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Adam McNeil
Film & Hist. Rep.

Du Bois & Washington’s Racial Uplift Methods as Seen in Within Our Gates

The presence of blackness at the beginning of the twentieth century in the film industry

was always contentious because of historical, social, political, and economic issues outside of the

industry; the issues negatively influenced the industry’s stories and imagery of peoples who were

not white. Ultimately though, the film industry’s foundations were built to reflect the historical,

social, political, and economic consensuses of the times that the films are created in. That is why

the black film industry historically fought against overtly and covertly racist caricatures and

tropes that undermine the humanity of their race.

The racist depictions of black Americans in the entertainment industry have foundations

in the blackface minstrel shows that were one of the most popular forms of entertainment for

Americans leading up to, and into, the silent film era in the first two decades of the 20th century.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s iconic 1852 historical fiction novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was supposed

to depict the horrors black enslavement, would lead the abolitionist cause’s rhetorical war over

the slavery issue; by the end of the physical war over slavery, led to the distasteful theater

sketches of the book that were anything other than progressive.1 Blackface caricatures were also

seen in the newspaper political cartoon realm as well. Through blackface minstrel shows and

newspaper political cartoons, the laughs about supposed black features could be done in the

presence of black faces, but the actual black persons did not have to be there. With the rise of the

black film industry though, blacks started to create their own narrative of blackness, and protest

1Dan Flory, “Race, Rationality, and Melodrama: Aesthetic Response and the Case of Oscar Micheaux,”
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63, no.4 (2005): 329.

kathleen margaret lant, “the unsung hero of uncle tom's cabin,” American Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (spring
1987): 47-49.
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their collective experiences;2 and blacks did not have to be in the room for the consumption and

entertainment of whites. Whether they are called protest films, race films, or other names, early

black films attempted to grapple with the basic humanity of early twentieth century black life, is

what the rise of the black film industry helped to usher in.3 What black filmmakers had to engage

with though, was the relative danger of the time period. By January of 1920, black Americans

were in the nadir of the most dangerous time of race relations in American history. From the

years 1890-1920 “on average at least once a week, every week, for five decades,” a person was

lynched.4 This period is the world that birthed director, screenwriter, and author Oscar

Micheaux’s momentous melodrama and race film Within Our Gates.

Because of how bloody this time period was, possible solutions to the problems of blacks

were important. The two men during the first quarter of the 20th century who had the most

influence upon those solutions were scholar-activist W.E.B. DuBois and Tuskegee Institute

President and Founder Booker T. Washington. The men had differing philosophies of how to

uplift the race. Du Bois believed that through his Talented Tenth of liberal arts trained students,

the race could improve the black condition in the country by being politically and socially

organized.5 Washington on the other hand, believed that through his industrial education model

of occupation based work, and through the thwarting of immediate political rights, blacks could

gradually attain social and political mobility, while they acquire economic wealth. This

philosophy was made more clear with Washington’s 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech that was

also called “The Atlanta Compromise,” Washington said “In all things that are purely social we

2 Flory, “Race, Rationality, and Melodrama: Aesthetic Response and the Case of Oscar Micheaux,” 333.
3 bell hooks, “Micheaux: Celebrating Blackness.” Black American Literature Forum 25, no. 2 (1991):
351.
4 Ashraf Rushdy, American Lynching (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) 74-75.
5 W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903) 65.
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can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”6

With both men’s philosophies in mind, the questions leading my later discussion of Within Our

Gates will be how does Micheaux depict and develop his characters to show the philosophies of

both men, how does light skinned or mixed race privilege work in the film, what historical work

is done in the representation of multiple consciouses that blacks have to portray, and how does

Micheaux depict the normalcy and barbarism of lynching and other forms of violence upon

blacks?

