National Museum of African American History and Culture

Pearl Bowser Audiovisual Collection

Summary

Collection ID:
NMAAHC.A2012.79.AV
Dates:
bulk 1920-2001
Languages:
English
.
Physical Description:
approximately 100 Motion picture films
213 Sound cassettes
7 boxes
Repository:

Arrangement

Arrangement
The collection is currently arranged in three (3) archival series as follows:
Series 1: Motion Picture Films Series 2: Video Tapes Series 3: Audio Tapes
Series 1 and 2 are arranged sequentially by museum-assigned object numbers. Digital copies in Series 3 arranged into seven subseries by NMAAHC staff. There is an additional subseries for "unidentified" audiovisual materials.

Biographical / Historical

Biographical / Historical
Pearl Bowser is a filmmaker, producer, author, lecturer, and highly acclaimed scholar of African American film who is recognized as an authority on the works of Oscar Micheaux, a noted writer, director, and producer of race films from 1919 to 1948.
Born Pearl Johnson on June 25, 1931, in Sugar Hill, Harlem, New York, she was named after her mother (also Pearl Johnson), a domestic worker who had been raised in a Catholic nunnery. On occasional Saturdays, the younger Pearl would accompany her mother to work in apartments in lower Manhattan, where she would assist her by folding handkerchiefs for a small allowance. After moving to a lower part of Harlem when she was about four years old, she met Harlem entrepreneur "Bumpy" Johnson, for whom she and other children in the neighborhood did odd jobs such as counting coins or attending to his ice-cream stand. Johnson, who would sometimes give the children joy rides in his Cadillac, occasionally allowed Pearl and the other children to borrow books from his extensive library, provided that they read them and submitted to a quiz.
As a child, Bowser had several racist encounters. For example, one of her white kindergarten teachers at her elementary school wore gloves in the classroom as to not touch Black pupils. She was also occasionally teased for having a gap between her teeth but felt insulated from sustained bullying because she had several older brothers who sometimes protected her. On a separate occasion, when she was about nine years old, her mother sent her on a trip from New York to the South to visit relatives. Although her mother had purchased tickets for her to be in a Pullman car, when she changed trains in Washington, DC., she was forced to ride in the car behind the engine, which left her covered in soot.
An avid reader, Pearl excelled in elementary and high school and received a scholarship to attend Brooklyn College, where she majored in biology. She supplemented her income by recording the numbers in one of Bumpy Johnson's shops. Disappointed with the quality of the education she was receiving, Bowser withdrew from Brooklyn College, eventually landing a job at CBS where she worked on a team that analyzed Nielsen ratings.
In 1955, Pearl married fellow New Yorker LeRoy Bowser. By the mid-1960s, although Pearl and LeRoy Bowser had separate interests, they both were working simultaneously in the civil rights movement. While LeRoy was active in Brooklyn CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and went to the South in the summer to teach for what was the beginning of HeadStart, Pearl, along with other production activists, took to the streets documenting African American culture and issues—working to bring these films to schools. Additionally, Bowser wanted to write a cookbook to earn funds for Brooklyn's CORE organization. She was approached by David Davis, the editor of
Tuesday Magazine
.
Tuesday
had distribution in the
Herald Tribune
across the country as a Sunday supplement. As the urban-world magazine exploded in Black communities, "Joan" Bowser's two-page pictorials on Southern cooking with a set of recipes became very popular in the five years she wrote them. Bowser retained copyrights to the articles, and easily completed her cookbook a short time later.
Bowser's colleague at ABC, Charles Hobson, found a used book written by Peter Noble about Black films and Oscar Micheaux. The volume was slim and contained what little information contained in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) files. Hobson and his colleagues wanted to write a book about the topic, and they assigned Bowser to begin the research. As part of the project, Bowser went to California to interview actors who may have been in early Black films or may have worked with Micheaux. What she learned began her intensive scholarship into Micheaux and his fellow filmmakers.
In 1971, she organized her first film festival, the Black Film History Series. In 1979, she organized the nation's first American women's film festival in New York City. She also presented a major retrospective,
Independent Black American Cinema 1920-1980
, which toured the country during 1981 and 1982. She also directed the Journey Across Three Continents film and lecture series, which toured the country from 1983-1985. Bowser also served as president of the prestigious Flaherty Film Seminar in 1987. In 1989, she, alongside Grant Munro, programmed the 35th Flaherty Film Seminar, which featured films such as
Finzan
,
Zajota and the Boogie Spirit
,
Daughters of the Dust
, and many more. She has also been a judge at the world-renown Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESCPACO) in Burkina Faso (formerly known as Upper Volta).
In the 1980s Bowser was awarded an independent artists grant by the Ford Foundation to travel west and collect oral histories from individuals in Oscar Micheaux's orbit, loosely following the route he would have travelled decades earlier. Stopping in cities such as Roanoke, Virginia; Memphis, Tennessee; and Jackson, Mississippi, she collected dozens of oral histories from actors, actresses etc. that knew Oscar Micheaux. Through this research she became an eminent figure in the Black independent film industry. Working as a programmer, she travelled around the United States and the world showing films by domestic and Black filmmakers within the Diaspora.
Despite her wealth of experience working as a programmer, it wasn't until the 1990s that Bowser made her directorial debut with the documentary film
Midnight Ramble
. Funded by
American Experience
, the film looks at African Americans and Hollywood movies from 1910 through the 1950s. In 2000, she, along with Louise Spence, co-authored
Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films and His Audiences
, a book about the pioneering filmmaker. Additionally, she is founder and director of Chamba Educational Film Services, a film distribution company that specialized in distributing films by African American filmmakers. In the early 1980s, she renamed her company/collection as African Diaspora Images, a collection of historical and contemporary films documenting Black film history. She subsequently joined Third World Newsreel, where she was director of their theater department.
In 2012, Pearl Bowser donated her extensive collection of books, sound cassettes, films, film memorabilia, and papers to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Sources:
1940 United States Federal Census; New York, New York, New York, population schedule, p. 61B, house number 1486, family 195, Pearl Bowser;
Ancestry.com
. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012 accessed: 10 Sept 2022); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm: m-t0627-02665
Bowser, Pearl. Pearl Bowser Oral History. Interview by Tuliza Fleming and Jennifer Lyon, July 21, 2011.

