INDEPENDENT AFRICAN-AMERICAN FILMMAKERS

1915 saw for the first time the formation of the Independent African-American Filmmakers. African-Americans as independent filmmakers took up their cause by counter-attacking the making of The Birth of a Nation. They sought out their own financing in order to produce films with more positive images of Blacks. The Birth of a Race (ca. 1918) was to be the first independent black film undertaken and produced by Emmett J. Scott, personal secretary to Booker T. Washington of the Tuskeegee Institute. The film was released in 1919 but never drew movie goers as previously envisioned.

The Johnson Brothers, George P. and Noble Johnson, had already begun movie making as the Lincoln Motion Picture Company which opened business in the summer of 1915. They wanted to produce movies which presented Blacks "in his everyday life, a human being with human inclination and one of talent and intellect." By 1916, they completed and distributed two films, The Realization of the Negro's Ambition (1916) and A Trooper of Troop K (1916).
Two years before these films, Bert (Egbert Austin) Williams (1873-1922), the famed actor, singer and vaudevillian, became the first African-American to appear as a star in a motion picture. His 1914 film, Darktown Jubilee, was not well received even though his role was covered up in Blackface.

By Right of Birth, 1921, was another one of the "hope for success" movies produced by The Lincoln Motion Picture Company. It covered the portrayal of black life featuring successful middle-class African-Americans.

The seeds were now planted, and 1918 brought to the forefront the legendary name of Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951). Micheaux is credited with keeping the African-American independent movie production industry alive from 1918 thru 1948.

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