Many of these posters appear in the touring exhibition "Imaging Blackness: Film Posters from the Black Film Center/Archive." Since they were originally produced as ephemera that would follow the distribution of the film and return to the studio, it is surprising that so many early posters featuring African Americans are still in existence. This collection includes some of the rarer examples.

In addition to their relative merit as commercial art, the posters are visual cues to the social construction of race in our society as revealed by that most potent dream merchant, the Hollywood film industry. Designed to catch the eye, they also offer a window into the history of race relations in the 20th-century U.S. In his foreword to the collection, filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles notes the evolution of how blacks were portrayed in the posters. Ever so slowly, he writes, "you begin to see a few black faces minus the shovels and trays." These incremental changes are notable because they show the long, slow, and continuing struggle of blacks to alter racial perceptionsas well as realityin the film industry.