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[ Speaking Italian ]

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[ Reel whirring ]

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Chuck D: Looked at Oscar Micheaux

as the originator of DIY --

do-it-yourself, independent.

♪♪

Asante: He means groundbreaking.

He means freedom and possibilities --

the possibility for me to exist.

Kwei-Armah: Oscar Micheaux means you can do it.

No matter what your environment, no matter what your time,

you can simply do it.

♪♪

Stewart: Oscar Micheaux is the most important

black filmmaker who ever lived.

Period.

♪♪

[ Charles Mingus' "Freedom" plays ]

♪♪

We do have an entry in black history...

♪♪

...who made what personally amounts to his shovel.

He was Spike Lee before there was Spike Lee.

♪♪

And this is the 70th anniversary of his passing.

♪♪

Mingus: This mule ain't from Moscow.

This mule ain't from the South.

But this mule's had some learning.

Mostly mouth-to-mouth.

It was very tough for most black families

and black people at that time, knew what they had to do.

We had come through the worst of being slaves.

Then there was a civil war.

Mingus: So stand fast, young Romeo.

Soothe in contemplation

thy burning whole and aching thigh.

Your stubbornness is ever-living

and cruel anxiety is about to die.

So after the aftermath, it was like,

okay, either we're going to have to learn this well,

do for self, a do or die.

♪ Freedom for your daddy's daddy ♪

♪ Freedom for your mama's mama ♪

♪ Freedom for your brothers and sisters ♪

♪ But no freedom for me ♪

Freeman: It was difficult for everybody,

but he was determined and quite successful.

♪♪

You can make it if you try.

If you think Oscar Micheaux,

you think, put your head down

and go forward, and you'll get it done.

I wonder how many know him?

[ Birds chirping ]

I discovered Oscar Micheaux by by accident.

I was at the Carbondale, Illinois, library

looking at the nonfiction section,

and there's this picture of him on the cover

that looks compelling.

I start reading that book and I can't put it down,

and I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about this man's story.

It's the greatest American story

that nobody knows anything about.

♪♪

McGilligan: Well, his family came from Kentucky.

They were slaves.

They crossed into southern Illinois when slaves were freed,

and they started to tend farms outside a small town

called Metropolis.

♪♪

♪♪

Micheaux, because he was raised in a farm family,

really had this rugged individualism

and this hard work ethic.

He's five of 11 children.

♪♪

Kwei-Armah: His relationship with his mother was profound,

and it was profound because she probably had the ambition

of all of those who were enslaved,

which is one day, not only will we be free,

but we will be equal and have equity in this land.

♪♪

His mother was a great admirer of Booker T. Washington.

Booker T. Washington's great philosophy

was that education would lift black people up in America.

At Micheaux's time, there's all these legal barriers

to stop black folks from moving forward.

And education was really the only thing you could use

to break through some of these barriers,

and Micheaux used it to his full advantage.

He believed in kind of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

He believed in the whole notion of learning a skill

and combining that with kind of education

and really moving forward with that.

His trajectory from being a young man, or a teenager even,

was to get out of Metropolis, head north,

where there was opportunity, better money,

and thousands of black people

living in the black belt of Chicago.

[ Birds chirping ]

♪♪

He wasn't a slave anymore,

so the fact that a lot of black folks

there were able to be nomadic and travel

and be able to get great experiences

away from being in one place.

That's what also galvanized a lot of this energy and talent.

♪♪

Willmott: Well, Chicago is kind of exploding at that time.

You know, it is part of the Great Migration,

a lot of black folks leaving the South

to find the American dream, really.

♪♪

Stewart: It was a really powerful community

in the sense that there formed the basis

for a kind of political mobilization

and the creation of vibrant black culture

and black artistic communities.

And so this was a really important space

in which Micheaux could start to imagine

where he can make a name for himself.

♪♪

Peña: I think he was someone who looked forward.

And, you know, in many ways, the key experience for Micheaux,

I believe, was when he worked as a Pullman porter

on the American railroads.

[ Train whistle blows ]

[ Up-tempo jazz music plays ]

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♪♪

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Even though they were waiters

and sort of cabin people, people who made up rooms,

they did, in a sense, mingle

with very high-class white people

and talk to them and get to know them,

and I think Micheaux, in that experience, said,

"If these people can live like this,

I can live like this and African-Americans

can live like this."

♪♪

♪♪

It's no surprise to me that someone like Micheaux would,

like someone like Malcolm X, their early life,

their formative years be shaped by some degree

of working on the train, working on a railroad.

That's a defining sort of modernist impulse.

And so Micheaux is a part of that.

He is a part of this ebb and flow of culture and ideas

and imagination that the train really embodies.

McGilligan: He met people. He talked to them.

He got books from them.

He learned about society, about politics,

about entertainment in different cities.

♪♪

It really made him a worldly man,

much more than a lot of people

who spend their lives entirely in the Midwest.

[ Train rattling ]

♪♪

Pullman porters, at that point in time,

were both like the greatest job in the world for a black person,

but also the worst job in the world for a black person.

It's terrible because you have to pay for your uniform,

all your meals, laundering.

