Deep Archive Finds in the Vein of Within Our Gates: Cult Guide

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

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

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

The Homesteader involves six principal characters, the leading one being Jean Baptiste (Charles Lucas), a homesteader far off in the Dakotas, the lone African American living in the area. To this wilderness arrives Jack Stewart, a Scotsman, with his motherless daughter, Agnes (Iris Hall), who doesn't know that she is biracial. In Agnes, Baptiste meets the girl of his dreams. Peculiar fate threw her in the company of the Homesteader, but, because Baptiste is black and Agnes is presumably white, their love is forbidden by law. Baptiste eventually sacrifices the love of this girl of his dreams, goes back to his own people and marries Orlean, the daughter of a black preacher named McCarthy. McCarthy, the embodiment of vanity, deceit and hypocrisy, really admires the marriage his daughter has made. He speaks of the "rich" young man she has married, praises him to the highest. Baptiste does not know, however, that McCarthy requires and is in the habit of having people praise him. Baptiste does not do it because he is not of the temperament to do so. Because of this failure grows the tragedy of mismarriage to Orlean (Evelyn Preer), a sweet girl, kind and good, but like her mother, without the strength of her convictions. Baptiste, Orlean having failed him, is persecuted by McCarthy and by Ethel (McCarthy's other daughter), who, like her father, possesses all the evil a woman is capable of; she is married to weak-kneed Glavis. In the end, Orlean, driven insane by the evil she had been the innocent cause of, rights a wrong which causes Baptiste to go back to his land in the Dakotas, where he finds the girl he first discovered. Later, he learns[by whom?] the truth about her race and the story has a beautiful ending.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

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

An undercover government agent on a case in Mississipi meets and falls in love with a beautiful young woman who's being menaced by a local crime boss. He rescues the girl, and they leave Mississippi and head to Harlem, but their troubles follow them: they become involved in the murder of a local crime boss there.

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

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 visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Girl from Chicago 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

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

Dir: Oscar Micheaux

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Ten Minutes to Live perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

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

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 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.