What others are saying about
The Life and Work of Oscar Micheaux: Pioneer Black
Author and Filmmaker: 1884-1951
Movie lovers, movie makers, and even some movie critics will fall for this book. It reads in part like a thriller, in part like a four handkerchief drama, and in part like an uplifting, inspirational war documentary script.
--Dr. Maya Angelou
…I expect this published volume to be a very valuable contribution to the history of an African American filmmaker who made a significant contribution to and impact on the motion picture industry in the United States.
--Dr. Henry T. Sampson
THE LIFE AND WORK OF OSCAR MICHEAUX:
Pioneer Black Author and Filmmaker:
1884-1951
by
Earl James Young, Jr.
Edited by
Dr. Beverly J. Robinson
SMASHWORDS EDITION
This book is also available in print at Amazon.com
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PUBLISHED BY:
KMT Publications at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 by Khafra K Om-Ra-Seti
First Print Edition 2003
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THE LIFE AND WORK OF
OSCAR MICHEAUX
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DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the memory of Oscar Micheaux, Earl James Young, Jr., Dr. Beverly J. Robinson and to all visionary Black Filmmakers of the 21st century and beyond!
CONTENTS
About the Editor: Dr. Beverly J. Robinson
AGE OF OPPORTUNITY
THE BLACK FILM INDUSTRY
PERIOD OF GREAT STRUGGLE
Appendix A: Stars in Oscar Micheaux Films
Appendix B: Micheaux Filmography
ILLUSTRATIONS
Original text describing The HomeSteader
Billboard of Murder in Harlem (1935)
Billboard of The Girl from Chicago (1932)
Billboard of God’s Step Children (1937-38
Billboard of Underworld (1936-37)
Billboard of God’s Step Children (1937-38)
Billboard of The Betrayal (1948)
*****
A black artist is continually trying to find himself; a search into the past, to see if from all the bits and pieces he comes across, he can find enough to build an image of himself to finally, through his own liberation declare himself a man. This book is about such a man. A man I needed to talk to and consult with. It was impossible to get to where the truth was, for me, as an actor, a writer and director myself without coming face to face with Oscar Micheaux who got there first and ask him if I was on the right path.
This book is where Oscar lives; now accessible not only to me, but to all the reading world, especially the young black filmmakers eager to find their places in the cinematic sun.
It’s all here, all you need to know about the man, the times and the industry that didn’t want to see him, or to believe that such a man, being black, could really be at all.
If Oscar could do it, what reasons have the rest of us to fail? Read it and see that black folks not only will survive but will also overcome. Even in film.
Ossie Davis: Actor, Writer,
Producer and Director
*****
Dr. Beverly J. Robinson was a Professor in the School of Theater, Film and Television at UCLA. Her specialty was theater history and criticism, and folklore studies where she had taught since 1978. She served as the Director of the African Studies Program at UCLA and for two years was the initial Executive Director of the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Inc. based in Oakland, California. Her commitment to education and the preservation and understanding of African peoples culture was her passion. She wrote numerous articles and chapters in books on subjects and titles ranging from Life Narratives as a Structural Model for the Study of African American Women, Faith is the Key and Prayer Unlocks the Door: The Poetics of African American Prayer Tradition, to Ritualized Arenas in African American Theater History, and her own book Aunt Phyllis ( The Narrative of Mrs. Phyllis Carter). Dr. Robinson was a consultant for numerous theatres and films including The Color Purple, Coming to America, Miss Evers’ Boys; Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Sidney Poitier (for the Biography Channel). In one of Dr. Robinson’s last projects she was the lead scholar on a folklore survey in Eatonville, Fla., the oldest incorporated African American municipality in the United States. In her final days she was also devoted to the performance and thoughts in the games of African Americans, and “Eliza, Jemima and Edith...You Have Nothing to Be Ashamed of ...” Dr. Robinson, 56, died of pancreatic cancer on May 5, 2002.
*****
When Earl James Young began his research on Oscar Micheaux in 1982, his thesis was to research specific questions about the life and times of a pioneering filmmaker as both an African American and artist during the beginning growth of what was to become a major entertainment industry. Young asked: What were some of the obstacles Micheaux faced? Was he a help, hindrance, or embarrassment to Black people? Why was Micheaux neglected by American historians, cultural researchers, and film specialists? Why did the censors from State to State continually try to halt the showing of his films? Why was his career distinctly marked with expressions of approbation and controversy? Oscar Micheaux was both lauded and criticized as the first Black producer to premier a film on Broadway, reprimanded for his cinematic race views, and constantly fought critics and censors over images that included women shown almost bare bosomed or portrayed as a gun mall. Micheaux appeared to be fascinated with what Bell Hooks aptly calls “A politics of pleasure and danger.”
The thoroughness of Mr. Earl James Young’s research lends itself to being one of the best resources for a comprehensive filmography of Micheaux’s work and reproductions of documents from his career. It also contains selected biographies of some of the filmmaker’s leading actors located in the Appendices. This invaluable information is juxtaposed (in Chapter Eight) with a summary of the final period of Micheaux’s life; one of struggling to survive.
In most cases, Young’s basic research presentation has been included. As a contributing writer I have emphasized the importance of understanding particular cultural, political and social factors surrounding Micheaux’s work. The editorial changes also include the options of using African American and Black in upper case usage when referring to a collective of people with defined communities throughout United States history. In lieu of the complexities of North American history, African American, Black, Afro-American, Negro, Colored are important terms with time specifics indicative of eras. Neither term is of lesser importance than the other. Most often they are representative of and often affected by the cultural and political decorums out of which they arose.
