Documenting Racism

Front matter

African Americans in US Department of Agriculture Documentaries, 1921-42

African Americans in US Department of Agriculture Documentaries, 1921-42

J. Emmett Winn

Chapter 1: A Brief History of the USDA Motion Picture Service to 1943

Chapter 2: Helping Negroes to Become Better Farmers and Homemakers Chapter 3: The Negro Farmer

Chapter 4: Three Counties against Syphilis

Chapter 5: Henry Browne, Farmer

Chapter 6: USDA Motion Picture Representations of African Americans

Notes Bibliography Index vi

131 142 151

Preface

The maintenance and perpetuation of racist beliefs and values in the media ensures that the tenets of racist ideologies are broadly communicated and constantly reinforced. The communication of racist ideologies via the media is an important topic for cultural scholars because it is the site of hegemonic struggles over meaning. Cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall argues that “the media are not only a powerful source of ideas about race. They are also one place where these ideas are articulated, worked on, transformed, and elaborated.”! Furthermore, media scholar Jane Rhodes has pointed out that a racist society needs the media to disseminate its principles.” Understanding how racism is encoded in media texts and communicated to audiences in both explicit and implicit ways helps scholars and media consumers to better understand the complex relationship between media and ideology.

Commercial filmmaking is an important site of study for anyone interested in the perpetuation of racist ideologies concerning African Americans, as negative black stereotypes have been utilized in filmmaking since its earliest years.* Racist representations of African Americans were appropriated from pre-cinematic culture and incorporated into commercial filmmaking from the beginning in films such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903), The Confederate Spy (1910), and For Massa’s Sake (1911). The study of historic commercial films is central to understanding how racist ideologies were incorporated into the art and industry of filmmaking. For example, D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, is often identified as both an important film for its impact on moviemaking and a bigoted film that perpetuates racist myths and stereotypes.* The use of negative stereotypes continued through the golden age of Hollywood in films such as The Ghost Talks (1929), Stand Up and Cheer (1934), and Gone with the Wind (1939) and has continued into the contemporary era in such movies as The Color Purple (1985) and Mississippi Burning (1988).° Indeed, Hall explains that versions of classic racist black stereotypes persist in the media today. The continued interrogation of media texts both

Preface vii current and historic is important as scholars strive to understand and explain how racist beliefs and values are created and naturalized via communication in the media.’

However, in the early years of cinema not all motion picture producers were interested in the commercial aspects of film; many of them—for example, professional organizations, civic groups, local and state governing bodies, and the federal government—wanted to make movies for noncommercial purposes. These early noncommercial moviemakers saw the potential in film to communicate their messages to audiences who were eager to see this new source of entertainment and information. Furthermore, the power to move audiences emotionally through the filmic representation of events and stories appealed to noncommercial filmmakers who were intent on winning public support for their interests. For example, Stephen J. Ross describes how labor and trade unionists from 1907 to 1929 used motion pictures to “portray their cause visually.”® Thus many groups with an interest in using film as a medium to encourage change and/or propaganda embraced filmmaking in its early years.

Eventually various political and socioeconomic factors collided to greatly curtail filmmaking by noncommercial filmmakers. However, several groups, including government agencies, continued to make movies for causes ranging from education to propaganda. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was one of the earliest agencies to produce films, and it did so for decades after the demise of many other noncommercial ventures.’ Millions of people saw these free films in a wide variety of venues, including public schools, colleges and universities, civic meeting halls, libraries, church halls, and even open fields. Over the period of several decades, from the silent-movie era through the 1950s, the USDA was a significant government filmmaking organization, touting itself to be not only the first government agency to organize a filmmaking division but also the most prolific. The USDA motion picture branch was internationally respected, and the distribution of its films was high for US government institutions, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s. The USDA showed its films practically anywhere extension workers or others could gather a small group or a large crowd. In fact, for many Americans in the early 1900s, the USDA films were the first motion pictures they saw, and the experience of watching USDA-made films was shared by millions in the United States and around the world. The role of the films varied, but the USDA saw all of its films as simultaneously entertaining audiences, in the broad sense of the term, while spreading the USDA’s message and encouraging people to find out more about its work."

