The Golden Age of Hollywood may not have been diverse but pioneering Black actors like James Edwards, Juanita Moore and Butterfly McQueen are notable.

During its Golden Age, Hollywood adapted many of the racist and discriminatory practices that held people of color back in other parts of America. Even so, this era gave rise to some of the most iconic and influential Black actors, performers who paved the way for those who followed in their footsteps.

While actors like Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, and Harry Belafonte have become household names, they represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Black Golden Age pioneers. All of these actors grappled with racial stereotypes and institutional oppression to fight for their chance to perform on both the big and the small screen.

10 Oscar Micheaux

Oscar Micheaux is remembered as the first major Black filmmaker in American cinematic history. During his career, which spanned both sound and silent films, Micheaux was involved in the production of over 40 feature films.

In addition to directing and starring in many films, Micheaux was also a prolific novelist who adapted quite a few of his titles for the big screen. Micheaux's movies, spanning from the late 1910s until the late 1940s, tackle race relations and discriminatory policies against Black people by providing intimate looks into the everyday lives of Black characters.

9 Butterfly McQueen

Butterfly McQueen, despite acting in 1939's Gone with the Wind, was unable to attend the film's premiere at a whites-only theatre. This dancer turned actor dealt with discrimination and typecasting most of her career, often only landing roles as a maid.

After working on films like 1945's Mildred Pierce, McQueen transitioned into TV in the 1950s. She acted sporadically until her death in 1995.

8 James Edwards

James Edwards sought out diverse roles during his acting career, which was cut short by his untimely death in 1970 from a heart attack. Edwards's first major role was Private Peter Moss in the 1949 film Home of the Brave, a soldier who must endure racial discrimination while serving in the South Pacific during WWII.

Edwards's talents are also on display in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing in 1956 and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate in 1962. While Edwards played a lot of soldiers in his early days, he became a prolific TV actor during the 1960s.

7 Lincoln Perry

Lincoln Perry, an actor of Jamaican and Bahamian descent, began his performance career in vaudeville using the stage name Stephin Fetchit. Perry built Fetchit up as an irreverent, sluggish character whose antics often provided comic relief.

As Fetchit, Perry was the first Black actor to receive a screen credit in film, and he was also the first to earn $1 million. More and more Black Americans found the Fetchit persona an anachronist and negative racial stereotype, and Perry's career dwindled until it came to an end in the early 1950s; in the past decades, though, Fechit has been reevaluated as a nuanced, trickster character who covertly waged war on white supremacy with his "lazy" hijinks.

6 Louise Beavers

Louise Beavers was a prolific film and TV actor who suffered from being typecast as a maid, slave, or servant during her decades-spanning career. Beavers, raised in Ohio and California, adopted a Southern dialect in order to be considered for more roles.

Beavers is one of three actors, along with Hattie McDaniel and Ethel Waters, to play the housekeeper Beulah in the popular sitcom from the early 1950s. As her career prospects improved, Beavers spoke out more frequently about the lack of equal opportunity for Black actors in Hollywood.

5 Canada Lee

Although he spent most of his career on stage, actor Canada Lee was well on his way to becoming a prolific screen actor when he died from kidney disease in 1952 at the age of 45. Lee's legacy runs deep, but he is remembered as a trailblazer who forged new roles for Black actors.

Lee has played Macbeth in Orson Welles's 1936 production of the Shakespeare play, a major feat. He acted in films like Alfred Hitchcock's 1941 Lifeboat, but his final film role proved to be his most iconic: leading a majority-Black main cast as Stephen Kumalo in 1951's Cry, The Beloved Country.

4 Nina Mae McKinney

Nina Mae McKinney started singing, dancing, and acting on stage before getting a Broadway break in the 1920s. One of the first Black film stars in the United States, the gorgeous McKinney left America for Europe after getting fed up with her home country's discriminatory policies.

McKinney eventually returned to the United States, but she struggled to find a breakout role. She did perform in "race films" intended for Black audiences, landing small roles in bigger productions like 1944's Dark Waters before giving up on performing in the early 1950s.

3 Juanita Moore

Juanita Moore was one of the first Black female actors to earn an Academy Award nomination. The Mississippi native whose family relocated to Los Angeles when she was young began her career as a dancer at the Cotton Club in New York City before transitioning into film.

Moore's acting tenure includes a major role in Douglas Kirk's melodramatic critique of American racism, 1959's Imitation of Life remake. In the film, Moore plays Annie, a single mother whose light-skinned daughter Sarah Jane tries to pass for white.

2 Woody Strode

Woody Strode was a pioneering athlete and professional football player long before he became an actor. Strode, a WWII veteran, starred in a series of sci-fi and adventure films, often cast as an African warrior, before being cast as the Ethiopian gladiator Draba in Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus.

Strode's next break came from director John Ford and his 1960 film Sergeant Rutledge, which is about a black soldier in the 19th century falsely accused of attacking and murdering a white woman. Strode worked in dozens of films from there, including quite a few European spaghetti Westerns.

1 Fredi Washington

Fredi Washington was an activist and Harlem Renaissance figure who pursued a career in the film beginning in the 1920s. The light-skinned Washington, whose parents were of African-American and European descent, starred alongside Louise Beavers in the original 1934 Imitation of Life directed by John M. Stahl, as well as One Mile from Heaven in 1937.

Washington spoke candidly about the laws and policies that kept her from landing more dynamic roles, and she quit acting in Hollywood after One Mile from Heaven. Instead, she returned to New York City and co-founded the Negro Actors Guild of America while performing in different Broadway productions.

NEXT: Dorothy Dandridge & 9 Other Great Black Actors From Hollywood's Golden Age

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