SPOTLIGHT January 2026: Madame Toussaint, Tressie Souders, Maria P. Williams and Zora Neale Hurston

It’s hard for female filmmakers to make a name for themselves in Hollywood, even outside the studio system. Women of color, and particularly Black women, face even more significant challenges in Hollywood, because of limited access to funding and fewer chances for them to overcome a failure. Despite that, there are several Black women artists who’ve succeeded, and their success has paved the way for others to follow. Julie Dash is one who comes immediately to mind. Dash’s 1991 film Daughters of the Dust was the first feature film by a Black woman to receive a general theatrical release in the US.

Cheryl Dunye is another prominent Black Woman pioneer filmmaker. Dunye is the first out Black lesbian to write, direct, and star in a feature film, with her The Watermelon Woman (1996). As a member of the “Queer New Wave” movement, Dunye created a new and distinctive documentary style, the “Dunyementary”, which blurs the borders of documentary and fiction. You can read AWFJ’s SPOTLIGHT on Dunye HERE.

With the current political climate, systemic bias and gatekeeping in moviemasking are ever-present, and they are becoming even bigger obstacles to success for Black Women in film. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine how difficult it must have been in the earliest part of the 20th century for Black female filmmakers. There are, however, Black female filmmakers who paved the way for important creators like Dash and Dunye, and others who are currently making waves in the industry, including including Ava DuVernay, the first Black woman to win the Directing Award at Sundance in 2012. and Nia DaCosta, the first Black woman to have a film open at #1 at the US box office with Candyman in 2021 and the first to helm a Marvel Cinematic Universe film with The Marvels in 2023.

As we welcome 2026 with our January SPOTLIGHT, AWFJ is focusing four of the most sucessful pioneering Black female filmmakers of the early 20th century paved the way for Dash, Duvarney, DaCosta and others, although their own career accomplishments have been all but obliterated from film history.

As we’ve seen during 2025, Black contributions to all aspects of American history and culture are being sidelined or erased altogether, making it all the more essential for journalists and historians to amplify their lasting impact. With that in mind, here are four early 20th century women whose names you should know.

MADAME E TOUSSAINT WELCOME (born Jennie Louise Van Der Zee):

Jennie Louise Van Der Zee, who became known as Madame E Toussaint, was an important contributor to the Harlem Renaissance as an accomplished photographer, artist, and filmmaker. Together with her husband Ernest, she established an art school, photo studio, and film production business, the Toussaint Motion Picture Exchange.

Born the oldest of six children in 1885, Jennie was the child of parents who, at one time, were the maid and butler in New York to President Ulysses S. Grant. Her education included not only traditional schooling, but private lessons in art and music. After her family moved to New York City, she met and married Ernest Toussaint Welcome, an inventor and businessman, in 1910. They established the Toussaint Conservatory of Art and Music, and Jenny and Ernest became THE POWER COUPLE of the Harlem Renaissance, and the first African-American owners of a business in Harlem. Her brother, famed photographer James Van Der Zee, also became an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1916, and through the Toussaint Motion Picture Exchange, they announced they’d make film series about African-American soldiers overseas called Doing Their Bit. African American soldiers spent more time in battle trenches than another other American unit, and through Doing Their Bit and her many illustrations and paintings capturing their experience, Jennie became one of the first Black female filmmaker to defend them and celebrate their contributions. Another of their artistic ventures, the Toussaint Pictoral Company, printed Jennie’s painting Charge of the Colored Divisions into posters to be used in War Savings Stamp and Liberty Loan drives. They also published one million patriotic postcards of African-American soldiers based on that painting. That image was the only one accepted and used by the US government’s National War Savings Committee by an African-American artist.

It was through trailblazing projects like Doing Their Bit that the perception of African Americans, and their true heroism during World War I was revealed, shown through irrefutable documentary footage. Unfortunately, none of that footage has survived, but it was still an essential step in establishing the US cinema industry. Vanguards Ernest and Jennie Louise Toussaint proved Black people could independently create and distribute their own films, leading to the emergence of legendary artists like Oscar Micheaux.

TRESSIE SOUDERS

Tressie Souders is one of two women, both of Kansas City, Missouri, recognized as potentially being the first African American woman to write, direct, and produce a feature film. As with so many Black female trailblazers of the era, there’s not nearly enough known about Theresa Ann Souders. She was born in 1897 and lived in Frankfort, Kansas, where she graduated from high school in 1918. After moving to Kansas City, Missouri, she took up domestic work and became involved with the local arts community. It was a scant four years later that she released 1922’s A Woman’s Error, which was distributed by the Kansas City-based Afro-American Film Exhibitor’s Company.

