In a world where African-American actors and actresses were overwhelmingly relegated to roles as servants, portrayed as criminals and “savages,” or completely excluded, Noble Johnson was the rare exception. He not only appeared on screen in films produced by Universal Pictures, in 1915, he co-founded the Lincoln Motion Picture Company with his brother, George, and several other partners. It was the first film company owned and operated by Blacks.
The company was formed to produce so-called race films (movies created specifically for Black audiences) that would portray Blacks in a positive light and give opportunities to Black actors and actresses. Back then, when Blacks were seen in mainstream films, they nearly always portrayed negative stereotypes and were usually played by whites in blackface.
Noble Johnson served as Lincloln’s president and also starred in three of the films the company produced. The first one, The Realization of a Negro’s Ambition (1916), was the first film to show middle-class African-Americans. However, Johnson was still appearing in films made by Universal. Executives at Universal pressured him to leave Lincoln, possibly due to white theater owners’ complaints that the films made by Lincoln attracted bigger audiences.
But it’s more complicated than that. When Johnson appeared in Universal films, he was almost always cast as a minority. He only played a Black person a handful of times. Much in the way that there are entertainers today who are considered “racially ambiguous,” the light-skinned Johnson was viewed as someone who could play characters from a range of backgrounds. He was also a skilled make-up artist and used that talent to help him play indigenous, Mexican, and Asian characters.
At first, Universal seemed to like that Johnson’s appearances in the Lincoln pictures boosted his popularity. But eventually, higher-ups at the studio began to feel that running his own company and starring in films where he embraced his Blackness made it difficult for audiences to accept him in other ethnic roles.
In 1918, he resigned from Lincoln, and the company made just two more films, for a total of five, before shutting down.
