Oscar Devereaux Micheaux, born January 2, 1884, to former slaves, was a prominent black producer, director, and filmmaker during the Harlem renaissance and the silent era. He produced over 45 films independent of Hollywood, predominantly featuring all-black casts.Raised in Great Bend Kansas along with 10 other siblings, Micheaux proved to be an extremely resourceful young man. In his youth, he took odd jobs like shoe shining, coal mining, and worked as a stockyard worker and a railroad porter. Eventually, he was able to homestead his own farm in an all-white area. Using his experiences from living in that area, he began writing and self-publishing series and books, like The Homesteader.
With the rise of the motion picture, Micheaux was quick to use the opportunity to put his stories on the big screen. In 1919 he created his own movie production company and became the first African American filmmaker. The low budgets of production subjected Micheaux's films to quality issues such as poor lighting, little editing, and poor sound. It was the content, however, not the quality, that was meaningful to the black audiences who gathered to see his "race"(all-black) films. Micheaux used personal experiences, as well as societal issues, to both entertain and touch the hearts of his audiences. He made an effort to portray African Americans in a positive light, countering the negative stereotypes propagated in many white films, and he boldly explored themes like interracial relationships, racism, and white prejudice.
On March 25, 1951, Micheaux passed away in Charlotte, North Carolina during a business trip. In full retrospect of his accomplishments, the Producer's Guild of America rightfully dubbed Micheaux “the most prolific black – if not most prolific independent – filmmaker in American cinema.”
Sources:
https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-oscar-micheaux/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oscar-Micheaux
https://www.silentera.com/people/directors/Micheaux-Oscar.html
This post made me very interested in Micheaux's effect on the cultural climate of America. The fact that he portrayed African-American characters on screen as real and relatable people, instead of caricatures or stereotypes like white movies did, was very revolutionary for the time. As we learned in class, even black people, who at that point were used to propaganda, were shocked by the new and refreshing way that Micheaux was able to portray them. He used his films to challenge those aforementioned white films, most notably "Birth of a Nation" (1915), by articulating the unspoken truths and hardships of black life in America. Clearly, he was not afraid to cross the line from entertainment to pure social commentary, exposing some of the terrible actions taken by white people through his representation of the Ku Klux Klan as bad guys.
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