Eventually, you have no money out of your salary.

One of the things that all the Pullman porters did

was to sell tickets on board,

it was called, but not report that money

and then sometimes steal money.

He was, in fact, fired once for taking money.

They believed he took $5.

So what did he do, being Oscar Micheaux?

[ Laughs ]

He went to St. Louis,

where there was another Pullman porter operation.

He went through the same school and got hired all over again.

♪♪

There's no Internet, they're not checking on him,

and he starts running, you know, the southern route

in a different Pullman porter route.

♪♪

He had tremendous American spirit of "start over again,

let's do it."

He preaches idealism and purity, and sometimes he's...

is a little tricky over here,

getting things done any way he can.

♪♪

Stewart: There was a vast expanse in which

one could imagine one's future was huge.

And then on top of that, Oscar Micheaux

was always a very observant person.

And so as he was working the terrain

and probably doing a lot of shucking and jiving

and the kind of, like, performance that one had to do

to get good tips from white passengers,

he was also listening to them,

and he was listening to the conversations

that white businessmen were having about the opportunities

out West to buy land.

And so he begins to formulate his plans

for becoming a homesteader.

McGilligan: Land was cheap on the roads,

but you had to get the option of bidding

because you were drawn in a lottery.

But if you did, you had a chance if you had money,

and he knew that, and so he took that chance.

[ Robert Glasper's "Afro Blue" plays ]

♪♪

♪ Dream of a land my soul is from ♪

♪ I hear the hand stroke of a drum ♪

♪ Shades of delight ♪

♪ Cocoa hue ♪

♪ Rich as the night ♪

♪ Afro blue ♪

♪♪

♪♪

Willmott: Micheaux is really unique in that sense.

I mean, he wasn't afraid to be the only black person

in Gregory, South Dakota.

He wasn't afraid of that,

which a lot of black folks at that time

would have been very frightened about that.

I mean, this is a time of lynching where black folks

are being lynched all over the country.

Black life is not valued very high.

♪♪

♪♪

Land figures extremely prominently in his imagination

but in the life of black people of the time,

because many in the South were promised

their 40 acres and a mule and virtually no one gets that.

♪♪

♪♪

Micheaux, again, saw something, I think, different with that.

It was sort of running through some of the political theory

and some of the ideology of the time,

so I think land is symbolically important,

but to him, it embodied something more.

♪♪

He must have been quite a sight

to his neighbors in South Dakota,

and I think at the core was his work ethic.

I mean, even if he was going to

face some kind of social discrimination,

the fact of the matter was that he put the money together

to buy that land and he worked that land every day.

Why, Mr. Baptiste,

I've been looking for you all morning.

I'd begun to think that you weren't coming.

I'm sorry, I intended to be here much sooner,

but something held me up and I couldn't make it.

I hope you'll pardon the delay.

That's quite all right, perfectly all right.

Ultimately, he was able to gain the respect of his neighbors

because he demonstrated in his efforts

that he really was someone

who wanted to make this project work for him.

And I think the fact that he was in South Dakota

and had that unique experience out there

with his white neighbors, that's an experience

that a lot of black folks did not have at that time.

All agreed, Mr. Baptiste.

He can vote at home and work for you.

And I hope he pleases you.

If he does not, you just tell me and I'll attend to him.

Oh, that'll never be necessary.

I try to get along with everyone, Mr. Stewart,

and I'm sure that Bill and I will make it all right.

Well, I'll be running along now.

I'll look for the boy in the morning.

Father, dinner is ready.

Don't let Mr. Baptiste go yet. Ask him to stay for dinner.

By all means. I'd forgotten.

You must stay for dinner, young man.

In the meanwhile, meet my daughter, Miss Agnes,

Mr. Baptiste.

McGilligan: And he also had this dream that he would share it

with what he called "the one true woman."

He was always looking for the one true woman in his life.

While he went off in search of women

that he knew in New York, Chicago,

St. Louis, writing them letters,

seeing what they were like, were they available,

would they like to meet with him,

including his first wife, that he married out of Chicago

that was disastrous with a stillborn child on the Rosebud.

[ Wind blowing ]

♪♪

And the worst winter

of the several that he had lived through came.

♪♪

Frigid snow, then rain that turns to ice.

♪♪

And he was stuck in his little shack

because you don't go farming.

He was all alone. He felt he was at the end of his ropes.

♪♪

♪♪

And he had always admired writers

like Jack London and novels like "Martin Eden."

Jack London could write "Martin Eden"

as an autobiographical novel,

that he was going through this terrible physical struggle,

trying to live on the prairie,

that he, also, had been spurned by women,

that he, too, was also alone

against forces beyond his control.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

And he becomes not Oscar Micheaux, the failed...

landowner of the Rosebud.

He becomes Oscar Micheaux the successful novelist,

the black novelist telling the true story

of Black American life on the Rosebud.

London: He took his farming experience,

his experiences as a Pullman porter,

and he kind of translated that onto the written page.

♪♪

Then he kind of took the means

to kind of self-publish, as well --

self-publish and self-distribute these books.

McGilligan: Then he goes to all these neighbors who he's helped.

