Category:Child Actors (African-American)

Overview

In the years of segregation, very few opportunities were offered to African-American actors, forced into stereotyped and humiliating roles.

As regards children, however, the segregationist canons proved to be less rigid, exceptions were allowed, starting with the short film A Scrap in Black and White (1903), of which the names of the young performers are not known.

Even those who wanted to denounce racial prejudices resorted to children, who the public tended to look upon with greater favor.[8] This is the case of the short film When Little Lindy Sang (1916), written by Olga Printzlau and directed by Lule Warrenton, starring Ernestine Jones, or the series Judge Brown Stories (1919-20), directed by King Vidor, starring little Thomas Bellamy.[9]

We had to wait until the 1920s and the experience of the Little Rascals to see Ernest Morrison and other African-American child actors (Eugene Jackson, Allen Hoskins, Matthew Beard and Billie Thomas) interact on a substantially equal level with "white" child actors, and until the 1960s and 1970s for less stereotype roles in American movies.