"Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1914)

Harriet Beecher Stowe's immensely popular 1852 novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and its various stage incarnations, were a dramatic blow by abolitionists against slavery and discrimination. Although it had been filmed previously with white actors in blackface, director William Robert Daly's 1914 version was notable for becoming the first U.S. feature film for white audiences to star a black actor in a lead role: Sam Lucas, who had played Uncle Tom on stage.

Credit: Library of Congress