapter 4. Quincy Mills provided detailed and

insightul eedback on chapter 5. Conversations with erri Francis, Michael

Gillespie, Matthew Bernstein, and Billy Woodberry have shaped my think-

ing. And Ray Sapirstein’s expertise on Leigh Richmond Miner and Hampton’sphotography provided a key oundation or my thinking about uplif aesthet-

ics; I’m grateul or his generous encouragement through the early stages o

my research.

I’m deeply grateul or the support, encouragement, inormation, and ad-

vice I received rom Kaveh Askari, Giorgio Bertellini, Pearl Bowser, Scott

Curtis, Zeinabu irene Davis, Leslie Eckel, Ken Eisenstein, Jane Gaines, Marsha

Gordon, om Gunning, Laura Horak, Jenny Horne, Erkki Huhtamo, Patri-

cia Leavy, Megan Luke, Martin Johnson, Jonathan Kahana, Sarah Keller, MajaManojlovic, O.Funmilayo Makarah, Paula Massood, Donte McFadden, Sean

Metzger, Charlie Musser, Rielle Navitski, Christina Petersen, Jennier Peterson,

Sandy Polu, Jennier Porst, Charlene Regester, Laura Serna, Aparna Sharma,

Shelley Stamp, Dan Streible, Julie urnock, Brigitta Wagner, Haidee Wasson,

Allison Whitney, and Josh Yumibe.

Duke University Press has been a dream to work with. I am deeply grateul

to Ken Wissoker both or his enthusiasm or this project when it was just an

unormed cluster o ideas and or his patience as I took the time to develop itinto this book. Tanks also to Elizabeth Ault and Danielle Szulczewski, who so

masterully guided the book through the production process. I am very appre-

ciative o the two anonymous readers who provided thorough and astute eed-

back on the manuscript and made it a much better book. Tank you!

Jacqueline Stewart was one o the first scholars to take seriously my inter-

est in Arican American film, and at every step o the way she has guided and

shaped my work. In sharing her intellectual and scholarly lie with me, she has

made me a better film historian, archival researcher, and advocate or Black

cinema. Tis book would not be possible without her example, encouragement,

and riendship. I have always been grateul to my amily—Nazli Choucri Field,

John Osgood Field, and Waseya Choucri—or their enthusiasm or my work

and their patience through the writing process. Having proessors or parents

means never having to explain why you’re always working; they also set an ex-

ample o how a scholarly lie can be a balanced and rich one. Most o all, this

book would not be nearly what it is without Dan Morgan. He read every sen-

tence (several times), helped me find my words, and most importantly has

made me a better thinker. His presence pervades this book and my lie and has

made them both immeasurably better. Finally, I have Werner Sollors to thank


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Acknowledgments · xxi

or inspiring me to become an Americanist. Te entire course o my career

changed the moment I entered his seminar on Issues in the Study o American

Literature over a decade ago. He has been my benchmark or what a scholar,

teacher, and mentor should be. With great appreciation and affection, I dedi-

cate this book to him.


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INTRODUCTION

Nothing has done so much to awaken the race consciousness o the coloredman in the United States as the motion picture. It has made him hungry to see

himsel as he has come to be.—WILLIAM FOSTER, “News o the Moving Picture”

Writing in the Indianapolis Freeman in 1913, the filmmaker William Foster ex-

presses a kind o critique common in Arican American newspapers through-

out the 1910s. He assesses the contemporary status o Arican American rep-

resentation in moving pictures and the “resentment” that Black moviegoers

eel against their egregious misrepresentation “presented everywhere.” Fos-ter attributes the “hunger” o Black moviegoers or sel- recognition to a di-

rect response to the prevalence o grotesque caricatures o Arican Ameri-

cans on American screens. Drawing on the uplif philosophy’s emphasis on

sel-reliance, Foster then shifs rom a critique o misrepresentation to a call

or sel-representation. Although he celebrates Black movie patrons’ protests

against such images, he argues or film production “or ourselves in our own

best way and or our own best good.” For Foster, as or many others, the goal

was not to rely on white filmmakers to change their characterization o Black

people but to provide a model or Black filmmakers—and an emerging Black

filmmaking practice—that would avoid the representational problems evident

in mainstream films. In his article, Foster captures the power o moving images

and their potential or resistance and affirmation.

In the early decades o the twentieth century, moving pictures served as

both a mechanism or the misrepresentation o Black humanity and a tool

or asserting it. Te ormer use has persisted, and its history is well docu-

mented. However, too little is known about early endeavors toward Black sel-

representation in moving pictures, or the ways in which this dynamic medium

served the interests o Arican American advancement. o fill this gap, this


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2 · Introduction

book is about early Arican American film practices, ocusing in particular on

films made in the 1910s. It is also about the role o cinema in the larger social,

political, educational, and economic project o Arican American uplif. Lastly,

it is about film history and its methodologies, reconstructing a history o up-

lif cinema entirely out o surviving archival ephemera. As a whole, this bookcontributes to a historical understanding o the multimedia operations o the

uplif project and brings to the ore alternative uses o the medium o film at

a time when its orms and unctions were being widely explored by amateurs

and proessionals alike.

In the 1910s the relatively new medium o motion pictures played a key

role in promoting and chronicling the Arican American experience, espe-

cially the broad idea o uplif—the movement o racial advancement based on

sel-help, service, and the promotion o middle-class ideals that began in thelate nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth. Beyond recording

instances o Arican American achievement, moving pictures participated in

the sel-definition o Black people at a time o vast change and challenge. Te

uplif project inormed early Black filmmaking and provided the impetus or

its engagements with the medium. In this way, uplif filmmakers embraced

cinema as a useul medium or promoting the interests o Arican Americans

and conveying the possibilities o Black citizenship or both Black and white

spectators. Uplif Cinema recovers this significant legacy o Black cinema andsituates Arican American uplif filmmaking in the context o Arican Ameri-

can history, American film history, and the role o visual culture in social and

political struggles.