Oscar Micheaux was not only the first major black filmmaker, but also the most

successful major black filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century.7 Micheaux was born

in Metropolis, Illinois in the year 1884 as one of eleven children of former slave parents who

moved to Metropolis to provide a better academic environment for their children.8 Though his

parents worked as slaves, by the time of Oscar’s upbringing, his parents owned their farm in

Metropolis where his father was the primary farmer and his mother was a schoolteacher. His

parents ingrained three major ideas into young Micheaux’s mind that Oscar Micheaux would

take throughout the rest of his life; the importance of owning your own land, not shying away

from farm labor as a profession, and the value of an education; even though ultimately Micheaux

lacked a depth of formal education.9 After moving to Chicago for more work opportunities and

to live with his older brother in his late teenage years, Micheaux already showed signs of his

industriousness. Micheaux worked multiple jobs at times in Chicago to make ends meet as a

busboy and a Pullman Porter, but when he did not receive the opportunities that he was seeking,

6 Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1901) 92.
7 Gerald R. Butters Jr., Black Manhood on the Silent Screen (Lawrence: University Press Kansas, 2002)
97-98.
8 W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular
Culture, 1890-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011) 215-216.
9 Butters Jr., Black Manhood on the Silent Screen, 126-127.
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he set out on his own to near the Rosebud Indian Reservation near Gregory, South Dakota to

work as a homesteader. He ultimately would become a successful homesteader and a respected

member of his community, so much so that even white neighbors attested to Micheaux’s

character.10 During this time is where Micheaux would begin his artistic career.

By 1913, Micheaux became a published author with his semi-biographical fictional

novel, The Conquest. The Conquest which was a novel that was loosely based upon Micheaux’s

life as a Pullman porter in Chicago, and his life as a homesteader in South Dakota. Micheaux

pulls for his future films like 1919’s The Homesteader and others throughout his future career

from The Conquest to drive home his worldview upon racial politics and ways for blacks to

uplift themselves.11 Micheaux accomplishes this though, without formal evidence showing that

he ever received formal filmmaking training; which is a major feat in and of itself. Because of

this lack of formal training though, Micheaux also does not have to be beholden to any

formalities of film that were pervasive in white cinema.12 This improvisation and freestyle

persona conditioned Micheaux well for his life as a frontiersmen upon not only the literary scene,

but the film scene as well.

The scholarship reception upon Within Our Gates has been varied over time. Since the

film was uncovered in the 1970s, and refurbished with the help of the Library of Congress, the

reception of the film has been reemerged because now scholars can view the film instead of only

relying on past writings about the film. In the twenty years there have been multiple scholars that

have written important articles and books upon Micheaux’s films, but Within Our Gates has

received more attention.13 In film scholar Charlene Regester’s 1995 article “The Misreading and

10 Butters Jr., Black Manhood on the Silent Screen, 127.

11 Ibid.
12 Charlene Regester, “The Misreading of African American Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux: A Critical
Review of Micheaux Scholarship,” Film History 7 (Winter, 1995) 427-428.
13 Ibid, 441.
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Rereading of African American Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux: A Critical Review of Micheaux

Scholarship, Regester reviews the scholarship timeline of Micheaux’s films and organizes the

timeline chronologically into pre-1970s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s scholarship. Regester believes

that because of the emergence of Within Our Gates in the last generation when coupled with the

changing social landscape in the country has influenced the film scholars to reevaluate Within

Our Gates and Micheaux’s other films.14

In another important article on Within Our Gates, film scholar Anna Siomopoulos’ 2006

“The Birth of a Black Cinema: "Race, Reception, and Oscar Micheaux's" Within Our Gates,

compares the ways that Micheaux’s editing style played a role in his storytelling in Within Our

Gates in comparison to D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist blockbuster film The Birth of a Nation, which

was a film that depicted what Griffith saw as the depravity that blacks brought to the South after

they were freed and how groups like the Ku Klux Klan had to emancipate the South from their

black problem through the use of violent repression.15 Siomopoulos points out that because

Griffith’s cross-editing style depicted only “black villainy and white virtue,” the audiences were

different in ways not only color deep.16 That is because Within Our Gates’s audience was

presented with characters who showed human complexities that challenged the audience to be

engaged throughout the film.