To date, no one has been able to unearth a copy of the film, and it too is believed to be lost. There has been some research done by filmmaker Yvonne Welbon in which she uncovered a review in Black press of the era calling A Woman’s Error “the first of its kind to be produced by a woman of our race” and that it represented a “picture true to Negro life”. Souders was interested in showing an authentic vision of African-American life, though in her case through narrative features. As all women in film and female filmmaker-focused journalists must be eternal optimists to survive the business, we live in hope the film will still one day be discovered.

There are film historians still working to learn more about the life of Tressie Souders, who created a film while she was also working as a domestic worker. She has been recognized with the Tressie Souders Director Award given through the Black Women Film Network Summit.

MARIA P. WILLIAMS

A native of Missouri, Williams was born Maria Priscilla Thurston in 1866, and had more than 20 siblings. She started teaching at 11, but later moved to Kansas City and married movie theater owner and entrepreneur Jesse L. Williams.

Prior to getting involved in the film industry, Williams was a social activist and educator, lecturing on topics like politics and social justice. In 1891, she became the editor in chief of the Kansas City weekly newspaper New Era. She held that position for three years, then started her own newspaper The Women’s Voice, which ran from 1896 to 1900. In 1916, long before she created the film for which she has become known, she wrote a memoir called My Work and Public Sentiment. Apparently, there is a readable copy of it in one Kansas City library.

It was her entrepreneurship that led Maria to creating and releasing the film The Flames of Wrath. She and her husband co-managed his movie theater, which taught them about film release and distribution for Black audiences. They founded the Western Film Producing Company and Booking Exchange, where she went on to write, produce, and star in the 1923 film The Flames of Wrath, making her, along with Tressie Souders, one of the first Black women to produce a film. It had strong distribution, and was screened around the country to great success, as indicated in a letter that declared “This picture has never lost a dollar to an exhibitor in all of its rounds.” Believed to be lost, and featuring an all-Black cast, itwas a five-reel silent mystery drama which was was centered on an escaped prisoner who, beore going to jail, buried the diamond ring that he stole. Maria starred in the film as a prosecutor. While the film as a whole has not survived, UCLA’s Charle E Young Research Library acquired a single frame of the movie.

Though 1923 was a banner year for both Maria and her husband Jesse, it was short-lived. He passed away that year, and it’s believed Maria stopped working in film at that time. Only nine years later in 1932, Maria had her own, even sadder end. She was shot to death only a few miles from her home, the victim of a never-solved murder.

ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Most students of history know Zora Neale Hurston’s name as author of the renowned 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, and perhaps know some of her other work, including the anthology of African-American folklore, Mules and Men. Hurston also wrote three other novels, and over 50 short stories, plays, and essays. It was her interest in anthropology and ethnography, and desire to capture rural Black life, culture and customs that led her to shoot 16mm film, and film footage during the 1920s, some of which is still in existence and is now essential documentation of Black life in the early 20th century.

Born the fifth of eight children in 1891, this renaissance woman’s early life was spent in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-Black towns in the US. Eatonville now holds an annual “Zora! Festival” in her honor. She worked in various jobs while studying, graduating high school in 1918. Attending Howard University, she co-founded the oldest collegiate newspaper in the US, The Hilltop, which just celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2024. She also went to Barnard College of Columbia University. It was there that she began conducting ethnographic research, getting a BA in anthropology in 1928. She lived in Harlem in the 1920s, finding some literary success and befriending other writers of Harlem Renaissance fame, like Langston Hughes.

In the late 1920s, she found support through the patronage of philanthropist Charlotte Osgood Mason and the backing of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and the American Folklore Society. She traveled in the south researching music, folklore, hoodoo, and other aspects of African-American and Caribbean culture. With camera in-hand, she captured footage of children playing games, men doing fieldwork or working in a logging community, a baptism, cookouts, baseball games, and other aspects of the Black experience of the time. She shot 15 rolls of film, amassing 85 minutes of footage. Some of the footage includes two a cappella songs sung by Hurston herself, Shove it Over and Wake Up, Jacob, which she recorded in 1939. Though some of her work is lost in time, fortunately quite a bit of it has survived, and is stored in the Library of Congress.

Zora Neale Hurston was using film as an ethnographic tool, laying the groundwork for not only ethnographic studies, but documentary filmmaking as a Black female filmmaker. She was saying with this work that Black people and their culture were beautiful and meaningful and an important part of American culture. These films provide an invaluable visual record of Black communities of the 1920s, their rituals, joys, and traditions. She is yet another Black female filmmaker essential to the future of film, especially documentary filmmaking using ethnography.

WHY WE CHOSE THEM:

It’s important for film lovers and for filmmakers to know film history, and to recognize the artists who created the chronology of filmmaking. These four women must be remembered and honored. They are not celebrated nearly enough for their contributions. We are so grateful for their fearlessness, creativity, and determination. Their work deserves space in our brains and their names should be on the tips of our tongues, not sidelined or forgotten. – Leslie Combemale