Oscar Micheaux was a producer and director who made films independently of the Hollywood film industry from the silent era until 1948. Oscar Devereaux Michaux was born on a farm in Metropolis, Illinois, on January 2, 1884, one of 11 or 13 children. His father was born a slave in Kentucky. His parents moved to Great Bend, Kansas, where Oscar grew up so that the children could receive a better education. They implanted three ideas in the young boy's mind that would be valuable messages of his own - the importance of owning your own land, respect for farming as a profession, and the value of education. In his later years, Michaux added an "e" to his last name. Micheaux attended a well-established school for several years before the family eventually ran into money troubles and were forced to return to the farm. When Micheaux was 17 years old, he moved to Chicago to live with his older brother, while attending school.
His first business was a shoeshine stand, which he set up at a wealthy Black barbershop, away from Chicago competition. He learned the basic strategies of business and started to save money. He dropped out of high school and secured a job as a Pullman porter assisting railway passengers, at that time considered prestigious employment for Black men of his era. Micheaux profited financially, and also gained contacts and knowledge about the world through traveling as well as a greater understanding for business. When he left the position, he had seen much of the United States, and had a couple of thousand dollars saved in his bank account. Micheaux was brimming with ambition. He wanted to heed Booker T. Washington’s call for Black economic independence by building his own wealth. Micheaux demanded that Black people spend their money well and create enterprises to support their lives and communities.
While working as a Pullman porter, Micheaux purchased a relinquished South Dakota homestead near the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1906. This experience inspired his first novels and films. Over the next few years he developed a successful homestead, earning the respect of his neighbors on the frontier who were predominately blue collar Whites. Life on the farm went well at first. Micheaux's years as a homesteader allowed him to learn more about human relations and farming. While farming, Micheaux wrote articles urging Black people to take advantage of the land out West and submitted them to the press. The Chicago Defender published one of his earliest articles. Oscar was in his field rain or shine, yielding only to the frozen ground. His determination soon turned his neighbors laughter to a “grudging respect, then to acceptance, and finally to admiration, when they realized that he had broken many more acres of prairie than most of them.” This admiration left Oscar feeling tentatively welcome in an area where he was the lone African American.
In 1910, he married Orlean McCracken, a schoolteacher and daughter of a reverend from Chicago. The marriage was doomed from the beginning. When Oscar traveled for work, Orlean felt abandoned. During one of the times he was away, Orlean suffered a miscarriage. The death of a child, Orlean's loneliness on the farm, and increasing economic problems led to a permanent separation. Orlean's minister-father eventually brought her back to Chicago. They divorced in 1917. Attempting to live self-sufficiently, Micheaux faced harsh weather and failing crops. After some success as a homesteader on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, a three year drought destroyed his crops. With his homestead failed he was forced to sell it in 1911. Soon after, Micheaux indulged himself into literary works, reading classic novels and new fictions. In 1913 Micheaux published and marketed his first book, "The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer".
In 1913, 1,000 copies of his first book were printed. He published the book anonymously, for unknown reasons. He based it on his experiences as a homesteader and the failure of his first marriage and it was largely autobiographical. Micheaux followed that book with more novels. After the publication of "The Conquest", Micheaux switched careers, believing he could earn a living as a novelist. He began work on a second book, "The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races". From 1914 to 1918 Oscar Micheaux traveled door to door to sell his books to South Dakota farmers and businessmen. In 1918, he wrote his novel "The Homesteader". Both books drew heavily upon his experiences in Chicago and on the farm in South Dakota. The novels were partially autobiographical. Micheaux was clearly manipulating and exploiting his life experiences; he rewrote his own biography to illustrate his philosophies on manhood and race.
"The Homesteader", attracted the attention of George Johnson, the manager of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company a successful Black film production company. in Los Angeles. The Lincoln company expressed interest in filming the novel but during negotiations Micheaux decided he should supervise the motion picture production in Los Angeles. Micheaux wanted to be directly involved in the adaptation of his book as a movie. This was not acceptable to the Lincoln management. Instead, Micheaux founded the Micheaux Film & Book Company of Sioux City. Its first project was the production of The Homesteader as a feature film. After rewriting his first novel "The Conquest", it was adapted to film and re-titled "The Homesteader" and dedicated to Booker T. Washington. Micheaux produced and directed it in 1919 as the film "The Homesteader". This silent film was the first full-length film made by a Black producer/director.
"The Homesteader" became known as Micheaux's breakout film; it helped him become widely known as a writer and a filmmaker. “The Homesteader” opened to rave reviews, but coverage of it — and of Micheaux — was largely relegated to media outlets that served the target audience of the film. It revolves around a man named Jean Baptiste, called the Homesteader, who falls in love with many White women but resists marrying one out of his loyalty to his race. He looks for love among his own people and marries a Black woman. Relations between the couple deteriorate. His wife kills her own father for keeping them apart and commits suicide. Baptiste is accused of the crime, but is ultimately cleared. An old love helps him through his troubles. After he learns that she is a mulatto and thus part-African, they marry. The charged subject of interracial romance would become Micheaux’s principal theme as both author and filmmaker.
