Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951) is the best known Black American film-maker of the early 1900s. He made what we would call low-budget independent films. He gave both Paul Robeson and Earl Jones (James Earl Jones’s father) their start in film.
He made at least 43 films, from 1919 to 1948. All but 16 were silent. All but ten are lost. Some are now on YouTube.
Race films: By the late 1920s there were about 700 Black cinemas in the US, creating a market for “race films”, films with a Black cast meant for Black audiences. Film companies, both Black and White-owned, sprang up to meet the demand. By the 1930s most race films were being made by Whites. Micheaux was one of the few Black film-makers who not only made the jump from silent to talking films, but who was not wiped out by the Great Depression.
Stereotypes: Micheaux wanted to fight Hollywood stereotypes that showed Blacks as shuffling servants. His main characters tend to be middle-class, well-educated and speak Standard English. Most are light, bright and damn near white. They believe in uplifting the race – and in assimilation, if not interracial marriage. Black working-class characters, when they do appear, tend to be darker-skinned and are sometimes superstitious.
Race: Micheaux had little interest in showing Black poverty, but he did not avoid issues of race. The oldest film that we have from him, or any Black director, is “Within Our Gates” (1920), his answer to “The Birth of a Nation” (1915).. It barely got past the censors in Chicago and was not shown in the South for fear that it would lead to race riots. It features a lynching.
White viewers: Although his main audience was Black, he was able to get his films shown at midnight at some White cinemas. Knowing that Whites were curious about Black nighclubs, he put in cabaret scenes for them.
Not Hollywood but Bronzeville: Micheaux was based in Bronzeville, a Black ghetto on the South Side of Chicago that gave us Louis Armstrong, Bessie Coleman, Sam Cooke, Jennifer Beals and the Chicago Defender.
He got into film-making by writing novels that were based on his experience as a farmer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The Lincoln Motion Picture Company, the oldest Black-owned film company, asked if they could make one of his books into a movie. When they would not let him direct – he had absolutely no film-making experience! – he started his own company to make the film. He raised money from White and Black farmers by driving across Oklahoma and asking. He was a striking figure with loads of charm. The film, “The Homesteader” (1919), amazingly, was a success.
He was always short on money. That meant he had to shoot his films in a short time, often using the first take even if the actor messed up his line. With no money to build sets, he used friends’s homes and offices. He liked to shoot scenes near stairs because they had better lighting.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- Paul Robeson
- Bessie Coleman
- Jennifer Beals
- Black artists and race:
- Zora Neale Hurston: What White Publishers Won’t Print – applies to Hollywood too
- Langston Hughes: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain – anti-assimilationist
- stereotypes
- Hollywood
- Nollywood
I saw a few films Mr. Micheaux films, but never knew much about the man so thank you. I was always under the impression that he did The Learning Tree until just a few years ago.
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He was always short on money. That meant he had to shoot his films in a short time, often using the first take even if the actor messed up his line. With no money to build sets, he used friends’s homes and offices. He liked to shoot scenes near stairs because they had better lighting.
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The most difficult thing about low budget filmmaking today is finding quality talent. Thanks to technology and miracles of post production you can do most of the crew work yourself.
Getting unpaid actors to show up, memorize their lines, dedicate themselves…
good luck with that.
In some ways its never been more difficult to make a film than today.
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Abagond You gotta do a post on the infamous ““Hey, other races have one of your features too!” ” Stock argument about black women features on white women, Ive heard this complaint a lot from asians and indians(from india).
But in the media it’s rampant on woc.
Id love to hear what you have to say.
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Informative post. I would like to have some of those old movie posters
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I am embarrassed to say that I didn’t know much of this. Thank you for sharing!
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Absolutely fantastic posting. I am going to go on a quest to find out more about Mr Micheaux.
Abagond, I am again, blown away by what you are teaching me!
