History: African Americans in Television and Film in History

The representation of a usually fictional character on stage or in films. At its highest levels of accomplishment acting involves the employment of technique and/or an imaginative identification with the character on the part of the actor.

a man or woman who performs in plays or films, especially as their profession.

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
African American actors and actresses, appearing on stage or in movies, have symbolized black experience in the United States. Plays, television, and films have featured blacks in starring or supporting roles and explored racial themes.

From Encyclopedia of Black Studies
The term blaxploitation films refers to a series of films released between 1969 and 1974 that featured a primarily black cast and whose narratives focused on the contemporary black urban experience. Grounded in the action-adventure genre, these films were usually low-budget Hollywood productions geared toward the black youth market.

Form of art and entertainment consisting of moving pictures, in either black and white or colour, projected on a screen.

From Black Firsts
The Wooing and Wedding of a Coon is the earliest known American-made film with an all-black cast.

From Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
From the inception of the motion picture industry, stereotyped black characters were endemic, a holdover from the tradition of minstrelsy. Thus images of buffoonish, simpleminded, superstitious African Americans were presented to American moviegoers of all races and ethnic groups.

From Black Firsts
Happy Pappy was the first television variety talent show with an all-black cast.

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
African-American actress, beauty queen and model. She became the first African-American woman to win an Oscar for her role in Monster’s Ball.

US comedian, actor, and singer.

From The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women
Perhaps the most prominent African-American actress in films today, Whoopi Goldberg became an international star in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple in 1985.

From Notable American Women: The Modern Period
A large woman with an expressive face and imposing voice, Hattie McDaniel won fame in the 1930s for her film portrayals of brash, worldly-wise maids, including Mammy in Gone With the Wind, the role which earned her an Academy Award.

From Encyclopedia of African American Society
Bahamian American actor and film director whose rise to stardom marked an important breakthrough for the representation of African Americans in films.

Actor, born in Mount Vernon, New York, USA. He won a scholarship to the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and afterwards worked with the Shakespeare in the Park ensemble.

Remembered for her risqué flamboyance, dancer Josephine Baker epitomized the Jazz Age and its climate of experimentation and freedom.

Comedian, writer, and television producer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

From Encyclopedia of African American Society
Actress and singer who became one of the first African American women to be regarded as a Hollywood “sex symbol” and who was the first black woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Among Davis’s numerous awards are the Hall of Fame Award for outstanding artistic achievement (1989) and the Image Award for best performance by a supporting actor for the film Do the Right Thing (1989) from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Medal for the Arts (1995), and the Presidential Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Singer, actor, and dancer, born in New York City, USA.

From Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Stepin Fetchit, a vaudeville entertainer and pioneering black film actor, emerged near the end of the Harlem Renaissance as Hollywood’s first African American movie star.

From Chambers Film Factfinder
The queen of cult blaxploitation B-movies in the 1970s, she built a career playing bad girls and tough women.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
American singer and actress, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Elegantly beautiful, Horne entered show business at 16 in the chorus line at Harlem's Cotton Club; she later sang there and was a vocalist with numerous bands

From Encyclopedia of African-American Writing
While rhyme was still paying, Ice-T began his acting career, appearing in dozens of films, starting in 1984. In 1995, he had a recurring role as a drug dealer on New York Undercover, cocreated by Law & Order creator Dick Wolf.

African-American writer, filmmaker, and actor. Lee is noted for his bold and sometimes controversial political films.

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
The American political activist and performer Paul Robeson was born on April 9, 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, the son of a former slave and a mother who died when he was six.

She portrayed singer Billie Holliday in the film Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and by the late 1970s achieved superstar status with live and televised concerts.

From Encyclopedia of African American Society
Movie and television actress who has specialized in portraying strong, courageous African American women.

Stage actor, singer, and songwriter, born in Nassau, Bahamas (formerly in British West Indies). Part African in descent, he was raised in Los Angeles and went on the road with the Mastadon Minstrels in 1891; he was so light-skinned that he had to use blackface to maintain his role as an African.

American talk-show host, producer, and actress. Producer and host of The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986-present), Winfrey has also acted in films such as The Color Purple (1985) and Beloved (1998).

An online collection that presents historical records on tap dance performance searchable by the title, date, and venue of performance; dancer, choreographer, director, producer; and performance medium (film, television, radio, stage, club); as well as by the names of “tap numbers” and tap choreographies.