He'd go to the local bankers and he'd say,

"You give me a little money, you sign this,

I sell some books, I give you some money back."

They all invest in his life story.

He turns his first book

into what we guess is some kind of bestseller.

Good morning, madam.

Having been a Pullman porter,

he knows all these places in America, in his area.

He starts to travel, and he goes to the black communities,

and sometimes he's going door-to-door.

"My name is Oscar Micheaux. I've written this book.

It's my life story."

I have just what you want to be reading.

This is it.

A fine new novel by a Negro author.

Going door-to-door to sell the books.

I think it comes out of that small-town experience

that he had because

I think it was in that small-town experience

that he discovered that you could rely on others

to help you to move your art forward.

And you say it's by a colored author?

What's his name?

I forgot to get his name myself.

Um, here's his picture. Maybe his name is under it.

He has an intelligent face.

He really wanted to get his message out

to the race as a whole.

And so what better way than this new medium of cinema?

Not totally new, but new in the hands of black artists.

♪♪

Cinema has, I think he recognized,

the ability to mirror.

So when black audiences would look at other black characters

on the screen, which was rare at the time,

that could give them a different kind of visual sense

of what they could be.

It's a medium that allows someone

to reflect upon themselves,

their own identities and their own possibilities.

♪♪

Peña: This is a little bit before the American cinema

became sort of really industrialized and corporate.

Still, in the 19-teens,

it was very much a mom-and-pop operation.

There were a lot of very small film companies.

There were few, as they called them,

Negro film producers that were feeling that,

you know, "This is a new accessible technology.

We can make our own stories."

Stewart: Noble and George Johnson,

who ran the Lincoln Motion Picture Company,

made these really classy, inspiring stories

focused on sort of the middle and upper classes.

Peña: The two African-American brothers,

George and Noble Johnson,

wanted to make a film of Micheaux's third novel,

and they approached him and tried to buy the rights,

but they couldn't come up with enough money,

according to Micheaux.

They must have been like, "Who is this guy?"

Like, coming from nowhere.

He's got this self-published novel,

and he wants to dictate how the film is going to be made.

I mean, they're telling him, you know, maybe it can be two

or three reels, and he's imagining,

no, it's more like seven or eight reels,

and he has never made a film.

The idea is in Oscar Micheaux's head,

"I don't want it to be like a three-reel

or like Noble Johnson's, and this is all a big movie."

♪♪

"I could do this, and I don't need Noble Johnson."

♪♪

That's the kind of person he was.

He just said, "Oh, I'll make it."

♪♪

Prettyman: No one really walks off the street

at that point in time in the '20s and '30s

and says, "I'm going to make a film," right?

You have to have a kind of inroads

into that studio system, largely.

♪♪

Kwei-Armah: I mean, he would get on the phone

or he would write to people that he knew,

to people that he had charmed.

And he said, "This is my vision.

By hard work alone, I shall produce this work."

And people bought into that vision.

♪♪

Willmott: One of the things I've always loved about Micheaux

was that independent spirit, that thing of not letting

anything stop him from being his artistic self.

He gets a little small crew and drives out to Gregory,

South Dakota, to shoot a movie.

They've got the cameras in the back seat.

You've got to remember, too, there's no film school,

no one can teach you how to do this.

I mean, you've got to figure this out

pretty much on your own.

♪♪

♪♪

And I think all of that comes from

that experience in South Dakota.

You've got to go out in the middle of nowhere.

You've got to plant your seed.

You've got to grow the crop,

and then you've got to harvest it,

and then you've got to take it to market.

I mean, he does all of that with film.

♪♪

[ Applause ]

♪♪

♪♪

Micheaux is like that guy who's walking down the street

and he's playing the drum, playing the horns,

playing the keyboard, and he's doing it.

It was sort of crowd filmmaking, that the people

that are around you become a part of your practice,

a part of the process.

And that's a very kind of storied practice

in black filmmaking, that you find people around you

to fund your film, to make your film,

to help you distribute, to travel with you.

I mean, so it is, again, a community-based model.

That's why he's the patron saint of black filmmakers,

because he's like the ultimate independent filmmaker.

[ Gunshot ]

♪♪

♪♪

McGilligan: Micheaux was a big motion-picture fan,

but he didn't love everything he saw.

He hated "Birth of a Nation."

♪♪

"Birth of a Nation" was a real cultural phenomenon.

There had never been a film in the history of the United States

that had had that kind of impact.

More than any other single work, "Birth of a Nation"

transformed American cinema into the American film industry.

Griffith, in his own right, creates the language of film.

He's the first filmmaker

actually to use the juxtaposition

of close-ups and long shots and master shots and cutaways,

you know, in simultaneous action.

♪♪

♪♪

But he does it in the service of what I call

a science-fiction film.

♪♪

Science-fiction films show the fears of the time.

[ Gunshot ]

♪♪

♪♪

"Birth of a Nation" was such a horrendous film

for black folks in America,

and it led to lynchings

that led to the rebirth of the Klan.

♪♪

♪♪

And so he tries to respond to that film the best way he can.

♪♪

London: "Within Our Gates" was a film

that kind of tried to celebrate Black Americans,

especially the black middle class,

and I think that really kind of turned the narrative

of "The Birth of a Nation" on its head.

♪♪

Asante: The idea that we could be good, bad, mad, angry --

we could be all kinds of things --

it's a direct response to the framing of African-Americans

in "Birth of a Nation."

♪♪

It's a direct answer, which is, "That's not who we are.

This is who we are."

"The Birth of a Nation" features the coming together

of the white north and the white south

through romantic relationship.

And Micheaux does the same thing but with black characters.

A black woman from the South

has a variety of suitors to choose from,

but her relationship with a doctor from the North

is one way that Micheaux is demonstrating the kind of

healing of the black community across regional divides

and a creation of a black uplift marriage

that's going to disprove all of the things about black people

that "The Birth of a Nation" is suggesting.

♪♪

He's speaking to the future of the race,

and that is really emphatic.

It doesn't always make for the most...

kind of like escapist viewing experience.

Instead, it's like he's holding a kind of magnifying glass

to American race relations and really making you look at things

that you had not appreciated with the naked eye.

♪♪

♪♪

Oscar Micheaux, in 1920, in doing that film,

getting that onto American movie screens,

having the guts to go out and do that

and show what he thought was the truth of America

is so far out on the envelope,

it's almost beyond the realm of what's actually possible,

I think, of that time period.

Audiences were completely stunned.

I was stunned when I saw it 60 years later.

♪♪

♪♪

And so we immediately, as a band at that time,

began to make a record about this African-American filmmaker.

We started spending a lot of time with Oscar

and all these films, and the music was like --

[Exhales sharply] -- you know.

It was so compelling that it came out very rapidly.

♪♪

♪♪

Peña: I think one can see, especially,

the flashback in "Within Our Gates"

as a kind of response to Griffith,

but in a certain way, to a certain kind of racism

that was very --

unfortunately very present in the United States.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

He was very much wanting to speak back to

a false narrative, a dishonest narrative

that Griffith propagates in his film.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

And very much, also, wanting to create some space

for black people to tell their version

of what often happens, for instance, with a lynching --

that there is often no crime, right?

He wanted to make sure that those things were clear.

♪♪

♪♪

"Birth of a Nation" makes lynching of black folks

a positive thing.

And the fact that Micheaux takes those kind of counter-images

that he constructs himself

and targets them directly back at "Birth of a Nation"

is a really, really powerful thing at the time.

♪♪

♪♪

When they showed the mob attack the young boy...

♪♪

and they hang his parents, those kind of images...

you know, you've got to understand,

those were very shocking at that time.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

In Micheaux's films, they're not documentary footage,

but they're documentary elements.

These are things that are happening in society

and to the black community.

And he takes those things and he weaves them within the story.

♪♪

"Within Our Gates" is kind of an example of that.

And Spike does that. You know, I do that with my films.

Obviously, he didn't do it the way we did it

in "BlacKkKlansman" or "5 Bloods."

But in essence, it's the same kind of idea.

And I think Micheaux was one of the first people

to really do that on a major scale.

I think we can get our head around,

in 1919, knowing, you know, we're in Jim Crow era.

We're in times of mass discrimination

and segregated America.

♪ Swing low ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ Swing low ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪♪

I think what you have to understand about American racism

is that it was very much built around the idea of segregation.

That is my school, your school, my bathroom, your bathroom.

Segregation was about space,

and as long as you stayed in your space,

you could do a fair amount.

♪♪

Whether it be food, shelter, clothing, entertainment --

all these things that we said, "Well, we know what we like.

We don't see this for us.

We're going to see if we can do for self."

♪ Swing low ♪

♪ Sweet chariot, yes ♪

♪ Coming for to carry me home ♪

So, segregation was isolating,

it was restrictive, it was dangerous, it was scary.

There were tremendous limitations.

But segregation was also, in many spaces, safety

and comfort and familiarity.

♪♪

All of the black leaders and artists and figures

in history during this period,

they found a way to use segregation to their advantage,

and Micheaux is one of the best examples of that.

♪♪

African-Americans were able to develop, within those spaces,

their own institutions.

So since they had their own theater,

they had their own literature, they had their own churches,

why not have their own cinema?

So in a way, that's where Micheaux fits in.

♪♪

Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to open

the primetime revue.

All right, boys, hit it!

♪♪

Willmott: Hollywood, for the most part, is not making,

not telling our story.

They're not making black films.

And so Micheaux has kind of the corner on the market

in that sense.

He uses that to his advantage.

And so it was kind of the best of times

and the worst of times.

For the Negro people at the time, to see oneself

or a vision of oneself that is moving and animated

and giving off life,

you know what I mean, was a phenomenon.

For me, a movie doesn't become a movie

until it meets an audience,

and that's something that Oscar Micheaux

knew and understood.

He was making films about subjects and issues

that mattered to black people and that mattered, full stop.

[ "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" plays ]

♪♪

Scott-Heron: You will not be able to stay home, brother.

♪♪

You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.

You will not be able to lose yourself on skag

and skip out for beer during commercials

because the revolution will not be televised.

