Top-Tier Alternatives In the Shadow of The Homesteader: Cult Guide

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A young black Harvard graduate fights against a variety of obstacles, including racist opposition, in order to build a school for black children.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Wages of Sin perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Film producer Winston L. Jaune gives his brother J. Lee a job in his company. J. Lee promptly steals company funds, spends lavishly in cabarets, at wild parties, and on women. Hw thereby put the company in financial difficulties.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A malevolent phony preacher plots to take advantage of a woman from his congregation who happens to be in love with his long-estranged identical twin brother.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Body and Soul perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A young man named Jean in post-World War I Chicago falls in love with a beautiful girl named Edith. He proposes to her, but realizes that she's involved in the rackets and won't leave them, so he goes back home to South Dakota, where he becomes a successful rancher. There he falls for a white girl, but guilt drives him back to Chicago, where he runs into Edith again, and they agree to marry. When Edith is later found murdered, Jean is blamed for the crime.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A US cavalry officer rescues a mixed race girl, raised in Africa, from slavers.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Exile perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Helen Ware, an artist's model, known as the Brown Venus is sad, discouraged and unhappy. When her men friends learn that she often poses nude, they try to become unduly "friendly" or just shun her, with the result that a beautiful girl with the figure of a Goddess finds herself without a lover. In desperation, she goes to a notorious night club and is later seen about to start on the downward trail. In New York's Harlem section, gangdom is running riot. Gangster Kid Cotton kills a man and runs away with the man's sweetheart, who is unaware of the crime until she reads about it in a newspaper at the "Mad Mullah" club in Chicago. Helen is near their table, overhears their discussion of the killing, and later finds herself involved in the case. Government undercover man Robert Fletcher trails Cotton to Chicago, and a peculiar twist of fate brings Helen to his hotel room, and a most intimate situation follows. Cotton sets up a numbers bank in Chicago in opposition the the policy gang, and a gang war breaks out. Gomez and his gang are rubbed out and Cotton becomes the king of the underworld. But the dragnet, thrown around him by Fletcher, begins to tighten.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A black night watchman at a chemical factory finds the body of a murdered white woman. After he reports it, he finds himself accused of the murder.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of A Daughter of the Congo perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A movie producer offers a nightclub singer a role in his latest film, but all he really wants to do is bed her. She knows, but accepts anyway. Meanwhile, a patron at the club gets a note saying that she'll soon get another note, and that she will be killed ten minutes after that.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A traditional minstrel show with an all black cast. It shows a choir singing and a vaudeville act of a comedy duo. It also levels criticism at a certain social class of the African-American community by using some racial stereotypes.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

The misadventures of a man who accepted a bet to spend a night in a haunted house.