\n<\/p>\n
Among the places her search took her, she said in newspaper interviews, were the national archives of Spain and Belgium, where she found silent classics by Micheaux with the title cards written in the languages of those countries, which she then had to have translated back into English.<\/p>\n
In 2000, she and Louise Spence published \u201cWriting Himself Into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films and His Audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPearl Bowser and Louise Spence\u2019s scholarly examination of Micheaux serves a dual purpose,\u201d Ren\u00e9e Graham wrote in a review in The Boston Globe. \u201cThrough six essays, they analyze Micheaux\u2019s work, how it was received by both Blacks and whites, and how his films encouraged fresh discussions about race. But Bowser and Spence\u2019s book also rescues the filmmaker\u2019s accomplishments from decades of obscurity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Bowser\u2019s expertise, though, encompassed much more than Micheaux-era films. Her lectures and film series covered a wide range \u2014 for instance, she presented \u201cFilms of Africa and the Caribbean\u201d at the Brooklyn Museum in 1986. And the collection of hundreds of films, videotapes and audiotapes she donated in 2012 to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution is rich in material<\/a> related to Black filmmakers in the 1960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n \u201cPearl didn\u2019t just revive Micheaux\u2019s legacy; she helped preserve and shape the narrative of independent Black film,\u201d Ina Archer, media conservation and digitization specialist at the museum, said by email. \u201cAcross her five-decade career she wove a continuous thread through a century of Black film that is only just now beginning to come into focus.\u201d<\/p>\n Pearl Johnson was born on June 25, 1931, in Harlem, where she grew up. According to a Smithsonian Institution biography<\/a>, her mother, also named Pearl, was a domestic worker, and young Pearl would often accompany her to work at apartments in Lower Manhattan, helping to fold handkerchiefs in exchange for an allowance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n