Tis introduction has three main tasks: first, to provide an overview o the

uplif project as a oundation or understanding how Black cinema unctioned

at the beginning o the twentieth century; second, to put orth critical rame-

works or thinking about uplif cinema as an explicitly useul orm o cinema;

and third, to articulate a methodological imperative that takes up the stakes

and challenges o writing film history about only nonextant films. o this end,

I conclude the introduction with a call to look beyond decayed and combusted

nitrate stock as victims o time and neglect, arguing that we have as much to

discover and learn rom absences as we do rom surviving artiacts. Te film

itsel is but one component o an expansive network o cultural traces that lead

to its myriad unctions. Uplif cinema is not only best explained in this way, it

also provides a test case or a broader methodology o film history.


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Introduction · 3

Arican American Uplif

Uplif films reflected, inormed, and participated in the larger movement o

Arican American uplif that was, at the time, the predominant social and po-

litical ideology concerning Arican American progress. Te program o racialuplif emphasized individual initiative, mutual assistance, social respectability,

interracial cooperation, and economic independence as components o a gen-

eral strategy or promoting the advancement o Arican Americans. Te uplif

project saw individual behavior as the key to communal success, emphasizing

personal conduct over systemic critique. Tis was a view that was cultivated in

the acknowledgment o white racist misperception and misrepresentation o

Arican Americans, essentializing and dehumanizing perspectives that needed

to be countered by a strict code o conduct. Uplif, Jane Gaines writes, was “aconflation o social and moral elevation [that] sent the message that moral ad-

vance meant social advance, as though the one were the effect o the other.”

As W. Fitzhugh Brundage notes, “by adhering to a code o temperance, thrif,

polite manners, sexual purity, cleanliness, and rectitude, blacks contradicted

racist stereotypes about their alleged ineriority.” In post-Reconstruction Jim

Crow America, uplif was not just a strategy or advancement; in the minds o

the project’s leaders, it was an imperative or survival.

Early twentieth-century Black uplif is inseparable rom the figure oBooker . Washington and the institutions with which he was associated:

Hampton Institute (where he was educated), uskegee Institute (where he was

principal), and the National Negro Business League (, which he served

as president). Tough the nerve center o the uplif project was in the South,

at uskegee, uplif reached into the consciousness o upwardly mobile and

would-be upwardly mobile Black northerners as well. Middle- class Arican

American homes across the country commonly eatured a portrait o Wash-

ington, and his ideals o individual initiative, service, and moral respectability

gave a generation o Arican Americans a model o conduct or them to emu-

late. Washington popularized uplif, served as its ambassador among whites,

and unctioned as an image o the uplifed.

Washington’s politics o uplif was complex and by no means universally

embraced. He agreed to a postponement o social equality in avor o more

immediately possible economic remedies, “casting down the bucket” in indus-

tries directly connected to an individual’s environment. As Washington stated

in his 1895 address at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta,

“when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro

is given a man’s chance in the commercial world.” (Te speech was amously


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4 · Introduction

labeled the “Atlanta Compromise” by W. E. B. Du Bois, due to Washington’s

postponement o demands or political rights and claims or social equality in

avor o support or vocational education and economic security.) Washington

saw the locus o “chance” or the unskilled and disenranchised ormer slaves

and their offspring in the mastery o a trade so that they would become indis-pensable to the larger community and thereby justiy their right to rights. His

emphasis on chance was urther underscored in the address when he asserted

that Arican Americans must begin at the bottom and not permit “our griev-

ances to overshadow our opportunities.”

Washington’s diplomatic disposition emphasized the useulness o the

Black reedman to the deeated white southerner in improving southern in-

dustry and creating an economic situation beneficial to both races, one that

would also allow the white population to maintain its desired distance romits previously (and, in act, currently) subjugated neighbors. Appealing to

the broad audience at the Atlanta Exposition, Washington stated that like the

“loyal” slaves, Negroes would be a “patient, aithul, law-abiding, and unresent-

ul people” who would give their lives to protect their white neighbors. In this

vision, social segregation would not preclude Black labor and enterprise rom

benefiting northern and southern whites, just as Black uplif would not pre-

sume social integration. Te goal o the uplif project was to “make the interest

o the races one” and thereby bring about gradual improvement to the statuso the Black citizenry. But the white man need not ear that Washington was

suggesting integration: “in all things that are purely social we can be as separate

as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”

Te tempered possibility and potential o Black uplif that underlie Washing-

ton’s measured rhetoric were presented in the service o the “mutual progress”

o white and Black Americans. Yet in practice the result was a kind o Faustian

pact in which progress was rarely “mutual.”

Education was a major component o these efforts, and the “pedagogy o

uplif” was a central—and polarizing—component o Black social and political

thought at this time. Te Hampton-uskegee idea o education emphasized

normal school education (that is, pertaining to the establishment o standards

or norms in education) and training in practical trades. Hampton, uskegee,

and other normal and agricultural institutes trained teachers and offered stu-

dents agricultural and industrial training to prepare them to be productive and

sel-sufficient laborers. Tough many groups and individuals, both Black and

white, celebrated this model o education or Arican Americans, others ound

it controversial. Criticism came both rom more progressive Black groups and


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Introduction · 5

rom socially conservative white southerners. Kevin Gaines argues that the

Hampton-uskegee philosophy “clashed with the reedpeople’s emancipatory

vision o education” as well as the views o white southerners who were wary o

the potential or Negro education to oster a sense o social equality. o alle-

viate such concerns, the southern institutional models o uplif emphasizededucation as a tool or making “useul citizens” rather than social equals or

political adversaries. As a result, this educational program, combined with a

missionary commitment to service, obuscated “the brutal realities o conquest

and political subordination.” Tis is what made Washington’s model o edu-

cation untenable or Du Bois.

Tis opposing perspective on the unction o education is where Du Bois

and Washington diverged most sharply. For Du Bois, education or Arican

Americans should ocus on “developing the Best o this race that they mayguide the Mass away rom the contamination and death o the Worst, in their

own and other races.” o this end, he advocated higher education or a “tal-

ented tenth” o Black elites. Education practically and symbolically highlighted

the differences between the two leaders as it played a large part in any vision o

the uture or Arican Americans. Quite directly, the orm o education (agri-

cultural and industrial or higher education in the liberal arts) anticipated the

uture role o the Black citizenry.

Faith in education as the gateway to advancement and upward mobility isthe cornerstone o the uplif project, and it unctioned as a kind o “libera-

tion theology.” As Kevin Gaines argues, “describing a group struggle or ree-

dom and social advancement, uplif also suggests that Arican Americans have,

with an almost religious ervor, regarded education as the key to liberation.”

