Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux was a pioneering African American filmmaker, writer, and entrepreneur, who played a significant role in the early 20th-century film industry. Born in southern Illinois in 1884 to parents who had been enslaved, Micheaux faced racial challenges throughout his life. After moving to Chicago and working various jobs, including as a Pullman porter, he became acutely aware of racial dynamics, which would heavily influence his creative work.
Micheaux began his literary career by writing autobiographical novels, including "The Conquest" and "The Homesteader," which he self-published and promoted. His transition to filmmaking came when he decided to produce "The Homesteader" as a film in 1919, marking the start of his prolific career in cinema. Over his lifetime, he directed and produced approximately forty films, many of which addressed complex issues such as race relations and sexuality, challenging the negative stereotypes prevalent in mainstream media.
Despite facing numerous obstacles, including limited budgets and declining popularity in his later years, Micheaux's impact on film and literature remains significant. His work laid the groundwork for future African American filmmakers and helped to create a space for Black narratives in the arts. Micheaux passed away in 1951, leaving behind a lasting legacy marked by his independent spirit and commitment to authentic representation.
Subject Terms
Oscar Micheaux
- Born: January 2, 1884
- Birthplace: Metropolis, Illinois
- Died: March 25, 1951
- Place of death: Charlotte, North Carolina
Filmmaker and writer
Micheaux was the most prolific and original African American filmmaker of the early twentieth century. He rose from shoeshine boy and Pullman porter to become a true pioneer, first as a homesteader in South Dakota and then as a writer, director, and producer.
Areas of achievement: Business; Film: direction; Film: production
Early Life
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (DEH-vuh-roh mee-SHOW) was born on a farm in southern Illinois, just six miles north of the Ohio River. His parents, Belle Gough and Calvin Micheaux, were both born into slavery in western Kentucky. The fifth of eleven children, Micheaux received a basic education in the segregated schools of Metropolis, Illinois, but yearned to leave home. At the age of sixteen, he traveled north, taking several factory jobs in central Illinois before moving to Chicago’s South Side in early 1902.
Micheaux worked intermittently as an unskilled industrial laborer and shoeshine boy—all in the Chicago area—before taking one of the most prestigious jobs for African Americans in the early twentieth century: porter on a Pullman railroad car. As Micheaux crisscrossed the country from 1902 to 1905, he was captivated by the beauty and potential of the American West. In 1904, while still employed as a Pullman porter, he used his savings to purchase a 160-acre homestead in south central South Dakota on land that had once been part of the Rosebud Reservation of the Brule Sioux.
In 1905, Micheaux moved to his homestead, building a small sod house and wooden barn and plowing the land for corn, flax, and oats. Because African American farmers were rare in South Dakota, Micheaux lived for the first time in a majority-white environment, which made him highly conscious of racial differences.
Life’s Work
In 1910, Micheaux married Orlean McCracken, the daughter of a Chicago African Methodist Episcopal Church elder. The couple lived together in South Dakota for one year before separating. Depressed by his marital problems, as well as by severe drought and financial difficulties, Micheaux wrote his first novel, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913). Highly autobiographical and self-published, the novel followed protagonist Oscar Devereaux from birth in southern Illinois to becoming a Pullman porter and homesteader in South Dakota.
Micheaux energetically promoted and distributed the book himself, selling enough copies to write and publish two more autobiographical novels in rapid succession: The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races (1915) and The Homesteader (1917). The latter attracted the attention of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, which produced “race pictures,” low-budget films with all-black casts for black audiences. During negotiations, Micheaux balked at some of Lincoln’s conditions and decided to make the film himself.
Although Micheaux had no formal training or experience in the film business, he had finally found his calling. The film version of The Homesteader (1919) not only received positive reviews, but also stirred immense controversy because it dared to address race relations, sexuality, and hypocritical preachers (supposedly based on Micheaux’s father-in-law). As he had done with his novels, Micheaux promoted and distributed the film himself, forging connections with African American theater owners around the country.
From 1919 to 1929, Micheaux wrote, directed, and produced at least twenty feature-length silent films (the authorship of several others is not confirmed), establishing a reputation as the most significant African American filmmaker of the early twentieth century. His second film, Within Our Gates (1920), was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1992. Other notable silents included The House Behind the Cedars (1924), based on a Charles W. Chesnutt novel, and Body and Soul (1925), starring Paul Robeson in his screen debut.
The seventeen feature-length talking pictures Micheaux made from 1930 to 1948 were generally less successful, often repeating the same themes as his silent films and created on paltry budgets with low production values. Because of his declining popularity as a filmmaker, Micheaux resumed writing fiction between 1941 and 1947, publishing four more novels that were less autobiographical than his earlier works. With his health failing, Micheaux sought medical treatment in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he died in 1951.
Significance
At a time when African Americans remained largely invisible in the film industry, Micheaux was a one-man tour de force, not only writing, directing, and producing approximately forty films, but also vigorously promoting and distributing them around the country. Throughout his thirty-year film career, he remained an original, independent, energetic entrepreneur. Directly addressing many controversial issues, especially race relations, Micheaux’s films and novels shattered the stereotypically subservient roles assigned to African Americans in mainstream culture. Because only fifteen of Micheaux’s films survive, his reputation rests on an incomplete but influential body of work.
Bibliography
Bowser, Pearl, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser, eds. Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. This collection of fourteen essays situates Micheaux in a broad historical context and is accompanied by three authoritative filmographies.
Bowser, Pearl, and Louise Spence. Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. The authors demonstrate how Micheaux exploited his own life story in the creation and promotion of his twenty silent films.
Green, J. Ronald. Straight Lick: The Cinema of Oscar Micheaux. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Green examines Micheaux’s major themes, goals, and cinematic style, noting the significance of racial uplift in the filmmaker’s oeuvre.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. With a Crooked Stick: The Films of Oscar Micheaux. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Although Micheaux made approximately forty films, only fifteen have survived. Green incisively analyzes the latter in detail.
McGilligan, Patrick. Oscar Micheaux, the Great and Only: The Life of America’s First Black Filmmaker. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. This carefully researched biography explores some of the many mysteries and contradictions in Micheaux’s life and career.
Young, Joseph A. Black Novelist as White Racist: The Myth of Black Inferiority in the Novels of Oscar Micheaux. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. Young examines six of Micheaux’s seven novels, discerning how they may perpetuate negative stereotypes of African Americans.