Considerable supplemental information has been included within the body of the text to explicate the importance of including certain data and additional bibliographic references. A good example of this inclusion is the author’s discussion on the debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Young attempts to present an objective side to the controversy between these leaders. Their debate was one of the first public philosophical differences among African American leaders. Editorially, every attempt has been made to keep Young’s basic “two sides to every good story” presentation, yet the reader will clearly see that Young is not without bias in his view of the conflict among the African American intellectuals. He very astutely points out, however, that the effect these men had on Micheaux’s family and personal ideas is indubitable. No attempts have been made to idealize or theoretically place Micheaux into the vanguard of the Harlem Renaissance or within the critical analyses common to contemporary scholars. Oscar Micheaux’s vast legacy as a pioneering filmmaker has been the impetus of my research and editorial contributions. He understood the importance of screened narratives in the lives of a people who were seldom asked about their own stories or if, less alone how, they were to be included.
Earl James Young left his thesis and this earth on November 13, 1993. He was slightly less than a month of becoming 50 years old. His work clearly indicates that he weighed his opinions as a researcher versus that of an avid fan. Young’s apparent love for scholarship and unselfishness left a granted permission to reproduce his thesis to make it available to others. The investigation of Micheaux’s life which is offered in these pages is what Young called “a response to Bernard L. Peterson’s call for more scholarly research than he was able to present in 1985.”
Mr. Young’s thesis adviser and Director of the Mass Communication Graduate Program at California State University Fresno, Dr. Philip J. Lang, Young’s sisters and a brother who graciously allowed us an opportunity to share their brother’s work with the world, Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Inc., Ms. Tiffany Walton, Dr. Jean Ishibashi, Mr. MacHenry Norman, Mr. Ron Stacker Thompson, Mr Danny Duncan, photos from Zambezi Bazaar in Los Ange
UCLA’s Film and Television Archive and their School of Theater, Film and Television are an integral part of those to whom we are most grateful in making this publication a living voice.
*****
AGE OF OPPORTUNITY
*****
Over a three-decade period that began in 1918, Oscar Micheaux wrote, directed, edited, produced, and distributed over forty films nationally and internationally. These films usually featured all-Black casts. They spanned a silent period (1918-1930) and a talkie period (1931-1948).1 According to the catalog of the United States Library of Congress, Micheaux also authored seven novels from 1913 to 1942. However, in a 1979 article, Bernard L. Peterson, Jr. credits him with ten.
These are considerable accomplishments for the son of former slaves and a man without formal education. Given such a background and the period in American history into which he was born, Micheaux’s achievements take on some magnitude.
Micheaux died in relative obscurity in 1951. His memory was nationally resurrected in 1973 by The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in Oakland, California. They began an annual presentation of the Oscar Micheaux Awards to Black actors, composers, singers, writers, directors, producers, and cameramen. Recipients of the prestigious award have included such notables as Lena Horne, Maidie Norman, Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, and Paul Robeson, who received his first film role from Micheaux in 1924. As of this printing, no award is given in Micheaux’s honor by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or the American Film Institute. Both these organizations have distinguished records for honoring film pioneers but have yet to bestow public honor upon Micheaux. The Producer’s Guild, encouraged by Floyd Johnson, established an Oscar Micheaux medal for outstanding achievement by an African American to film and television in 1995. The Guild’s first recipient was Ike Jones and in 1997 Gordon Parks was acknowledged.
The African American population of the period, the local censorship boards, and the sheriffs across the country considered Micheaux and his work to be highly controversial. Peterson refers to him, as “America’s first fabulous black filmmaker.” 2 Donald Bogle calls Micheaux’s work a “shameless promotion of the world of hair straighteners and skin lighteners which would embarrass many people today.” 3
This study examines the life and work of Oscar Micheaux from his birth in 1884 through 1931. Its primary focus is on Micheaux’s silent filmmaking career which began with a 1919 blockbuster, The Homesteader, and ended with the production of his first talkie, The Exile, in 1931. The latter marked the beginning of a rocky two decades in sound which is discussed in Chapter Eight.
There is no way Micheaux’s achievements can be measured or understood without recognizing the periods of history which served as background to his colorful and turbulent life. He was born in a nation which had a legacy of darkness and despair for African Americans. During this period of examination, his career spanned World War I, the great migration, the Red Summer of 1919, a recession, the Harlem Renaissance, and 1930’s depression years. Yet he survived. He was the only African American filmmaker to do so and he merits attention.
Micheaux’s film career was his writing career. Indeed, it was the adaptation of his own novel, The Homesteader (1917), which launched his film career. Many of his subsequent films were also based on his own novels or screenplays. Some were based on the writings of other, usually Black authors. His book sales provided some of the capital for his films throughout his career.
An incredible amount of misinformation exists about Micheaux, much of it published by learned people. He was not the first Black filmmaker nor the head of the first African American film company.4 He did not always use all-African American casts. He certainly did not use all-African American crews and he did not make the first all-African American sound movie. Some films attributed to him are not his while others, in fact most, that are his are lost to us forever. It was difficult to try to sort out fact from fiction and to seek corroborative data by cross-checking various newspapers, books, and personal recollections of those who knew him.
Much of Micheaux’s early life, prior to his filmmaking, is reconstructed from books he wrote which are believed to be essentially autobiographical. This is somewhat problematic inasmuch as few of us would write of ourselves in an unflattering light, particularly if we were as proud as this man apparently was. Nonetheless, this book relies heavily on his first novel, The Conquest (1913), to summarize his years before film. Trying to wade through the biases of those who knew him was equally burdensome. Those who spoke unkindly of him had their reasons. Those who spoke favorably of him had theirs. Oscar Micheaux seemed to be saint to some, sinner to others, and a mystery to all. Comments from these individuals have been evaluated objectively, and where evidence exists which does not support a particular recollection, it is noted.
