Oscar Micheaux was an early 20th century African American author, filmmaker, and entrepreneur who made over 44 films. He was the first African American to produce a full-length feature film. Some of his most notable films included Within Our Gates, about the difficulties faced by African Americans in the South, and God's Step Children, which dealt with issues of colorism. Micheaux frequently explored controversial topics like miscegenation, lynching, and educational inequality in his films. Despite facing challenges with financing, distribution and censorship, Micheaux was a pioneering African American filmmaker who helped advance representation in cinema.

1. Author, playwright, movie
producer, director, book
publisher, and lecturer.
The first man to produce a full-
length, eight-reel, all-African
American movie
The first African American to write
and publish a best-selling novel--with
a circulation of over 55,000.
During this phase of his life, he
was founder and president of the
Micheaux Film Corp., and was
credited with producing 44 of
the 82 all-Negro pictures made

2. Micheaux was born January
2, 1884, on a farm near
Metropolis, Illinois. He was
the fifth of thirteen
children born to Calvin and
Belle Micheaux. As might
be expected with a large
family, the Micheaux clan
struggled financially.
Oscar's parents stressed
education, however, and
the youngster grew up
determined to seek his
fortune elsewhere.
(Micheaux)

3. Micheaux: However, the
greedy and inhuman attitude of
this monopoly this toward its
colored employees has just the
opposite effect, and is
demoralizing indeed.
Thousands of black porters
continue to give their services
in return for starvation wages
and are compelled to graft the
company and people for a
living.” (Micheaux, 50)

5. “But when the reality of the situation dawned upon me, I
became in a way frightened, for I did not want to fall in love
with a white girl. I had always disapproved of
intermarriage…that we would become desperately in
love, however, seemed inevitable. (Micheaux, 155)

7. Griffith’s innovations beginning with the Birth of
a Nation includes but are not limited to: “Its own
original musical score written for an
orchestra, the definitive usage of the still-
shot, elaborate costuming to achieve historical
authenticity and accuracy, scenes innovatively
filmed from many different and multiple
angles, the technique of the camera "iris"
effect, the use of parallel action and editing in a
sequence, moving, traveling or "panning" camera
tracking shots the effective use of total-screen
close-ups to reveal intimate expressions, the use
of fade-outs and cameo-profiles, the use of lap
dissolves to blend or switch from one image to
another, high-angle shots and the abundant use
of panoramic long shots, extensive cross-cutting
between two scenes to create a montage-effect
and generate excitement and suspense” (Dirks)

8. “The legacy of Birth of a Nation
was a revived and powerful new
Ku Klux Klan, some forty-five
years after it had been outlawed
and made a mere footnote in
history, and propaganda
masquerading as history…”
(Jansson)
. “The uncouth black and
mulatto politicians are seen
openly drinking liquor and
going barefoot on the floor of
Congress…” (Jansson)

9. Features interracial cast, Within
Our Gates follows a Southern black
woman who, abandoned by her
fiancé, travels to the North in search
of funding for a black school in her
home town, only to have her past
come back to haunt her. The film
explores racial tensions in the South
through issues of
miscegenation, rape, and, most
controversially, lynching. Due to a
particularly graphic lynching
scene, Southern theatres would not
book the film and it eventually
disappeared for seventy years.

10. “Where films produced by white
Americans presented these ridiculous
stereotypes as excessive fragments
with scant relevance to the main
narrative, Micheaux attempted to
delineate the social pathologies of
race and racism.” (Horne)

11. . “Time and again, we see characters
in Micheaux’s film
reading, discussing, and acting in
ways that are fully consonant with
possessing a full-fledged humanity.
The title cards in Micheaux’s film
repeatedly assert that black
Americans are complete human
beings, deserving of rights equal to
those conferred on whites.” (Flory)

12. “Old Ned says to the camera, "Again, I've
sold my birthright. All for a miserable mess
of pottage." Despondent and frustrated, he
argues, "Negroes and Whites - all are
equal. As for me miserable sinner, hell is my
destiny." This is a remarkably provocative
scene. Uncle Tom characters were a staple
in white mainstream films and some black
independent productions, but never had a
director attempted to explain the psychology
of such a human being. " (Butters, 2000)

13. The emasculation of black
men and the reality of
white brutality and
violence against blacks

14. “Micheaux's use of crosscutting in
Within Our Gates (1919), particularly
in regard to the attempted rape of
Sylvia Landry and the lynching of her
adoptive parents, suggests not only
parallelism, but also simultaneity and
juxtaposition, such that the effect is to
bring together two events that do
not, in fact, take place at the same
time… into one flashback sequence
within the film arguably served to
heighten the emotional response of
audience members to this particular
sequence.” (Frederickson)
Here, the film’s African American
protagonist Sylvia Landry (Evelyn
Preer) tries to protect herself from a
very real assault and attempted rape at
the hands of white landowner Armand

15. “The viewer is soon
“Reverend Thurston has begun an
introduced to Reverend
active campaign for the education of
Wilson Jacobs, the founder of
the black race. He asks that the
a school for African
federal government contribute
Americans and "[an] apostle
significantly, so that Negro children in
of education for the black
all of the U.S. can receive proper
race." Micheaux
instruction." Thus, Micheaux
demonstrates the lack of
addresses a serious contemporary
educational opportunities
problem which virtually all filmmakers
available to African American
of the period, both black and
children in the South.”
white, ignored.”

16. Lying Lips
“However, Micheaux's films are Elsee, a nightclub singer, is sent
most notable for the absence of to prison for the murder of her
racial stereotypes and for the aunt. Her
presence of a cast of boyfriend, Benjamin, attempts
accomplished black actors to prove her innocence. Assisting
with a luminescent star Benjamin is detective
quality that mirrors the Wanzer, played by Robert Earl
highly capitalized white- Jones (James Earl Jones'
centered studio films.” father). Appearing in a bit part
(Horne) is Juano Hernandez (later to
star in Intruder in the Dust ). A
prime example of Micheaux’s use
of Hollywood genres and
characterizations in so-called
race films. Edna Mae Harris

17. Veiled Aristocrat God's Step
Children
Lorenzo Tucker (the "Black
Valentino") stars in this story of a
Oscar Micheaux's film deals with
lawyer who returns home to find
a light skinned African-
that his light-skinned sister is about
American orphan who refuses to
to marry a dark-skinned man. His
acknowledge her race. She winds
mother has picked a more suitable
up in a convent after being
candidate. Director Oscar Micheaux
disruptive in her all Black
once again tack les the issue of dark-
school. Eventually she marries a
skinned versus light-skinned
dark-skinned man. A serious
African-Americans. Features Laura
and moving film featuring
Bowman.
Alice B. Russell, Carmen
Newsome, Jacqueline Lewis
and Ethel Moses.

18. “Considering that Micheaux, and
other independent black
filmmakers during the second and
third decades of the twentieth
century, struggled against
censorship, worked with small-
scale productions, and had vast
problems with distribution --
often traveling in between states
themselves, catering to those few
hundred black cinemas that
screened race films -- it appears
quite puzzling that Micheaux
succeeded in exporting some of
his films abroad without the
assistance of a major studio's
distribution channels.”
(Gustafsson, 2008, 30-49)

19. Swing
Oscar Micheaux was in the director's chair for this tribute to
African-American music. Featured are songs performed
from Alabama to Harlem, with the Tyler Twins performing
the dance numbers, and also featuring Cora Green, Hazel
Diaz, Carmen Newsome and Alec Lovejoy.