Not one [black American actor] has ever been seriously challenged to deliver the best that is in him. --James Baldwin The Devil Finds Work, 1975
Throughout the history of American cinema, people who appear in movies seem to have been divided into two categories: actors and black actors. Actors--tacitly understood to mean white actors--played every sort of role in every kind of film, from action heroes to sex sirens, in horror films and period pieces. Black actors, on the other hand, were defined by their race and carefully circumscribed in the parts they could play--usually sidekicks, servants or criminals. Even the...
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