moma:
MoMA Film curators have discovered the earliest existing footage of a feature film with a black cast. The film will screen at MoMA on November 8 as part of our To Save and Project film preservation series.
I believe this claim is incorrect. The oldest films with Black actors that I know of are Thomas Edison’s productions of battle scenes from the Philippine American War (1899). African-Americans played the Filipinos. They were produced in West Orange, NJ. You can find the films on the Library of Congress website http://www.loc.gov/item/98501198/