Legacy

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

Author, playwright, movie producer, director, book publisher, and lecturer.

Oscar Micheaux

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)

Pullman Porter

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)

The Homestead

Turning Points in Micheaux’s life

“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)

D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”

Griffith’s legacyGriffith’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)

Oh and this too!“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)

Micheaux’s counter-narrative

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.

Depiction of blacks

“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)

. “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)

Addressing white stereotypes of blacks

“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)

The Psychology of an “Uncle Tom”

The Case of Efrem

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

Deconstructing Racism“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 Gridlestone

Uplifting his race

“The viewer is soon introduced to Reverend Wilson Jacobs, the founder of a school for African Americans and "[an] apostle of education for the black race." Micheaux demonstrates the lack of educational opportunities available to African American children in the South.”

“Reverend Thurston has begun an active campaign for the education of the black race. He asks that the federal government contribute significantly, so that Negro children in all of the U.S. can receive proper instruction." Thus, Micheaux addresses a serious contemporary problem which virtually all filmmakers of the period, both black and white, ignored.”

“However, Micheaux's films are most notable for the absence of racial stereotypes and for the presence of a cast of accomplished black actors with a luminescent star quality that mirrors the highly capitalized white-centered studio films.” (Horne)

Beginning of the star system for

blacks Lying LipsElsee, a nightclub singer, is

sent to prison for the murder of her aunt. Her

boyfriend, Benjamin, attempts to prove her innocence. Assisting Benjamin is detective

Wanzer, played by Robert Earl Jones (James Earl

Jones' father). Appearing in a bit part 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 stars.

Veiled Aristocrat

Lorenzo Tucker (the "Black Valentino") stars in this story of a lawyer who returns home to find that his light-skinned sister is about to marry a dark-skinned man. His mother has picked a more suitable candidate. Director Oscar Micheaux once again tack les the issue of dark-skinned versus light-skinned African-Americans. Features Laura Bowman.

And the Oscar goes to…

God's Step Children

Oscar Micheaux's film deals with a light skinned African-American orphan who refuses to acknowledge her race. She winds up in a convent after being disruptive in her all Black school. Eventually she marries a dark-skinned man. A serious and moving film featuring Alice B. Russell, Carmen Newsome, Jacqueline Lewis and Ethel Moses.

“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)

Micheaux in Europe!

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.

Contributions to African American

Culture