Introduction

ethods of mass communication evolved during this time period, resulting in the developing technologies of the motion picture industry. Motion pictures provided entertainment and information for the masses. The power and mystery of the new technology mesmerized the public; images on the screen were often assumed to be the truth, including inaccurate representations of races. In response, a group of African American independent filmmakers, including Oscar Micheaux, tried to "uplift the race" and create unity within the black community.³ The rising motion picture industry's stereotypes and Micheaux's response were the beginning of a new movement inspired by technology: the movement away from a divided society. As this era unfolded, and as early movies hardened the stereotypical lines between racial groups, Micheaux first personally overcame this, and then used the medium of the motion picture to communicate his ideas, and to portray African Americans with dignity and respect. In recognizing how powerful film was, his impact was felt in the African American community, white community, and in the motion picture industry. Micheaux did not just direct films; he directed society away from resolute divisions.

Early Film in Chicago

t was the genius of Thomas Edison that produced a workable moving picture machine. In 1889, he fashioned the Kinetoscope, a peep-show cabinet that contained a continuous film passing in front of an eyepiece, allowing viewers to literally watch "moving pictures." Edison's invention motivated a Chicagoan to begin his own experiments.⁷ William N. Selig, a magician, saw his first Kinetoscope in 1895. With his show business experience, Selig saw the financial potential of further developing motion picture technology.⁸ Selig also realized that the money was not in selling the projectors but in selling the tickets to theatres. He turned his attention to creating a technology that would project film onto a screen. In 1896, the Selig Polyscope Company made its first motion pictures.⁹ They were sold to vaudeville houses in Chicago.¹⁰ By 1907, the Selig Polyscope studio called itself "the biggest motion picture plant in the country."¹¹

ilm prospered in Chicago. In addition to Selig Polyscope and Essanay Film Manufacturing, there were numerous other small production companies.¹² Chicago was the likely location for the industry, since investment capital was easily available to finance amateur ventures, an industrial base could support companies, and transportation allowed studios to ship prints everywhere within three days.¹³ Most films told realistic stories about urban life, and Chicago soon became the set: fires, crowds, streetcars and stores provided the backdrop.

ohn R. Freuler established the American Film Manufacturing at 6227 N. Broadway in Chicago. Almost immediately, Freuler began sending production crews out West.^* Freuler's most important accomplishment was to attract actor Charlie Chaplin from Essanay in 1916. Chaplin was in Freuler's The Rink and Easy Street, which were filmed in southern California. D. W. Griffith also worked for Freuler during those years. Griffith, however, chose to concentrate on only one film, Birth of a Nation.¹⁴

or the first time, a medium of mass communication existed that was both entertaining and accessible to the average person. Motion pictures could reach a much wider audience that did not have to be educated. The new movies did not require much, if any, reading ability, except for the occasional title frame. They simply depended on watching. They were more entertaining, and eventually there was something for everyone to share.

rom the very beginning, film offered a substitute for reality, including inaccurate portrayals of the divisions among black and white communities.¹⁵ Many ethnic groups were stereotyped in early films. The Indian, or the "red" man, was played by a white with makeup, and was depicted as violent. Jews were confused and clumsy; Swedes were obtuse; Irish passed out on front stoops. Even in the "all-white" films, there were stereotypes. Tall men were heroes, and blondes were heroines. An authentic representation of the African American experience was nonexistent.¹⁶ In early films, the black man was portrayed as subservient and happy-go-lucky. White actors had been imitating blacks since the first minstrel shows in 1840, and even before then in monologues and dances. For over 75 years, whites played blacks in "black face" by putting on thick black makeup. Many whites in the North saw the stereotypes of African Americans in the movies, and believed them. In early films, blacks played jungle natives, such as when Selig hired Pullman porters in Chicago to play "authentic" Africans in one of his most famous movies, Big Game Hunting in Africa. Many blacks also played comic buffoons or servile positions of maids and domestic help.¹⁷

n an effort to repudiate these stereotypes, African American entrepreneurs, eager to see an accurate reflection of their race on the screen, began to produce their own films. These were known as "race movies" and were often low-budget and technically inadequate. Yet African American moviemakers took on complex issues of the black community, including racial prejudice, poverty, and light versus dark skin.¹⁸ African American studios appeared around the nation, in cities such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Lincoln, Nebraska, but Chicago became the center for enterprising independent black filmmakers. Jazz acts and vaudeville performers passed through Chicago, creating a mixed talent pool.¹⁹ The initiation of black cinema was a tool of unification for the black community. Ossie Davis, a noted African American film actor, stated,