Perhaps the most important scholarship referencing Within Our Gates is the 2001 essay

compilation book by film scholars Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser Oscar

Micheaux and His Circle: African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era. In

book scholar Michelle Wallace’s chapter essay “Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates: The

14 Ibid, 442.
15 Anna Siomopoulos, “The Birth of a Black Cinema: "Race, Reception, and Oscar Micheaux's" Within
Our Gates, The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 6, No. 2
(FALL 2006), pp. 112
16 Ibid, 111-112.
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Possibilities for Alternative Visions,” Wallace writes that in Within Our Gates Micheaux

illuminates how “cultural ambivalences regarding race, gender, and sexuality of that time” are

what he tries to fix based upon the racist parameters that The Birth of a Nation created.17

Micheaux proves this by structuring her chapter in a three-part structure to show how

minstrelsy’s influence was there to manufacture the ambivalences in how film told history. The

structure based on how whites played blackface characters, conventional stereotyping birthed

from Uncle Toms Cabin and leftover antebellum plantation stereotypes, and lastly how the

mulatto characters in the films were depicted and transformed over time.

A common theme of the scholarship about the historical work that Micheaux conducted

in Within Our Gates is in some way directed to The Birth of a Nation. While there is an obvious

connection between the the two films, I see an opportunity to insert a differing perspective within

the overall scholarship of Within Our Gates is showing how Micheaux’s characters were

depicted and developed through the lenses of the philosophies of W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T.

Washington?

To help answer my questions I will use an array of primary sources. One of them is the

film Within Our Gates, that was rediscovered and remastered with the assistance of the Library

of Congress in the last two decades. Because Within Our Gates is a silent film with word titles to

orient the viewer with the dialogue that will be happening, I will be quoting the film many times.

I will also use black newspapers; Chicago Defender and The Appeal, to inform my analysis

about Within Our Gates’ critical reception from its audiences. To inform my textual analysis of

the philosophies of both DuBois and Washington, I will analyze Du Bois’s The Souls of Black

Folk and Washington’s Up from Slavery. From here on my paper will be divided into three

17 Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser, Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African-American
Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) 55.
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sections. First, I will introduce the film’s overarching themes and synthesize the storyline.

Second, I will analyze how Du Bois’s philosophies inform my analysis and understanding of the

film’s characters. Third, I will depict how Washington’s philosophies inform my analysis and

understanding of the film’s characters.

Oscar Micheaux’s 1920 film Within Our Gates is a racial uplift film that centers the

character Sylvia Landry, an adopted light-skinned mulatto female teacher from the South as the

main character, who strives to acquire funds in the North for an up and coming grade school for

children in the fictional rural hamlet of Piney Woods, Mississippi. Through the acquisition of

funds for the school is what leads Sylvia’s travels and her story, another major component of the

story is how Micheaux develops her character to show the audience themes of racism, southern

bigotry, rape, lynching and miscegenation. The climax of the film is when Sylvia, after returning

from Boston to acquire funds for the school from a sympathetic white woman, who almost ran

her over in the street after pushing a white child out of the position to get hit, named Mrs.

Warwick Geraldine Stratton, Sylvia finds that her father’s boss Phillip Gridlestone has been

cheating him out of his wages for a long time. While this information is being relayed to Mr.

Landry, Efram, Gridlestone’s servant overhears their talking from a nearby window and reports

his findings back to Gridlestone. Because of Efram’s warning about Landry’s knowledge of the

wage issue, when Sylvia’s adoptive father goes to Gridlestone is already aware. During their

argument there is a white man outside of the open window who shoots Gridlestone as

Gridlestone tries to shoot Landry as he tries to walk out of Gridlestone’s shooting, the gun near

Landry, and a white man being killed in the presence of a black man, Efram goes throughout

town after he peers inside the office window to see the aftermath, and says “Sweet Jesus! Landry

done killed Mistah Gridlestone!” This false revelation leads to the lynching of Sylvia Landry’s
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adoptive parents, the lynching of Efram in front of dozens of white spectators, and the near rape

of Sylvia.18 The rape does not occur because the would be rapist is Phillip Gridlestone’s brother,

Armand, who realizes that the person who he is about to rape is his biological daughter who has

a mark on her chest that denotes their kinship. The film’s power is in Micheaux lack of

objectivity towards the story that he is trying to tell, and at times towards the taboo subjects that

he confronts.