viii Preface

Given the number of films that the USDA made, the size of its audiences, and the longevity of the USDA’s Motion Picture Service, a surprising lack of scholarly attention has been devoted to the study of these films despite the fact that the department’s “films on scientific and technical subjects, forestry and fire prevention, agricultural education and soil conservation have been a responsibility which has served the people well.”'? Even less research has been done on the representations of African Americans in Department of Agriculture films. For example, in his important book The Negro in Films, Peter Noble mentions only one of the USDA films devoted to African Americans, Henry Browne, Farmer (1942) ,'° even though African Americans appeared in USDA films in the 1920s and 1930s as well. The USDA films made in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s that focus on blacks generally have escaped comprehensive analysis by scholars concerned with African American representations in film."

Purpose and Scope

The current study addresses this situation by explicating the racist ideologies communicated through USDA motion pictures made from the 1920s through 1942. In this book I analyze the four major USDA motion pictures that focus on African Americans: Helping Negroes to Become Better Farmers and Homemakers (1921), The Negro Farmer (1938), Three Counties against Syphilis (1938), and Henry Browne, Farmer (1942). My purpose is to explicate the representation of African Americans in these films within the racist ideologies of the period. Each analysis includes an in-depth investigation of the reality created by the filmmakers, the motion picture’s use of stereotypes, the rhetorical message communicated, and a discussion of each film’s relationship to broader racist ideologies. Finally, I build on the individual analyses to clarify how the motion pictures as a whole communicate the racist ideology that African Americans are inferior and a threat to white society.

It is important to note that this study is limited in its scope to the analysis of filmic texts and the supporting documentation available in the USDA archives and other sources. Thus, it is impossible for this scholarship to make broad general comments concerning the USDA or its programs, staff, or administrators beyond what the analysis supports. Moreover, the motion pictures often deal with specific institutions and historical figures, such as the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) and a USDA extension agent named Thomas M. Campbell, because

Preface ix of their important work with rural African Americans. This study acknowledges the significance of such institutions and individuals and points out their accomplishments in relationship to the material presented in the motion pictures; however, it does not provide a comprehensive study or explanation of the important work that these institutions and individuals provided during the years these movies were made.'®

USDA Motion Pictures, Documentary, and Reality

An important aspect of the analysis of these four films is an explanation of their constructed realities. In each of the films, the USDA uses conventions of documentary filmmaking to present a view of southern African Americans that it wants viewers to accept as accurate. These conventions encourage audiences to interpret the films as documenting reality. Some of the common conventions used are a narration that describes and comments on the action from an assumed position of authority; the implication that the scenes are of actual people and events (instead of carefully staged or scripted scenarios); and the use of actual locations, data, and statistics to convince viewers that the information is objectively presented by experts. Because they use these conventions, the USDA motion pictures are often referred to as documentaries.

Defining the USDA films as documentaries is problematic only if the reader equates documentary with the concept of an objective reality. The fact is that the USDA motion pictures analyzed in this book do not represent an objective reality of their times. To the contrary, they are carefully constructed to present a specific view of African Americans in the rural South that was approved by the USDA. That view, as I illuminate in my analyses, is informed and influenced by long-standing racist ideologies that defined southern blacks as inferior to whites and a threat to white society. The motion pictures do not overtly state this view of southern blacks but instead rhetorically argue such ideas through the use of consistent themes informed by racist ideologies. In other words, the USDA motion pictures are documentary films because they use documentary conventions, but they are not faithful presentations of an objective reality.

