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Great Lives from History: African Americans

Julie Dash

by Judy M. Bertonazzi

Filmmaker and novelist

Dash was the first African American female director to release a feature-length film. The film, Daughters of the Dust(1992), celebrated her South Carolina Gullah heritage and was deemed a national treasure by the Library of Congress.

Areas of achievement: Film: direction; Literature; Radio and television

Early Life

Julie Dash was born on October 22, 1952, and raised in the Queensbridge Housing Projects in Long Island City, Queens, New York. Her parents had migrated to New York City from South Carolina, and her father was raised in the Gullah culture of South Carolina’s Sea Islands. This history was instrumental in forming Dash’s black feminist aesthetic, most notably on display her acclaimed film Daughters of the Dust (1992).

As a senior in high school in 1968, Dash studied filmmaking at Harlem’s Studio Museum. Her experiences growing up with her father’s Gullah culture influenced the way she saw her own identity as a black woman in the inner city, and this identity informed her passion for film. Her own family stories, a strong sense of pride in her diverse African American cultural roots, and her activist’s vision of redefining African American imagery in films all shaped Dash’s artistic vision.

Life’s Work

Dash’s career in cinematography began soon after she attended Harlem’s Studio Museum. In 1974, she received her bachelor’s degree in film production from City College of New York. She moved to Los Angeles to refine her filmmaking skills. There, Dash met Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, and Haile Gerima, who were at that time part of the L.A. Rebellion, an activist film cohort known for creating black films for black audiences.

In 1975, Dash was named a producing and writing fellow at the American Film Institute. She earned a master of fine arts degree in motion picture and television production in 1986 from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Between 1975 and 1986, Dash directed, wrote screenplays, and solicited funding for Diary of an African Nun (1977), an adaptation of an Alice Walker short story that won Dash a Director’s Guild Award. Dash also released Illusions (1982), a short film with a black feminist theme. In the film, actor Lonette McKee portrays an African American woman “passing” for white while being forced to cater to a white film establishment, despite her desire to encourage black women’s professional advancement in the industry. Dash’s screenplay for Illusions reveals her desire to see African American women, men, and children in more expansive and culturally representative roles in Hollywood films.

Dash’s film Daughters of the Dust was a groundbreaking depiction of the African American Gullah culture. The film reveals the cultural diversity of African Americans while conveying the Gullah worldview and historical vision.

Dash has won awards and critical recognition for many other film, television, and music productions, most notably the music video for Traci Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” (1996), the film Funny Valentines (1998), the made-for-television film The Rosa Parks Story (2002), and the short film Brothers of the Borderland (2004). She continued to work on television and film projects throughout the 2000’s.

Significance

Daughters of the Dust was the first nationally released feature film directed by an African American woman. Set in the early 1900’s, the film painted a sensitive portrait of a Gullah family, focusing in particular on the courageous decision of Gullah women to migrate to New York City during the Great Migration while other family members stayed on the Sea Islands. Daughters of the Dust was recognized by the Library of Congress as a “national treasure” to be kept in the National Film Registry. Dash’s film also received recognition in Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine. The 1999 Newark Black Film Festival honored Daughters of the Dust as one of the most important films in black cinema of the twentieth century. In 1997, Dash wrote a sequel to Daughters of the Dust as a literary novel.

Further Reading

1 

Dash, Julie. “Making Movies That Matter: A Conversation with Julie Dash.” Interview by Michael T. Martin. Black Camera 22, no. 1 (Spring, 2007): 4-12. An extensive interview with Julie Dash on her life in the film industry, her past films, and current film projects. It also includes a filmography.

2 

Dash, Julie, Toni Cade Bambara, and Bell Hooks. Daughters of the Dust: The Making of an African American Woman’s Film. New York: New Press, 1992. This useful source includes a preface by Bambara, an interview between Dash and Hooks, the script, and Dash’s description of the making of the film.

3 

Geechee Girls Multimedia. “Julie Dash.” http://www .geechee.tv/julieinfo/filmo.html. The official Web site for Dash’s production company includes her biography, filmography, bibliography, and films in production.

4 

Hurd, Mary G. “Julie Dash.” In Women Directors and Their Films. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2007. Provides a brief biography and filmography.

5 

Raphael-Hernandez, Heike. “A Revival of Ancestral Hope: Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.” In The Utopian Aesthetic of Three African American Women (Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Julie Dash): The Principle of Hope. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008. Scholarly analysis of Dash’s Daughters of the Dust in a feminist context.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Bertonazzi, Judy M. "Julie Dash." Great Lives from History: African Americans, edited by Carl L. Bankston, Salem Press, 2011. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLAA_122355597737.
APA 7th
Bertonazzi, J. M. (2011). Julie Dash. In C. L. Bankston (Ed.), Great Lives from History: African Americans. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Bertonazzi, Judy M. "Julie Dash." Edited by Carl L. Bankston. Great Lives from History: African Americans. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2011. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.