A variety of data collection efforts were employed because of a substantial amount of African American history that is lost or ignored. Two primary sources were the Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno and the Research Library (Special Collections) of the University of California at Los Angeles. Utilizing the inter-library loan program and through numerous letters of direct inquiry, records were searched in libraries at the University of Illinois, Fisk, Howard, Tuskegee, and Yale universities. Libraries of at least a half dozen institutions within the California State University system provided the various novels written by Micheaux. Additional contact was made with the public libraries in Chicago, Illinois; Roanoke, Virginia; New York City; and Sioux City, Iowa. The Ohio Historical Society offered copies of letters from the early twenties between Micheaux and the noted African American author, Charles Chesnutt. A professor at Elizabeth State University, North Carolina, provided the name and source of the missing tenth novel attributed to Micheaux. Data were also collected from citizens in Metropolis, Illinois, birthplace of the filmmaker. Advanced in years but eager to help, one school teacher there used a graduate student in education from Southern Illinois University to act as correspondent intermediary. The Library of Congress, the Amistad Research Center of New Orleans, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Inc., and the libraries of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and American Film Institute in Los Angeles searched their files with varying degrees of success. Jack Schiffman, author and son of impresario Frank Schiffman, the man who bailed Micheaux out of financial troubles in 1928, offered glimpses of the filmmaker’s life in New York. Lorenzo Tucker and Carlton Moss, both actors who worked for Micheaux, provided insight into his personality and day-to-day operations. Microfilm of three of the nation’s leading Black newspapers made it possible to track the movements of Micheaux and to examine history from an African American perspective. The Chicago Defender, New York Age, and Pittsburgh Courier were powerful organs of expression for African American people in troubled times, often serving as the conscience of America. Information contained in these periodicals underscored the deficiencies in recorded African American history. Many Black leaders whose names and stories appeared in their pages are not found in the mainstream of American history. The names of countless White men and women of goodwill who helped make the progress of Micheaux and other African Americans possible are also absent from history’s mainstream, yet they are heralded in the Black press of the past. In fact, headlines of a major American newspaper during this period compared with headlines of an African American newspaper of the same date, reveal a world of difference.
This study is composed of nine chapters. Chapter One gives a brief history of racism in America and racial stereotyping in its mass media during the latter half of the nineteenth century. This serves to establish the kind of societal conditions into which Oscar Micheaux was born. His life from his birth in 1884 until 1917 (during which time his idealism and ambition helped him rise above that environment) is summarized in Chapter Two. The chapter is based largely on information contained in The Conquest, Micheaux’s first novel. This is followed with an examination of the beginnings of the movie industry (Chapter Three), how it portrayed Blacks in a negative manner, and the development of Black nationalism among African Americans as a result of racial stereotyping in the media and being shut out of a “democratic society”. Chapters Four through Seven reveal a turbulent period of realism in Micheaux’s life when he was forced to deal with American society as it really was. The narrative for these chapters was developed by placing the collected data in chronological order, then separating it into time periods on which the chapters were based, ending with the start of Micheaux’s work in sound films. That final period of his life, one of struggling to survive, is summarized in Chapter Eight, followed by the Micheaux Legacy in Chapter Nine.
*****
The aftermath of the Civil War brought a new kind of misery to African Americans. They had become free, but the price of freedom was high. For some,the years 1878 through 1908 were referred to as “The Darkest Period.”1
Literature played a major role in the shaping of anti-Black attitudes in the United States. Darwin Turner suggested there were five basic images derived from the writings for stage and reading entertainment: The comic fool, the black beast, tragic mulatto, carefree primitive and the docile Christian slave. American fiction was the primary medium used in creating these attitudes.2 Beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing past the Civil War, southern writers intensified their portrayals of African Americans as contented, comical, irresponsible, brutish, and miserable in general.3 Such writing reached a peak after the war. Many of these books were well written, immensely popular, and persuasive. Michael Winston pointed out that the critical aspect of efforts to bring the North and South together again was “defining” the character and role of African Americans.4 This definition, as offered by Southern apologists in literature, was frequently demeaning and malicious. The written word of American novels was not the only means by which racial confusion and hate were promoted. Leading magazines and newspapers referred to Blacks as darkies and human gorillas. Editorial cartoonists underscored these attitudes with humorous yet vicious pictorial stereotypes.5
The theater provided a flourishing entertainment business with the tradition of “blackface”. White performers in wigs and greasy black makeup affected stereotypical mannerisms to entertain the American public. When Blacks were professionally recognized and commercially allowed access to the stage as singers and vaudeville artists after the Civil War, they, too, engaged in stereotyping, becoming caricatures of their own race because of an established national tradition.6 Bert Williams, the first African American to perform with the renown Ziegfeld Follies (and a phenomenal mime and comedian artist), became a famous but tragic legend who had no choice other than to “blacken-up” in order to work. The tradition continued when Black theater came to Broadway in 1898. For some, Bob Cole and Billy Johnson’s A Trip to Coontown and Will Marion Cook and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Clorindy: The Origin of the Cakewalk were full of the usual stereotypes.7 While for others, these first allBlack shows established a tradition of African Americans owning, operating and producing their own landmark musicals that reshaped minstrelsy and introduced American vaudeville and cabaret entertainment to the world.8
The pattern of stereotyping and no access to the medium continued when the film industry came into existence a few years prior to the first all-Black Broadway show. Winston noted that American film adopted a negative attitude toward African Americans from the start, taking its cue from newspapers, novels, magazines and the stage.9 The basis of film lies in the written word, and what had been written about African Americans was generally unfavorable. Even though Black and White authors wrote counter-propaganda, the real damage had already been done by the time film came into its own. Slavery had been an institution for over two hundred years and the mass media had substantially contributed to the legacy of darkness and despair which followed slavery. Real life appeared to reflect media and media appeared to reflect real life. A fuller discussion of film’s beginnings and the image of African Americans on the screen follows in Chapter Four.
There were other significant socioeconomic changes that came with the new century. The great urban migration of African Americans from the South took place between 1880 and 1930. The peak movement occured between 1910 and 1920 when the northern population of African Americans jumped from 79,000 to 227,000.