A contemporary of Oscar Micheaux was scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois, and though the

research for this paper did not find a direct link between the two men, I do not believe that it

would be a stretch to say that Micheaux was familiar with the liberal arts and Talented Tenth

ethos of racial uplift that Du Bois’ portrayed. The Talented Tenth, as Du Bois described them,

were the black middle class who were charged with uplifting the rest of the race through their

educational attainments and what would be provided from them to help train the race to become

better. With that link, I will discuss how Du Bois’s philosophical link is contained in the

characters in Within Our Gates. When Sylvia Landry is introduced, she is introduced as “ a

schoolteacher from the South visiting her northern cousin—is typical of intelligent Negro of our

times.”19 Du Bois believed that those characterized as an “intelligent Negro” were the ones who

were supposed to uplift the race.20 Those classically educated blacks were supposed to be the

ones who like Sylvia, choose to educate the masses of black pupils throughout the country to

allow them to be who they want to be, and not stuck in service to whites. This is important to

understand when viewing the film for Micheaux’s historical representations, because to know

why he chose to introduce the main character of the film in this way means that Micheaux

18 Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates, Silent, Oscar Micheaux (January 12, 1920; Chicago; Micheaux
Book & Film Company.) Amazon Video...
19 Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates, Silent, Oscar Micheaux (January 12, 1920; Chicago; Micheaux
Book & Film Company.) Amazon Video.
20 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 64-65.
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wanted to set the stage for the film with Sylvia’s presence, and the multiple interpretations that

could be involved with it. Because of the intelligence that was provided through the educational

opportunities that Sylvia had to become a teacher, it is not a surprise that she will choose to try to

uplift the race with her work as a teacher, and make that her primary focus.

Another important historical representation of Du Bois was through what teachers like

Sylvia faced. In the opening speech slide of the film it says, “At the opening of our drama, we

find our characters in the North, where the prejudices and hatreds of the South do not exist-

though this does not prevent the occasional lynching of a Negro.”21 As Du Bois says when

speaking about the rural Georgia lynching of Sam Hose in 1899, and the backdrop of the Red

Summer of 1919 in mostly northern cities and towns, there was lynch violence in the entirety of

the country.22

During Red Summer, there were upwards of twenty-five race riots around the country,

and one of them, most notably was in Chicago.23 That is why I believe there is irony in the

history that Micheaux is trying to portray at the beginning of the film with this statement. He is

showing that though the North is deemed better for black people, the same ills that supposedly

plague only the South, plague the North as well. To further the interpretation, Micheaux without

showing a single lynching in Within Our Gates yet, indicts the entire country. Du Bois factors in

this discussion because he chastises those like Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute, who

try to speak ill of black people fighting for political rights, because no matter where one goes, if

you lack political rights, whatever economic opportunities you have, can be taken away from you

21 Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates, Silent, Oscar Micheaux (January 12, 1920; Chicago; Micheaux
Book & Film Company.) Amazon Video.
22 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 93.
23 Nicholas Wisseman, "Beware the Yellow Peril and Behold the Black Plague": The Internationalization
of American White Supremacy and its Critiques, Chicago 1919,” University of Illinois Press 103, No. 1
(Spring, 2010), pp. 43
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on the whim of white person.24 That is why when advertising for the film in the Chicago

Defender, there were editorials that spoke about some feelings regarding the film, “This is the

picture that it required two solid months to get by the censor board, and it is the claim of the

author and producer that, while it is a bit radical, it is withal the biggest protest against race

prejudice, lynching, and “concubinage” that was ever written or film, and that there are more

thrills and gripping, holding moments than was ever seen in any individual production.”25 The

quote from the editorial provides contextualizing opportunities of the world that Within Our

Gates came from. Because “it required two months” to get Within Our Gates into a theater in late

January 1920, that meant that when the film was probably made, it was in the aftermath of the

summer of riots. That could also be why the film was perceived as “a bit radical,” because black

spaces were also contested spaces of protest, and one does not know if there is possible backlash

from it.26

Another character in Within Our Gates whose presence brings similarities to Du Bois’

writing is old Ned, who portrays double consciousness. Double consciousness, as Du Bois

described in The Souls of Black Folk is, “this sense of always looking at ones self through the

eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt

and pity.” “an American, a Negro; two souls; two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two

warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn

asunder.”27The way that old Ned is portrayed in the film brought me to him occupying a dual

positions in the film because old Ned is brought into the film as a “Tom” figure of the southern

wealthy woman Mrs. Geraldine Stratton, which is a leftover from the minstrelsy stereotype of a

24 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 30.

