'RACE MOVIES.

AFRICAN Americans in motion pictures; MOTION picture industry; BIRTH of a Nation, The (Film : 1915); RACE discrimination; AFRICAN Americans

This article reports that from film's start, there has been a continuous struggle with moviemakers about the negative ways films portray African Americans. The lack of acting roles for black performers and the slow integration of all-white theaters across the country also contributed to this rocky relationship African Americans have had with Hollywood. Within a few months after the first theater movies were made in the 1890s, African Americans began to appear in films. Racial tensions reached a new high in 1915 when the movie industry trumpeted the release of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation.