Today's Black History Month illustration is of Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951), the first major Black filmmaker and the most successful Black filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century. #BlackHistoryMonth
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He wrote, produced and directed 44 films between 1919 and 1948. His films featured contemporary Black life, complex characters, and he sought to counter the negative on-screen portrayal of Black people on screen.
In 1913, he released his first novel, The Conquest The Story of a Negro Pioneer, loosely based on his own life as a homesteader. It attracted attention from a film production company in LA, which wanted to adapt the book into a film.
Micheaux set up his own film and book publishing company, then released the film, “The Homesteader” in 1919. The silent film featured a Black man who entered a rocky marriage with a Black woman…
played by actress Evelyn Preer, despite being in love with a white woman. It garnered praise from critics, and one of them called it a “historic breakthrough, a creditable, dignified achievement.”
Here’s a clip of Micheaux’s second film, “Within Our Gates” (1920), the earliest known surviving feature film directed by an African American. Within Our Gates was created in response to The Birth of a Nation and showed the reality of Dixie racism in 1920.
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