Black “Censor,” White Liberties: Civil Rights and Illinois’s 1917 Film Law

Most accounts of censorship follow a predictable narrative: an innocent author creates a work, only to have menacing censors obstruct free expression. However, Illinois’s first state censorship law challenges this narrative: its sponsor, the black legislator Robert Jackson, attempted to hone censorship into a tool for black freedom. Exploring the legislative and social history of the law’s creation and enforcement, I examine how Jackson’s unusual quest for liberty through censorship produced a resonant plea for cinematic racial equality that the U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately affirm, and I evaluate what this episode teaches us about the complex relationship between freedom and repression.