"There were black people behind the scenes, telling our black story to us as we sat in black theaters. We listened blackly, and a beautiful thing happened to us as we saw ourselves on the screen. We knew that sometimes it was awkward, that sometimes the films behaved differently than the ones we saw in the white theater. It didn't matter. It was ours, and even the mistakes were ours, the fools were ours, the villains were ours, the people who won were ours, and the losers were ours. We were comforted by that knowledge as we sat, knowing that there was something about us up there on that screen, controlled by us, created by us - our own image, as we saw ourselves…"²⁰

illiam Foster, a writer for the Chicago Defender, Chicago's premier African American newspaper, responded to the stereotypes in white films. He opened the first African American owned and operated film production company in the United States in 1913. Named the Foster Photoplay Company, it was located in the Grand Theater at State and 31^st St. in Chicago. Foster once wrote, "Nothing has done so much to awaken race consciousness of the colored man in the nation as the motion picture. It has made him hungry to see himself."²¹ In 1917, Luther J. Pollard, an African American, founded the Ebony Film Corporation. Pollard was a strong advocate for racial pride.²² His dream was to found a company of black players that everyone, black or white, could enjoy. Writing to an African American filmmaker in Los Angeles, Pollard stated, "We specialize in comedy… You will find [our films] to be clean and without those situations which are usually attributed to the American Negro. We proved to the public that colored players can put over good comedy without any of that crap shooting, chicken stealing, razor display, watermelon eating stuff that the colored people generally have been a little disgusted at seeing…"²³

Oscar Micheaux, Film Pioneer

scar Micheaux was born into a modest family in 1884, in Metropolis, Illinois. He was one of thirteen children of former slaves, and most of his early life is unknown. He left Metropolis at the age of seventeen and went to work as a Pullman porter in Chicago.²⁶ Dreaming of an independent life in which he could make change, he was inspired by the teachings of Booker T. Washington, who urged blacks to get along with whites in order to gain economic advantage, and the pioneer philosophy of Horace Greeley, who encouraged everyone to go West and open up the country. With these philosophies in mind, Micheaux acquired two 160-acre tracts of land in Gregory County, South Dakota in 1905, despite no previous experience in agriculture. His experiences as a homesteader were the basis for his first novel, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).²⁸ Micheaux described this book as "a true story of a Negro who was discontented and the circumstances that were the outcome of that discontent."²⁹ He rewrote the book into his most famous written work, The Homesteader (1917), which he published and distributed himself by traveling west, selling door-to-door to the white farmers and businessmen in small towns. The book was about "what those farmers knew, being a homesteader in a hard land" and during hard times.³⁰ The Homesteader showed Micheaux's understanding of societal divisions and desire to make changes to incorporate white communities with African American communities. With a color blind mission at hand, Micheaux set about changing society.

n 1915, Micheaux lost his homestead due to financial problems resulting from a drought.³¹ Struggling to continue with his undertaking, he moved to Sioux City, Iowa, where he established the Western Book and Supply Company. He continued to write novels, selling them himself, door-to-door. Meanwhile, in Lincoln, Nebraska, George and Noble Johnson read The Homesteader. They had been producing films for black audiences through their Los Angeles based Lincoln Motion Picture Company.³² The Johnson Brothers wanted to buy the rights to Micheaux's novel but Micheaux demanded that if a motion picture were to be made of his book, he must direct it.³³ The Johnsons turned him down because he had no experience in filmmaking. Micheaux, recognizing a perfect opportunity, reorganized the Western Book and Supply Company into the Micheaux Film and Book Company and opened up an office at 538 S. Dearborn in Chicago. He began to raise money for his own film of The Homesteader. He went to the white farmers and small businessmen around Sioux City, Iowa where he also maintained an office, asking them to buy stock in his new company. In the end, he raised enough money to begin production in Chicago. The film turned out to be an eight-reel feature, first exhibited at Chicago's 8^th Regiment Armory on Thursday, February 20, 1919.³⁴ An advertisement in the Chicago Defender described The Homesteader as "destined to mark a new epoch in the achievements of the Darker Races… every Race man and woman should cast aside their skepticism regarding the Negro's ability as a motion picture star, and go and see, not only for the absorbing interest obtaining therein, but as an appreciation of those finer arts which no race can ignore and hope to obtain a higher plan of thought and action."³⁵ It christened the film as "the greatest of all Race productions."³⁶ Over the next ten years, Micheaux produced over thirty films, all but two in Chicago, and became the most successful African American film producer of the era.³⁷ His success was truly miraculous- Micheaux overcame racial and financial difficulties in order to gain independence, stray from the stereotypes he was born into, and make remarkable changes in the film industry, African American community, and American society.