Although the type and purpose o education was contested, the act o educa-

tion as undamental to uplif was promoted across ideological lines. Gaines

shows that “uplif encompassed the tension between competing philosophies

o black education orchestrated by the vision o economic development and

racial accommodation advanced by white industrialists, reormers and philan-

thropists.” Tese competing philosophies o education diverged with regard

to social class and reflected a undamental tension in uplif philosophy be-

tween the shared effort toward collective advancement and the entrenchment

o a “racialized elite identity,” through which uplif depended on class stratifi-

cation as the mechanism or advancement. Fred Moten sees in this tension an

uneasy concern with Black criminality, a critique that acknowledges that “the

assimilationist cultural politics o normative uplif can never be ully separated

rom the white supremacism it is supposed to combat.” Anxieties about racial


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6 · Introduction

advancement were intertwined with challenges to the social order. Education,

in whatever orm, constituted a threat to Black dependency and thereore had

to be advocated with care.

Te uplif philosophy ocused its strategies or advancement on the notion

o the autonomous individual, positing individual sel-help as key to commu-nal improvement, which was largely understood as economic independence.

o this end, Washington argued that education should acilitate economic sel-

sufficiency. I agricultural and industrial educational institutes were designed

or the educational advancement o Arican Americans, ultimately this was in

the service o economic advancement. Te , ounded by Washington in

1900, was the proessional nexus o this aspect o the uplif project. Along with

“useul” education—or, as the ounder o Hampton, General Samuel Chap-

man Armstrong, termed it, “education or lie” (epitomized by Hampton anduskegee)—the represented the significance o economic independence

at the heart o the uplif project. Te educational institutes, Washington, and

the each promoted the advancements o Arican Americans in various

proessions and chronicled examples o demonstrated progress through pub-

lications targeted primarily at philanthropists and other members o the na-

tion’s economic and political elite. For example, the 1904 pamphlet published

at Hampton titled What Hampton Graduates Are Doing in Land- Buying, in

Home- Making, in Business, in eaching, in Agriculture, in Establishing Schools,in the rades, in Church and Missionary Work, in the Proessions, 1868–1904 ex-

emplifies the uplif philosophy’s emphasis on education as the way to affect

communities through different orms o labor and public service. Te empha-

sis on economic independence also ostered an encouragement o entrepre-

neurialism. Black businessmen emerged in all types o enterprises, and higher

education was seen as a training ground or businessmen as well as or armers.

Although the work o the educational institutions and that o the were

central to the uplif project, o equal significance was its public açade. Just as

the individual was seen as the key to communal success economically, each

person also carried the burden o representing the race through his or her

actions and conduct. In an environment saturated with grotesque racist cari-

catures and representations predicated on racialized ridicule, reclaiming the

image o Arican Americans was an important aspect o the uplif project; the

perception o upward social mobility and respectability matched economic ad-

vancement in importance. Uplif leaders crafed a rhetoric o uplif to appeal

and appease: a rhetoric that thereby reflected the project it represented. o this

end, the uplif project communicated its ideals through careully designed and

persuasive uplif narratives.


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Introduction · 7

Te idea o the uplif narrative plays a central role in this book. At its

most basic level, an uplif narrative is one that presents Arican Americans as

achieving a status as modern, independent, and sel-sufficient. It strategically

presents a trajectory o progress through a logic o beore-and-afer examples.

Washington’s second and most amous autobiography, Up rom Slavery , is anexample o an extremely popular uplif narrative. Chronicling Washington’s

rise rom a slave to the most powerul Arican American o his time, Up rom

Slavery is an autobiographical narrative that William Andrews has called “one

o the most compelling personal myths in the history o American literature.”

As a postbellum slave narrative at the beginning o the twentieth century, it

presents a revisionist account o the so-called peculiar institution that repre-

sented “slavery and its significance to the advancement o black people in an

increasingly pragmatic perspective.” Andrews explains the rhetorical logicin these terms:

What slavery was in the past is not so important as what slavery means,

or (more importantly) can be construed to mean, in the present. A

actual view o slavery, or Washington, is concerned less with a static

concept o historical truth, rozen in the past, than with the need or

rhetorical power in the ever-evolving present. o the postbellum slave

narrator, particularly Washington, slavery needed to be reviewed and

reempowered as a concept capable o effecting change, o making a di-erence ultimately in what white people thought o black people as reed-

men, not slaves. Te acts o slavery in the postbellum narrative, there-

ore, are not so much what happened then—bad though it was—as what

makes things, good things, happen now.

Tis harnessing o the narrative o the past to serve particular goals o the

present not only necessitated a revision o the slave narrative; it also required

a circumscribed presentation o goals. A major component o Washington’s

accommodationist strategy was, in effect, to reposition the relation o Arican

Americans to whites. Instead o a rhetoric o blame, rights, justice, and resti-

tution, uplif rhetoric emphasized independence and sel-help or the “mutual

progress” o both races. Troughout Washington’s chronicle o his develop-

ment, he reiterates the principle o service: “Te great and prevailing idea that

seemed to take possession o every one [at Hampton] was to prepare himsel to

lif up the people at his home.” As an uplif narrative, Up rom Slavery models

a trajectory o progress while careully negotiating the presentation o its aims

and expertly navigating the potential concerns, prejudices, and sensibilities o

its intended audience.


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8 · Introduction

O course, uplif narratives were not simply literary. One o the central

points o this book is that uplif was a prescriptive program that was articulated

through—and constituted by—a range o media. Uplif discourses traveled

across orms, emerging in speeches, literature, pamphlets, pageants, photo-

graphs, music, and moving images. In doing so, the broader uplif project en-countered new problems at the same time that the multimedia strategy allowed

or new possibilities. Uplif cinema in particular conveyed an argument or—

and unctioned as proo o—Arican American progress through the most

modern orm o mass communication, targeting both white and Black (and

sometimes mixed) audiences. It aligned Arican Americans with technologi-

cal progress while offering a broad-reaching platorm rom which to vividly

project the race’s potential or advancement.