"Within Our Gates", his second film, produced in 1920, specifically attacked the racism portrayed in "The Birth of a Nation" while also mocking Black preachers who promised heaven instead of offering education. Micheaux always depicts African Americans as being serious and reaching for higher education. The film was one of his most scandalous. Criticized by segments of both the Black and White communities, the film had numerous censorship problems. It was certainly Micheaux at his most provocative. The film was released shortly after the "Red Summer" race riots of 1919, a reference to the high number of lynchings and race riots which took place that year. Micheaux explored the suffering of African Americans in the present day, without explaining how the situation arose in history. Some feared that this film would cause even more unrest within society, and others believed it would open the public's eyes to the unjust treatment of Blacks by Whites. Protests against the film continued until the day it was released. Because of its controversial status, the film was banned from some theaters.
From the opening title Micheaux makes it clear that "Within Our Gates" will deal with a topic completely avoided by contemporary African American and White filmmakers: lynching. Between 1900 and 1914, over 1,100 Black people were lynched in the South. Mainstream film companies portrayed Black men largely as humorous objects—dim witted, slow moving, shiftless caricatures who were non-threatening to the mainstream White public audience. Most Black-owned film companies of the post-World War I era including the Unique Film Company, and the Rosebud Film Corporation depicted Black American men in stark and melodramatic contrasts of good and evil, as either epitomes of virtue or dastardly ogres. While these companies attempted to illustrate desirable characteristics of Black manhood, they did so in unrealistic ways that did not consider the economic, political and social frustrations that African American men faced on a daily basis. Thus, saint-like figures proved to be impossible role models for urban or rural African-American men to live up to.
“Body and Soul,” from 1925, stars Paul Robeson in a dual role as a struggling inventor and his twin brother, a faux minister who hides crimes beneath sanctimonious airs. Micheaux took on controversial subjects in the Black community including interracial romance, skin color hypocrisy and corrupt clergymen. Significantly, his films in the 1920s and 1930s contrasted sharply with the Hollywood image of Blacks as lazy, ignorant and sexually aggressive. Micheaux's films were made during a time of great change in the African-American community. His films featured contemporary Black life. He dealt with racial relationships between Blacks and Whites, and the challenges for Blacks when trying to achieve success in the larger society. His films were used to oppose and discuss the racial injustice that African Americans received. Oscar Micheaux remarried in 1926 to actress Alice B. Russell. She appeared in six of his films.
Oscar Micheaux’s desire to control the production and distribution of his films was be the hallmark of his career. He persuaded the best Black actors of his time to work in the mostly low-budget, films he produced. Most of Micheaux’s films were detective stories, quickly written, filmed, edited and released. His Black audiences rarely complained since they were starved to see people on the silver screen who looked like they did. Throughout the silent era, Micheaux created cinematic portrayals of African American manhood that stood in sharp contrast to Hollywood's depictions. He pumped out up to four features a year between 1919 and 1940, finally making nearly 40 all-Black musicals, melodramas, detective stories and ghost stories, two-thirds of which are now thought lost. At a time when Blacks lived severely restricted lives in Jim Crow America this ambitious original film maker managed, against incredible odds.
Micheaux’s work belonged to a category of movies simply known as “race films.” Made roughly between the late 1910s and late 1940s, these films were made for Black audiences, by Black filmmakers and actors. They hit their peak in the 1920s, when more than 30 companies were making race films, and tackled issues specific to their audience. In addition to writing and directing his own films, Micheaux also adapted the works of different writers for his silent pictures. Many of his films were open, blunt and thought-provoking regarding certain racial issues of that time. Financial hardships during the Great Depression eventually made it impossible for Micheaux to keep producing films, and he returned to writing. Micheaux sought to create films that would counter negative portrayals of African Americans in films by White producers, which trafficked in degrading stereotypes. He created complex characters of different classes.
His films questioned the value system of both African-American and Euro-American societies, which stirred controversy with the press and state censors. His films featured contemporary Black life. He dealt with racial relationships between Blacks and Whites, and the challenges for Blacks when trying to achieve success in the larger society. Micheaux made the transition from silent films to talkies. He was the first African American to produce a sound film with "The Exile" (1931). He faced stiff competition from Hollywood studios, which discovered that famous Black entertainers could boost interest in otherwise White films. Micheaux went on to produce more than 40 feature length films. His last film, "Betrayal" (1948), was the first Black-produced film to open in White theaters. Micheaux on occasion tackled more complex subjects in his films. Micheaux used his films, to portray racial injustice suffered by Black Americans, delving into topics such as lynching, job discrimination, and mob violence. His career continued until his death in 1948, though his popularity significantly waned because of his reluctance (or inability) to adhere to Hollywood standards. Many White critics decried Micheaux’s amateur movie-making skills, yet his audiences devoured his product, making him the most successful Black writer, producer and director at a time of great change in the Black community in America until his death in 1951.