Carlton Moss

Carlton Moss (February 14, 1909 – August 10, 1997) was an African-American actor, screenwriter, and film director. Born and raised in both North Carolina and Newark, he attended Morgan State University, where he founded an acting troupe he called "Toward a Black Theater." His stage career brought him to Broadway in 1933, where he appeared in the play We, The People.

In 1936, Moss became one of three African-American theatre artists who assumed leadership of the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project following the departure of John Houseman. Houseman, who had recommended Moss for the role, later characterized him as "skillful, progressive, educated and sensitive to every changing breeze of Harlem opinion." Under the new leadership, Moss directed a production of The Show-Off in 1937 at the Lafayette Theatre, marking the unit's first presentation under its reorganized direction.

Moss went on to establish himself as a significant figure in film. He wrote The Negro Soldier for director Frank Capra, a 1944 propaganda film designed to promote racial harmony among World War II soldiers and to encourage African-American men to enlist. That same year he traveled to Europe to produce Teamwork, a documentary chronicling the contributions of an African-American quartermaster unit known as "The Redball Express." He was also offered the opportunity to collaborate with Elia Kazan on Pinky but withdrew from the project, citing concerns that the film was demeaning to Black people.

Among his later directorial works is the documentary Frederick Douglass: The House on Cedar Hill, released in 1953. His filmography also includes George Washington Carver (1959), Black Genesis: The Art of Tribal Africa (1970), and several entries in the Portraits in Black series produced during the 1970s. Moss additionally taught as a guest lecturer at Fisk University in Nashville and served as a professor in the Comparative Culture Program at the University of California at Irvine, where he continued to produce educational films focused on African-American history and culture.