Between 1920 and 1930, the figure rose to 440,000.10 Most of these migrants were uneducated and poor people who suddenly found themselves in bitter competition for jobs and housing in a part of the country that was new to them. The promised land became yet another kind of hell, not as bad as slavery but torturous still. The newcomers were openly used as strike breakers and grossly underpaid. Landlords often raised apartment rents by as much as 35 percent when African Americans moved in. Friction and rivalry developed quickly between African Americans and the European immigrants. Poor whites felt their security was equally threatened and northern white liberals were intimidated by tales of crime, immorality, and assorted myths; many of which were perpetuated by the mass media.11
During the years 1882 to 1927, the climate was hostile: 3,513 African Americans were lynched. Though the vast majority of these crimes occurred in the South, victims were brutally slain in every state except Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Maine.12 Race riots during the same period claimed the lives of hundreds more as well as caused the theft and destruction of millions of dollars in property which belonged to African Americans.13
Bergman noted two major historical periods affecting the way African Americans would be viewed in 20th Century America and its media: Reconstruction, 1865-1877, and the “Darkest Period,” 1878-1908. The latter period seemed to be a time when the nation virtually turned its back on Blacks. Political gains achieved with the Civil War victory for the North were wrenched from them. African Americans now became subject to the cruelty of Whites in the North as well as the South.14 It was at the start of this period that Oscar Micheaux was born.
*****
CONQUEST IN CONTROVERSY: 1884-1917
Oscar Micheaux was born January 2, 1884 outside of Metropolis, Illinois some forty miles north of Cairo near the Ohio River. According to Roberta Palmer, a descendant of Metropolis’ founder, the city was built on the site of Fort Massac,
…where the French, British, and Americans held it at various times. George Rogers Clark came through on his surveying expedition and Aaron Burr stopped here on one of his journeys (plotting?). We are a sleepy little town on the banks of the Ohio and have not made a great deal of progress in our many years. We are the only town in the U.S.A. with the name Metropolis.1
The warm, tongue-in-cheek analysis by Roberta Palmer seems to contrast with what Madlyn Stalls, then a graduate student in Education, referred to as an “exceptionally fertile, nurturing, interesting environment and in some ways politically progressive.”2 In modern times, Metropolis integrated its public schools on its own initiative prior to the enactment of the 1954 Brown decision rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, more than a century ago it was a terminal on the Underground Railroad; a springboard to freedom for African Americans fleeing slavery.
Micheaux was the fourth son and fifth child of a thirteen-member family headed by Swan, Sr. and Belle Willingham Micheaux.3 Both Swan, Sr. and Belle had been enslaved in Kentucky and had migrated to Illinois after the Civil War. Their new home allowed them to fare well considering the times. Micheaux recalled his mother was a schoolteacher and his father owning eighty acres of farm land and being considered “well-to-do” for a Black man.4 Two of Swan Micheaux Sr.’s sons went off to fight in the Spanish-American War. One, whose name is unknown, returned home without ever seeing combat. The other, Lawrence (who was the eldest), died in Cuba (1898) from typhoid pneumonia. The brother who returned moved to a nearby town and became a waiter, much to the disappointment of Belle Micheaux. Mrs. Micheaux had frequently voiced strong opposition to her children ever working in positions of servitude.5 There was also William O. (known as WO), an older brother with whom Oscar was not close, and a younger brother, Swan (named after his father). Micheaux’s sisters were Ida, Maude, Ollie, Ethel, Gertrude, and Beatrice.6
As a prospective, industrious farmer-to-be, young Oscar was rated poorly by his family and neighbors. He was a good student but remembered being criticized for “talking too much and being too inquisitive.” 7 Micheaux also remembered recognizing his very early talents as a conversationalist and salesman. This soon became apparent to his family, too, when he returned from the market with much better sales for the farm goods than any of his brothers. He grew to dislike many of the local African Americans and he perceived hypocrisy among the clergy. Micheaux wrote that a substantial number of African Americans had settled in the area as farmers or as emancipated arrivals after the Civil War. The land they owned was difficult to till and within one generation most of their children moved to the big cities, preferring city life to struggling on a farm. As the older generation died, they were replaced by German immigrants who continued working the land until it finally prospered.8
The Micheaux family moved briefly into Metropolis proper to ensure a better education for their children. Oscar was not impressed and complained of inadequate teachers and facilities. His peers regarded him as dull and he described many of them as “wretchedly poor, ignorant, and envious.” 9 Church was the center of activity, a place where people dressed up to go on Sunday to sing and shout praises to the Lord. Belle Micheaux often did the latter, much to the embarrassment of her children. During the week, however, Oscar viewed many of the churchgoers to be far from Christian in their words and deeds. Particularly offensive to him were the preachers, most of whom he regarded as spongers who traveled house to house dressed in finery in order to be fed. As early as fifteen years of age, he was highly critical of church leaders and of neighbors who constantly complained about slavery and the white racism since emancipation. In his young view, this was merely an excuse for lack of ambition. Micheaux’s vocal opposition did not endear him to the townspeople. Listening to a different drummer probably made for a lonely, if not unhappy life. Thus in 1901, at seventeen, Oscar Micheaux left Metropolis, hoping never to return. Perhaps it did not occur to him at the time that the environment which he thought he hated had allowed him to become a very independent and outspoken thinker. His writing suggests that traditional values were passed on to him by a close-knit family, with the exception of having no respect for the clergy. There is no indication that he was anti-religious, however, and he frequently admonished others for not leading moral lives.