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@Maria
I used to be a teacher in jail. I agree with you, sometimes “crime” was the only sensible option for my students. Of course I disagreed etc etc, but if you cared to listen and follow their arguments, the inevitability of crime could be heart wrenching. I once had a discussion with a guy who said “Frankly, why should you get more than £… to stack shelves? There is no skill.” He could not understand that food, clothing, accommmodation were not cheaper for shelves stackers, that they too had families and deserved a holiday. All he could say “People must live within ther means”. Of course they must, but some means just do not allow you to live, and if you are stuck, nicking might be the only option, and this is tragic because our society values money and judges people on clothing,holidays etc, which is very wrong and needs to bechanged as the planet cannot support it…so yes, masses of issues there.
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[…] Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951) is the best known Black American film-maker of the early 1900s. He made what we would call low-budget independent films. He gave both Paul Robeson and Earl Jones (James E… […]
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Very informative post. I once did a play where I played Micheaux’s father-in-law. He was a most interesting man and a very important figure in Black cinema.
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Abagond,
I see you continued black history month.. wonderful.
learned something new, Great post!
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I have been a lot of buzz about Mr. Micheaux’s fine line o’ work lately, and am making it a priority to check out some of his films (as many as possible) this week-thanks for the reminder about him, Abagond!
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Thanks for the information! I think it’s fascinating that he put the language real Black folks used in his films. I’m definitely going to check out some of his films soon.
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@ annef1
I most definitely agree with you about the fact that no matter how “low skilled” a job is people have to be able to make a living wage. When you feel like you’re considered to be expendable to the society you’re living in you start not to give a fxxk about that society.
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This is a great story.
Any tips on how we can see some of his work?
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@Maria
I feel that women of color, particularly Black women, face intensified gender inequality since we lack the protection of whiteness. And then race is also compounded with issues of socioeconomic class. While wealth can have an effect on your social standing, race has an even larger effect on how humans interact in an inequitable way. The 1% is at least 82% white, while only 1.5% of the 1% is Black. Furthermore, affluent Black people are more likely to live in a poor neighborhoods than poor whites. African-American women with college educations or better have worse birth outcomes then white American high school dropouts. Just being a Black woman who’s pregnant means you’re having a high risk pregnancy in America. I think you’re underestimating the effect that race has on Black people of all socioeconomic classes in the U.S.
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annef1
I used to be a teacher in jail. I agree with you, sometimes “crime” was the only sensible option for my students.
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Especially when they can’t get a credit card in the name of their UNBORN grandchildren to fund their current expenses.
Thats what all these Western governments are using right now to pay for their high standards of living.
When the lenders realize these Western governments cannot pay, their credit card will be declined, and they will have to go back to the DIRECT raping and looting their forefathers engaged in.
its coming
*Brace for impact*
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Questions:
1) Why did he mostly use light skin actors? According, to his photos he seemed to be a man of a darker skin tone..
2) What every happened to those black film companies?
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In light of this and the subsequent post on “Birth of a Nation,” thought I’d bring your attention to my recent post “Black Film?” on my blog Race Across America.https://raceacrossamerica.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/black-film/
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@Maria
“People who follow the status quo are always afraid to break rules, no matter how stupid the rules are, or how little sense it makes to follow them. They will complain, if it popular to, but they won’t actually break a law if there’s a consequence to doing it. It gives them anxiety. When people on the lowest rung of society have less reason to respect laws, so, in my experience, we care less about breaking them when we have to. ”
I can’t stand people who never question the law. I think that poor people of color are more likely to have life experiences that show us the ridiculousness of the law as we get criminalized for just trying to live our lives, for just doing things we have to do to survive, when we aren’t doing anything that harms the greater good. When the law criminalizes people for being poor it’s a privilege to get to go through life without breaking the law and being stigmatized as a “criminal”.
People of color did not create the law. Women did not create the law. The poor did not create the law. We had no hand in shaping it, no seat at the table. If we had, we wouldn’t have laws criminalizing people for being poor or women escaping domestic violence or sex workers not being protected from being violenced and murdered. I recently watched a trial and was disgusted to see how the judge and two lawyers (3 old white men) regularly would huddle and whisper together in a corner. It just made plain how the legal system is like a game made up by white boy kindergartners wanting to feel important. It’s a game where we didn’t make any of the rules and we can never win.
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@Maria
Thank you so, so much for sharing your story. You’ve seriously given me some food for thought. Classism…while it’s not a particularly “black problem” and we’re just as fallible and flawed as other human beings – I personally can’t stand the classism – particularly respectability politics within the Black community. I personally don’t think we can afford to engage in xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and classism when white supremacy and misogyny are our biggest life threatening problems.
While I understand where you’re coming from, there are some things I’d like to address:
“And there IS a difference between being poor and being disadvantaged because you’re a minority. And its cool to me if people only feel comfortable writing what they know.”
We really have to question whether we live in a CLASS society or a CASTE society. Poor whites are rarely typified as lazy, dangerous, shiftless freeloaders and breeders to anywhere near the extent the black poor are. African-Americans are nearly three times more likely than whites to live in poverty – 27.2% compared to 9.6%. And 12.7% of black people are living in deep poverty with an income 50% below the poverty line compared to 4.3% whites.The most persistent poverty is not in America isn’t in the “inner city.” 85.3% of persistent-poverty counties are rural. Like most poor whites, the majority of poor Black Americans live in rural communities away from large cities.States with greater numbers of blacks and Hispanics on the welfare rolls are more likely to impose lifetime limits, family caps on benefits for mothers who give birth, and stricter sanctions for not complying with work requirements.
Nationwide, a majority of white recipients experience the most generous welfare programs and a majority of black recipients experience least generous and the most restrictive. Poor whites on welfare are treated better by caseworkers, are less likely to be bumped off rolls for presumed failure to comply with regulations, and are given more assistance at finding jobs than their black or brown counterparts. Poor whites are more likely to have a job, and are more likely to own their own home than poor black people. Whites with incomes under $13,000 annually are more likely to own their own home than blacks with incomes that are three times higher due to having inherited property. A study found that among lower class men who’d dropped out of high school, 84 percent of whites were employed full time at age 22, while only 40 percent of Black men were employed at that age. And while black and white men from low-income families had similarly high rates of criminal convictions, those convictions mattered far more to the lives of the black men. At age 28, 54 percent of white men with a record were employed full time making an average of $20 an hour; among black men with records, 33 percent were employed, making just over $10 an hour, or half that of their white peers.
At age 28, 45 percent of white men from low-income backgrounds were working in construction or other industrial trades, compared to only 15% of African-American men, and even within that small group, their annual earnings were less than half that of whites. Why? Because poor white men had access to high-wage, blue collar jobs that are ONLY reserved for white men.Most white and African-American women from low income families had similar rates of teen motherhood, earned less than low income white men, worked sporadically, and worked in low-paying clerical and service sectors when they did work. They difference is that when considering family income, low income white women had parity with low-income white men because they were the most likely to be married or co-habiting with them. However, low income black women who reported being married or cohabiting had family earnings that remained tens of thousands of dollars below that of white men from similar class backgrounds.Again…we should consider whether we live in a racial caste society or a socioeconomic class society. I think we live in a caste society.
“the NYPD are too upset to do what they’re being paid to do because the fact that they’re racist and corrupt is too obvious to deny at this point and Because the unrest that they caused and stirred up might, if God is just, come back to them. And basically no one would give a fuck if it did because they DESERVE a resprisal.”
From your fingertips to God’s ears. And they’re not the only ones. Lots of police departments and whites in general – especially white Americans – deserve reprisal. Not all of them, but most of them.
“But I can tell you honestly, the protection that white skin offers isn’t free.”
I know. It comes at the cost of black people’s lives and humanity and at the cost of their basic human empathy. I don’t know any instances in American history where thousands of Black people repeatedly gathered in public to burn a white person alive at the stake, maim them, torture them, and cut off their body parts as souvenirs while they were still conscious as though it was some kind of spectator sport or picnic. People in the KKK weren’t the only ones who engaged in acts of racial terrorism. Everyday whites of all socioeconomic classes systemically lynched and raped Black men, women, and children and got away with it. White racial terrorism is not only carried out by those in extremist groups the way the media tries to tell it. Every single time a white man raped a Black woman and got away with it because Black people knew what would happen if they defended Black women? That’s terrorism. Rape is a tool of war and terrorism. Whites shooting innocent Black people with these “stand your ground” laws and getting away with it? Terrorism. White public servants killing Black people every 3 or 4 days, when that’s how often there used to be public lynchings by bloodthirsty white mobs? Terrorism.
