In the first quarter of the twentieth century, five African American women filmmakers helped build the US film industry and helped secure better representation of African Americans on screen. Although they were geographically separated, living in different parts of the country, from Kansas City, Missouri, to Montclair, New Jersey, and Washington, DC, they were united by a shared belief that the motion picture was socially transformative. Some tried for a short time to make a living in the film business, while others left the field after making a single motion picture and disappeared altogether. These women wanted to present an authentic vision of African American life, and to that end they often became entrepreneurs, arranging screening venues and distributing film prints, or taking them directly to audiences in order to reach more communities. Beyond their risk-taking and pioneering spirit, their efforts to change the prevailing view of African Americans bound them to one another and made their achievements emblematic of a movement to affirm the validity of African American lives. Although the current wave of interest in African American director-producer Oscar Micheaux and the “race film” producers of his day has confirmed and validated the existence of independent Black filmmakers in the silent era, the research prompted by this interest has largely uncovered only the men involved.

Taking a second look, however, we discover not only the African American giants of cinema but also the women who took part in creative teamwork alongside their husbands. The best examples are Micheaux’s second wife, Alice B. Russell, and Eslanda Robeson, the wife of singer, stage and screen actor, and activist Paul Robeson.

Who Was the “First” African American Woman Filmmaker?
Even so, with the exceptions of Eloyce King Patrick Gist, whose 16 mm educational religious short films drew the attention of some critics, and Zora Neale Hurston, known primarily for her work as a writer and ethnographer, African American women filmmakers have not attracted the attention of historians. In their own time, however, the achievement of being the “first woman filmmaker,” and the title of “first woman filmmaker” that came with it, mattered to the African American press. Citing separate events a year apart, the press argued that Tressie Souders and Maria P. Williams, both of Kansas City, Missouri, should be considered the “first.”

It could also be argued that the first woman filmmaker of African American descent was Madame E. Touissant Welcome, born Jennie Louis Van Der Zee, the sister of the famous photographer James Van Der Zee. She directed a film about Black soldiers in World War I as part of a twelve-part documentary that she produced with her husband, E. Touissant Welcome, for the Touissant Motion Picture Exchange (Dixon 20). Looking back in this way, we can see that those who broke down barriers of different kinds were not only individuals but a whole group of women.

The hopes that the Black community placed in these women are evident in the title of a 1921 article published in The Competitor, “Our Growing Importance in the Amusement World.” The article mentions that writer Birdie Gilmore had her work Jungle God produced by the Delsarte Film Company, and refers to another of her stories that had been accepted by the Metro Company (38). In 1915, the Chicago Defender mentioned a “three-reel drama” titled Shadowed by the Devil in its “Among the Films” section (5). The feature-length Shadowed by the Devil was the only production of Chicago’s Unique Film Company, which may have been founded by a husband-and-wife team of filmmakers. Mrs. M. Webb was the source of the original story for the film, which was directed by her husband, Miles M. Webb (Sampson, 183). Taken together, Tressie Souders, Maria P. Williams, Eloyce King Patrick Gist, Alice B. Russell, Eslanda Robeson, Mrs. M. Webb, Birdie Gilmore, Madame E. Touissant Welcome, and Zora Neale Hurston all deserve recognition and a secure place in the history of silent cinema.

Drusilla Dunjee Houston’s 1902 Answer to Dixon and Griffith
Drusilla Dunjee Houston, who wrote a screenplay she titled “Spirit of the South: The Maddened Mob,” should also be added to this group as an African American woman who sought to make a difference in the silent film era. Although Houston’s screenplay, probably the first African American response to Thomas Dixon and D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), was never made into a motion picture, it represents a woman’s documentation, over nearly a decade, of the destructive race-based social ideas promoted by Thomas Dixon in his novels, in his stage plays, and later in The Birth of a Nation. These ideas advocated a violent social stratification that took root in the American West and spread across the country.

The 35 mm silent-era prints of Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates (1920) and Symbol of the Unconquered (1920), recently returned to the US from archives in Spain and Belgium respectively, have helped revive historians’ interest in the early days of African American independent filmmaking, as documented in the touring catalog Oscar Micheaux and His Circle (xxiii). These fortunate discoveries, fragmentary though they may be, have kindled new hope that more motion pictures may yet be found. We continue to search for clues to the existence of other “lost” works, as well as for evidence that will help us fill the gaps in the sketchy portraits drawn of these women, who worked as producers, actors, directors, and writers in an earlier era of institutionalized racism.

Kyna Morgan, Aimee Dixon
Translation: Nahit Evre Uçarcı

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