By early 1902, Micheaux had worked feverishly as a laborer, survived malaria and saved enough to get to Chicago by way of several small Illinois towns where he held odd jobs. He went to work as a bootblack10 after receiving a chilly welcome from brother WO in the windy city. WO and other African Americans in Chicago represented a larger version of the same attitudes Micheaux disliked in Metropolis. By fall of the same year, he went to work for the Pullman Car Company which provided luxury sleeping cars for the nation’s railroads. As a porter, he received an education in the world. He was able to travel to many cities across the country and see how people lived. Micheaux was struck by the great variety of opportunities that existed in America and he refused to be limited by his race. During train stopover, he had a chance to visit theaters, observe different businesses and life-styles, and voraciously read tales of how people had become successful. He became smitten with the American dream. However, in the larger cities Micheaux continued to be disenchanted with the pretentiousness of urban African Americans. He also was repelled by what he saw as their fast life, their vices, and the squalor in which many lived. He seemed to ignore the fact that many were forced to live that way.
With his earnings at the Pullman Car Company, a major employer of African American men during the heyday of the railroads,11 Micheaux was able to start his first bank account and began saving in earnest. It was also through this employment that he was able to talk to White farmers, ranchers, and other passengers about the advantages of owning land. Intrigued, he decided to try his hand at becoming rich through real estate. The great Northwest was virgin territory then. Micheaux decided to gamble his savings in 1904, buying land in Gregory County, north of Dallas, South Dakota.12
Micheaux’s arrival on the frontier was met with curiosity by White farmers. They seemed amused by the talkative Black man and reasonably certain that he would fail in his farming efforts. Micheaux was equally certain that he would not fail. He worked like a Trojan to ensure his success. In time, he was both popular and respected.13 Every so often he would go out on a Pullman Car to make more money in order to buy more land. During these excursions, especially in Chicago, Micheaux urged other African Americans to follow his example by moving out to the Northwest. The dazzle of the big city was too much for most of his listeners to leave. Nonetheless, Micheaux continued to urge African Americans to migrate and he became fairly well known among them in the process.
The opportunity to travel outside the U.S. came after the 1904 presidential election. Micheaux went to South America as a valet for some White millionaires. Once again, he found himself in a unique position to learn how Whites took their share of the American dream. Micheaux’s observations of life in early South Dakota reveal no sense of racial injustice or oppression. It is difficult to imagine his life being free from such antagonism, given the times, but he left no diary of it. He did observe limited intermarriage among the pioneers and he commented unfavorably on those few local mulattoes who sought to deny the ‘black blood in their veins’. His greatest complaint was loneliness. Loneliness would later lay the framework for much of his writing and filmmaking.
Micheaux apparently fell in love with the daughter of a Scottish neighbor around 1909. In his recollections, loyalty to his race precluded such a union. There was also the fact that South Dakota had recently passed a strict antimiscegenation law that would have sent him to jail.14 Though Micheaux made no mention of it in his first novel, The Conquest, he was undoubtedly aware of the country’s racial climate. There had been a bloody race riot in Springfield, Illinois (slightly over 800 miles from central South Dakota) the previous year . Eight African Americans were killed and the property of countless others was either stolen or burned. A national outcry led to the birth of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, but racial tensions in the country remained deep. Micheaux’s parents moved to Kansas to live among other prosperous African American farmers, but he decided to go to Chicago in search of an African American wife to bring to South Dakota.
Micheaux married the timid daughter of a strong-willed clergyman sometime between 1911 and 1912. Friction seemed inevitable, given Micheaux’s stated dislike of members of his father-in-law’s occupation and the fact that both men had enormous egos. There were also philosophical differences between them which reflected a division among African American educators and intellectuals.
From 1895 until the death of Booker T. Washington in 1915, two schools of thought separated African American leadership. The split was known as the Washington-DuBois controversy. This “controversy” was a debate of socioeconomics, not racial identity. Washington proposed a policy which he felt would protect the South’s economic base so that it could compete with Northern industrialism in an atmosphere of minimal social agitation between the races. He made this proposal in a speech before the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta in September 1895. At the center of his ideas was the view that the races should be separate but equal, and he stressed industrial/economic advancement for African Americans; particularly since the pocketed masses lived and owned land in the South. Whites at most social levels in the North and South praised Washington for this speech. He was lauded by editors of leading newspapers, prominent Whites, and even Grover Cleveland, then president of the United States. The content of Washington’s speech offered Whites above and below the Mason-Dixon Line, a “common ground from which to approach the Negro problem.” 15 It was an easy way out for an uneasy White America--a plea for patience among African Americans by a powerful leader.
However popular Washington’s speech was with Whites, it met with strong disapproval from most African American educators.16 Since Washington was one of the most respected African American leaders in America, intellectuals who did not share his thinking turned to W. E. B. DuBois (an equally brilliant and eloquent African American professor and writer) for a more militant form of leadership. DuBois asserted that the priority of America should be equality among the races at all levels. Economic solutions should be addressed secondarily. He argued for suffrage and all citizenship rights guaranteed under the U. S. Constitution. Further, he and his followers urged increased agitation to get those rights.