A poll that shows that whites like the death penalty even more when they’re informed of the racial disparities in death sentences and state sanctioned executions? Racial terrorism. It works to engender fear in us of the power ALL white people have and keep us in “our place.” It’s terrorism. I don’t EVER feel sympathy for any whites who are complicit with white supremacy as active participants or passive bystanders in any way – that includes poor whites who have and continue to systematically engage in acts of racial terrorism and also SPECIFICALLY vote for and support laws because they will SPECIFICALLY harm Black people.It would be like feeling sorry for the Germans who were complicit with the Nazis during the Holocaust. [Btw the Nazi’s got their racist ideas about eugenics and the gas chamber from seeing how “well” white America ran THEIR racist eugenics programs and death houses.] I just don’t. And it’s monstrous that I’m expected to. I think their behavior is sociopathic and reprehensible and many of them deserve to be shot for it – which is getting off light because at least I don’t think they should be enslaved for hundreds of years like livestock and systematically be imprisoned or killed off when they’re no longer of any use to me. They’re behavior is sociopathic.
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@Maria
Thank you so, so much for sharing your story. You’ve seriously given me some food for thought. Classism…while it’s not a particularly “black problem” and we’re just as fallible and flawed as other human beings – I personally can’t stand the classism – particularly respectability politics within the Black community. I personally don’t think we can afford to engage in xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and classism when white supremacy and misogyny are our biggest life threatening problems.
While I understand where you’re coming from, there are some things I’d like to address:
“And there IS a difference between being poor and being disadvantaged because you’re a minority. And its cool to me if people only feel comfortable writing what they know.”
We really have to question whether we live in a CLASS society or a CASTE society. Poor whites are rarely typified as lazy, dangerous, shiftless freeloaders and breeders to anywhere near the extent the black poor are. African-Americans are nearly three times more likely than whites to live in poverty – 27.2% compared to 9.6%. And 12.7% of black people are living in deep poverty with an income 50% below the poverty line compared to 4.3% whites.The most persistent poverty is not in America isn’t in the “inner city.” 85.3% of persistent-poverty counties are rural. Like most poor whites, the majority of poor Black Americans live in rural communities away from large cities.States with greater numbers of blacks and Hispanics on the welfare rolls are more likely to impose lifetime limits, family caps on benefits for mothers who give birth, and stricter sanctions for not complying with work requirements.
Nationwide, a majority of white recipients experience the most generous welfare programs and a majority of black recipients experience least generous and the most restrictive. Poor whites on welfare are treated better by caseworkers, are less likely to be bumped off rolls for presumed failure to comply with regulations, and are given more assistance at finding jobs than their black or brown counterparts. Poor whites are more likely to have a job, and are more likely to own their own home than poor black people. Whites with incomes under $13,000 annually are more likely to own their own home than blacks with incomes that are three times higher due to having inherited property. A study found that among lower class men who’d dropped out of high school, 84 percent of whites were employed full time at age 22, while only 40 percent of Black men were employed at that age. And while black and white men from low-income families had similarly high rates of criminal convictions, those convictions mattered far more to the lives of the black men. At age 28, 54 percent of white men with a record were employed full time making an average of $20 an hour; among black men with records, 33 percent were employed, making just over $10 an hour, or half that of their white peers.
At age 28, 45 percent of white men from low-income backgrounds were working in construction or other industrial trades, compared to only 15% of African-American men, and even within that small group, their annual earnings were less than half that of whites. Why? Because poor white men had access to high-wage, blue collar jobs that are ONLY reserved for white men.Most white and African-American women from low income families had similar rates of teen motherhood, earned less than low income white men, worked sporadically, and worked in low-paying clerical and service sectors when they did work. They difference is that when considering family income, low income white women had parity with low-income white men because they were the most likely to be married or co-habiting with them. However, low income black women who reported being married or cohabiting had family earnings that remained tens of thousands of dollars below that of white men from similar class backgrounds.Again…we should consider whether we live in a racial caste society or a socioeconomic class society. I think we live in a caste society.