In essence, these motion pictures are constructed views of African Americans in the rural South during the decades from the early 1920s through the early 1940s. This concept of documentary film as a purposively constructed view of the world was not foreign to documentary x Preface filmmakers of the time. For example, Erik Barnouw, in his classic book Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, writes that movie producers understood that they could shape the viewer’s understanding of a condition in the way they presented the situation in their films. In Barnouw’s words, “The documentary film maker, dramatizing issues and their implications, could lead the citizen through the wilderness.”!” For example, Barnouw wrote that the famous documentary filmmaker John Grierson considered “cinema asa pulpit,” to “not only explain” but also to inspire.'® Likewise, in the first chapter of their 2009 book, A New History of Documentary Film, Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane investigate ways of understanding documentary and point out that “documentary is one of three basic creative modes in film, the other two being narrative fiction and experimental avant-garde.”!? From this position, they explain the common characteristics of documentaries, including subjects, purpose /viewpoint/approach, form, production method and technique, and audience response.” In discussing the second characteristic, Ellis and McLane explain that the purpose/viewpoint/approach “is what the filmmakers are trying to say about the subjects of their films.

They record social and cultural phenomena they consider significant in order to inform us about those people, events, places, institutions, and problems.” Thus, documentary films should not be considered a filmic version of objective reality but a mode of filmmaking that allows the filmmaker’s perspective to be expressed. The USDA filmmakers saw their role as not just educational but also propagandistic in the sense that they believed their films played an important role in helping the public to properly understand the USDA’s programs and in eliciting support for the USDA’s work.” Finally, according to Bill Nichols, in his book Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, “Documentary represents the world of individual responsibility and social action, common sense and everyday reason... . This is indeed the world we see but it is also a world, or more exactly, a view of the world. It is not just any world but neither is it the only view possible of this one historical world.””? Thus, it is important to remember that these USDA motion pictures present a view of the world that African Americans inhabited in the rural South during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. However, that view should not be considered a presentation of the objective reality of that world, and in fact I argue that the view presented is biased by the racist ideologies of the times. There were then (and are now) other ways to view the world southern rural blacks inhabited in these decades that were not presented in these films. However, the USDA’s view was privileged over other views because it was a

Preface xi powerful government department charged with an agricultural mission. This fact is also the reason why these films were widely distributed, trusted, and believed. Finally, the importance of the USDA’s mission and its status as a government agency ensured that these films would be protected in the USDA archives for all time.

Analysis of the Films

Understanding that each of the USDA films creates a view of reality faced by rural African Americans in the early twentieth century is the foundation of the investigation into their ideological premises. In each motion picture, the USDA filmmakers carefully constructed a reality that was used as evidence of the government’s work and the basis for the government’s arguments. However, in working to craft a specific reality, the films drew upon the beliefs and values of the times. Scholars have demonstrated that ideological assumptions are ensconced in the media, myth, and culture.” Hence, the motion pictures perpetuate the ideological positions in which they are situated. Recognizing the important role that motion pictures play in the dissemination and maintenance of social beliefs and values, communication scholars have employed rhetorical strategies to interrogate filmic texts.” David Blakesley, in The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film, explains that this “approach views films as serving ideological functions in both its content and technical apparatus. The task of film criticism is to expose film’s complicity with or deconstruction of dominant ideology.””° Additionally, film scholar P. L. Simpson suggests that the way a film encodes ideological messages may “deflect attention from other possible” views of reality.” In order to understand films in their historical context, Thomas W. Benson suggests that a close textual reading of movies can shed light on how films combine form with public themes.” Moreover, Blakesley explains that “films reveal not only the predispositions of filmmakers, but they also serve ideological functions in the broader culture.”*? To this end, I analyzed these filmic texts in order to extricate the racist ideological suppositions ensconced in the texts and communicated to USDA audiences for decades.

My analysis of the films is supplemented by research from the USDA archives at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in College Park, Maryland. The documents obtained for this research come primarily from the records of the office of the Secretary of xii Preface

Agriculture, specifically “Records Relating to the History of the Motion Picture Service, 1908 to 1958”; “General Correspondence Relating to Negroes, 1909-1955”; and “General Correspondence of the Office of the Secretary, 1906-1970.” These records provide a rich source of information about the USDA’s motion picture efforts and valuable insights into its work with southern African Americans.