ost of the early films of the time were musicals, comedies, Westerns, light romances or gangster films. But Micheaux believed in emphasizing black themes for his black audiences. Micheaux used the new technology to deliver a message. Themes he often focused on included African Americans passing for white, intermarriage, injustice of the courts against blacks, and even the sensitive subjects of lynching and the Ku Klux Klan.³⁸ The films were shown nationally at special matinee performances or midnight shows held specifically for black audiences.³⁹ Micheaux often used actors from the Lafayette Players in New York and cast his actors on the basis of type. All his stars were modeled after white Hollywood personalities.⁴⁰ Light-skinned actors usually played leads, something Micheaux was later severely criticized for.⁴¹ Micheaux's work captured the racial divisions of America. His message for African Americans was important, but his belief in educating the American society was monumental.

Within Our Gates: A Response to Birth of a Nation

eleased just five months after the Chicago Race Riots and the "Red Summer of 1919," Within Our Gates contained a riot-lynching scene which reflected American race relations in the early part of the century. The film included a sequence depicting the lynching of two innocent African Americans,⁴⁵ a woman and her sharecropper husband, who was accused of murdering his employer, a white plantation owner.⁴⁶ The sequence was no more than a brief scene during a flashback, but it generated strong resistance. Many African American as well as white communities felt the film was too controversial, so the film's national distribution was limited. The same community that had welcomed Micheaux's first film, The Homesteader (1919), and commended the success of the Micheaux Film and Book Company, objected to Within Our Gates.⁴⁷ A permit to show the film was denied by the Chicago Board of Movie Censors after its first screening, but a more liberal faction agreed to a second viewing, inviting area officials and representatives of Chicago's African American community.⁴⁸ Alderman Louis Anderson and Edward Wright of the Corporation Counsel of Chicago, believed that Micheaux's film should be shown in spite of the controversial lynching scene. Others argued that Within Our Gates would cause more riots. The morning the film was supposed to open, the interracial Methodist and Episcopal Minister's Alliance petitioned to Chicago's Mayor, William "Big Bill" Thompson and Chief of Police John J. Garrity; both officials refused to censor the film.⁴⁹ The film opened at the Vendome Theatre at 3145 S. State Street on January 12, 1920 to a "packed" audience.⁵⁰ It was advertised in the Chicago Defender as "the greatest preachment against race prejudice." The Defender also stated that "it is the claim of the author and producer that, while it is a bit radical, it is the biggest protest against Race prejudice, lynching and concubinage that was ever written or filmed… there are more thrills and gripping, holding moments than was ever seen in any individual production… People interested in the welfare of the Race cannot afford to miss seeing this great production, and remember, it TELLS IT ALL."⁵¹

icheaux's film presented an African American middle-class perspective of American society. "The attempt to ban screenings of Micheaux's film, then, was an attempt to silence the protest against lynching. Within Our Gates was thus historically linked to fear of cataclysmic social change, a linkage obfuscated by the smoke screen of 'race riot.' Micheaux's film was meant less to inspire action or race solidarity than to work a kind of moral self affirmation… Micheaux's spectacle of lynching was rhetorically organized to encourage the feeling of righteous indignation in the Black spectator."⁵² The lynching of the man and wife in the film is a scene that is one of the most unsettling images in the history of African American cinema.⁵³ A triumph for Micheaux, Within Our Gates was a rejoinder against the prevalent racial stereotypes in movies and opened a new door of consideration for the African American community. His impact was felt in not only the African American community, but the white community as well; white began to recognize the power of Micheaux and the challenge the African American community was making to racism.

