Maria P. Williams: The First Black Woman to Write, Produce, and Star in Her Own Movie

Black History Month celebrates African Americans who have made big changes in history, like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. But there are also many important African Americans who aren’t as well-known.

One of them is Maria P. Williams. You might not have heard of her, but her work in movies has helped many Black women in the film industry. Her life is just as interesting as her work.

African American filmmakers have been creating movies since cinema began, but their work has only recently started to be recognized. Filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux and the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, one of the first Black production companies founded by brothers George and Noble Johnson, made significant contributions.

Noble Johnson is often considered the first African American movie star. They produced “race films” for segregated audiences with nearly all-Black casts, portraying African American life from their perspective.

Unfortunately, much of the early Black cinema has been lost over time, with only four minutes surviving from the Lincoln Motion Picture Company’s last movie, By Right of Birth (1921).

Black women also played crucial roles in the early days of African American cinema, although their contributions are often overlooked compared to those of their male peers. Women like Alice B. Russell and Eloise Gist, despite acting in and producing many of their husbands’ films, seldom receive the recognition they deserve.

Among these pioneering women, Maria P. Williams is particularly notable. She was the first African American woman to write, produce, and act in her own film, Flames of Wrath, marking a significant milestone in cinema history.

Before entering the film industry, Maria Williams was deeply involved in social activism and education, travelling across Kansas to give lectures on politics and social justice. By 1891, her commitment to social change led her to become the editor-in-chief of a local Kansas City weekly newspaper, the New Era.

She held this position for three years before launching her own newspaper, The Women’s Voice. This publication was sponsored by the “colored women’s auxiliary of the Republican party” and, according to Film School Rejects columnist Emily Kubincanek, focused on “timely topics” similar to the subjects of her lectures.

Williams continued to be an active political figure well into the 20th century, publishing her memoir My Work and Public Sentiment in 1916 to document her life and social views. The title page of her book identifies Williams as a “national organizer” for the Good Citizens League; 10 percent of all sales were dedicated toward decreasing crime in the African American community.

Williams did not become involved in cinema until her marriage to African American entrepreneur and business owner Jesse L. Williams, among whose many business endeavors was a privately owned movie theatre in Kansas City.

The couple later went on to form their own production company, Western Film Producing Company and Booking Exchange, where Maria served as secretary and treasurer. It was under this banner that Williams made her 1923 silent film, Flames of Wrath, a five-reel crime drama that cemented her position as a pioneer of Black cinema.

By 1920, while five-reel films were relatively common, it was exceedingly rare for such a project to be led by a woman, particularly an African American woman. A single reel of film is 1,000 feet long and translates to about 15 minutes of runtime, making the physical task of cutting and splicing reels together quite demanding.

Initially, this type of work was considered unskilled labour, often performed by women who had limited education. However, as sound and music became integral to films, men started to view this work as “too complex” for women to handle.

Despite the significance of Maria Williams’ work, little is known about the production of her film. Flames of Wrath was advertised in the Norfolk Journal and Guide as a “five-reel mystery drama, written, acted, and produced entirely by coloured people.”

It was distributed to African-American theatres across the southern United States and was quite successful. In a letter to the manager of the Douglass Theatre in Macon, Georgia—the city’s largest Black theatre—Florida cinema manager Roger Wilson claimed that the film had “never lost a dollar to an exhibitor in all of its rounds.”

Maria Williams starred in her film “Flames of Wrath” as a prosecutor leading a high-stakes case against C. Dates for the murder and robbery of P.C. Gordon. When Dates is convicted and sentenced to ten years, he soon escapes to recover a diamond ring he stole and buried in a nearby park.

However, a young boy discovers the ring before Dates can retrieve it, setting off a complex plot involving an unscrupulous lawyer.

For many decades, “Flames of Wrath” was believed to be lost until the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library acquired a single frame of the movie in 1992 from the collection of George P. Johnson, an African American producer and co-owner of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company. This frame is among the sparse remnants of Black Americans in silent cinema.

Little is known about Williams’ life after the release of her film until she died in 1932. Historians speculate she ceased filmmaking after her husband’s death in 1923, making “Flames of Wrath” her only known cinematic work.

Tragically, Williams was murdered nearly a decade after her film’s release, reportedly lured from her home by a stranger under the pretense of needing help for a sick brother, and later found shot by the side of a road. The investigation into her death remains unresolved.

Despite the loss of most of her film work and her premature death, Maria Williams’ pioneering contributions have opened doors for today’s Black female directors. Her dynamic life as a schoolteacher, lecturer, political activist, and filmmaker not only made a significant impact on cinema but also tells a story worthy of its own film.