Administration

Immediate Source of Acquisition
Acquired as a donation from Pearl Bowser in 2012.
Processing Information
Collection processed, arranged, and described by the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Media Preservation team, in conjunction with the Cataloging and Digitization team.
Series 1 cataloged at the item level and described on the museum's Collection Search website. Select titles from Series 1 and 2 were digitized. All items in Series 3 were also digitized.
Final finding aid described by Bryan Miller and Blake McDowell, with the assistance of Emily Houf, Judith Andrews, and Doug Remley.

Using the Collection

Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research. Access to collection materials requires an appointment.
Preferred Citation
Pearl Bowser Collection, National Museum of African American History and Culture
Conditions Governing Use
The NMAAHC Media Preservation team can provide reproductions of some materials for research and educational use. Copyright and right to publicity restrictions apply and limit reproduction for other purposes.

Keywords

Keywords table of terms and types.
Keyword Terms Keyword Types
Sound cassette Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Documentary films Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Film festivals Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Filmmakers Occupation Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
African American actors Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
African American actresses Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
African diaspora Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Oral histories (document genres) Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
England Geographic Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Race films Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Harlem (New York, N.Y.) Geographic Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Roanoke (Va.) Geographic Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Memphis (Tenn.) Geographic Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
African American motion picture producers and directors Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
African American women authors Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Meetings Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Conferences Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Lectures and lecturing Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Amateur films Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Motion picture soundtracks Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Actors -- Interviews Occupation Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Oral history Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Radio broadcasts Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
16mm motion picture film Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
VHS (videotape format) Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Bowser, Pearl, 1931- Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Micheaux, Oscar, 1884-1951 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Bambara, Toni Cade Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Greaves, William, 1953-2005 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Spence, Louise, 1945- Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Snead, James A., 1953-1989 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Andrade-Watkins, Claire Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Jafa, Arthur Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Tucker, Lorenzo Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Gerima, Haile Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Moses, Ethel Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Gunn, Bill, 1934-1989 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Jones, Robert Earl, 1904-2006 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Sanchez, Sonia, 1934- (poet, reader) Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Robeson, Paul, 1898-1976 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Massiah, Louis Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Dash, Julie Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid

National Museum of African American History and Culture
Washington, D.C. 20004
NMAAHC-Archives@si.edu