Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., now has its own “silver screen.”
An impressive collection of films about African-Americans is now housed on the campus and will be presented beginning in February to commemorate Black History Month.
The 89 motion pictures, released between 1915 and 1969 and recently converted to DVD from reels, are part of the memorabilia collection of Washington, D.C., toxicologist Dr. Lewis Brown and his wife, environmental chemist Dr. Shamira Brown. The couple met as undergraduates at Dillard University in New Orleans and both earned graduate degrees at Southern.
Some of the stars’ names will be familiar to audiences — Paul Robeson, Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horn. Others may be more obscure — Eddie Anderson, Clarence Muse, Ethel Waters, Herbert Jeffries, Fredi Washington, Spencer Williams. It is largely because of the latter group that the Browns are so passionate about sharing their collection.
“Most of these are movies that won’t be seen on TV. They have been thrown away,” Lewis Brown says. “Most young people don’t know anything about these people, and if they have heard about them, they have heard a lot of negative things. They should open their minds and see the whole picture.”
At 41, Brown isn’t old enough to have seen most of these films when they were initially released. For him, it has been an ongoing history lesson, especially learning about silent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux and director Eugene Jackson, a distant relative of Brown’s and a co-star of the TV show “Julia” with Diahann Carroll.
The Browns made the donation to Southern’s history department last fall, and more recently sent much of the same material to Dillard. Lewis Brown says they also are donating 79 episodes of the famous but controversial TV show “Amos and Andy” to Southern’s New Orleans campus. The NAACP has strongly objected to the stereotypical characters in the show, but Brown says “Amos and Andy” — as well as the opposition to it — represents an important part of history that should be preserved. “This is an example of something that needs to be discussed instead of hidden or thrown away,” he says.