Uplif Cinema and Race Film

Te dominant way in which historians have studied early Arican American

engagements with moving pictures as producers, subjects, and spectators has

been through the discourse on race film. Although race film has received criti-

cal scholarly attention since the 1970s, it is a concept contemporaneous to the

films’ emergence in the 1910s, designated as a term or filmmaking practicesby, or, or about Arican Americans. Tere were filmmaking concerns owned

and operated by whites that sought to appeal to Black audiences with Black

cast productions, but Arican American filmmakers saw themselves as par-

ticipating in the uplif o the race through motion picture production. Black

filmmaking entrepreneurs understood themselves as race men, and the term

race picture or race movie unctioned as shorthand or the press, exhibitors, and

audiences to understand films made about and or Arican Americans. In 1920

in the New York Age, the arts critic Lester Walton championed “colored motion

pictures” as a “new and ertile field offering wonderul opportunities.” And,

as Jane Gaines has shown, Geraldyn Dismond, an Arican American writing

in Close-Up in 1929, defined “Negro films” as films—made by Black-owned

or white-controlled companies—with a common “motive”: to both present a

humanizing portrayal o Arican American subjects, “showing them not as

ools and servants, but as human beings with the same emotions, desires and

weaknesses as other people,” and to “share in the profits o this great indus-

try.” Te term race film reflected the notion o a separate cinema or a largely

segregated audience, but it did not indicate a shared style, genre, or singular

point o view.


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Introduction · 9

Since the late 1970s, film historians have endeavored to chronicle and criti-

cally assess race films, ocusing primarily on narrative fiction films exhibited

in theaters to Black audiences. Tomas Cripps defined race movies as “films

made or exclusively black audiences between 1916 and 1956,” ollowing the

historical usage o the term. Henry Sampson identified over five hundredfilms eaturing Arican American casts shown in theaters that catered to an

Arican American audience. Subsequent scholars have built on Cripps’s and

Sampson’s oundational research. Although the ocus o scholarly attention has

largely been on the Lincoln Motion Picture Company and Oscar Micheaux,

other researchers have added to our understanding o lesser known ventures

and figures. For example, Christina Petersen has researched and produced a

filmography o Reol Productions; Barbara Lupack and Matthew Bernstein

and Dana White have traced the history o the Norman Film Manuactur-ing Company; Pearl Bowser and Charles Musser have researched the Maurice

Film Company; and Jacqueline Stewart is producing a comprehensive account

o Spencer Williams, including a ull survey o his career as an actor, director,

and producer. Furthermore, Charlene Regester and Anna Everett have shown

that film criticism in the Black press was a constitutive part o race filmmaking

at the same time that it critiqued perceived misrepresentations in the films

themselves.

Te most prolific and successul race filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux, producednearly orty eature films rom 1919 to 1948. His silent era films, only three o

which survive rom the more than twenty he made, were explicitly oriented by

uplif ideals. For example, in Within Our Gates (1920), the protagonist Sylvia

Landry teaches at a school or Black children in the rural south and is orced

to go north to appeal or unds rom wealthy white philanthropists to keep the

school in operation. Te Symbol o the Unconquered (1920) centers on a Black

rontiersman, and the hero o Body and Soul (1925) is an aspiring inventor. At

the same time, these films also exhibit inherent ambivalences about the uplif

project.

Tough Micheaux saw himsel as a Bookerite, he did not hesitate to turn

his lens on less respectable aspects o Black social lie, choosing themes that, as

Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence note, were “explosive in their time.” His rep-

resentations o corrupt ministers, rapists, gamblers, and hypocrites drew voci-

erous criticism, and his portrayals o miscegenation and lynching were noth-

ing short o shocking. Furthermore, as Bowser and Spence note, “Micheaux’s

notions o racial uplif and individual responsibility challenged white defini-

tions o race without actually changing the terms.” Even here, Micheaux’s

filmmaking project aligns with Washington’s philosophy o racial uplif, which


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10 · Introduction

was similarly critiqued or setting aside systemic change in avor o modest, in-

cremental challenges to the status quo.

Race film, as it has been historically understood, is nonetheless a category

that is too limited or the films under discussion here. Uplif cinema produc-

tively expands the epistemological coordinates o race film. Tis book con-tributes to the study o race film by introducing uplif cinema as an important

component o early Black filmmaking, and then by using that move to recon-

sider the defining aspects o that filmmaking. Te makers o uplif films em-

ployed motion pictures as a medium o persuasion and representation in the

service o Arican American advancement and sel-definition. Uplif cinema

and race film overlap in terms o strategies and practices that extended into

the 1920s and beyond. However, unlike race film, uplif cinema was primarily

imagined as a orm o useul cinema, discussed below. Uplif cinema adds tothe historiography on race film by expanding its locations, genres, periods,

production and exhibition contexts, and motivations.

Although uplif films have been critically overlooked, uplif itsel is not a

new concept in the study o race film. Scholars o early Black cinema have de-

scribed how filmmakers mobilized aspects o uplif to assert the modernity

o Black subjects, particularly in northern urban locations. Speaking o race

films in their “heyday,” Jane Gaines asserts, “in every way imaginable they es-

poused uplif.” She writes: “Like much o the black literary production o theday . . . race movies were thoroughly imbued with the spirit and the letter o

uplif, the mode in which race consciousness was publically articulated in the

early part o the twentieth century.” Uplif cinema may be a distinct practice,

but it has implications or how we understand race films, shedding light on the

complexities o Black filmmaking in the early decades o the twentieth century.

One consequence o the predominance o the race film model has been an

almost exclusive ocus on the films made in the north. In this book I show that

the emergence o a cinema practice related specifically to Arican American

concerns is rooted in southern rural areas as well as northern urban centers,

and that the south played a significant role in engagements with moderniza-

tion and media culture. Arican American filmmaking emerged in the south

at the same time as it did in the north, in the early years o the second de-

cade o the twentieth century, but it developed in significantly different ways

in the two regions. Both northern and southern filmmakers combined popu-

lar entertainment with the positive representation o Arican American lie at

a time when its prevailing screen image was the visual maniestation o dis-

torted white perception. In the north, Black filmmaking entrepreneurs sought

to monetize Black audiences and provide appealing moving pictures or Black


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Introduction · 11

theaters. In the south, filmmaking projects aiming to support Arican Ameri-

can interests emerged rom educational institutions rather than commercial

ventures. Te aculties and trustees, both Black and white, o southern Arican

American agricultural and institutional colleges saw themselves at the ore-

ront o modernity with their proposed solution to the so-called Negro Prob-lem o economic and racial subjugation. o this end, they enlisted moving pic-

ture technology by using film as a mechanism or und- raising, addressing

northern white philanthropists who supported the endeavors o Washington

and his conservative circle as well as southern Black communities (I examine

this practice in chapters 2 and 3).

