This dissertation documents the development of the TV da Gente (Our TV) television network in São Paulo, Brazil. The first network of its kind in Brazil, TV da Gente producers channeled blackness as a focal point for television production by employing Afro-Brazilians to appear on the shows as central figures and by creating content that sought to appeal to an Afro-Brazilian audience. This dissertation characterizes the racially unequal visual relations in Brazil through the ways in which Afro-Brazilians are and are not seen in public images. It foregrounds these racially unequal visual relations as sites of contestation for Afro-Brazilian media producers at TV da Gente. I track the roles of Afro-Brazilians in mainstream Brazilian visual culture to demonstrate the ways in which they remain conspicuously absent or marginally present with public representations. An examination of TV da Gente television producers' intentions in program creation and an analysis of the programs they made shows that they privileged middle class images of Afro-Brazilians that emphasized education, professional work, and civic responsibility. I argue that the visual conditions of Afro-Brazilian images that already saturated the public sphere circumscribed the images available to TV da Gente workers for Afro-Brazilian visibility. The emphasis on a middle class image of Afro-Brazilians enabled them to intervene within and challenge the stereotypical and limited representations of Afro-Brazilians that proliferate in public life.