25 “WITHIN OUR GATES.” Chicago Defender (Chicago, IL), Jan. 24, 1920.
26 Ibid.
27 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 2.
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caricatured obedient slave or servant; who tells the philanthropic Mrs. Elena Warwick of Boston

when asked about if she should donate $5,000 the Piney Woods School that Sylvia is teaching,

that she should give $100 to the preacher old Ned. She believes this because “Wasting $5,000 on

a school is plain silly when you could give $100 to old Ned, the best colored preacher in the

world….who will do more to keep Negroes in their place than all of your schools put together.”28

Old Ned is characterized by Mrs. Stratton as someone who will “keep Negroes in their place,”

while he actually does not like what he does as a preacher.

Ned represents Du Bois’ two-ness because, as a preacher who is obviously known to the

whites in his community as a conciliatory clergyman (the relationship between old Ned and Mrs.

Stratton is never explained, along with where old Ned and Mrs. Stratton are from), he has to live

according to the rules that whites like Mrs. Stratton appropriate to attain as old Ned says “All for

a miserable ‘mess of pottage.”29 Ned does not want to be the person who whites want him to be,

and this interpretation is clear after Ned says this in front of the local white person who has

summoned him to his office,“Y’all knows what I always preach. This is a land for the white man

and black folk got ta know their place.” Once Ned leaves the room and “removes his face” he

says “Again, I’ve sold my birthright. All for a miserable ‘mess of pottage. Negroes and whites-

all are equal. As for me, miserable sinner, Hell is my destiny.”30 This exchange shows that Ned

comprehends what he is doing to his people by reenforcing white supremacy, without a white

person being present.

During the time that Du Bois was coming into prominence, there was another man whose

racial uplift message captivated the country, and that was Founder and President of Tuskegee

28 Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates, Silent, Oscar Micheaux (January 12, 1920; Chicago; Micheaux
Book & Film Company.) Amazon Video.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
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Institute, Booker T. Washington. Washington came into national prominence because of his

famous 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech where he captivated the mostly white audience by

stating his philosophy upon educational and racial uplift “Cast down your bucket where you are

cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all race by whom we are

surrounded, Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the

professions.”31 This statement pertains to Within Our Gates for many reasons. Ned was spoken

about in the last section because of his “Tom” depiction of the black preacher. Preachers

traditionally had to have schooling to become a preachers in many cases, and that was not a

career that based upon the previous quotation, Washington would have advised. Though

Micheaux has Rev. Wilson Jacobs double as the principal for the Piney Woods school, whose

light-skinned appearance is another reason for the difference in comparison to Ned, I posit that

that was because in multiple ways, Wilson’s character was based upon Washington.

Throughout Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery, Washington details how he

traveled extensively throughout the North fundraising for Tuskegee. Washington also goes to

Boston in search of philanthropic dollars, which is also where Sylvia goes in search of funds for

Piney Woods, where fate has Sylvia pushing a young white child out of the way of the oncoming

vehicle that the wealthy white Mrs. Warwick is being driven in.32 Because of Mrs. Warwick’s

sentiments towards the selfless act of Sylvia, Mrs. Warwick offers to assist Sylvia because as she

says “I am very interested in the cause of your race, and I will find the means to help in the most

effective way.”33

31 Washington, Up From Slavery, 83.

32 Washington, Up From Slavery, 52.
33 Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates, Silent, Oscar Micheaux (January 12, 1920; Chicago; Micheaux
Book & Film Company.) Amazon Video.
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Micheaux depicts Rev. Jacobs’ and Sylvia Landry’s crusade for the uplifting of the black

race similarly to how Washington portrayed his efforts to fundraise for Tuskegee. I do not

believe my hypothesis about the possibility of a connection between Washington and Micheaux

to be a stretch because Micheaux personally espoused Washington’s relatively conservative

views about race and economics. I feel this way because prior to Micheaux’s career in film, he

was a novelist. The sequel to his first book, The Conquest, was The Forged Note: A Romance of

the Darker Races, which was published in 1915, the year that Washington died.34 In The Forged

