Back in 1915, D.W. Griffith's movie, The Birth of a Nation, was considered revolutionary.

What came with it, though, was a litany of controversy and prejudice.

Griffith, born in Oldham County, was considered a film pioneer and his movie would become the first motion picture to ever be shown in the White House.

And while Griffith is more commonly remembered to this day, there was another Kentuckian involved with the film who is less remembered.

Madame Sul-Te-Wan, born as Nellie Crawford in Louisville, became the first Black woman to ever have a contract in film for her role in The Birth of a Nation.

This monumental achievement was, unfortunately, overshadowed by the controversy created by the film.

She would later go on to have a relatively successful career and was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1986.

Let's explore the rich life and hard times of Madame Sul-Te-Wan.

[music playing] Nellie Conley, born Nellie Crawford, was born in 1873 in Louisville, Kentucky, to formerly enslaved parents.

She became very, very prominent, one of the most prominent African-American performers in Hollywood.

But her journey started in Louisville.

Her mother took on a job washing the clothes of actors at a local theater.

So, she would deliver the clothes and she would watch them as actresses and watch them work.

Her mother and she moved to Cincinnati.

She worked a little then as a young actress and the movie industry was just taking off.

And so, she moved to California to make her life in the movies.

And she did, she was in the silent films, she was in the talking films.

The big one that comes to mind is she was in Birth of a Nation.

And that film, D.W. Griffith, changed the game.

After moving to California and working odd jobs, she met, you know, or found out that D.W. Griffith, who was a Kentucky native, was producing a film and was looking for African-American actors.

And so, she wrote a letter to him, you know, stating her interest in being a part of that.

Birth of a Nation is probably one of the most pernicious films ever made about African-Americans and set in motion stereotypes that have been the steady diet of white America since that point.

Not only was she in Birth of a Nation, she was then in Intolerance, his next film the year later.

I think she was in several of his films, but she's in everything, my God.

She was in Tarzan, King of the Apes.

She was in Imitation of Life.

She was in Revenge of the Zombies, or the Revenge of the -- she's in them.

But most of them, she's uncredited.

There's a lot of conversation about why Nellie took on, you know, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, all right?

A lot of people wanna know where it came from.

Well, the Wan is there because in the early stages, she used to refer to herself as Nellie Wan.

When she became involved in Hollywood, what have you, she created this kind of exotic name, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, all right?

And Donald Vogel, who's a film scholar, focuses on Black film, suggests that she came up with that name because at the time, people in the South would always refer to people, especially Black people at that time, by their first name or auntie or aunt, you know?

And the fact that Madame was first, it always forced people to say Madame.

Most African-Americans who performed during that time had to take on stereotypical roles, but there were always stereotypes that were subservient to White people.

She took the roles of being servants.

It's what she understood, it's what she knew.

I don't think she was, you know, gonna be Camille.

[laughs] I don't think she was gonna be, you know, Madea in Madea, but Madea had a servant, you know what I mean?

So, I think those are the roles that she did take.

There's lessons that we can draw from her life just as we can draw from other people's lives in terms of their contribution.

You know, the other thing that we don't even talk about in Nellie's life is the fact that she was able to navigate this as an African-American woman, right, in predominantly White male profession.

I think that's a lesson in itself, is to understand that.

So, although we may have criticism of maybe some of the things, some of the films that she performed in, I think that we also need to look at it within the context of history and begin to maybe salute these people, the fact that they were able to show that they were capable.

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