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@ Maria
“the NYPD are too upset to do what they’re being paid to do because the fact that they’re racist and corrupt is too obvious to deny at this point and Because the unrest that they caused and stirred up might, if God is just, come back to them. And basically no one would give a fuck if it did because they DESERVE a resprisal.”
From your fingertips to God’s ears. And they’re not the only ones. Lots of police departments and whites in general – especially white Americans – deserve reprisal. Not all of them, but most of them.
“But I can tell you honestly, the protection that white skin offers isn’t free.”
I know. It comes at the cost of black people’s lives and at the cost of their basic human empathy. I don’t know any instances in American history where thousands of Black people repeatedly gathered in public to burn a white person alive at the stake, maim them, torture them, and cut off their body parts as souvenirs while they were still conscious as though it was some kind of spectator sport or picnic. People in the KKK weren’t the only ones who engaged in acts of racial terrorism. Everyday whites of all socioeconomic classes systemically lynched and raped Black men, women, and children and got away with it. White racial terrorism is not only carried out by those in extremist groups the way the media tries to tell it. Every single time a white man raped a Black woman and got away with it because Black people knew what would happen if they defended Black women? That’s terrorism. Rape is a tool of war and terrorism. Whites shooting innocent Black people with these “stand your ground” laws and getting away with it? Terrorism. White public servants killing Black people every 3 or 4 days, when that’s how often there used to be public lynchings by bloodthirsty white mobs? Terrorism.
A poll that shows that whites like the death penalty even more when they’re informed of the racial disparities in death sentences and state sanctioned executions? Racial terrorism. It works to engender fear in us of the power ALL white people have and keep us in “our place.” It’s terrorism. I don’t EVER feel sympathy for any whites who are complicit with white supremacy as active participants or passive bystanders in any way – that includes poor whites who have and continue to systematically engage in acts of racial terrorism and also SPECIFICALLY vote for and support laws because they will SPECIFICALLY harm Black people.It would be like feeling sorry for the Germans who were complicit with the Nazis during the Holocaust. [Btw the Nazi’s got their racist ideas about eugenics and the gas chamber from seeing how “well” white America ran THEIR racist eugenics programs and death houses.] I just don’t. And it’s monstrous that I’m expected to. I think their behavior is sociopathic and reprehensible and many of them deserve to be shot for it – which is getting off light because at least I don’t think they should be enslaved for hundreds of years like livestock and systematically be imprisoned or killed off when they’re no longer of any use to me. They’re behavior is sociopathic.
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@ Maria
Btw, these are my sources for info. Check them out if you have some time:
http://www.timwise.org/2009/03/when-exceptions-prove-the-rule-poverty-whiteness-and-privilege
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/22923-white-america-is-oblivious-to-the-truth-about-black-poverty#
http://www.npc.umich.edu/publications/policy_briefs/brief16/
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/11/opinion/alexander-olson-poor-urban-whites/
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/06/the_lost_generation.html
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/07/white_privilege_extends_to_the_poor.html
http://prospect.org/article/urban-poor-shall-inherit-poverty
http://prospect.org/article/titanic-wealth-gap-between-blacks-and-whites
http://www.nclej.org/poverty-in-the-us.php
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@ Maria
And you should really check out this article about the racial wealth gap called:
“BEYOND BROKE: Why Closing the Racial Wealth Gap is a Priority for
National Economic Security”
Click to access Beyond_Broke_FINAL.pdf
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Interesting observations, mariareginacd.
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@mariareginacd
Love your commentary!!!! You are giving me so much food for thought. Even though I still believe we live in a racial caste society and not a socioeconomic class society and I don’t feel any sympathy for poor whites, I’m going to do some more research and thinking about the intersection of race and class.
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