African American Studies by Credo Reference: Television and Film

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.

In A/V A to Z: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms
A U.S. film genre of the early 1970s targeting a primarily male, urban Black audience, beginning in 1971 with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Shaft.

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

From Black Firsts
1902 • The first appearance of blacks in film came in Off to Bloomingdale Asylum. The slapstick comedy was made in France and produced by George Méliès. The black characters were probably played by white actors.

In A/V A to Z: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Media, Entertainment and Other Audiovisual Terms
A type of film produced in the U.S. from shortly after World War I through the 1940s (peaking during the 1930s), consisting of low-budget films that were produced and distributed by Blackowned production companies, then marketed toward Black audiences.

From Black Firsts
1939 • Ethel Waters (1896-1977) became the first black singer to appear on television and the first black American to star to appear in her own television show, The Ethel Waters Show.

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 African American Almanac
Hattie McDaniel was born on June 10, 1898, in Wichita, Kansas, and moved to Denver, Colorado, as a child. After a period of singing for Denver radio as an amateur, she entered vaudeville professionally and by 1924 was a headliner on the Pantages Circuit.

In African American Almanac
Sidney Poitier was born on February 20, 1927, in Miami, Florida, but moved to the Bahamas with his family at a very early age.

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 African American Almanac
Born Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andréw Perry, Stepin Fetchit pursued an early career in the Royal American Shows’ plantation revues.

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).