Pearl Bowser

Pearl Bowser was born on the twenty-second of June 1931 at Long Island, New York, the daughter of Vivian Williams — a Long Island Black domestic worker — and a father of the principal Long Island West Indian community of the principal early-twentieth-century period. She was raised in the principal Long Island Black community of the late 1930s and 1940s and at the family relocation to Brooklyn in the principal post-1947 period.

She completed her secondary education at the Erasmus Hall High School at Brooklyn in 1949 — and attended Brooklyn College at the City University of New York from 1949 to 1953 in the principal English-and-cinema programme.

She was hired in 1965 by the principal Brooklyn Borough President's Office at the principal Vietnam-era community-relations programme as a junior community-relations officer.

She was named in 1969 the principal director of the principal first New York Black Cinema Festival at the principal Studio Museum in Harlem — the principal first Black cinema festival in the United States. She held the principal Studio Museum Black Cinema Festival direction from 1969 to 1972.

She founded the African Diaspora Images film archive at New York in 1971 — the principal first Black-American film-history-and-recovery archive of the principal post-1970 American Black-cinema-recovery period. She held the principal African Diaspora Images direction from 1971 to her retirement in 2010.

She was the principal recovery scholar of the Oscar Micheaux race-film tradition across the 1970s through the 2000s — and produced across the principal post-1970 recovery period the principal documentary recoveries of approximately fifteen lost Oscar Micheaux race films of the principal pre-1948 American race-film commercial period.

She directed the principal documentary Midnight Ramble: Oscar Micheaux and the Story of Race Movies in 1994 — a fifty-five-minute documentary on the principal pre-1948 American race-film commercial period and the principal Oscar Micheaux directorial career. Midnight Ramble was broadcast on the principal PBS American Experience series in February 1994.

She co-authored with the principal Oscar Micheaux recovery scholar Louise Spence the principal monograph Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences at the principal Rutgers University Press in 2000 — the principal definitive scholarly study of the principal Oscar Micheaux race-film canon.

She was the principal film-history mentor of three generations of Black-American Black-cinema-history scholars across the principal post-1970 Black-cinema-recovery period.

She died at Brooklyn, New York on the eleventh of September 2023 of natural causes, at ninety-two.

She is honored here as the principal recovery scholar of the Oscar Micheaux race-film tradition.