Micheaux considered himself to be one of Washington’s greatest admirers, even dedicating his first novel to the leader. He frequently lectured other African Americans on the virtues of Washington’s thoughts (as he interpreted them) while admonishing them for their shortcomings. Micheaux continued to feel that many African Americans were more interested in complaining about Whites instead of working hard and taking advantage of the opportunities in America. He discussed this debate among African American leaders in his first novel, The Conquest, in a chapter entitled “The Progressives and the Reactionaries”. Micheaux either misunderstood or mis-analyzed the platforms of both Washington and DuBois. He was incorrect in noting that DuBois had refused to oppose Washington and that the anti-Washington movement had never gained momentum.17 While purporting to be “imbued with the spirit of Booker T. Washington,” Micheaux urged African Americans to leave the South and the ghettoes of the North in order to settle in the Northwest, whereas Washington urged them to remain in the South.18 Micheaux also wrote in that chapter that his wife’s family was more closely aligned to DuBois’s beliefs and that they had often taunted Micheaux about his “Booker T. Washington ideas”. 19
The Washington-DuBois controversy was probably more of a conflict among African American intellectuals than the masses. In 1905, barely forty years after the end of slavery, many African Americans were still stigmatized by the results of previous rules that made them unable to read or write. Most of what they knew of the debate was rumor, hearsay, and confusion. To some degree, Micheaux, a man of limited formal education, is an example of this, with his incorrect analysis. Nonetheless, it appeared to have been a frequent topic and subject of disagreement in the Micheaux household when his in-laws came to visit.20
Within a year after the marriage, a series of hostile letters passed between his father-in-law in Chicago and Micheaux in South Dakota. The long-distance arguments were generally about the daughter, but most were petty and arrogant tests of the strong wills of both men. It left Micheaux’s wife torn between an almost childlike obedience to her father and loyalty to her husband. In frail health and pregnant, she gave birth to a stillborn son while her husband was sixty miles away working on what now amounted to eight hundred acres of farmland. This was in February of either 1912 or 1913. The unfortunate event gave Mrs. Micheaux’s father and sister reason to come to South Dakota. Over Micheaux’s strong objections, they took the sickly woman back to Chicago. His subsequent efforts to get her to return had failed as of the writing of his first novel, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer. The impact of this failed marriage seemed to haunt Micheaux throughout his writing and film careers. He left behind many accusations, but today we have only his side of the story.21
Bergman noted the year 1913 as the beginning of a decade in which some African American authors chose to ignore the existence of racial tensions. Two such authors he listed were Oscar Micheaux and Henry Downing, whose play, The Tangle, would one day be adapted for film by Micheaux. The basic message of these writers was that hard work and dedication would lead to the American dream. Their heroes were dusky versions of white fiction heroes. Micheaux’s first novel, The Conquest, was published in 1913 by Lincoln Press and is autobiographical. With the exception of name changes, most of the historical events (town celebrations, bidding for railroad routes, prairie fires, land purchases, etc.) related in The Conquest are historically correct. Many of the facts were verified by Dr. Henry Sampson, including photos, by checking names and dates of land purchases and books on South Dakota.22 Micheaux wrote of African American life in Illinois and South Dakota, using thinly veiled name changes in many instances for people and places. For example, the hero is Oscar Devereux; Gregory, South Dakota, is Megory; and Dallas is Calias. Micheaux often left out dates, burdening the reader with the task of playing mathematician in order to determine the year of a particular episode or event. Written in a labored, often pretentious style, the book tells of a young Black man who goes to the frontier and becomes a prosperous rancher. Though in love with a Scottish woman, his racial pride forces him to end the relationship. Out of loneliness, he marries a woman named Orlean McCraline, daughter of a Chicago Black clergyman. The preacher’s constant interference eventually destroys the marriage. In reality, it was the loneliness of the prairie that convinced Micheaux to “actively look for a bride.” He had been previously corresponding with a teacher in southern Illinois named Orlean McCracken. Orlean was a “beautiful young lady...and the youngest of two daughters of Rev. N.J. McCracken who had been pastor of the black Methodist church in Metropolis, Illinois, when Micheaux was a young boy” and later became a presiding elder over the southern Illinois district. The two were married on April 20,1910. As in The Conquest and in Micheaux’s life, the constant interference of Orlean’s father eventually destroyed the marriage.23
James Law called The Conquest the first African American novel in America to feature a leading Black character in the role of pioneer.24 In style, it is preachy to African Americans about their shortcomings. Micheaux urged self-improvement by going to the Northwest and homesteading. Though he considered himself a follower of Booker T. Washington, he advocated settling there instead of the South.
The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races was published with illustrations in 1915 by Micheaux’s own company, Western Book Supply.25 Again, there is the suggestion of autobiography with the lead character, Sidney Wyeth, an African American writer, traveling through the south selling his book, The Tempest (The Conquest?).26 This was how Micheaux sold his own novels. He was unable to drive, so once a book was finished, he would hire a chauffeur to take him throughout the Black sections of the country. On tour, he would promote his work and himself among the African American bourgeoisie and the masses. He used these occasions to continue urging African Americans to improve their lot. The Forged Note tells of Wyeth’s lectures and his observations of attitudes and life in the south. This pattern occasionally led Micheaux into confrontations in real life but it served him well by establishing a large following for him and his work throughout the Black grapevine.
By the time he wrote The Homesteader (1917), again using his publishing house, Western Book Supply, Micheaux had become fairly well known, among not only African Americans, but also White farmers and businessmen in Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. He traveled by horse and on foot to peddle his wares to the Whites. Micheaux presented an imposing figure. He was a charismatic six-footer in an age when people were generally shorter in stature and more reserved in demeanor. One of his actors recalled him as “impressive and charming enough to talk the shirt off your back.” He wore long Russian coats and wide-brimmed hats which surely must have been an attention-getter to his audiences and customers of both races.27 His writing seemed to have appeal as well, according to the 1966 recollection of Merritt Hull of Crane, Montana.
...My father homesteaded and farmed until 1903, then they moved to eastern Montana. In 1915 or 1916, they received a book The Conquest, written by a Negro who farmed in that country at that time. My folks knew him and liked him, so I suppose he sent them this book, but where it went, I don’t know. My mother read the book out loud. My parents commented on it at times as they read it . . . 28
Micheaux’s book was probably sent from South Dakota, since no records exist showing him as a landowner in Montana.
The Homesteader appears to be an expansion and fictionalization of the romantic attachments Micheaux described in The Conquest. There is even similarity in the names of the characters. Jean Baptiste is an African American farmer in South Dakota who rejects the love of Agnes Stewart, (a White neighbor) because of their racial differences. He marries, instead, Orlean McCarthy, daughter of a Chicago Black minister. The couple return to South Dakota, where interference from the father-in-law is unbearable. He persuades his daughter to sell property which Baptiste had given her. The bride goes insane, killing her father, then herself. Baptiste, arrested for double murder, is absolved in the crime through the investigation of a detective hired by Agnes Stewart. Stewart is later found to have black blood, making a marriage to Baptiste possible.