He was showing history from the African-American point of view,

and his films are very powerful and modern

in terms of their ideas, in terms of their style,

and in terms of their budgetary gloss.

♪♪

Peña: Have read that he wasn't a good filmmaker.

I, on the contrary, and many others think that's

because he was a kind of almost experimental filmmaker,

that he was really somebody who played with form

in a very interesting way.

♪♪

[ Woman vocalizing ]

♪♪

He took what he could borrow from things that he likes,

so you see scenes in "Body and Soul"

that are very German expressionist.

Very, very striking, especially when he's doing scenes

with nature and wind storms, which he loved wind.

♪♪

♪♪

So he was very sophisticated,

sometimes in the lighting and in the composition.

♪♪

London: The film that strikes me the most

from Oscar Micheaux's filmography

is "Body and Soul."

I'm a fan of Paul Robeson, and so to see an early work

by Micheaux of a young Paul Robeson

is incredible to me.

Oh, Micheaux was so good at casting!

He was so good at discovering people.

Paul Robeson -- he was an all-American football player.

He had graduated from law school.

He was already known as a serious actor.

This is about 1923, '24.

Paul Robeson doesn't show up in other motion pictures

until the early 1930s.

It's Oscar Micheaux who says, "Paul Robeson.

He's amazing."

♪♪

Prettyman: In "Body and Soul," we have Paul Robeson

playing these two twins.

And people have different readings of the film,

but for me, "Body and Soul" represents

people who would prey on other black people.

♪♪

That was one of the targets that you see

in almost all of his movies

is he takes his shot at these jackleg preachers.

♪♪

Jackleg preachers were preachers

that were basically con men --

you know, preachers that took folks' money --

innocent folks' money --

and kind of used religion to really manipulate them

and to really steal from them ultimately.

♪♪

♪♪

Micheaux was never afraid to sort of --

what could you say?

As one newspaper accused him,

"wash the dirty linen of the community in public."

Prettyman: It's an important sort of commentary

of black cultural and religious life

when some in the black community wanted him to.

They wanted a kind of pristine treatment of black life,

and he didn't want to do that.

He wanted to show some of the complexity

and some of the contradictions and, again,

ways in which they might have been exploiting each other,

pastors and preachers exploiting their own people.

Willmott: He wasn't, like, anti-God or anti-religion.

I think he was a man of faith, actually,

but he saw religion as a tool

being used against black folks in many ways.

And it very much kind of, you know --

talking about the televangelist kind of preachers

that will come later on in American life.

♪♪

♪♪

The more difficult part

was really the distribution and exhibition

because those sectors were very quickly taken over

by the big Hollywood studios.

♪♪

[ Train whistle blows ]

♪♪

[ Birds chirping ]

[ Horn honks ]

♪♪

The idea that someone will say, "Here.

Here's what I'm going to do.

I'm also going to get on the train and bring my movies

to the movie theaters and play them.

I'm going to make sure that they're seen.

I'm not going to wait on anybody else to do it.

I'm simply going to do it."

Now the amount of person hours that must have taken

to literally have your film under your arm

and turn up and play it.

♪♪

He never gets a real great distribution deal.

He did it all those years pretty much on his own.

But it was really great how he did it

because he connected with black churches.

He connected with black organizations.

He created a black network of movie theaters.

[ Jazz standard plays ]

♪♪

♪ Down South, the banjos cry, too ♪

♪ Deep blues, the darkest sky, too ♪

♪ When the moonbeam's on the bayou ♪

♪ That's how rhythm was born ♪

Every major city that had an African-American community,

there would be cinemas there,

and Micheaux would sort of strike deals

with the owners of these movie theaters

to have their films play at certain times of the week.

♪♪

Willmott: Most of them were white movie theaters

that would allow blacks to come in after hours,

They called it midnight rambles, where black folks could come in

oftentimes around 10:00 or 11:00,

maybe even midnight to show a film,

and Micheaux was there, and black audiences are hungry

to see themselves on the screen.

♪♪

♪♪

And not only was he sort of selling his films

and showing his films himself,

traveling to this network of black theaters,

but while he was at the theaters,

talking to the managers about what cut he would get

from the box office and so forth,

he was also making deals to fund his next films.

♪♪

Peña: He would spend maybe a couple of weeks

in New York, two or three weeks,

then he would take the same print

and then go to Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia,

maybe go to Pittsburgh, and from Pittsburgh,

go to Washington -- very often carrying the prints themselves,

you know, from place to place.

And eventually, they would hit

just about every African-American community.

♪♪

He would travel and take the film cans --

film prints himself to each location,

sometimes even disguising the name of the film

to kind of evade the censors and avoid them cutting up

his original prints.

If Doctor Jalop should augur,

then go see Captain Renfrew.

You know where he lives --

the big house on the hill.

♪♪

Willmott: He's responding to the suffering of black folks

in the nation at the time.

And so the things he wanted to show on film

connected specifically to those issues.

My mother's sick, Doctor.

Who is it?

She's been taken suddenly with --

The fat Negress who lives in the house on 12th Street.

