You have a point about lack of racial diversity, but there were plenty of movies with strong female characters in the black-and-white era. Here are some:
All About Eve
Mildred Pierce
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Bringing Up Baby
Roman Holiday
The African Queen
His Girl Friday
It Happened One Night
The Lady Eve
The Women
Gone with the Wind
La Strada
The Little Foxes
The Miracle Worker
Mrs. Miniver
Queen Christina
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Gilda
The Lady from Shanghai
Double Indemnity
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Sunset Boulevard
Anna Karenina
Camille
Nights of Cabiria
The Philadelphia Story
Gaslight
The Lady Vanishes
Notorious
Rebecca
Shadow of a Doubt
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
The movies then may have been almost all-white, but they weren’t anywhere close to all white-male.
*Broken Blossoms *is one of the true treasures in film history. Everything about it is about as perfect as could be. It’s a shame that so many people are missing out on this masterpiece, due to their own prejudices about what a film should be.
I’ve seen maybe a handful. Citizen Kane, Schindler’s List, It’s a Wonderful Life, The first parts of Pleasantville and the Wizard of Oz (if sepia counts for the latter), edit: and Bright Eyes.
I’ve seen a lot more black-and-white TV. Zorro, I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Munsters, Mister Ed, first seasons of Gilligan’s Island and the Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, the good episodes of the Andy Griffith Show, and so on.
I guess I’ve caught a few silent pics, but I’d never remember what they were, and they’re all so short that I don’t really count them.
Sherlock is slow-witted next to Tarzan. Tarzan taught himself to read and write English from a primer left by his parents when he was a child, and yet he had never learned to read, write, or speak in any human language at that time. His first spoken language was French, but he had already mastered English in the written form.