Post 3, Griffith and Micheaux: Within Our Gates (1919)

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Post 3, Griffith and Micheaux
Black film-maker Oscar Micheaux’s film Within Our Gates (1919) on the racial history and politics history of the U.S. and challenges the characterization of southern blacks, especially the sharecroppers. Micheaux’s film was partly in response to Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) film that represented blacks as useful to provide labor to white and warns against full citizenship to African Americans as they would also exert vengeful violence. African Americans suffered under the lynch laws in states like Mississippi, with the trauma and injustice affecting them even decades later as shown by Micheaux.
The film Within Our Gates was made for black audiences where there were black heroes and emphasized the need to guarantee their freedoms. The issue of black identity highlights how different issues shaped them includes racial identity rural life versus urban life in the industrial cities, African American migration to the north and interracial relations including the discrimination of blacks. Griffith downplayed the importance of racial equality in the U.S. instead highlighting at the south lost during and after Reconstruction, and there was a need to defend white people. The two films have different takes on America’s racial history as Griffith demonized blacks, while Micheaux emphasized their resilience and the devastating impact of racism and slavery on the black community.
The heroes in The Birth of a Nation are the white men and the director supports the Ku Klux Klan’s role in ‘protecting’ white people, but blacks are the heroes in Within Our Gates who persevered despite the obstacles they faced. Griffith represented blacks were as inferior and overly aggressive that they targeted the white women and violence was necessary to protect all whites from blacks. Despite blacks being under the constant threat of violence and lynching Griffith treats them as the great...