Attention to race films has ocused on narrative fiction, including such

genres as comedies, westerns, mysteries, dramas, and musicals. Te genre

that has received the most attention in race film historiography is melodrama,largely because these films directly engaged with Arican American social and

political issues. In her discussion o the uplif narratives o the Lincoln Mo-

tion Picture Company and o Oscar Micheaux, or example, Gaines ocuses

on melodrama as a orm or “the race movie betterment narrative.” Other

aspects o film culture that have only received brie mention (such as actu-

ality ootage, nontheatrical exhibitions at venues such as churches and meet-

ing halls, and versions o the local film) deserve more ocused research and

sustained discussion because they expand our ocus to include a uller rangeo the production and reception practices o this period. It is in these broad

areas that uplif cinema took shape. Beyond narrative fiction, uplif films ex-

tend the uses o moving pictures into other cinematic modes and genres, most

notably nontheatrical practices, hybrid orms, and nonfiction filmmaking,

such as actualities and local films (discussed below). Films made o Black col-

leges combined narrative and actuality orms aligned with the rhetorical strate-

gies o und-raising materials. Even northern Black filmmaking entrepreneurs

who made fiction films prior to 1915 were as invested in other orms (such

as actualities) that documented aspects o Black civic lie, demonstrating the

achievement o uplif ideals.

A more overt ocus on uplif cinema likewise expands the historiography on

race film to include its pre-1915 instantiations. Although scholars do acknowl-

edge that some Black filmmakers were producing films beore the 1915 release

o Te Birth o a Nation, Gaines is typical o a broader trend when she argues

that “early black filmmaking is inextricably tied to the release o this film, and

Griffith’s offensive epic was the irritant around which a pearl ormed.” Yet,

as Gaines hersel notes, scholarship has repeatedly challenged the notion that

Black filmmaking was born as a response to Te Birth of a Nation. Even i


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12 · Introduction

Griffith’s film has a hold in the popular imagination as a flashpoint or Black

film history, by the late 1970s historians—most prominently Henry Sampson,

Tomas Cripps, and Phyllis Klotman—had traced the filmmaking practices

o figures who had worked earlier, such as William Foster, widely considered

(until now) the first Black film producer. Still, since not even any ragmentso race films made prior to 1915 survive, it became a convenient narrative to

posit that Black film endeavors ollowed rom Griffith’s film. Such a narrative

is supported by the widely publicized efforts to counter Te Birth o a Nation

with films such as Te Birth o a Race (1918) and, relatedly, by what Cripps calls

the notable “ailures” o the Lincoln Motion Picture Company and the Birth o

a Race company. What I show throughout this book is that the landscape o

early Black filmmaking practice was ar richer than has been understood and

offered powerul models o success or filmmakers in the 1920s.Tis expansion o the period matters not just because it makes the histo-

riography more accurate but also because it broadens our understanding o

the motivation o race film practitioners. Accounts o race film have posited

it primarily as a response to representational racism and as the maniestation

o a desire to capitalize on a perceived untapped market, Arican American

spectators. Te notion o a separate cinema necessitated by a segregated cul-

ture is a logical inerence. Yet it is only part o the story. Te impetus or early

Black filmmaking is more nuanced and complex than the amiliar narrative orace film suggests: it comes rom a wider—and more explicitly multimedia—

context.

Along these lines, it is important to recognize that early Black film culture

was not an entirely segregated experience. Rather, it was deeply imbricated

with the influences and participation o white sponsors. Tis goes beyond the

inclusion o white capital or race film production, or the race film produc-

tion o white-owned companies. When Gaines discusses the interracial na-

ture o American silent film culture and the “uncanny parallels and volatile

intersections o black and white American cultures,” she notes that “the race

pioneers carved something significant out o nothing—race movies were an

audacious invention that helped to make an audience that most white entre-

preneurs did not see, that helped to imagine a separate community into exis-

tence.” Gaines is reerring here to the theatrically exhibited films targeting an

Arican American audience produced by figures such as Oscar Micheaux. But

such “race pioneers” also included institutions and filmmakers (both whites

and Arican Americans) who thought more expansively about the use o the

medium o moving pictures as an agent o uplif. Rather than appearing out o


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Introduction · 13

nowhere, these films were the logical extension o already existing multimedia

campaign materials promoting Arican American advancement. As such, their

production and exhibition were inherently—though not unproblematically—

interracial, as well as intermedial.

Although Te Birth o a Nation brought the issue o the filmic representa-tion o Arican Americans to national attention, the leaders o the uplif project

had already been using motion pictures to disseminate the message o agri-

cultural and industrial training or several years. As early as 1910, moving pic-

tures were integral parts o the uplif campaigns o the Hampton and uskegee

Institutes. Speaking generally, Arican American uplif cinema in the south

subordinated entertainment to message, loosely constructing narrative (both

fiction and nonfiction) as a means o showcasing Hampton’s and uskegee’s

endeavors. Te product was Negro education, and the films were vehicles orits sale. In contrast, northern Arican American cinema was a business venture

aimed at visual entertainment or Black audiences. Arican American entre-

preneurs produced and exhibited motion pictures or Black audiences in cities

such as Chicago, New York, and Boston. In the north, Black urbanites were

“migrating to the movies,” as Stewart has argued, to see a reflection o their

lives that was positive, realistic, and engaged with contemporary debates con-

cerning Black urban lie. Te filmmaking projects o uplif filmmakers en-

compassed various modes o production and different regional requirements,through which they explored alternative possibilities or cinema in the service

o Arican American social and political advancement in the early 1910s.

Myriad in orm and content, uplif films shared a cultural context but not

necessarily generic characteristics or types o exhibition venues. Uplif cinema

included films that spanned several modes o production, were articulated

through various genres, and were shown in different exhibition contexts. Al-

though most were ideologically aligned with the Bookerite uplif project, some

posited a challenge to uplif philosophy and its practical components (such

as uplif comedies that were offensive to some while being highly entertain-

ing to others). Despite their heterogeneity, these films inormed, contributed

to, responded to, and were otherwise critically engaged with uplif. In all o

its orms, uplif cinema unctioned as an agent o Black sel-ashioning in the

early twentieth century.