Note Micheaux defends Washington’s conservatism multiple ways. In The Conquest and The

Forged Note the protagonists, Oscar Devereaux (the middle name of Micheaux) and Sidney

Wyeth, reenforced the benevolence of the Washingtonian philosophy by using their words for

social commentary upon the urban middle-class professionals. Devereaux for example, posits

suburban Chicagoans as “overeducated Negroes” whose “sole object in life was obviously

nothing, but who dressed up and aped the white people.”35 The irony of the statement is that

Micheaux’s later film sales would need the suburban black money, or professional black money

to fill the theaters like the Hammond Pickford theater in Chicago.36 That is why I wonder if

Micheaux ever regretted statements like these, because even though the black film industry was

growing alongside the black middle class in urban cities like Chicago, where there was nearly ten

times the growth in overall population from 1890 to 1920, there was not a lot of room for

subversion in messaging.37 Especially when those people that you are chastising, are the people

who are helping you emerge.

34 Bowser, Gaines, and Musser, Oscar Micheaux and His Circle, 134.
35 Ibid. 134.
36 “WITHIN OUR GATES.” Chicago Defender (Chicago, IL), Jan. 24, 1920.
37Cedric J. Robinson. Forgeries of Memory & Meaning: Blacks & The Regimes of Race in American
Theater & Film Before World War II. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.) 244
 14 of 21

Micheaux did receive praise outside of Chicago as well. In response to boycotting that

occurred because of the depictions of the clergy, there was a long editorial by St. Paul,

Minnesota’s black newspaper, Appeal, that appealed to black people across the country in

solidarity with the release of Micheaux’s Within Our Gates, “Some colored people in Chicago

are protesting against the production of a moving picture play based on a story by Oscar

Micheaux, “Within Our Gates,” setting forth the horrors of the lynching bees of the South.” The

author also says “These good people say they are afraid the picture will stir up racial friction and

therefore it should not be produced. We wonder what kind of clay these folks are made of. They

sat unmoved through plays showing the mistreatment of Jews by the Russians and Armenians by

the Turks, and many of them failed to utter a single protest against “The Birth of a Nation,” the

most rabid anti-Negro picture ever filmed.38 The editorial shows that there were feelings that

those who were protesting the film should not because the film is fighting against the racial

prejudice that produced the “Red Summer,” and other lynchings. The author also makes a point

about racial cognitive dissonance. Because of other atrocities that occurred around the time of

Within Our Gates in the early 1900s, there are comparative sufferings to the ones that black

people faced, especially with the black men coming home from World War I and I think that the

author was saying that blacks were becoming complacent in their own suffering. The last point

about the possible lack of discontent over The Birth of a Nation is important as well. One would

think that because of the anti-black foundation of The Birth of a Nation, the organized protesting

would occur for a picture that speaks about your race’s murder! With that said though,

considering the possible reasoning being the stirring up of racial friction, in the hearts of the

thousands of migrants from the South, and those who have recently been plagued by “Red

38 Micheaux Movie Hits Lynch Evil.” Appeal (St. Paul, MN), Jul. 3, 1920.
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Summer” that perceived friction could be coded for the state of fear that black people across the

country felt.

Though that fear is not wholly based upon this, a downside of the Washingtonian uplift

philosophy is that as blacks did acquire money through the “agriculture, mechanics, in

commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions,” black people’s lack of civil rights,

including the right to vote, did not allow for blacks to defend themselves against physical and

economic attack.39 The lack of protection is what allowed individual or collective whites to use

extralegal violence to kill blacks and other oppressed peoples with little to no fear of justice. This

is what helped lead to the lynching of Sylvia’s adoptive parents. Sylvia’s adoptive parents were

the aforementioned rural southern agricultural workers that Washington told to caste down their

buckets.40 That casting down of buckets did not provide Jasper Landry and his wife solace when

Phillip Gridlestone’s murder was framed on Jasper by Gridlestone’s black “Tom” servant

Efram.41 Jasper only wanted the money that Phillip Gridlestone rightfully owed him for his labor.

