Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle brings together four acclaimed documentary films, spanning the 1830s to the 1960s: The Abolitionists, Slavery By Another Name, Freedom Riders and The Loving Story. The Created Equal project, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, offers scholarly resources and program guides for reflection on the legacy and meaning of our shared civil rights history.
Ava Duvernay on the set of Selma. Photo credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Paramount.
Although she did not pick up a camera until she was 32, Ava DuVernay has made history as a writer, director, and producer. She was the first African American woman to win Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival, be nominated for a Best Director Golden Globe, direct a film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, and direct a film with a budget over $100 million. Her work has made her the highest grossing Black woman director in American box office history. Her latest project, When They See Us, was nominated for 16 Emmy awards, making her and Beyoncé the first African American women in Primetime Emmy history to receive multiple nominations in their careers for directing. (Source: National Women's History Museum)
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The Hate U Give: a film by George Tillman (2018)
Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Now, facing pressures from all sides of the community, Starr tries to find her voice in order to stand up for what's right.
See also Skyline Professor Nathan Jones's film recommendations on his page in this guide.
We look forward to your recommendations for additional resources to include in Antiracism: A Resource Guide.
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Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films by
Since the previous edition of Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks (2001), the relationship between African American performers and Hollywood has developed further, calling for another examination. Every year since 2001, at least one African American performer has been Oscar-nominated; some years, there have been two or three. And even as some directors delve into African American history-Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) or Lee Daniels (The Butler), for example-some black directors like F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job) and Tim Story (Fantastic Four) are becoming mainstream in their interests, making films that do not involve African American themes. In this updated edition, the discussion of the controversial films Monster's Ball and Training Day, which saw Oscars going to Halle Berry and Denzel Washington, is continued in-depth and with particular detail. Bogle further examines the particular dilemma of African American women in Hollywood, discussing a huge array of actresses, including Oscar winners Lupita Nyong'o, Octavia Spencer, and Jennifer Hudson and Oscar nominee Viola Davis.
Just As I Am by
"In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely Tyson has not only succeeded as an actor, she has shaped the course of history." -President Barack Obama, 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony "Just As I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. In these pages, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by His hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say." -Cicely Tyson
Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights by
The post-civil rights era of the 1970s offered African Americans an all-too-familiar paradox. Material and symbolic gains contended with setbacks fueled by resentment and reaction. African American artists responded with black approaches to expression that made history in their own time and continue to exercise an enormous influence on contemporary culture and politics. This collection's fascinating spectrum of topics begins with the literary and cinematic representations of slavery from the 1970s to the present. Other authors delve into visual culture from Blaxploitation to the art of Betye Saar to stage works like “A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White” as well as groundbreaking literary works like “Corregidora” and “Captain Blackman.” A pair of concluding essays concentrate on institutional change by looking at the Seventies surge of black publishing and by analyzing Ntozake Shange's for colored girls... in the context of current controversies surrounding sexual violence. Throughout, the writers reveal how Seventies black cultural production anchors important contemporary debates in black feminism and other issues while spurring the black imagination to thrive amidst abject social and political conditions. Contributors: Courtney Baker, Soyica Diggs Colbert, Madhu Dubey, Nadine Knight, Monica White Ndounou, Kinohi Nishikawa, Samantha Pinto, Jermaine Singleton, Terrion L. Williamson, and Lisa Woolfork.
Black Male Frames: African Americans in a Century of Hollywood Cinema, 1903-2003 by
“Black Male Frames” charts the development and shifting popularity of two stereotypes of black masculinity in popular American film: “the shaman” or “the scoundrel.” Starting with colonial times, Williams identifies the origins of these roles in an America where black men were forced either to defy or to defer to their white masters. These figures recur in the stories America tells about its black men, from the fictional Jim Crow and Zip Coon to historical figures such as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Williams argues that these two extremes persist today in modern Hollywood, where actors such as Sam Lucas, Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman, among others, must cope with and work around such limited options. Williams situates these actors' performances of one or the other stereotype within each man's personal history and within the country's historical moment, ultimately to argue that these men are rewarded for their portrayal of the stereotypes most needed to put America's ongoing racial anxieties at ease. Reinvigorating the discussion that began with Donald Bogle's seminal work, “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks,” “Black Male Frames” illuminates the ways in which individuals and the media respond to the changing racial politics in America.
Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era by
From Al Jolson in blackface to Song of the South, there is a long history of racism in Hollywood film. Yet as early as the 1930s, movie studios carefully vetted their releases, removing racially offensive language like the "N-word." This censorship did not stem from purely humanitarian concerns, but rather from worries about boycotts from civil rights groups and loss of revenue from African American filmgoers. “Cinema Civil Rights” presents the untold history of how Black audiences, activists, and lobbyists influenced the representation of race in Hollywood in the decades before the 1960s civil rights era. Employing a nuanced analysis of power, Ellen C. Scott reveals how these representations were shaped by a complex set of negotiations between various individuals and organizations. Rather than simply recounting the perspective of film studios, she calls our attention to a variety of other influential institutions, from protest groups to state censorship boards. Scott demonstrates not only how civil rights debates helped shaped the movies, but also how the movies themselves provided a vital public forum for addressing taboo subjects like interracial sexuality, segregation, and lynching. Emotionally gripping, theoretically sophisticated, and meticulously researched, “Cinema Civil Rights” presents us with an in-depth look at the film industry's role in both articulating and censoring the national conversation on race.
Shaping the Future of African American Film by
In Hollywood, we hear, it's all about the money. It's a ready explanation for why so few black films get made--no crossover appeal, no promise of a big payoff. But what if the money itself is color-coded? What if the economics that governs film production is so skewed that no film by, about, or for people of color will ever look like a worthy investment unless it follows specific racial or gender patterns? This, Monica Ndounou shows us, is precisely the case. In a work as revealing about the culture of filmmaking as it is about the distorted economics of African American film, Ndounou clearly traces the insidious connections between history, content, and cash in black films. How does history come into it? Hollywood's reliance on past performance as a measure of potential success virtually guarantees that historically underrepresented, underfunded, and undersold African American films devalue the future prospects of black films, so the cycle continues as it has for nearly a century. Behind the scenes, the numbers are far from neutral. Analyzing the onscreen narratives and off-screen circumstances behind nearly two thousand films featuring African Americans in leading and supporting roles, including such recent productions as Bamboozled, Beloved, and Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Ndounou exposes the cultural and racial constraints that limit not just the production but also the expression and creative freedom of black films. Her wide-ranging analysis reaches into questions of literature, language, speech and dialect, film images and narrative, acting, theater and film business practices, production history and financing, and organizational history. By uncovering the ideology behind profit-driven industry practices that reshape narratives by, about, and for people of color, this provocative work brings to light existing limitations--and possibilities for reworking stories and business practices in theater, literature, and film.
Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film by
This insightful study places African American women's stardom in historical and industrial contexts by examining the star personae of five African American women: Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Halle Berry. Interpreting each woman's celebrity as predicated on a brand of charismatic authority, Mia Mask shows how these female stars have ultimately complicated the conventional discursive practices through which blackness and womanhood have been represented in commercial cinema, independent film, and network television. Mask examines the function of these stars in seminal yet underanalyzed films. She considers Dandridge's status as a sexual commodity in films such as “Tamango,” revealing the contradictory discourses regarding race and sexuality in segregation-era American culture. Grier's feminist-camp performances in sexploitation pictures “Women in Cages” and “The Big Doll House” and her subsequent blaxploitation vehicles “Coffy” and “Foxy Brown” highlight a similar tension between representing African American women as both objectified stereotypes and powerful, self-defining icons. Mask reads Goldberg's transforming habits in “Sister Act” and “The Associate” as representative of her unruly comedic routines, while Winfrey's daily television performance as self-made, self-help guru echoes Horatio Alger narratives of success. Finally, Mask analyzes Berry's meteoric success by acknowledging the ways in which Dandridge's career made Berry's possible.
Black on Black: Urban Youth Films and the Multicultural Audience by
Images of violent black masculinity are not new in American culture, but in the late 1980s and early '90s, the social and economic climate in the country contributed to an unprecedented number of films about ghetto life. And while Hollywood reaped financial gains from these depictions, the rest of the country saw an ever widening "opportunity gap" between marginalized groups and mainstream society, as well as an increase in juvenile violence. These events added to the existing discomfort of the viewing public with representations of young black males living in urban ghettos. “Black on Black: Urban Youth Films and the Multicultural Audience” tackles the under-examined subject of black, male-focused, coming-of-age films in American society. Of central concern is an analysis of responses made by culturally diverse young adults to selected "Hood" films of the early 1990s. Grounded in Reader-Response Theory and utilizing qualitative research design and analysis, author Celeste Fisher examines student interpretations of three representative films of the period: “Boyz N the Hood,” “Juice” and “Menace II Society.” This book provides insight into how meaning is made by a multicultural audience in response to a particularly controversial representation of "Blackness" in American society. Developed to make sense of the violence that accompanied the screenings of some Hood films, this research provides a greater understanding of how such films are interpreted. “Black on Black” is suitable for scholars and students interested in the subject, as well as for anyone interested in film, race, multiculturalism, and identity politics.
Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, and Memory by
This wide-ranging interdisciplinary collection--the first of its kind--invites us to reconsider the politics and scope of the “Roots” phenomenon of the 1970s. Alex Haley's 1976 book was a publishing sensation, selling over a million copies in its first year and winning a National Book Award and a special Pulitzer Prize. The 1977 television adaptation was more than a blockbuster miniseries--it was a galvanizing national event, drawing a record-shattering viewership, earning 38 Emmy nominations, and changing overnight the discourse on race, civil rights, and slavery. These essays--from emerging and established scholars in history, sociology, film, and media studies--interrogate “Roots,” assessing the ways that the book and its dramatization recast representations of slavery, labor, and the black family; reflected on the promise of freedom and civil rights; and engaged discourses of race, gender, violence, and power in the United States and abroad. Taken together, the essays ask us to reconsider the limitations and possibilities of this work, which, although dogged by controversy, must be understood as one of the most extraordinary media events of the late 20th century, a cultural touchstone of enduring significance. Contributors: Norvella P. Carter, Warren Chalklen, Elise Chatelain, Robert K. Chester, Clare Corbould, C. Richard King, David J. Leonard, Delia Mellis, Francesca Morgan, Tyler D. Parry, Martin Stollery, Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, Bhekuyise Zungu.
Real Sister: Stereotypes, Respectability, and Black Women in Reality TV by
From “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” to “Flavor of Love,” reality shows with predominantly black casts have often been criticized for their negative representation of African American women as loud, angry, and violent. Yet even as these programs appear to be rehashing old stereotypes of black women, the critiques of them are arguably problematic in their own way, as the notion of "respectability" has historically been used to police black women's behaviors. The first book of scholarship devoted to the issue of how black women are depicted on reality television, “Real Sister” offers an even-handed consideration of the genre. The book's ten contributors--black female scholars from a variety of disciplines--provide a wide range of perspectives, while considering everything from “Basketball Wives” to “Say Yes to the Dress.” As regular viewers of reality television, these scholars are able to note ways in which the genre presents positive images of black womanhood, even as they catalog a litany of stereotypes about race, class, and gender that it tends to reinforce. Rather than simply dismissing reality television as "trash," this collection takes the genre seriously, as an important touchstone in ongoing cultural debates about what constitutes "trashiness" and "respectability." Written in an accessible style that will appeal to reality TV fans both inside and outside of academia, “Real Sister” thus seeks to inspire a more nuanced, thoughtful conversation about the genre's representations and their effects on the black community.
The Colorblind Screen: Television in Post-Racial America by
The election of President Barack Obama signaled for many the realization of a post-racial America, a nation in which racism was no longer a defining social, cultural, and political issue. While many Americans espouse a "colorblind" racial ideology and publicly endorse the broad goals of integration and equal treatment without regard to race, in actuality this attitude serves to reify and legitimize racism and protects racial privileges by denying and minimizing the effects of systematic and institutionalized racism. In “The Colorblind Screen,” the contributors examine television's role as the major discursive medium in the articulation and contestation of racialized identities in the United States. While the dominant mode of televisual racialization has shifted to a "colorblind" ideology that foregrounds racial differences in order to celebrate multicultural assimilation, the volume investigates how this practice denies the significant social, economic, and political realities and inequalities that continue to define race relations today. Focusing on such iconic figures as President Obama, LeBron James, and Oprah Winfrey, many chapters examine the ways in which race is read by television audiences and fans. Other essays focus on how visual constructions of race in dramas like “24,” “Sleeper Cell,” and “The Wanted” continue to conflate Arab and Muslim identities in post-9/11 television. The volume offers an important intervention in the study of the televisual representation of race, engaging with multiple aspects of the mythologies developing around notions of a "post-racial" America and the duplicitous discursive rationale offered by the ideology of colorblindness.
Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement by
“Equal Time” explores the crucial role of network television in reconfiguring new attitudes in race relations during the civil rights movement. Due to widespread coverage, the civil rights revolution quickly became the United States' first televised major domestic news story. This important medium unmistakably influenced the ongoing movement for African American empowerment, desegregation, and equality. Aniko Bodroghkozy brings to the foreground network news treatment of now-famous civil rights events including the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, integration riots at the University of Mississippi, and the March on Washington, including Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. She also examines the most high-profile and controversial television series of the era to feature African American actors—"East Side/West Side,” “Julia,” and “Good Times”--to reveal how entertainment programmers sought to represent a rapidly shifting consensus on what "blackness" and "whiteness" meant and how they now fit together.
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