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14 · Introduction

Frameworks or Conceptualizing Uplif Cinema

Uplif cinema is one example o the Progressive Era’s response to motion pic-

tures. Te National Board o Censorship spoke o using cinema to enact uplifin all audiences, film advocates proclaimed the possibility o using motion pic-

tures as an educational resource, social problem films o the 1910s addressed

domestic issues, and the film industry advocated the use o cinema as a tool

or the promotion o international understanding—and trade—in the era o

the League o Nations.

Along with discourses surrounding theatrical entertainment cinema o the

1910s, recent research on nontheatrical cinema provides a helpul ramework

or approaching uplif cinema across modes o production and in relation tomyriad exhibition practices. As Rick Prelinger has shown, rom cinema’s emer-

gence moving pictures have been used “to record, orient, train, sell, and per-

suade.” Te multiple unctions o moving pictures beyond theatrical enter-

tainment are broadly gathered under the category o useful cinema. In their

discussion o the “multidimensional and flexible concept” o useul cinema,

Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson write: “Te concept o useul cinema does

not so much name a mode o production, a genre, or an exhibition venue as

it identifies a disposition, an outlook, and an approach toward a medium onthe part o institutions and institutional agents.” Acland and Wasson take the

term “useul” rom ony Bennett’s concept o “useul culture,” in which cul-

ture is ormulated through institutions as a mechanism o power. Tey extend

Bennett’s concept to “a body o films and technologies that perorm tasks and

serve as instruments in an ongoing struggle or aesthetic, social, and political

capital.” Useul cinema is an effective rubric or considering a broad range o

films and film practices that have been receiving greater scholarly attention in

recent years.

Useul cinema is not a retronym, however, but rather the restoration o a

way o characterizing films that served a purpose beyond entertainment. Te

notion o utility was a part o the discourse about moving pictures in the early

twentieth century. For example, trade publications such as the Moving Picture

World advertised films like Adrif (Lucius Henderson, Tanhouser, 1911) with

the slogan: “A picture with a lesson!” Te advertisement even spoke to the

utility o the film not just or the audience but or the exhibitors themselves:

“ is a useul film with a big, simple moral that would do much to recon-

cile the Church to the Motion Picture—i the ormer knew that this sort o film

was so much in evidence.” Films were also sometimes explicitly characterized


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Introduction · 15

as not useul, as in this review o Te Reugee (Lux, 1910): “A war story which

does not convey any inormation; nor does it amuse. Its useulness as a motion

picture may, thereore be questioned.” Te reviewer concluded that Te Refugee

“serves no useul purpose.” Utility was also designated or hal-reel films that

could round out a program, as in the Lubin Manuacturing Company’s adver-tisement o “Tose Useul Hal-Reel Comedies.” Discussions concerning the

utility o moving pictures or educational purposes were prolific in the pages o

the trade press. For example, in an issue o the Moving Picture World rom 1911,

several articles and notices proclaim the educational value o moving pictures:

“Te Picture as a eacher,” “eachers View Historical Films,” and “Simpliying

the eaching o History.” Similarly, moving pictures such as Te Awakening

o John Bond (Oscar Apel and Charles Brabin, Edison, 1911) were championed

as answers to the current wave o criticism o films. Te Moving Picture World noted: “Tese pictures were the entering wedge that pierced the hard shell o

conservatism and in less than a year have pried it wide open and orced the rec-

ognition o the motion picture by the press, university, state, church and laity

as the greatest educational agency since the discovery o the art o printing.”

Te burgeoning film industry thus championed moving pictures as powerul

agents o education as well as reorm, an argument made most effectively by

useul films that explicitly served the greater public welare.

Sponsored by corporations, governmental agencies, social welare organi-zations, and private groups and institutions, useul films were “made to per-

suade”—unctioning as educational films while also striving to entertain.

Tey display industrial processes, technological advances, and lessons in per-

sonal and social conduct. Industrial films o this period show industrious-

ness o various sorts: raw materials being turned into products, such as From

the Field to the Cradle (Lubin, 1911) on milk production andTe Making o a

Shoe: From Cowhide Pelt to Goodyear Welt (Edison, sponsored by United Shoe

Machinery, 1915); buildings and inrastructure being built, such as Te Great-

est Engineering Feat (Kalem, 1911) and Building the Great Los Angeles Aque-

duct (American Film Manuacturing, 1913); the benefits o technology, such as

Te Stenographer’s Friend: Or, What Was Accomplished by an Edison Business

Phonograph (Edison, 1910); models or conduct, such as Te Little Mothers’

League (Kalem, sponsored by the New York Health Department, 1911) and

Te Cost of Carelessness (Universal Animated Weekly, sponsored by Brook-

lyn Rapid ransit, 1915); or lessons in hygiene, such as Boil Your Water (Pathé

Frères, sponsored by the New York City Department o Health, 1911).

Useul cinema is an important lens through which to consider uplif cinema

not only because o the historiographical oundation established by Acland


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16 · Introduction

and Wasson (and the contributors to their volume), but also because utility

is basic to uplif cinema in two unique and undamental ways. First, the films

were produced and exhibited with a specific purpose in mind—namely, the

social and political advancement o Arican Americans in the first decades o

the twentieth century. Second, the films were made with the goal o promotingthe idea o Arican Americans as useul citizens. Tus, in uplif cinema utility

is doubly inscribed.

As a orm o useul cinema, uplif cinema employed the medium o motion

pictures to assert the humanity, respectability, modernity, and utility o Ari-

can Americans or white and Black audiences at a time when such propositions

were, more ofen than not, challenged by cultural and political norms. In this

sense, uplif cinema at once was a public relations project targeting whites and

unctioned as an agent o positive sel-definition or Arican American partici-pants and spectators. Considered as a kind o useul cinema, uplif cinema can

be understood in relation to its social purpose and varying degrees o pragma-

tism. Te uplif project orms a constellation o discursive practices, the filmic

components o which are theatrical and nontheatrical, industrial and entre-

preneurial, and overlapping iterations o these modes. Uplif cinema is part o

this practice o using film as a useul medium, but it extends the stakes o that

useulness to its subject: Arican Americans as useul citizens. Trough various

orms, uplif cinema argues that Arican Americans are modern and indus-trious citizens, and in this sense, uplif cinema operates at the intersection o

making films useul (not just an entertaining rivolity or novelty) and making

Black people useul (as workers and citizens). Te raw material or many o

these films is the Black population.