Micheaux's Film Technique, The Final Days

lthough Micheaux developed new motion picture techniques and produced over thirty independent films as well as seven novels, he was usually hampered by financial limitations.⁵⁵ Like other independent black filmmakers of the time, his work was cinematically rough.⁵⁶ Editing and lighting were inadequate, and the acting often amateur. Most of his films plunged right into the storyline with little character development.⁵⁷ On the tightest of budgets, a film was usually completed within six weeks. He worked with a small crew, hiring his cameramen for one day at a time, and scenes were made with a single take. His scenes were centered around one set, often found in one of his friends' homes.⁵⁸

y the 1930s, the Micheaux Corporation, then headed by Micheaux and his brother, Swan, was the only independent black filmmaking company to survive the Great Depression, pressure from Hollywood, and the invention of sound motion pictures.⁵⁹ In 1931, when most black companies were shutting down, Micheaux released The Exile (1931), the first all-talking motion picture made by a black company. The Betrayal (1948) was his last triumphant film.⁶⁰ He went back to writing novels, his place secured in history as "a pioneer black filmmaker and a man ahead of his time."⁶¹

Conclusion

uring the 1980s, Micheaux was rediscovered by a generation of film "buffs." In recognition of Micheaux's efforts to bring African American topics to the screen, the Director's Guild of America gave him a posthumous honor with a Golden Jubilee Special Directorial Award in 1986. On February 13, 1987, Micheaux was given filmdom's ultimate honor: his own star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard.⁶⁶ Although Micheaux is not well known today, his true impact was on the realistic representation of minorities on screen as well as in American culture and society. "He paved the way for people like Spike Lee to use film to raise serious racial issues."⁶⁷ Oscar Micheaux's pioneering work laid the groundwork at the genesis of the new mass communication technology of film, for Bill Cosby's Huxtable family, Spike Lee's Crooklyn and He Got Game, as well as myriad other examples.

otion pictures gave Micheaux the ability to show what no other filmmaker was showing. His films concentrated on real issues that affected real people. When others sought the motion picture as a medium of entertainment, Micheaux presented the most controversial issues of the time. He was the true pioneer of early African American cinema and stands as the "exemplar of both persistence and failure in the face of unyielding barriers."⁶⁸ Micheaux left an unforgettable legacy. He made movies that, although often technically inferior, captured a rising spirit in his time. Oscar Micheaux recognized the power of the motion picture, and invented new film techniques to further the power of film to entrance the American public. He used this power to reinforce a strong African American community as well as firmly educate this divided public. His choice of controversial subjects and black-oriented themes are evidence of a film pioneer whose primary intent was to present positive images of African American life. Oscar Micheaux had an impact on the African American community of then and now, influencing the public's view of racial identity, and molding the ideas that make our American society today.

1. Henry T. Sampson, "Blacks in Hollywood, a Secret History." [http://www.bkh.com/bkhallhtmlfolder/1kinghtmlfolder/tonybrown.html], 1996. Return to text

2. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 46. Return to text

3. Within Our Gates, Produced by the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Video, 1993, videocassette. Return to text

4. "As the Cameras Rolled, Chicago was Dream City." The Chicago Tribune. 10 August 1986, 7. Return to text

5. Ibid. Return to text

6. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 26,35. Return to text

7. Culture: Expanding the Audience (Chicago, 1980), 91. Return to text

8. Kalton Lahue, "Motion Picture Pioneer: The Selig Polyscope Co." (New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1989), 11-12. Return to text

9. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 26. Return to text

10. Culture: Expanding the Audience (Chicago, 1980), 91. Return to text

11. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 29 Return to text

12. Culture: Expanding the Audience (Chicago, 1980), 95. Return to text

13. Ibid. Return to text

14. T.R. Delapa, "Movie Memorabilia Recounts Chicago's Fabled Film History," The Chicago Tribune, 5 October 1984. Return to text

15. Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film: 1900-1942 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 4. Return to text

16. William Jones, Black Cinema Treasures: Lost and Found (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1991), 6. Return to text

17. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 46. Return to text

18. Ibid. Return to text

19. Ibid., 47. Return to text

20. William Jones, Black Cinema Treasures: Lost and Found (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1991), 6. Return to text

21. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 47. Return to text

22. Ibid., 53. Return to text

23. Ibid. Return to text

24. Henry T. Sampson, "Blacks in Hollywood, a Secret History." [http://www.bkh.com/bkhallhtmlfolder/1kinghtmlfolder/tonybrown.html], 1996. Return to text

25. "Going Abroad: Noted Motion Picture Producer Soon Sails for Europe," The Chicago Defender, 31 January 1920, 11. Return to text