This occurred because the Landry’s did not fundamentally have rights that whites had to

recognize. To play on the name of Washington’s autobiography Up from Slavery, blacks were

not up from slavery fully, because their second class citizenship was unofficially codified

through the white supremacist tyranny that Phillip Gridlestone and Mrs. Geraldine Stratton

advocated for. That is why prior to Phillip’s death, he says to Jasper, “I have always treated the

coloreds well - but I remember that my father, who owned a thousand slaves, had callouses on

his hands from…. [makes a fist and hits Jasper in the face] ….and he showed me that was the

only way to keep ‘em in line.42 Phillip Gridlestone’s final words show that Jasper and his

39 Washington, Up From Slavery, 83.

40 Ibid, 83.
41 Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates, Silent, Oscar Micheaux (January 12, 1920; Chicago; Micheaux
Book & Film Company.) Amazon Video.
42 Ibid.
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families status in the South was similar to the status of blacks slavery. Because whites had the

ability to treat blacks with the same impunity that they did when they “owned” them. Phillip

Gridlestone used the same means that his calloused handed father used on his slaves.

The reason why Phillip Gridlestone became mad though, was because of his servant

Efram. Efram overheard a conversation while passing by the Landry home that he thought said,

as Jasper’s wife says “She is as educated as white girls now- so when you go pay the boss tell

him that,” when in actuality she said, “You should keep an account of all your purchases, sales,

and debts so that….when you go to the Gridlestone house you can take the accounts and settle

without argument.”43 That was wishful thinking on the part of Sylvia, but obviously that did not

happen because her adoptive parents were later lynched in the forest because of the ordeal that

Efram caused with his gossip. Mrs. Landry’s last words were “Justice! Where are you? Answer

me! How Long? Great God almighty, How Long?”44 Because of the collective black state of

being in the United States, there was not much opportunity for the justice that Mrs. Landry was

pleading for. The only “justice” that was provided in Within Our Gates ironically enough,

through Efram.

Prior to the Landry couple being caught and lynched after they ran away into the woods,

the lynch mob was getting bloodthirsty, and wanted someone to prey upon. The only person

available to bare the trauma was Efram. Prior to realizing his fate, Efram says “Here I is’mong

da whi’ fo’k, while dem other niggahs hide in da woods.” He later says “T’ain no doubt ‘bout it-

da wh’ foks loves me.” Before he dies a man named Mistah John says to the mob standing

around, “While we’s waitin’, what ya say we grab this boy?” To which Efram begins to

understand the situation that he is in “Bu.. bu.. but’ you knows me, Mistah John- ya knows I’se

43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
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da one wha’ tole you Landry killed Mistah Gridlestone [White mob grabs Efram and lynches

him]. While this sequence of events may seem to be rightful retribution for the multiple lies that

Efram tells, the greater parable to be interpreted from the murder of Efram is that no matter how

much one believes that he or she has been sold a mess of pottage that is in perpetuity, Within

Our Gates shows that that security is faulty, and up to the daily interpretation of whites within

the time period that Within Our Gates was made. One of the major themes of the Within Our

Gates is the refutation of the message that black people were all rapists and those who commit

crimes were black. Because in the cases of Sylvia, Landry, Mrs. Landry, and Efram, that

stereotype is shown to be false.

Micheaux was a self professed race man, who traveled extensively to generate the

necessary buzz and financial backing to create Within Our Gates. Micheaux says to the Chicago

Defender “ The appreciation my people have shown my maiden efforts convinces me that they

want racial photoplays, depicting racial life, and to that task I have consecrated my mind and

efforts.”45 He did so because Micheaux would not only travel to Europe to fundraise for his

present and future projects, but his use of silent, protest, and soon to be talking films showed a

hustle and development that made Micheaux, by his death in 1951, the most important and

prolific black filmmaker of at least the first half of the 20th century.46

Within Our Gates was the most important black silent film ever. The film gave the

opportunity for blackness to be shown in all of its’ parts. Unlike films like The Birth of a Nation,

books like Uncle Remus and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, where blacks, or blackface characters, were

only shown for comedic relief or to play a one sized, non-developing character, there were

depictions of black people who had the ability to have their characters develop or show multiple

45 “GOING ABROAD.” Chicago Defender (Chicago, IL), Jan. 31, 1920.