Chapter Outlines

Chapter 1 presents a brief history of the first four decades of the USDA Motion Picture Service. This introduction, along with this preface, orients the reader to the study and provides the background information required for the analyses of the motion pictures. Discussed in the following chapters are the four major productions concerning African Americans that the USDA distributed to both foreign and domestic audiences for several decades. The films communicated the USDA’s view of African Americans living in the rural South.

In Chapter 2, I analyze Helping Negroes to Become Better Farmers and Homemakers and argue that the movie reproduced the racist separate-but-equal doctrine that ruled 1920s Alabama. The film denies African American farmers agency by relegating them to a position where they are unable to improve their farming conditions. Instead, the movie argues rhetorically that the power and ability to create positive change resides with the white USDA officials who direct the work of black extension agents. Thus, by interceding on behalf of black farmers, white authorities dramatically improved the lives of African American farmers and their families. Furthermore, Tuskegee Institute’s pioneering work in black extension is acknowledged but downplayed, as credit for black agricultural outreach is transferred to the white authorities in the USDA. By cinematically presenting differences between blacks and whites, the film argues in favor of separate-but-equal laws and customs and communicates that blacks are inferior and require white help.”

In Chapter 3 The Negro Farmer is analyzed. The Negro Farmer presents several African American farm families who required assistance in most aspects of their farming and home lives, including nutrition, sanitation, gardening, livestock production, and crop improvement. The answer to all of these problems is presented in the context of the USDA’s Live at Home program, which showed how, through extension demonstration work and 4-H club programs, these often dire situations could be

Preface xiii improved. In doing so, the makers of the film chose to represent African Americans as inferior to whites and thus supported Jim Crow racism while opposing the migration of millions of African Americans from southern farms to the North and West. A key part of the film’s opposition to the migration is its final segment, in which selected quotes from Booker T. Washington’s 1899 essay “The Case of the Negro” are used to argue that African Americans belong on the southern farm, engaged in agricultural pursuits. By arguing that southern blacks should remain on the farm, the USDA’s message also supported the racially oppressive system of segregation that forced southern African Americans into a state of economic peonage after slavery.*!

Three Counties against Syphilis, the focus of Chapter 4, presents the story of the tri-county Public Health Service syphilis treatment and testing program for African Americans that utilized a mobile clinic to reach out to rural black communities in a sparsely populated area of costal Georgia. The significance of the film is heightened by the fact that the program and film were made during the early years of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted in Macon County, Alabama, in which hundreds of African American men were allowed to suffer the ravages of untreated syphilis. Unlike Helping Negroes to Become Better Farmers and Homemakers and The Negro Farmer, the title Three Counties against Syphilis does not overtly state in its title that its focus is on the African American community. However, after a brief period in the beginning of the film where it appears to be about a program that involves both whites and blacks, the motion picture forsakes its biracial approach to focus entirely on testing and treating African Americans. The film presents blacks as inferior to whites and argues that testing and treatment of blacks is essential to protect white society from black disease. The syphilis testing and treatment program was conceived and conducted within the premises of racial medicine, as was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, a racist ideological concept that distinguished African Americans as a problem population, inferior to whites both physically and morally, and a threat to white society through social interaction. Three Counties against Syphilis communicated and perpetuated this racist ideology in the United States.

Chapter 5 is dedicated to my analysis of the 1942 World War II USDA motion picture Henry Browne, Farmer. This movie evaded representing blacks as dependent upon whites by locating this farm family in an all-black world where African Americans are completely segregated from whites. The movie tells the story of the Browne family, their farm in Macon County, Alabama, and the service of their oldest son in the xiv Preface all-black Tuskegee Airmen military squadron. The film presents the Browne family as successful and patriotic farmers who operate a model farm that employs the best agricultural practices. The motion picture demonstrates how the Brownes contribute positively to the US war effort by growing peanuts for oil, reusing materials, and using preventive maintenance to help prolong the use of farming equipment for the duration of the war. Henry Browne and his family are portrayed as patriotic American farmers who contribute positively. By segregating Henry Browne and his family and their accomplishments and service to the United States in an all-black world separated from white society, Henry Browne, Farmer rhetorically argues that Jim Crow, and its inherent racist ideology, was working positively for the United States and for African Americans. In other words, the film offers the impression that Henry Browne and other black farmers who were willing to remain in their place and be denied their fundamental civil rights could be successful and happy in the all-black world of Jim Crow segregation.

