By Right of Birth
{{short description|1921 film}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2020}}
{{italic title}}
{{Infobox film
| name = By Right of Birth
| image = By Right of Birth film poster.jpeg
| alt =
| caption = Film poster
| director = Harry Gant
| producer = R.H. Updike
| screenplay = Dora Mitchell
story by George Perry Johnson
| based_on =
| starring = Clarence Brooks
Noble Johnson
Beulah Hall Jones
Anita Thompson
Webb King
Beatrice George
Lester Bates
Lew Meehan
| music = John Spikes
| cinematography = Harry Gant
| editing =
| studio = Lincoln Motion Picture Company
| distributor = Lincoln Motion Picture Co.
| released = {{film date|1921|6|22|Los Angeles}}
| runtime = 6 reels
| country = United States
| language = English
| budget =
| gross =
}}
The film By Right of Birth premiered on June 22, 1921, in Los Angeles, California.{{Cite web|url=http://www.daarac.org/2016/10/by-right-of-birth-1921-only-surviving.html?m=1|title=By Right of Birth (1921) [Only Surviving Works From The Lincoln Motion Picture Company]|website=daarac.org|access-date=December 13, 2016}} This film was one of the few surviving films of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, which is known as the first producer of race films and of such silent films as By Right of Birth.{{cite web|url=https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/what-was-the-first-ever-independent-movie/|title=What was the first-ever independent movie?|magazine=Far Out Magazine}} The company was founded in 1916 and in 1923 produced its last movie, The Heart of a Negro.{{Cite web|url=http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/lincoln-motion-picture-company-first-black-cinema|title=The Lincoln Motion Picture company, a first for Black cinema - African American Registry|website=www.aaregistry.org|access-date=December 13, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160519202751/http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/lincoln-motion-picture-company-first-black-cinema|archive-date=May 19, 2016|url-status=dead}}
In 2022, associate professor Cara Caddoo from The Media School and the College of Arts and Sciences' Department of History at Indiana University Bloomington, while researching her newest book, found lost footage of Noble Johnson and Beulah Hall Jones from an early 1917 film, The Trooper of Troop K, spliced into By Right of Birth, another Lincoln Motion Picture Company film, released in 1921.{{cite web|title='Missing' historic black film found by Indiana University film professor|author=Jagielo, Tim|date=November 4, 2022|url=https://indianapublicradio.org/news/2022/11/missing-historic-black-film-found-by-indiana-university-film-professor/|publisher=Indiana Public Radio}}
Background
The film was directed by Harry Gant,{{Cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0304569/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm|title=Harry Gant Biography|last=|first=|date=|website=|publisher=|access-date=December 13, 2016}} who is also responsible for the films The Realization of a Negro's Ambition (1916) and Absent (1928). The story was by George Perry Johnson, both a writer and a member of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company executive board.
File:By Right of Birth (1921).webm
Currently, only small pieces of this film still exist. After almost 100 years since the creation of its 6 reels totaling 6,000 feet of film, only one four-minute clip of consecutive scenes from it is known. It was a silent movie; the music for it was created by John Spikes, who also wrote the song “Juanita” for the film.
Plot
By Right of Birth is a film about a woman named Juanita Cooper, played by Anita Thompson.{{Cite web|url=https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/553791/by-right-of-birth|title=By Right of Birth (1921) - Overview - TCM.com|website=Turner Classic Movies|access-date=December 13, 2016}} She had been raised by adoptive parents, Frank and Geraldine Cooper (played respectively by Lester Bates and Grace Ellenwood). She decides to search for her biological parents, with the help of the young attorney Manuel Romero (played by Lew Meehan), who has a secret crush on her. Manuel is trying to obtain land leases belonging to Freedmen in Oklahoma, specifically, black former slaves who had had American Indian owners, and the descendants of these slaves.{{Cite book|jstor=j.ctt1b7x4wf.9|title=Oscar Micheaux and His Circle|last=REGESTER|first=CHARLENE|chapter=The African-American Press and Race Movies, 1909–1929|date=January 1, 2001|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=9780253021359|series=African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era|pages=34–50}} The land that was allotted to these freemen is, unknown to them, rich in oil, and valuable to own. Manuel learns of a missing allottee named Helen Childers, the granddaughter of an old Indian woman by the name of Minnie Childers (played by Minnie Provost). Manuel forges her signature on a lease to get her rightful proceeds for himself instead. Geraldine Cooper and a detective “Pinky” Webb (played by Webb King) figure out through some research that Juanita is actually the same person as Helen Childers. The film ends with Juanita eventually finding her birth mother, Mother Agnes (played by Beatrice George), and inheriting a large sum of money, producing the film's happy ending in spite of villainous schemes; Romero, caught in his own lies, ends up dead because of it.
Reviews
Audience reception of this film was positive, much like the other Lincoln Motion Picture Company’s films. The Sentinel commended the film by stating the film was “strikingly free of so many absurdities so often seen in colored productions” Gavinson, Alan, ed. Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films 1911-1960. American Film Institute, 1997, Proquest. Web. This film portrayed African Americans and Native Americans in a better light than most movies during the early 1900s. The Daily Herald also reviewed the film saying “[By Right of Birth is] free from racial propaganda such as has been characteristic in several similar productions attempted by other concerns”. By Right of Birth was only shown in colored movie theaters, because at the time blacks and whites were firmly separated.{{Dubious|date=August 2017|Reason= was it the people, or the institutions, who/that effected the separation?}}
Significance
The film was a response to D.W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, which was about the American Civil War, and is infamous for its portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan as heroic; it also featured white male actors in blackface, often portrayed as hurting and harassing white women. The NAACP tried to get local film boards to ban the film, as well as providing education on the topics,Copeland, David (2010). The Media's Role in Defining the Nation: The Active Voice. Peter Lang Publisher. p. 168.{{Cite web|url=http://www.naacp.org/about/history/timeline/|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091119213141/http://www.naacp.org/about/history/timeline/|url-status=dead|title=NAACP – Timeline|archivedate=November 19, 2009}}{{cite web|last1=Nerney|first1=Mary Childs|title=An NAACP Official Calls for Censorship of The Birth of a Nation|url=http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4966/|website=History Matters|accessdate=May 9, 2015|url-status=live|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150524132722/http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4966|archivedate=May 24, 2015}} but was largely unsuccessful, with many white Americans going to see the film and praising it. The Birth of a Nation is now preserved in the National Film Registry for historic education purposes.
There is a rumor that By Right of Birth almost cast a white man by the name of L.C. Shumway for the role of Manuel Romero. Records show he was paid for two weeks on set but he was never in the film. To cast a white man as the villain in a race film would be making a statement, which might have been something that the Lincoln Motion Picture Company was avoiding.