Tis act is explicit in the case o the films made at Hampton and uskegee.

One such film, Making Negro Lives Count (Hampton Institute, 1915), clearly

plays on this dual meaning in its title and in a narrative structure that show-

cases Hampton’s ability to transorm individuals and, as a result, communities.

Making Negro Lives Count chronicles the conditions in poor rural communi-

ties, the training provided by Hampton to meet the challenges o those condi-

tions, and the results o improvements made in the communities by Hampton

graduates. More broadly, the institutes’ films were part o the rhetorical arse-

nal o their multimedia publicity campaigns. With other publicity materials,

these films constructed an uplif narrative that was central to the mission o

Hampton and uskegee: they ollowed a narrative trajectory o personal and

communal transormation in a purported documentary discourse to demon-

strate the power o the institutes to bring about concrete change. Following a

beore-and-afer logic—which I will discuss more extensively in chapter 1—


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18 · Introduction

insists on the need or the institute, a message that would be aimed at both

northern philanthropists and southern Black communities.

Te double address o the materials meant that the threat o ailure was

doubled as well. For white audiences, the threat was o the criminal licentious-

ness o the uneducated Black male who would be governed by “an unbridledbody, an ignorant mind, and an undeveloped soul,” in the words o one north-

ern white sympathizer. For Black audiences, the threat was the status quo

o poverty, dependency, and racial subjugation, highlighting the possibility o

ailure; or uplif to be a viable goal, there must always be the threat o the im-

pending downturn o a precariously positioned people. Te double address

thus required a orm with which to articulate the social mission o the insti-

tutes that would appeal to otherwise conflicting constituents. o this end, the

publicity projects used a rhetoric in which ormal representational strategieswere oregrounded in the service o a political project. In the Hampton and

uskegee publicity, the iconography o uplif is underscored by ambivalence;

ailure is always inherent in the promotion o progress.

Te rhetoric o beore and afer that constituted the dominant strategy o

the publicity materials o these southern institutes intensified in 1915, afer the

incendiary release o Te Birth o a Nation and the ensuing response by mobi-

lized Arican American groups. In April 1915 Hampton administrators allowed

Te New Era, a film compiled rom reedited ootage o one o the institute’spublicity films, to be appended as an epilogue to Te Birth o a Nation. Te New

Era was added to the eature to placate the censors and critics o the epic’s mis-

representation o American history and Arican American humanity, and con-

stituted, as I will argue in chapter 4, an “afer” to the “beore” that was Te Birth

o a Nation. Te resulting outcry in the Arican American press and among the

institute’s supporters and detractors caused heated arguments over the role

o film in Black social struggles. Te criticisms were twoold. First, Hampton

was aulted or being involved in this project at all, and thereby giving legiti-

macy to Te Birth o a Nation. Second, the material Hampton had contributed

was described as being not strong enough and not used effectively enough to

actually counteract Griffith’s film. Tese two criticisms are related, but they ad-

dressed different concerns or the use o motion pictures as an agent o uplif—

exhibition context, reception, and efficacy o the material. Indeed, this incident

demonstrated the possibility that Hampton’s industrial filmmaking could go

awry when recontextualized and placed adjacent to such a reviled work.

Yet uplif cinema encompasses filmmaking practices that extend beyond the

itinerant screenings in the interest o Hampton and uskegee to the more sys-

tematic engagement with moving pictures as a business venture by Black entre-


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Introduction · 19

preneurs in the north. Apart rom the films made at Hampton and uskegee,

the films discussed in this book were made by entrepreneurs who produced

them with the primary goal o financial success. (For example, the Chicago

Deender reerred to the exhibition o William Foster’s first film,Te Railroad

Porter , as having been “placed on the market” by Foster.) o call the individual producer-director production mode o uplif cinema entrepreneurial is

to encompass the three meanings o entrepreneur : the director or manager o a

public musical institution, the nineteenth-century sense o “one who ‘gets up’

entertainments,” to quote the second edition o the Oxord English Dictionary ,

and the sense o owning and managing a business and assuming the risk o

profit or loss. In this sense, the business and entertainment definitions o entre-

preneur bring uplif into alignment with itinerant exhibitors like Lyman Howe.

Black film entrepreneurs worked with relative autonomy, unhindered byregulation or patent restrictions. Tere is no evidence to suggest that the Mo-

tion Picture Patents Company, which controlled licenses or exhibitors, took

any notice o Black film enterprises because they operated outside o the ex-

change system monopolized by the Patents Company. Te term entrepreneur-

ial also allows or an understanding o filmmaking that includes narrative and

nonnarrative, fiction and nonfiction, theatrical and nontheatrical modes o

film production. Although the southern institutes that engaged with motion

picture technology did so or a variety o reasons, entertainment was not theprimary objective; or independent Black film entrepreneurs, in contrast, the

goal was to cultivate and sustain a paying audience through entertaining mo-

tion pictures and actualities pertaining to Arican American lie.

Even in entrepreneurial films primarily designated or commercial exhibi-

tion, there is still a strong element o useul cinema (which I discuss in chap-

ter 5). In their engagement with nonfiction and actuality orms, in addition to

their fiction filmmaking, entrepreneurs explicitly employed moving pictures

as agents o race pride and community sel-recognition. By filming uplif, and

creating uplif through film, they provided an image o Black people that coun-

tered the distorted projection o racist paranoia prevalent on American screens

and asserted Arican Americans’ humanity and civic belonging through mov-

ing pictures.

Among the early moving pictures produced and exhibited by Arican Ameri-

cans were iterations o a practice o filmmaking and exhibition known as the

local film. Te local film—also known as local topicals, local actualities, and


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20 · Introduction

local views—was a type o film produced and exhibited or spectators drawn

to the theater (or other exhibition site) by the possibility o seeing themselves,

their acquaintances, and their communities on screen. Local films appealed

to spectators’ vanity as well as to their curiosity about how their image would

appear when publicly projected. With their targeted address to specific audi-ences, local films proved to be very popular in the early cinema and beyond;

the addition o local views was a common means o increasing audience inter-

est in a moving picture show. In the United States, Edison, Biograph, William

Paley, and traveling exhibitors such as Lyman Howe were among early local

film producers. And in 2012 Melton Barker’s local talent film Te Kidnapper’s

Foil (1930s–1950s) was named to the National Film Registry, garnering more

attention or the local film.