The novel’s jacket claims that the story is at least partially true. It states that Micheaux’s land was sold at far below market value by his wife, who forged his signature (The Forged Note?). The novel jacket also says that Micheaux pursued legal redress through the land courts of Washington, D.C., until Secretary of the Interior Franklin Knight Lane decided against him.29 A search through U.S. Department of Interior records from 1909 through 1915 offers no support for such an allegation.
Nonetheless, The Homesteader became a popular book among African Americans and some White farmers of the midwest and northwest. Continually building his promotional skills, Micheaux used the Chicago Defender to advertise his book. This newspaper was based in Chicago but sold throughout the country wherever there were large African American populations. It carried stories written by African American writers in key cities about news of regional and national interest to Black audiences. It was particularly popular among many in the South for its outspoken stand against racism and lynching.
*****
Film was in its infancy when Oscar Micheaux was born. Photographers and scientists such as Muybridge, Edison, Marey, and Dickson had experimented with capturing motion on film as early as 1872. By 1900, Edison’s kineto-phonograph was evolving into the nickelodeon, America’s new favorite pastime. Gerald Mast reported that the period 1900-1913 marked the second era of American motion pictures.1 The vaudeville houses had featured the kineto-phonograph in a limited capacity during the first era, but within twenty years storefront theaters showed films exclusively. The nickelodeon became a part of the entertainment scene around 1905. By 1907, attendance at these five-cent theaters was estimated to exceed ten million admissions per day.2 Movies were cheap, had broad appeal, provided escape, and were particularly popular with immigrants as a means to practice reading their newly acquired second language, English. The tremendous impact film had on the public immediately created a climate for social legislation, self-regulation, and concern among various public interest groups. Founded in 1909, the National Board of Censorship was one of many organizations created to watchdog the moral and social responsibilities of the industry. State and city censorship boards were also created for the same purposes. Absent or ignored among the various concerns expressed at the time was the manner in which African Americans were portrayed on the screen. There had been no historical precedent to warrant such concerns. Peter Noble recorded the first appearance of “Negroes” on the screen in 1902 in a George Melies production called Off to Bloomingdale Asylum.3 Noble believed that the actors were actually white. His film synopsis states that four Blacks were presented in acts of buffoonery as they tried to pull an omnibus down the street. It is important to note that Noble’s extensive investigation of American cinema revealed that film prejudice was directed against all kinds of foreigners as well as Blacks.
The film business became a closed society almost from the beginning. African Americans were not the only group shut out or portrayed in stereotypes. Films such as The Masher (1907), The Wooing and Wedding of a Coon (1905), and the worldwide distribution of the Rastus and Sambo series singled out Blacks in particular as objects of humor and derision. But there were numerous other films equally derogatory about Mexicans, Spaniards, Jews, and Irishmen.4 Micheal Winston concluded, however, that most of the other targeted groups had, unlike African Americans, enough social or economic status to successfully protest their unfavorable depictions on film. Donald Bogle stated that certain stock Black characters were introduced to the screen at the start of the twentieth century: toms, coons, mulattoes, mammies, and bucks. As late as the 1970s, it is Bogel’s contention that these same images continued to prevail.
One of the most popular filmmakers of the period was the director, David Wark Griffith. He was the son of a Confederate colonel and a Kentucky descendant of a long line of southern military and political aristocrats who were left in economically reduced circumstances after the Civil War. Griffith had a meteoric rise from a twelve year stage career as a traveling dramatic and vaudeville actor to playwright to director. Between 1908 and 1913, he was the most renowned and prolific filmmaker at American Mutuscope and Biograph Company (later known as the Biograph Company). His directorial and technical achievements and innovations in film were considerable. Aside from some of his numerous acclaimed productions, he also made several films which stereotyped ethnic groups. A few titles tell the story: Greaser’s Gauntlet (1908), The Romance of a Jewess (1908), and That Chink at Golden Gulch (1910).5 Again, it is important to note that Griffith was doing no more than was common in the industry at that time.
The development of film was but one aspect of an American society which virtually excluded any positive images of African Americans. As a result, Black nationalism, which had emerged before the Civil War, grew rapidly after the turn of the century. The concept of “Race” improvement and pride became sharper in all facets of the African American experience. As lynchings and other racial persecutions intensified, so too did a defiant and determined effort among African Americans to show they were worthy of and entitled to the same rights as any other American.6
One of the major voices against racism, the Chicago Defender, was first published May 5, 1905. It was a leader among the Black press in chastising its readership for their shortcomings, but it also chastised America for what it viewed as hypocrisy against the U.S. Constitution. Five years after the advent of the Chicago Defender, William Foster became the first person of African heritage known to produce films featuring Black casts. Between 1910 and 1916, he produced several comedy shorts in Chicago. Foster was also a drama and sports writer who used the pen name Juli Jones. A man of many talents, he later became circulation manager of the Chicago Defender and is credited with helping to build that paper’s circulation to the largest of any African American weekly. There were also other Blacks who made attempts at independent filmmaking. Though there were a number of corporations established for the purpose of making Black films, relatively few actually delivered a product.7 Many of those that were legitimate efforts grew in response to the continued stereotyping of Blacks on the screen and the refusal of many theaters to admit Black patrons. Other attempts were failures or outright shams.