Isn't she?

No, Caroline Sanders owes me a $5 doctor bill already.

I'm tired of you Negroes running up doctor bills

nobody can collect.

Never have any money.

"Within Our Gates," which we spoke about before, was banned,

I believe in Chicago and maybe in a couple of other places.

Why? Well, because of course, it showed a lynching.

♪♪

All of those things he knew that he wanted to do were things

that the black audiences really wanted to see.

He knew that hunger for telling the real black experience.

He felt that the ways in which he was being censored,

these were not just affronts to his artistic vision,

but they were politically motivated.

These were attempts to try to keep black people

from really feeling

and seeing the weight of the political messages

that he was including in his films.

And he was resisting that over and over and over again.

♪♪

♪♪

There were some cases in which he would take the seal

that he got for another film and put it on a new film

so that it seemed like that one had passed

the censor board when really it hadn't.

He was slapped on the wrist for that.

He made around 40 films.

He did this during a time when African-Americans

were restricted from so many different types of activities.

♪♪

And it is like an archeological dig,

I reference often.

You know, I'd love to sit with all of them.

I'd wish the miracle that rather than 80 percent

of them are un-found, that maybe it was the other way 'round --

that 80 percent of them will be found.

Willmott: Their job was to get the movie made,

try to get it out there best you can,

try to find the audience, maybe make your money back,

maybe make some money if you were lucky.

It wasn't preserving those films.

♪♪

[ Speaking Italian ]

♪♪

[ Jazz standard plays ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Oh, Mr. Hawkins, I see you're here.

Uh, let me take your hat and cane.

♪♪

♪♪

You know, Harlem is the capital of Black America.

And at that time, it was the most exciting place

for a black person to be in the country.

♪ Chicago's all right, it's got Wrigley Field ♪

♪ and Soldier's Field and Marshall Field ♪

♪ And it's on a nice lake ♪

♪ But it hasn't got the hansoms in the park ♪

♪ It hasn't got a skyline after dark ♪

♪ That's why New York's my home ♪

♪ Never let me leave it ♪

♪ New York's my home sweet home ♪

Micheaux probably moved to New York because Harlem

had become the biggest black belt in America.

♪♪

Enjoyable to live

but also is a place where he could raise money,

meet people.

It allowed him to really connect to a black audience

and to the black community in a way he'd never had before.

[ Up-tempo jazz music playing ]

♪♪

♪♪

Intellectually, artistically, politically,

fires were being set.

Inspirations were being propelled into the mainstream,

into the consciousness of your fellow man and woman.

♪♪

So many amazing figures that came out at that time

that formed a kind of little nucleus,

which we call the Harlem Renaissance.

So he would have been mixing and mingling with

the cream of the crop of writers and artists and painters

that were living in Harlem both before,

after, and during the Harlem Renaissance.

♪♪

♪♪

It was the only place in the country like that.

And so he was surrounded by people

trying to do the same thing he was doing.

The thing that's that's really unique about him

in Harlem, though, is that no one else

is really able to make independent films

the way he did in Harlem.

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

♪♪

Peña: "Murder in Harlem" -- it's another film

that has last-minute surprises

and people popping out of the shadows.

♪♪

I've been in love with you for a long time.

Come on, little one. Give me a kiss.

♪♪

And there's Oscar Micheaux, playing

a little role in the movie.

Another one.

"That tall Negro did this.

He will try to lay it on the night."

Big and charming.

"Tall Negro."

"He will try to lay it on the night."

What can it mean?

He's like a P.T. Barnum with his presence.

I'm tall. But why, they...

No, no. They couldn't be trying to lay this on me.

I don't know anything about it, except finding a body.

I am a --

Come, we're taking you with us.

Come on.

And there's Oscar Micheaux's wife.

A very, very important person.

Alice B. Russell.

♪♪

Very refined, very quiet, in the background,

monitoring and making sure things

are going according to plan.

No need pretending you don't hear me,

'cause I'm gonna fix you anyhow.

[ Dramatic music plays ]

♪♪

♪♪

It's kind of influenced by this actual murder

that took place in the South

that had led to the lynching of a Jewish person.

He took that story and kind of moves it around

and makes it about, really, the black community.

♪♪

♪♪

[ Clock chiming ]

There's a wonderful moment in the film that I love very much,

which is, if you recall,

it starts off with, like, an African-American night watchman.

[ Whimsical music plays ]

♪♪

And he's going around with his flashlight and whatever.

♪♪

Suddenly, the flashlight hits upon

the dead body of a woman.

♪♪

♪♪

And suddenly, he does something which is so amazing.

He just looks at the camera,

and he looks at the camera for like maybe 10 seconds,

almost as if to say, "Oh, my God.

I'm African-American. She's white.

I'm going to get in trouble."

[ Frantic music plays ]

♪♪

♪♪

It's a very modern film in that sense,

that he's responding

to what's happening right at that moment.

And people would -- everybody still does that.

When something big happens in the news,

people immediately try to capitalize on that

and make a film that directly speaks to that.

And that's what Micheaux was trying to do.

[ Singing operatically ]

♪♪

Sound becomes incorporated into filmmaking in 1927.

