Carlton Moss

Carlton Moss was born on the fourteenth of February 1909 at Newark, New Jersey, the son of Edward Moss — a Newark Black professional — and the mother of the principal post-Great-Migration Newark Black middle-class community. He was raised at the family relocation to North Carolina in the principal early-1920s post-Great-Migration period.

He completed the bachelor's degree in social science at the Morgan State College at Baltimore in 1932 — and worked across the early 1930s as a Federal Theatre Project assistant director at the principal Lafayette Theatre at Harlem.

He wrote and directed across the late 1930s the principal Federal Theatre Project Black-American documentary radio dramas — including the principal NBC Radio Show on the Negro of 1937 and the principal Federal Theatre Project Black-American Voodoo Macbeth radio adaptation of 1936.

He was recruited in 1942 by the principal United States Army Signal Corps Information and Education Division at New York at the principal Signal Corps Information-and-Education-Black-American-documentary commissioning programme — at the principal Frank Capra-Stuart Heisler Signal Corps documentary unit of the principal Why We Fight series period.

He wrote and directed The Negro Soldier in 1944 — a forty-three-minute United States Army Signal Corps Information and Education documentary on the principal Black-American Second-World-War soldier and the principal Black-American historical record of military service. The Negro Soldier was screened approximately at every principal United States Army training base and at approximately three thousand American commercial cinemas of the principal late-Second-World-War period.

The principal Carlton Moss Negro Soldier of 1944 was the principal first major commercial American documentary film on the principal Black-American historical record commissioned by the principal United States Army Signal Corps Information and Education Division.

He wrote and directed the principal Negro Soldier sequel Teamwork in 1945 — a twenty-eight-minute United States Army Signal Corps Information and Education documentary on the principal post-Battle-of-the-Bulge Black-American Second-World-War soldier service.

He was named in 1947 to the principal Hollywood Black-American Anti-Discrimination Committee at the principal Hollywood post-1947 House Un-American Activities Committee hearings period — and was blacklisted at the principal post-1947 Hollywood McCarthy-era blacklist period.

He founded the principal Frederick Douglass Film Company at Los Angeles in 1955 — the principal independent Black-American documentary production company of the post-1955 Los Angeles period — and produced across the post-1955 period the principal documentary films Frederick Douglass: The House on Cedar Hill of 1953 and Two Centuries of Black American Art of 1976.

He taught documentary cinema at the principal Fisk University at Nashville from 1960 to 1970 and at the principal University of California at Irvine from 1970 to 1985.

He died at Los Angeles on the tenth of August 1997 of natural causes, at eighty-eight.

He is honored here as the writer-director of The Negro Soldier.