Black History

The 1982 epistolary novel “The Color Purple” by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker summarizes the belief that the color purple is not only synonymous with royalty but a deep purple that seems almost to be black. Enter Academy Award nominee – Brooks, an accomplished artist and actor.

“I was blown away at how thoughtful this museum, still even under construction, was approaching its content and how committed it was and it still is to expanding public understanding of film history,” says Jacqueline Stewart, Director and President of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, in a recent press preview of its exhibition, Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898-1971. Five years ago, she had been invited to participate in the Regeneration Advisory Committee of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

And it wasn’t just anything, either. In 1973, Diana Ross, by then a huge star in music, made her film debut playing Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues.

Since its founding, Hollywood has adapted to the screen hundreds if not thousands of literary works by white authors, but – with the exception of some anomalies such as Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple in 1985 – has largely ignored the work of their Black peers. In the last decade, however, the commercial and critical success of Black movies has opened Hollywood’s mind and wallet to bringing the work of Black literary icons to the screen.

When Netflix decided to release Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods in mid-June last year, after it had missed its premiere at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, which was canceled due to Covid-19, it didn’t expect it to become the center of media attention and a source of political discourse. But neither did it expect the public’s eruptive reaction to the suffocating death of an African American, named George Floyd, at the hands of a White police officer.

When anti-racism demonstrations erupted last summer in the US and beyond, following the killing of George Floyd by the police, Hollywood was quick to offer its support, but soon faced a moral dilemma when the demonstrators demanded wiping out all symbols and traces of racism from America’s history and culture, including the films that depicted racial stereotypes. Warner Bros.

As the Black Lives Matter movement is gaining more and more ground in the wake of countless police killings, the number of (mostly white) people interested in getting an education in Black history is steadily growing. The streamers have reacted accordingly and added many films and documentaries to their library.