Black List

A blacklist (or black list) is a list or register of persons who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize them from a certain social circle.

Part of a multimedia initiative, The Black List: Volume One is the brainchild of renowned portrait photographer/filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and acclaimed NPR radio host, journalist and former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell... The actual title of the film itself, The Black List, was first conceived by Mitchell as an answer to the persistent taint that western culture has applied to the word "black."

By 1951, Joseph R. McCarthy was in full blossom... It was from these latter hearings in Washington and in Hollywood, that the infamous BLACKLIST evolved. By that time, and as a direct result of these more recent hearings, more than 324 people had been fired by the studios and were no longer permitted to work in the Motion Picture Industry