The final chapter, Chapter 6, uses the analyses of the four USDA films to demonstrate that the motion pictures communicated that African Americans were inferior to whites in all ways and threatened white superiority and white society, a fundamental belief of American racist ideology. The motion pictures accomplished this by communicating three broad themes (1) segregation is sacrosanct, (2) African Americans are farmers, and (3) blacks are a problem population. By consistently communicating the idea of black inferiority and the need for white supervision and control, the USDA films maintained the racist foundations of Jim Crow laws and customs, reinforced the doctrine of separate but equal that denied African Americans their civil rights, and upheld segregation not only as the natural condition for blacks in the United States but also as the best situation for blacks to succeed in America.

Acknowledgments

In researching and writing this book, I benefited from the help, encouragement, and support of many wonderful people who, mostly because of their goodwill, unselfishly aided me in a variety of ways. To each of them, I owe a public thanks and am happy to attempt to pay that debt with these lines.

I thank my parents, Albert Taylor and Roger Lee (Gandy) Winn, for all of their support and encouragement through the process of producing

Preface xv this book and for all the help they have given me for the last half century. Roger Lee and Albert have always worked hard and taken pride in their work, regardless of the task at hand, and thus were terrific role models. I am grateful for their love, lessons, and support.

Iam very fortunate to have the support of a wonderful group of friends and colleagues who offered encouragement and assistance in a variety of forms, including good company, great food, and even better advice. These fine folks include John and Kathy Tamblyn, Robert and Susie Weigel, Rob Agne, Tim White, David Payne, Danni Williams, Julie Huff, and Kim Golombisky. I’m thankful that they are always there, even when I am not the best of company.

The nature of this book required a good deal of work in archives and libraries, and I am indebted to the many archivists and librarians who helped me. I am particularly grateful to archivists at the National Archives and Records Administration II, in College Park, Maryland, especially Vernon Early, an archive specialist who went well above and beyond, on short notice, to produce a synchronized sound-track copy of one of the films for my study. Additionally, I thank Dean Bonnie MacEwan and all of the wonderful staff and faculty of Auburn University’s Ralph Brown Draughon Library for their assistance.

I have benefited greatly from the help of three professional editors. My sincere thanks go to Jill R. Hughes of the Editor’s Mark, who has provided encouragement over the last year as well as excellent copyediting and proofreading. I owe a great debt to David Barker, editorial director at Continuum, who was instrumental in aiding me with the proposal and subsequent planning of this book. Finally, it has been a pleasure working with Katie Gallof, Continuum’s Film and Media Studies acquisitions editor. I cannot thank her enough for her encouragement, help, and humor as we thought through ways to make the book better during the writing process.

Finally, and most importantly, I thank Susan Brinson, my spouse, friend, and colleague. Susan provided invaluable intellectual insight and emotional support through the entire process. I am very grateful to share my life and my work with Susan.

Chapter 1

A Brief History of the USDA Motion Picture Service to 1943

An understanding of the history of the USDA’s Motion Picture Service (MPS) is helpful in placing the USDA films that focused on African Americans in the broader context of the USDA’s motion picture program.' The history of the MPS demonstrates that it took its work very seriously and strove to produce quality films within its limited budget and resources. The MPS grew from a small group of enthusiasts within the USDA to a major division that produced hundreds of films over a period of several decades. In its earliest years the MPS operated on a level that was comparable to most film production, even in the commercial realm, but soon settled into a respected position in the governmental film arena.