46 Ibid.
 18 of 21

identities like Dr. Vivian and Ned, along with those characters who were not upstanding citizens

like Efram and Larry Pritchard.47 Oscar Micheaux provided the opportunity for his viewers to

finally see themselves in a more whole perspective. This perspective was needed for uplifting the

psyche of a beaten down people who were only a few generations removed from slavery, but

who were currently in the nadir of lynch law violence. With Within Our Gates, Micheaux was

able to develop into well-known social commentator, similarly to his deceased idol Booker T.

Washington, and his rival W.E.B. Du Bois. Both men succeeded within the formal education

space in ways that Micheaux never did, even though he did publish a few novels, he was not as

well know for his book writing like Washington was from Up from Slavery and Du Bois was

from The Souls of Black Folk, but what he did do that Washington and Du Bois could not, was

pursue, refine, and produce the content for the moving picture.48 Because of Micheaux's efforts,

he was able to be the frontiersmen that he was in South Dakota. He was able to employ black

actors and actresses in roles that did not denigrate their integrities and build his platform

throughout the early “talkie” film era. Though Micheaux was less known for those efforts, he

still was able to use his camera to make a difference.

There were probably many reasons that influenced why Oscar Micheaux filmed Within

Our Gates, but one characterization that I am confident in making is that he was informed and

impacted by his contemporaries, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois on how to develop

the messaging of film, even if they are indirect links. Washington’s philanthropic Northern

assembled links could be seen in the role that Sylvia Landry played in migrating North to gain

funds for Piney Woods. Washington’s distaste for the backward clergyman was seen in the

depiction of old Ned. Du Bois’s talented tenth leadership model was seen within the role that

47 Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates, Silent, Oscar Micheaux (January 12, 1920; Chicago; Micheaux
Book & Film Company.) Amazon Video
48 Bowser, Gaines, and Musser, Oscar Micheaux and His Circle, 134.
 19 of 21

Sylvia, Dr. Vivian, and Rev. Jacobs played individual roles for the collective salvation black

people. Micheaux may have been an adherent to the more conservative ideology of Washington,

his prolific writing, moving from the rural life of South Dakota, and subsequently moving urban

Chicago, which is obviously not the southern migration that Washington lobbied for, refutes this

link.49 This shows that Micheaux played up and played down multiple links that championed and

obstructed the views of Washington and Du Bois, ultimately though, Micheaux in Within Our

Gates gave a humanized peak into the black world in 1920.

49 Washington, Up From Slavery, 56-58.

 20 of 21

Bibliography

Primary Sources

DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: A.C. McClurg and Co., 1903.

“GOING ABROAD.” Chicago Defender (Chicago, IL), Jan. 31, 1920.

“GREAT PICTURE.” Chicago Defender (Chicago, IL), Aug. 28, 1920.

Micheaux, Oscar. Within Our Gates. Silent Film. Directed by Oscar Micheaux. Jan. 12, 1920.
Harlem. Micheaux Book & Film Company.

“Micheaux Movie Hits Lynch Evil.” Appeal (St. Paul, MN), Jul. 3, 1920.

Washington, Booker T.. Up From Slavery. Chicago: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1901

“WITHIN OUR GATES.” Chicago Defender (Chicago, IL), Jan. 24, 1920.

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Redifining of Oscar Micheaux,” Journal of Film & Video 40, no. 4 (Fall 1988).

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Green, J. Ronald. “Twoness,” in the Style of Oscar Micheaux,” in Black American Cinema,
Manthia Diawara, ed.. New York: Routledge, 1993.
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Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness, The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia: Temple
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hooks, bell. “Micheaux: Celebrating Blackness.” Black American Literature Forum 25, no. 2
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——-“Lynched, Assaulted, Intimidated: Oscar Micheaux’s Most Controversial Films,” Popular

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