One o the important eatures o the local film is that it is ofen a politicalgesture o sel-recognition as well as a description o a popular practice o early

filmmaking. In 1904 American Vitagraph advertised a traveling moving picture

show by quoting the Scottish poet Robert Burns, “O would some Power the

small gif give us / o see ourselves as others see us!” Tere is a curious irony

in this choice o verse to advertise local films. Te Burns poem rom which it

is taken is titled “o a Louse, on Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church,”

and it tells o an upper-class lady in church who does not notice a louse in her

bonnet. I we saw ourselves as others see us, the verse continues, “What airs indress and gait would leave us.” o see onesel through the eyes o others, in the

poet’s imagination, rees the subject rom vanity and pretentions. Lice are not

discriminating in their prey, whether “beggar,” “cattle,” or “such fine a lady”;

as the poem humorously laments the “impudence” o the louse, it celebrates

the creature’s democratic reach by gently mocking the lady’s assumption that

her beauty, rather than the nesting louse, is what has attracted others’ eyes. For

Burns, to see yoursel as others see you is a humbling experience, made all the

more so by the divine “Power” that affords this impossible perspective. When

applied to moving pictures, however, this “small gif” takes on a broader sig-

nificance: it allows us to see some o the issues involved in local film practices.

In Burns’s poem, class is a central element o the need or sel- recognition:

the upper-class woman is not able to see hersel as others see her (as a host or

a louse). Although local film retains an interest in class, it moves in an oppo-

site direction, affording working- and middle-class spectators the opportunity

to see an image o themselves projected on a screen in a collective viewing ex-

perience—to see themselves as participatory members o a community and as

subjects o a film. Tus, in their work on the Mitchell and Kenyon collection


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Introduction · 21

in Britain (films largely involving working-class people), Vanessa oulmin and

Martin Loiperdinger point to this act o sel-recognition as the central ea-

ture o the local film, a phenomenon that om Gunning has described (also in

reerence to the Mitchell and Kenyon films) as “the cry o recognition which

baptizes this cinema o locality, as the amazement o a direct connection marksthe viewing process.” In Martin Johnson’s work on American local film in

the transitional era and classical Hollywood era (such as home talent films and

civic films with largely middle-class participants), he extends the attraction o

seeing onesel on screen to consider place recognition as a constitutive aspect

o the local film. Where Robert Burns describes a mechanism o humility,

the local film offered a means o publicly affirming the individual as an enran-

chised member o a particular community.

Arican American uplif cinema is part o the tradition o local filmmaking,but it is more than that, using more than novelty as the primary draw or its

audience. Put simply: Arican American local film demonstrates a more ex-

plicit awareness o existing in response to other images. Arican American

filmmakers were presenting aspects o Black lie to audiences (Black, white,

and mixed) at a time o prevalent caricatures and degrading misrepresenta-

tion o Arican American images in popular culture. Te act o seeing one-

sel on-screen as a dignified member o a community, then, unctioned as a

way to counteract the prevailing representational tendencies that existed in thebroader culture o circulating images.

When the first film made at Hampton Institute, John Henry at Hampton:

A Kind o Student Who Makes Good (1913), was shown to students and workers

at the school in January 1914, the institute’s monthly publication reported:

“Nothing is more vitally interesting than ‘to see ourselves as others see us’ and

laughter and applause testified to the intimate appreciation o scenes showing

the trials and triumphs o a Hampton student.” I discuss this film in more

detail in chapter 3. Here, I am interested in how the brie account o the screen-

ing reers not only to Burns’s poem but also to the definitional discourse o the

Arican American condition theorized by Du Bois as “double-consciousness,”

the idea o always looking at onesel through the eyes o others, an “other”

that is necessarily racially posited. Du Boisian double consciousness is an apt

metaphor or the cinematic experience. Reerring to Du Bois’s amous passage

in Te Souls of Black Folk, Gaines writes: “Suddenly one o the oundational

statements in race theory appears as film theory, addressing the question o

the execution o power through the trajectory o the eye.” Du Bois’s passage

reads as ollows:


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22 · Introduction

Afer the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the euton and

Mongolian, the Negro is a sort o seventh son, born with a veil, and

gifed with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields

him no true sel-consciousness, but only lets him see himsel through

the revelation o the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense o always looking at one’s sel through the eyes

o others, o measuring one’s soul by the tape o a world that looks on in

amused contempt and pity. One ever eels his two-ness,—an American,

a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two war-

ring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it rom

being torn asunder.

Gaines posits race films—films with Black casts produced or Black audi-

ences—as a kind o antidote to Du Bois’s diagnosis: “For blacks there is the

hegemonic absurdity o looking at themselves through the same distorted lens

that eyes them so contemptuously. For blacks within white society who have

historically been looking through the wrong lens, race movies offered a cor-

rected view o things, not a radically new view but certainly an improved one.”

Tere is historical evidence to bear this out. Almost a century afer Du

Bois’s amous ormulation, Ossie Davis evocatively described the experience

o watching race films in Black theaters, emphasizing the impact o this sepa-

rate cinema in a space designated or Black spectators:

Tere were black people behind the scenes, telling our black story to us

as we sat in black theaters. We listened blackly, and a beautiul thing hap-

pened to us as we saw ourselves up on the screen. We knew that some-

times it was awkward, that sometimes the films behaved differently than

the ones we saw in the white theater. It didn’t matter. It was ours, and

even the mistakes were ours, and the ools were ours, and the villains

were ours, and the people who won were ours, and the losers were ours.

We were comorted by that knowledge as we sat in the dark, knowing

that there was something about us up there on that screen, controlled by

us, created by us—our own image, as we saw ourselves.

As Gaines suggests and Davis describes, race film “corrects” the skewed per-

spective o “the social dimension o looking relations” that is definitional to

American hegemonic order.

Uplif cinema, in its interracial oundation, complicates this model. Te

local films, actualities, and industrial films present images that

uplift cinema by allyson nadia field

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