The Symbol of the Unconquered
Pioneers of African-American Cinema • 59m
Oscar Micheaux • United States • 1920
Oscar Micheaux's response to BIRTH OF A NATION.
A response, of sorts, to D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. In Oscar Micheaux’s rendition, the Klan (here renamed the Knights of the Black Cross) is not an organization devoted to racial purity, but a gang of common thieves using violence and intimidation to steal a prospector’s valuable property.
Up Next in Pioneers of African-American Cinema
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Two Knights of Vaudeville
United States • 1915
The Ebony Film Corporation may have been a white-owned company, but African-American producer Luther Pollard used it as a means of getting black faces on the silver screen. Luther often worked in collaboration with his brother Fritz, a star athlete who later became the first...
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Veiled Aristocrats
Oscar Micheaux • United States • 1932
VEILED ARISTOCRATS exists in incomplete form, but the missing footage does not impair one’s enjoyment of this drama—punctuated with song-and-dance numbers—of a woman wrestling with the decision of marrying a successful light-skinned man, or an idealistic ent...
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Within Our Gates
Oscar Micheaux • United States • 1920
An unflinching portrayal of racial violence.
During her attempts to secure funding for an impoverished school serving the black community, an idealistic young teacher confronts her traumatic past, including the lynching of her parents by a white mob. Still ...
