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From the inception of the motion picture industry, stereotyped black characters were endemic, a holdover from the tradition of minstrelsy. Thus images of buffoonish, simpleminded, superstitious African Americans were presented to American moviegoers of all races and ethnic groups. Even before the public outcry by African Americans against D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), black newspaper columnists had waged campaigns against the stereotyping of African Americans in films. When white filmmakers continued to portray African Americans as simpletons providing comic relief or as sexual predators bent on ravaging white virgins, a number of African Americans responded by producing their own films, which featured black actors in major roles or, more generally, had allblack casts. These productions were called race movies or race films. Most race films were intended for black audiences. Many African American filmmakers did realize that, theoretically, profits, both financial and social, were to be made by reaching the white market; but in reality, race films were often rejected by white audiences, who wanted the presentation of African Americans onscreen to stay within the bounds of the current racial ideology.