Letters of Frances H. Pfeiffer, The Cinema Lyceum, Los Angeles, to W. E. B. Du Bois, R. R. Moton and E. J. Scott, 1916
Record
- Date
- 13 Apr - 16 June 1916
- Held by
- W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312), Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries; microfilm digitized on the Internet Archive
- Reference
- Du Bois Papers, correspondence, 1916, "Cinema Lyceum" (archive.org per_papers-of-wed-du-bois_twenty-fifth-anniversary-fund_1890-1915_ia40607911-01)
- Seen as
- originalimagetranscriptabstractindex
What it says
Typed letters on the letterhead of “The Cinema Lyceum, 714-715 Story Building, Los Angeles,” with the names “Philip A. Thompson” and “Frances H. Pfeiffer” at the top right. Found 10 Oct 2026; the letter to Du Bois read from its image by Claude.
To Dr. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, editor of The Crisis, New York, 16 June 1916 (image):
“Your book, The Negro, interests me keenly. The reason for this is partly explained by the enclosed copies of letters, although the ‘Negro Question’ — or Answer, if you will – has been always a vital subject to me. I am taking the liberty of sending you these letters, and writing to you because I feel just a little acquainted with you personally, since I have heard my husband say that he was with you in Harvard, and belonged, I believe, to the same fraternity.
“Early in the spring the idea came to me to put on a great Negro picture as the initial production of The Cinema Lyceum, using Dr. Washington’s life as a basis.” She now hoped for a larger film, so that “every white person who sees it will never be able to forget what the Negro race was, is and is to be,” the first of several “picture-plays” to be “educational in the broadest sense … enlarge the sympathies and awaken more consideration for all classes and races; help to arouse a keener sense of justice.” They had an outline and a rough plan, but would not go on “until we are sure of the approval and cooperation of prominent men and women of the race.”
Elsewhere in the letter, as transcribed from the reel: “If Mr. Pfeiffer were here I am sure he would wish to be kindly remembered to you.”
The enclosures, copies on the same reel: the Cinema Lyceum to Maj. R. R. Moton, principal of Tuskegee Institute, 13 Apr 1916 (two pages); Moton’s reply to “Frances H. Pfeiffer, Cinema Lyceum,” 15 May 1916; and the Cinema Lyceum to Emmett J. Scott, 6 June 1916, “Per Frances H. Pfeiffer.” Du Bois’s reply to “Mrs. Frances H. Pfeiffer” is also on the reel; he was not keen on a film built on Booker T. Washington.
Emil was at Harvard from 1885 to 1889 and a member of Delta Upsilon (reports-harvard-class-1889-pfeiffer).
The Catalog of Copyright Entries for 1916 lists her four-page pamphlet Cinema Lyceum
(index-copyright-entries-frances-pfeiffer-1916-1918).