There were not only Black journalistic objections to the manner in which Blacks were shown on the screen, but also there was a movement to reshape the image of Blacks on stage. With stage as the predecessor of screen, in 1914 the Lafayette Stock Company in Harlem was established to promote Black theater. Financed by Whites, its actors were known as the Lafayette Players, and many would become leading stars in Black films. This was also the year that Blacks were allowed to play themselves (as Blacks) on the screen for the first time. In one case, it was a success, but the other attempt was a disaster. World Pictures released the fourth screen version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1914, breaking tradition by allowing Sam Lucas, a Black actor, to play the title role. Other Black players were used in supporting roles. The film was released without incident.8 The Biograph Company was not successful with a similar effort. D. W. Griffith had left them in 1913, but before his departure and continuing to 1916, Biograph experimented by releasing several Black burlesque shorts. In 1914, it featured Black comedian Bert Williams in one called Darktown Jubilee. Williams was at that time starring in the Ziegfeld Follies with great popularity. However, several film scholars reported his screen debut to have been a dismal failure.9 The film was greeted with catcalls and hisses from hostile White audiences. A riot ensued in Brooklyn in which at least one Black was rumored to have been shot, recalled Carlton Moss, film producer and instructor.10 At other locations, the film was boycotted. Although no summary of the movie is given by Klotman, Noble, or Bogle, the latter writer states that White audiences would not accept a Black in a leading role except as a “tom”.11
Bert Williams was a renown singer and comedian who began with minstrel entertainment which required that he appear in blackface. Indeed, playing such a role was how Williams earned a living. There is no evidence to suggest any different type of portrayal in his first Biograph movie. In any event, the film was quickly recalled. Bogle and Noble cited that as the reason why William’s film career ended.12 Klotman and Sampson, however, revealed a second release by Biograph, also starring Williams, in 1916. It was entitled A Natural Born Gambler.13 Griffith’s film may have been a genius prodigy to cinematography history, but the storyline was imbecilic and another reminder of America’s timeless racism. No disturbances are cited by either author with the release of that feature, and Sampson provided a publicity still from it in which the comedian appeared in the usual blackface.
In 1915, D. W. Griffith premiered The Birth of a Nation, a film to portray Thomas Dixon’s novel, The Clansman. He primarily used White actors in blackface to portray Blacks (except for actors like Neille Conley, AKA Madame Sul-Te-Wan). Hugh Gloster, Sterling Brown, and Robert Bone listed Dixon’s literary work as a classic example of the racist writing of many Southern propagandists.14 While Noble and Bogle agreed that the film treatment reached artistic and technical heights previously unattained by filmmakers, the content of the work, in their view, brought vicious anti-Black sentiment before the American public as never before.15 Gerald Mast offered actual documents which allowed the reader to make his/her own decision.16 Among the documents was a review of the film from the New York Times which essentially supported Noble and Bogle. The reviewer noted that The Clansman had had a short stage run almost a decade earlier and that Dixon had appeared at the film presentation, saying, “He would have allowed none but the son of a Confederate soldier to direct the film version of The Clansman.” In legal documents from the Boston branch of the NAACP, a number of the period’s prominent Americans of both races commented on the racist nature of the film. The associate editor of two religious publications gave a notarized statement in which he told of correspondence and meetings with Dixon during which the author frankly admitted the racist intent of his work. Whatever the motivations individually or collectively (of Griffith and Dixon), the impact of the film on the American public was substantial. Where African Americans were concerned, it would result in the first major effort on their part to produce and distribute Black films nationally as counter-propaganda.
In 1916 Noble Johnson, along with four other middleclass Blacks and one White, organized the Lincoln Motion Picture Company in Los Angeles, California. Noble Johnson, like Madame Sul-te-Wan, was one of filmdom’s earliest Black actors and he appeared in more than one hundred Hollywood films during his career.17 Athletic, handsome, and “fair skinned,” Johnson seldom played “Black roles”. His roles generally consisted of portraying Mexican, Chinese, Spaniard, Cuban, and even Mongolian character types. He and his brother George were sons of a middle-class Colorado family which dealt in race horses. Johnson’s horsemanship netted him a role in Lubin’s The Eagle’s Nest around 1909, thus beginning a prolific acting career as a non-black.18
When Noble Johnson founded the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, it was important to have a reliable cinematographer. Harry Gant, the sole White member, was a friend of Noble’s and a cameraman at Universal Pictures where they worked together. Gant filmed all of the Lincoln productions.19 J.W. Gordon and F.A.Williams, Black businessmen, opened the New Angeles Theater in the same city in July 1916, showing Lincoln’s first film, Realization of a Negro’s Ambition.20 It was a resounding success nationally and played most of the Black theaters in the United States, estimated to be no more than two hundred. It marked the first time African Americans were presented in a feature film in leading roles without burlesque comedy.21 Lincoln’s second feature was the Trooper of Company K. It used over three hundred screen extras and was a tribute to the Black soldiers of the Mexican War. Both films starred Noble Johnson and were very popular with Blacks across the country.22 Sampson reported 1917 as the year of Lincoln’s third production, The Law of Nature. It was another successful star vehicle for Noble Johnson.23 In that same year, other events occurred which would carry black nationalism to yet another level. The East St. Louis, Illinois, riots; America’s entry into World War I; and the arrival of Marcus Garvey in New York were three such occurrences.
An estimated 40 to 100 African Americans were killed in race riots in East St. Louis in July 1917. Between March 28th and July 2nd, violence against Blacks was so acute that thousands fled the city as refugees. The actual death toll was so widespread that no conclusive figures have ever been produced. Some traced the causes to be political, economic, and social. A Black population which rose from six thousand in 1910 to thirteen thousand in 1917, resulted in stiff competition for jobs, housing, and votes. Hostile Whites responded by rioting against Blacks. After the riots, Bergman reported that ten thousand Blacks marched in silent protest in New York on July 28, 1917. They carried banners which read, “Mr. President (Wilson), why not make America safe for democracy?” The obvious reference was to the war in which Black soldiers were fighting in the name of democracy.24