26. The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History (1991) 1772-1773. Return to text

27. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 56. Return to text

28. The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History (New York, 1991), 1772. Return to text

29. Oscar Micheaux, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (Maryland: McGrath Publishing, 1969), VI. Return to text

30. William Jones, Black Cinema Treasures: Lost and Found (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1991) 26. Return to text

31. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 55. Return to text

32. William Jones, Black Cinema Treasures: Lost and Found (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1991), 27. Return to text

33. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum, 1994), 110. Return to text

34. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 56. Return to text

35. "The Homesteader," The Chicago Defender, 22 February 1919, 13 Return to text

36. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 56. Return to text

37. William Jones, Black Cinema Treasures: Lost and Found (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 1991), 28. Return to text

38. Ibid., 29. Return to text

39. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum, 1994), 111. Return to text

40. Lorenzo Tucker, "Black Valentino," Ethel Moses, the "Negro Harlow," Bee Freeman "the sepia Mae West," Slick Chester, "the Colored Cagney," Lawrence Criner, Shingzie Howard, Evelyn Preer and Paul Robeson. Return to text

41. Ibid.,114. Return to text

42. Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema (New York: American Film Institute, 1993), 49. Return to text

43. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 50-51.Two years after Birth of a Nation, Chicago's The Birth of a Race Company (1917), was formed to produce the film The Birth of a Race. It was a direct response to Birth of a Nation. More than any other movie, Griffith's Civil War epic, with its images of ape-like African Americans, sent shock waves through African American communities in the country. Birth of a Race showed "the true story of the Negro, his life in Africa, his enslavement, his freedom, his achievements, together with his past, present and future relations with his white neighbor and to the world in which both live and labor." Return to text

44. Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema (New York: American Film Institute, 1993), 49. Return to text

45. Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema (New York: American Film Institute, 1993), 49. Micheaux himself had personally witnessed the anti-Semitic lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta. The court convicted Frank, a Jewish white man, for the murder of a white southern Christian woman. Return to text

46. Mark A. Reid, Redifining Black Film (Berekely, California: University of California Press, 1993), 12. Return to text

47. Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema (New York: American Film Institute, 1993), 50. Return to text

48. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 57. Return to text

49. Ibid. Return to text

50. Ibid., 58. Return to text

51. "Within Our Gates," The Chicago Defender, 17 January 1920, 12. Return to text

52. Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema (New York: American Film Institute, 1993), 50, 55. Return to text

53. Ibid. Although the film was lost for seventy years, a 35 mm print version of Within Our Gates, renamed La Negra, was discovered at the Spanish Film Archives in Madrid, with Spanish subtitles. In 1970, it was returned to the United States Library of Congress, restored and publicly shown. Return to text

54. Ibid. Return to text

55. Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema (New York: American Film Institute, 1993), 26. Return to text

56. Ibid. Return to text

57. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum, 1994), 115. Return to text

58. Ibid.,114. Return to text

59. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont press, 1998), 58. Return to text

60. Ibid. Return to text

61. Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema (New York: American Film Institute, 1993), 30. Return to text

62. Midnight Ramble: The Story of the Black Film Industry, Produced by Shanackie Entertainment Corp., 1994, videocassette. Return to text

63. Interview with Martin Keenan, Great Bend, Kansas, 27 December 1998. Return to text

64. Interview with Floyd Webb, Chicago, Illinois, 27 December 1998. Return to text

65. Nita Lelyved, "First Weekend Club Shows Its Support for Black Films," The Chicago Tribune, 1 January 1999, 2 Return to text

66. Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 1998), 58. Return to text

67. Interview with Martin Keenan, Great Bend, Kansas, 27 December 1998. Return to text

68. Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film: 1900-1942 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p.343. Return to text

The Author of This Paper

The paper went on to the district, city, and state levels of the history fair competition. After having been published in The Concord Review her freshmen year ("A Bintel Brief: Journey to America"), she decided to send the Micheaux paper in too. It was then published in the Fall, 2000 issue and is currently being read by the Gilder-Lehrman American Institute of History Essay Competition readers (they awarded her with second place for her "Bintel Brief" essay).

Sarah has been very involved in history and science fair competitions, as well as the high school's student newspaper, which she founded and which she now edits for the third year.

You may write to Sarah at sarah@bartonarts.org.