There is no doubt that the USDA began producing films very early relative to other government agencies. In fact, the early MPS pioneers claimed that the USDA was the first government agency to produce a motion picture. For example, an MPS unit chief reported that in 1908, “when the Wright brothers came to Fort Myer [Fort Myers, Florida] to demonstrate their pioneer biplane for the Signal Corps, the Department of Agriculture made a film record of the demonstration—the first government motion picture.”® Others have questioned this assertion; for instance, in their 1923 book, Motion Pictures in Education, Don Carlos Ellis and Laura Thornborough claim that the US Reclamation Service was the first “among the bureaus in Washington to take up this work, and ... exhibited at the Jamestown Exposition 1907 films showing the work of the Government in reclaiming arid lands.”* However, the right to the claim of being the first government bureau to make a motion picture is of less importance than the fact that the USDA very quickly became a leader in government-sponsored motion pictures and was considered a model of success in the endeavor.*

The earliest motion picture work of the USDA was not part of its official duties and was performed without official departmental sanction. Ellis and Thornborough contend that the first USDA staff member to make a government film was Joseph Abel, a Bureau of Animal Industry photographer, who in 1909 “made a film of the live-stock show at the Alaska-Yukon Pacific Exposition and, later, films on the Texas Fever Tick and Its Eradication.” These early efforts were concealed from USDA officials. According to the MPS staff, a film laboratory was established without the knowledge of the secretary of agriculture. The reason cited was that the USDA secretary at the time, “Tama Jim” Wilson, thought the “motion picture was the work of the devil.”® This situation allegedly changed when O. H. Benson, a pioneer in the 4H Club movement, surreptitiously set up a motion picture camera and filmed Secretary Wilson speaking to a group of “corn club boys.” When the secretary saw the footage, “he was amazed and delighted—and from that moment the motion picture program of the Department ceased to be a bootleg enterprise.”” Some reports cite C. Francis Jenkins as the camera person for this footage. Jenkins was a government clerk who later became an important film pioneer.’ Regardless of the exact reason for the legitimizing of filmmaking, the USDA film work continued in an ad hoc manner for several more years.

A modest film laboratory was established in 1912 in the USDA Section of Illustrations, where staff employees W. S. Clime and G. R. Goergens “were regularly assigned motion picture work.”!° The USDA and others have identified this as “the first Government motion picture laboratory to be established in the world.”!! Although the USDA staff members took such bragging rights very seriously, there is little historical evidence to confirm or deny these claims beyond the statements of the staff members in their written reports. However, the fact that the early USDA motion picture production was impressive and well respected in the educational film arena is not disputed. For example, Ellis and Thornborough argue that the USDA films had “considerable educational value” and “constituted the largest single collection of educational films on a related group of subjects.”!? This success in the early years, spanning from about 1908 to 1912, brought the USDA positive attention in the burgeoning film industry, both commercial and noncommercial.

The USDA’s efforts were so successful thatin September 1913 the agency formed “a temporary committee to determine whether the Department should enter the educational motion picture field in earnest.”!? Later that year the USDA established a permanent committee and authorized the Division of Publications (Section of Illustrations) to “purchase and install a complete motion picture photographic apparatus.” It was charged “to install a Motion Picture Laboratory, to purchase the necessary apparatus, and to produce motion pictures for visual instruction in agriculture under the direction of the motion picture committee.” Thus, in late 1913, the earliest official USDA motion picture unit was established. By most measures, the USDA’s task was daunting, given that the USDA at that time consisted of seventeen different bureaus with wide-ranging responsibilities. Ellis and Thornborough cite this diversity as a main reason for the USDA’s success in the government film arena, because all of its motion picture work was coordinated by a single film unit, thus athe MPS was able to produce movies on a wide variety of topics.'° This variety tested the USDA filmmakers while also providing them with ample opportunities to experiment with new techniques and ideas.

Establishing what amounted to a small but fully functioning movie production studio within the federal government in early 1914 proved to be a challenge for the USDA staff. Early reports to the USDA secretary indicate that the MPS was experiencing problems and asking for patience. Since the MPS had a very small budget, the staff had to carefully research motion picture equipment before deciding what to purchase. For example, they performed a fairly extensive study of lighting to decide what would work best for their films.!” Moreover, faced with the problem of exhibiting their films in rural areas, the staff needed to understand the challenges of exhibition in a noncommercial environment.’