Lena Horne as seductive swing siren, Herb Jeffries as gunslinger in Harlem on the Prairie, or comedians Pigmeat and Rastus as “flat-footed floogies”: all forged a role for black entertainers that countered—or reinforced—stereotypes while creating a thriving, independent culture of African-American cinema.

Imaging Blackness, 1915–2002: Film Posters from the Indiana University Black Film Center/Archive includes 43 striking posters from almost a century of movies. Early American films such as The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith’s controversial 1915 masterwork popularizing the Ku Klux Klan, created a Negro of the imagination: docile, bestial, or insipid. However, it also served as a powerful impetus for the emergence of a thriving, independent black cinema.

Imaging Blackness features posters that highlight this tradition, beginning with Richard Norman’s films of the early 1900s, including Sleepy Sam, the Sleuth (1915), Green Eyed Monster (1920), and The Flying Ace (1926). Norman, a white director whose studio was based in Arlington, Florida, wrote and directed films with rare positive roles for black actors. Over the next two decades, productions featuring alternative images of black life were more common, and black actors began to gain more “star power.” The poster for the 1943 Lena Horne vehicle The Bronze Venus illustrates this phenomenon: originally released as The Duke is Tops in 1938, the film was renamed and redistributed five years later to take advantage of Horne’s burgeoning career.

Exhibition visitors will also take in the racy, exotic poster from Island in the Sun, a 1957 film controversial for its depiction of interracial relationships, which includes what some critics identify as the first interracial kiss in U.S. cinema history. Additionally, Imaging Blackness includes the poster from Lilies of the Field (1963), featuring Sidney Poitier as a handyman in the service of a group of white nuns. While alienating some black audiences, Poitier’s performance received an Academy Award for Best Actor, the first ever presented to an African-American man.

The cinematic focus shifted dramatically during the 1970s with the creation of “blaxploitation” films such as Superfly (1972). More recent decades gave rise to powerful movies such as The Color Purple (1985) and Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991), one of several films that established Lee’s reputation for adroitly tackling controversial themes. Collectively, these stories span nearly 100 years of cinema and provide a captivating exploration of America’s long entanglement with race.

Imaging Blackness is curated by Audrey T. McCluskey, Ph.D., Associate Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, and former director of the Black Film Center and Archive at the University.