Common stereotypes about Black people in Hollywood movies can be traced back to the early nineteenth century. Black people were usually presented as either servile or monsters, and in terms of horror films, even the concept of zombies began as a metaphor for slavery.
“Look at the way voodoo and vodun were mischaracterized in early Hollywood because of this fear of Blackness, and Black power and fear of the Haitian Revolution and uprising. You have this mythology of the living dead,” says Tananarive Due, award-winning author, screenwriter, and executive producer of the documentary, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. “It wasn’t because they cared about Black enslavement. It was born of this idea that we're going to have the power to do to them, ironically, what they did to us. That was what zombies were in early Hollywood. So it’s fear-mongering about Black power.”
