by David F Walker | May 9, 2026 | News & Updates
Born in 1866, Mattie Edwards is quite possibly the first Black leading lady in mainstream film. Her career started in vaudeville in the late 1880s, and she began working in film as early as 1913. Edwards was part of a company of Black actors that worked for the Lubin Manufacturing Company, an early production company that made silent short films between 1896 and 1916. Lubin produced notoriously racist films starring white actors in blackface, but between 1913 and 1915 the company produced a series known as “Colored Comedies.” Keep in mind that these shorts were almost as racist as the movies Lubin produced with white actors in blackface. Edwards was Lubin’s leading Black actress, and she starred in at least twenty-four of the company’s shorts. Her co-star was often John “Junk” Edwards, though it is unclear if they were related in some capacity, or just shared the same last name. Mattie Edwards also appeared in movies produced by Essanay Studios (which produced early Charlie Chaplin movies) and the Ebony Film Company, as well as appearing in two Oscar Micheaux productions. Mattie Edwards died in 1944, and has been largely left out of film history.
To learn more about actors like Mattie Edwards and companies like the Lubin Manufacturing Company, check out my new book Black Film: A History of Black Representation and Participation in the Movies will be released by Ten Speed Press on March 24, 2026. You can pre-order the book here.
by David F Walker | May 9, 2026 | News & Updates
Best known as the founder and host of “amateur night” at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, Ralph Cooper was a prominent player in the world of race films. Known as “Dark Gable” (after Clark Gable), as well as the “Bronze Bogart” (after Humphrey Bogart), Cooper starred in several films, including BARGAIN WITH BULLETS and GANGSTERS ON THE LOOSE, as well as DARK MANHATTAN and THE DUKE IS TOPS, both of which he also wrote and directed. Cooper was closely associated with the gangster movies he helped produce with brothers Harry and Leo Popkin’s Million Dollar Productions. The Popkins (who were white) and Million Dollar Productions made a series of low budget race movies, all shot in a week or less, including THE DUKE IS TOPS, the first major starring role for Lena Horne.
To learn more about filmmakers and actors like Ralph Cooper, check out my new book Black Film: A History of Black Representation and Participation in the Movies will be released by Ten Speed Press on March 24, 2026. You can pre-order the book here.
by David F Walker | May 9, 2026 | News & Updates
Often referred to as “the Black Garbo” or “the Colored Garbo,” Nina Mae McKinney was the first black leading women in mainstream Hollywood, with twenty-six appearances to her credit. Nina (pronounced Nine-ah) was born in South Carolina in 1913, and moved to New York while still in her teens, where she worked as a dancer on Broadway. It was while dancing the chorus line of the popular musical Blackbirds of 1928 that McKinney was “discovered” by legendary director King Vidor, who cast her in Hallelujah, his first talking motion picture, and one of mainstream Hollywood’s earliest race films.
McKinney was one of the first black actresses signed to a studio contract, but MGM never really utilized her. She was considered to glamorous and attractive for the servant roles that would go to actresses like Butterfly McQueen or Hattie McDaniel, and there was no way she would be cast opposite a White actor in any kind of romantic context. As a result her career languished, and McKinney was loaned out to other studios, mostly for B-movies and low budget “black cast” pictures like Gang Smashers and The Devil’s Daughter. She also co-starred opposite Paul Robeson in Sanders of the River, where he played an African tribal chief wearing a leopard-skin loincloth, and she played his imperiled wife. McKinney spent much of her career looking for work in America and Europe, where she mostly performed in live cabarets. Her final film performance was an uncredited role in the 1950 film Copper Canyon. Nina Mae McKinney died of a heart attack in 1967 at the age of 54.
To learn more about performers like Nina Mae McKinney, check out my new book Black Film: A History of Black Representation and Participation in the Movies will be released by Ten Speed Press on March 24, 2026. You can pre-order the book here.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/673613/black-film-by-david-f-walker/
by David F Walker | May 9, 2026 | News & Updates
Although he was not the first black filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux was the first black director to produce a feature-length film, and he was certainly the most prolific producer of race films for nearly thirty years. With no film experience at all, Micheaux produced a feature-length version of his self-published novel The Homesteader in 1919. Over the next three decades, Micheaux would make 41 more films, creating his own cottage industry of stars that included Paul Robeson (who made his film debut in Micheaux’s 1925 film Body and Soul), Lorenzo Tucker (often billed as “The Black Valentino”), Alec Lovejoy, Carman Newsome and Laura Bowman. Micheaux traveled cross-country with his films in the trunk of his car, showing the movies anywhere he could screen them.
To learn more about filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux, check out my new book Black Film: A History of Black Representation and Participation in the Movies, which will be released by Ten Speed Press on March 24, 2026. You can pre-order the book here.
by David F Walker | May 9, 2026 | News & Updates
A Chocolate Cowboy (originally titled Mine Your Business!) is a silent short film released in 1927. The film starred white actor Fred Parker in blackface as a character named Rastus. There is nothing exceptional–or good for that matter–about A Chocolate Cowboy. The one interesting thing about the film is that the poster used to promote the film does not make it clear that the lead character is a blackface minstrel, which is uncommon for the time. It almost seems like the film’s distributor was intentionally trying to make it look like a race film with an all-Black cast. Blackface was very common during the silent film era, and producers made no attempts to hide the fact that a movie starred white actors in blackface. I’ll post more about blackface in film later.
To find out more about more about blackface in film, check out my new book, Black Film: A History of Black Representation and Participation in the Movies, coming from Ten Spreed Press on March 24, 2026. You can pre-order the book here.