♪♪

This was a challenge for many filmmakers,

and it was a huge challenge for independent filmmakers

and certainly black independent filmmakers.

Micheaux was the only one who could make the transition

from silent filmmaking to sound filmmaking

because he was able to talk up the financing

to be able to do it.

♪♪

♪♪

Micheaux's 1931 film "The Exile" is the first

black independent sound film.

♪♪

I kind of think they're all the same in many ways, you know?

That the novels kind of become the films in some ways.

A lot of the themes of the novels

end up being in his films.

♪♪

McGilligan: Based on his second-to-last novel

called "The Wind from Nowhere,"

which is a rewrite of his first novel

and his third novel -- again, his life story on the Rosebud.

Morning, Miss. My name is Baptiste.

I'm calling to see a Mr. Stewart

about hiring his boy.

Is he in?

Yes. Will you come in?

Thanks.

♪♪

He was always interested in race

in terms of kind of interested

in interracial relationships -- love relationships.

Father, dinner is ready.

Don't let Mr. Baptiste go yet. Ask him to stay for dinner.

By all means. I'd forgotten.

You must stay for dinner, young man.

That's a common kind of theme in a lot of his stories.

And I think, you know,

people kind of speculate that he might have had

a relationship out there in Gregory.

♪♪

Well, he had a personal experience on the Rosebud

that deeply affected him.

Now, he was very conscious of laws

that forbade white women to marry black men

or black women to marry white men.

And he finds himself, one day, getting attracted to someone

whose name we can't be sure of.

We know she exists because he wrote about her many times.

She was probably Scottish,

the daughter of another settler,

blonde, white.

Sometimes I hardly know whether I'm awake

or dreaming this.

I only know that I'm happy.

Very happy.

Although I've just met you, dear,

you've been in my heart for years and years.

At some point, he's alone with her,

and they fall into each other's arms and probably make love.

You are the first one I have ever loved.

Oh, my darling.

♪♪

Because he's not a prude -- he's not a prudish guy,

and he was very attracted to her.

And this caused him no end of heartbreak

because he felt he couldn't marry her

because it was against the law.

♪♪

♪♪

Interracial relationship was an important issue

for Micheaux, as it is still today,

because it's kind of that final barrier in many ways,

you know, when interracial relationships are --

when people have to, in a sense,

accept someone of another race in their family.

The idea I think Micheaux had

is if you can break that barrier down in some ways,

everything racially moves forward.

Kiss me.

♪♪

We know that he also dealt with some

controversial subject matters like interracial marriage.

But specifically, I think his treatment of women

is really interesting.

He was telling stories in the way that we should.

We should give women characters, obviously, dimension.

We need to give black characters dimension.

And we should offer them complexity.

You know, that's one of the things that I'm always

really grateful to him for.

Psst!

Sissy!

Sissy!

And I often have an issue with the phrase, you know,

one is "ahead of their time."

I think Oscar Micheaux was right where he needed to be

in terms of the way he told his stories.

Moreover, it really is

and was society that was behind the times.

Hello, Mr. Martin. Come right in.

Hello, Bev. How are you?

Fine, Gary. How are you?

Oh, just so-so.

you tell me it is.

It isn't worthwhile. I'm only going to stay a few minutes.

You can at least sit down.

Well, thank you.

You know, I'm casting a picture.

And I want a girl to play [Indistinct].

Just a touch of life in one of his Harlem places,

you understand?

I think if you were to say that Oscar Micheaux

was a silent filmmaker who never really comfortably

transitioned to sound, you would not be far off.

♪♪

If you look at his silent films the ones that we have --

such as "Within Our Gates," "Symbol of the Unconquered,"

"Body and Soul" -- they're very fluid,

you know, and they're very inventive,

and he feels really at home with it.

♪♪

The transition to sound was really dramatic.

The fact that you couldn't move the camera

with the same kind of freedom.

You wished to see me?

Pardon me, but this is...?

Ida Morton, thank you.

And that there was a kind of eloquence to silent film,

the nuances of acting, instead of having to speak up.

Gary Martin.

The motion-picture producer?

Well, something like that, I guess.

Oh, I'm delighted! Glad! Everything!

You know, these early sound films,

people are really loud and the dialogue seems corny.

Oh, Mr. Martin, whatever can you wish to speak with me about?

Pictures -- motion pictures.

How would you like to work in one?

Oh, how would I like to go to Heaven without dying?

I think it really paralyzed Micheaux a little bit, formally.

♪♪

♪♪

[ Speaking Italian ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

I think you can draw a direct line

from an Oscar Micheaux to a Spike Lee

to a Sam Pollard to a Shaka King.

And so for young filmmakers, this is an incredible story

that you can draw inspiration from.

So absolutely, every black filmmaker

has Oscar Micheaux to thank for opening the door.

♪♪

Asante: I'm working in development on a project now

that is set exactly in the period

that Oscar began making films,

and his work is an important kind of document

and an important element of research for me,

to see the world through the eyes

of a black man at the time,

as opposed to the framing that African-Americans

were given at the time on screen,

which was, outside of Oscar,

always through white people, really.

