In the Gallery: Early Cinema, 1896–1915

“I sell the shadow to support the substance.” Sojourner Truth, 1864

“This picture-making and picture-appreciating power...is a power of great dignity and is closely allied to, if not identical with, the poetic and religious element of man’s nature.” Frederick Douglass, 1862

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” Booker T. Washington, 1901

"One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings." W.E.B. DuBois, 1903