The winner is Sidney Poitier.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Announcer: Mr. Poitier is the first Negro

to win such a high award,

and the announcement is received warmly by the audience.

[ Applause ]

It is a long journey to this moment.

I am naturally indebted to countless numbers of people.

For all of them, oh, I should say a very special thank you.

[ Applause ]

♪♪

Peña: As America began to finally move somewhat away

from the sort of segregationist regime

that it was and Hollywood began to employ people

like Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier

and other very fine African-American actors --

not only employ them but to give them dignified roles.

African-American audiences, as well as others,

flocked to these movies and were very supportive of the them.

♪♪

The Civil Rights movement and everything,

looking toward this new amazing opportunity

that's happening and this new, exciting success

that black folks are having on the big screen,

it makes Micheaux fade away and disappear.

♪♪

Stewart: He was still pretty much saying

the same kinds of things that he was saying in 1919, 1920,

about lifting yourself up by the bootstraps,

not necessarily engaged in a more nuanced critique

of white systems of oppression.

♪♪

Willmott: But it's interesting because

it's also the Civil Rights movement that rediscover him.

People start to want to honor black history,

and people want to know kind of where we came from.

And when people started to look back,

one of the first people they found in a film was,

of course, Oscar Micheaux.

♪♪

McGilligan: 1951, he was 67 years old.

Everybody who saw him in his final years

said he was disheartened, even bitter,

and nearly broke.

♪ I did not become someone different ♪

♪ That I did not want to be ♪

♪ But I'm new here ♪

♪ Will you show me around? ♪

♪ No matter how far wrong you've gone ♪

♪ You can always turn around ♪

McGilligan: We don't know why he was in Charlotte, where he died.

Knowing Micheaux, even if he was dying,

he was probably selling, you know, his books.

But it's one of many mysteries about him.

There are mysteries that remain to be discovered about him,

and I think that's for the next generation.

♪♪

♪♪

Okay, Oscar.

All right.

♪♪

I'm Bernice Gray.

I'm a proud cousin of Oscar Micheaux.

All right.

Now.

Pastor: You're not perfect, but you're usable.

♪♪

I may be favored, but I got my flaws.

♪ Mm, mm, mm ♪

♪ Mm, mm ♪

♪♪

♪ Mm, mm, mm ♪

♪ Mm, mm ♪

McGilligan: And Metropolis is such a podunk today.

It has lost its cachet

as an important little place in southern Illinois,

that they were desperate to create some image

for themselves.

And they decided to declare themselves the home of Superman.

♪ Mm, hmm, hmm, mm ♪

It's typical United States of America.

They will salute fictional heroes like Superman

or Rocky in Philadelphia,

based on the film, as opposed to the real people,

especially the real black people who have lived there.

♪♪

Oscar Micheaux is the real Superman

because he didn't allow kryptonite to stop him.

He didn't allow anything to stop him.

And they threw everything they had at him,

and he still was able to get the job done.

♪♪

The first time I saw Oscar Micheaux,

I was in high school.

I was struck by his direct attitude,

and why was the attitude important?

Because the attitude is contrary to the stereotype.

He was great before, but there were barriers to him.

He would be great today.

♪♪

In all fairness, you have to fight for history.

You just can't say history is going to happen.

You have to fight for it and fight for the memory

because past is past no matter what.

So you've got to fight for the remembrance of the past.

♪ Your local superhero from the hood ♪

♪ Iron Man Stark's got the good ♪

♪ Not that good-good like Snoop, I bulletproofed the Coop ♪

♪ Polished up the suit and gathered the troops ♪

♪ Got a brand new ray gun ♪

♪ Me and DOOM heading down to the range ♪

♪ To shoot in the matrix ♪

♪ Catch bullets with my hands and teeth ♪

♪ I break faces ♪

♪ Wild car chases, don of all ages ♪

♪ I saved the world, that's fucking history pages ♪

♪ My Wu crescent shines in the sky at night ♪

♪ Watch how my eagle on my wrist take off into flight ♪

♪ All my might, white glass teeth that write ♪

♪ Ain't a bird or a plane, it's a ghost on the mic ♪

♪ Two hammers and a diamond-blade sword ♪

♪ Thicker than the Ford F-150, niggas couldn't lift me ♪

♪ As if, stance mad stiff ♪

♪ Metal Face DOOM, beware, he bear gifts ♪

♪ Cab for the shift, overwork, overtime ♪

♪ Jerk, you been warned, go for mine ♪

♪ In the dance hall, play the wall like handball ♪

♪ Till his pants fall, brawl till last call ♪

♪ Loose cannon, squeeze drip ♪

♪ Off to rip this one for the Gipper, get gypped ♪

♪ That nig, ya dig? Don't tip the strippers ♪

♪ Foamposite mask, matching slippers ♪

♪ Yo, where's Starks? Backpack of ammo ♪

♪ Warriors said, "Let your flags blow," camo ♪

♪ These dudes is toys like Wham-O ♪

♪ Damn though, chip paint driving on the gravel ♪

♪ With the Lambo ♪

♪ Blam-o ♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