Oscar Micheaux was an African-American author, film director and independent producer.
Background
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was born on January 2, 1884, on a farm near Metropolis, Illinois. He was the son of Calvin Michaux and Belle Willingham Michaux. His background and life are obscure, but according to his thinly disguised autobiographical novel, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer, by the Pioneer (1913), he was one of thirteen children, and the grandson of a slave. Shortly after Micheaux's birth, the family moved to Metropolis in order to further the children's education.
Education
Micheaux attended the local "colored" school for a few years but returned with his family to the farm, where he worked as a vegetable vendor, an occupation that enabled him to escape the drudgery of farm work and revealed his talent for promotion.
Career
Micheaux rebelled against the "shouting Methodism" of his mother and became known in Metropolis as a worldly freethinker. He left town when he was seventeen and worked briefly in a railroad-car factory and in a coal mine in southern Illinois before going to live with an older brother in Chicago, where he worked at the Union Stock Yards and held other irregular jobs. While working as a Pullman car porter, Micheaux learned from passengers of the opportunities for homesteading land in South Dakota. In 1904 he staked a claim in Megory County on what had been the Little Crow Reservation. He was the only black in the area, but he prospered and, by his own estimation, was worth more than $20, 000 by the time he was twenty-four. Around 1908, Micheaux embarked on a career as an author and promoter of his writings. After publication of The Conquest in 1913 he started traveling, particularly in the South, advertising his book and his ideas. An ardent follower of Booker T. Washington, he believed in the efficacy of initiative as a solution to poverty and attacked blacks for their alleged criminality, lack of education, and especially for their lack of incentive. Out of this promotional experience in the South came Micheaux's The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races (1915). After his third book, The Homesteader (1917), Micheaux turned to a new medium, film. Approached for the motion picture rights to The Homesteader, he agreed to sell with the stipulation that he be allowed to direct the film. When his terms were refused, Micheaux decided to produce the movie himself. He raised the necessary money by the unusual method of soliciting advances against the rental of the film from owners or operators of movie houses, black and white. The Homesteader (1919) is considered by cinema historians to be the first all-black, full-length American film. Over the next three decades Micheaux produced thirty-three more movies. Micheaux's low-budget productions were filmed on location at his New York City headquarters in four to six weeks. According to those who knew Micheaux during this period, he was impressive and mysterious. He would appear suddenly in Philadelphia or New York, wearing a wide-brimmed Western hat, and announce that he was planning a new movie. He used black players from established stage companies in the East, and several famous black actors appeared in his films, including Paul Robeson, whose first film role was in Body and Soul (1924). Micheaux made his first talking picture, The Exile, in 1931. During his years making movies, Micheaux also continued to write novels. The literary historian Robert A. Bone has called these later works "crude success fantasies". Micheaux died in Charlotte, N. C. , during a promotional tour of the South.
Achievements
Oscar produced the first African-American feature film production and keeping the African-American independent movie production alive from 1918 thru 1948. In 1996, Micheaux was posthumously inducted into the Director's Guild of America for his many contributions and in 1987, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (star located on Hollywood Blvd. ). Each year the National Black Programming Consortium presents the Oscar Micheaux Award to an accomplished, deserving media professional or entertainer whose work embodies the creativity, dedication and pioneering spirit of Micheaux in the development, production and presentation of programing depicting people of color and their culture throughout the world in non-stereotypical ways. In 1989, the Directors Guild of America honored Micheaux with a Golden Jubilee Special Award. The Producers Guild of America created an annual award in his name. In 1989, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame gave him a posthumous award. Gregory, South Dakota holds an annual Oscar Micheaux Film Festival. In 2001 Oscar Micheaux Golden Anniversary Festival (March 24–25) Great Bend, Kansas. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Oscar Micheaux on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. On June 22, 2010, the US Postal Service issued a 44-cent, Oscar Micheaux commemorative stamp. In 2011, the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia created a category for donors, the Micheaux Society, in honor of Micheaux. Midnight Ramble: Oscar Micheaux and the Story of Race Movies (1994) is a documentary whose title refers to the early 20th-century practice of some segregated cinemas of screening films for African-American audiences only at matinees and midnight. The documentary was produced by Pamela Thomas, directed by Pearl Bowser and Bestor Cram, and written by Clyde Taylor. It was first aired on the PBS show The American Experience in 1994, and released in 2004.
Views
Micheaux explored variations in genre in his films, although real or fancied miscegenation often served as the basis of plots. Daughter of the Congo (1930) had an African background; Underworld (1936) was a gangster film. In his last movie, The Betrayal (1948), he returned to the theme of the black homesteader in South Dakota in love with a white woman.
Quotations:
"Your self image is so powerful it unwittingly becomes your destiny. "
"There is no barrier to success which diligence and perseverance cannot hurdle. "
"One of the greatest tasks of my life has been to teach the colored man he can be anything. "
"It is only by presenting those portions of the race in my pictures, in the light and backround of their true state, that we can raise our people to greater heights. "
"Every race man and woman should cast aside their skepticism regarding the Negro's ability as a motion picture star. "
"We want to see our lives dramatized on the screen as we are living it, the same as other people, the world over. "
"What I like best is a good story with a moral. "
"Honest, intelligent criticism is an aid to the progress of an effort. "
"Moving pictures have become one of the greatest revitalizing forces in race adjustment. "
"My long experience with all classes of humanity had made me somewhat of a student of human nature. "
"I have always tried. .. to lay before the colored race a cross section of it's own life, to view the colored heart from close range. "
Connections
Micheaux fell in love with a white woman, the daughter of a neighbor, but married a black woman from Chicago, a minister's daughter who subsequently returned to her father. On March 20, 1926, Micheaux married Alice B. Russell, an actress who had appeared in his movies.
Father:
Calvin Swan Micheaux
1859 - 1932
Mother:
Bell Gough Micheaux
1856 - 1918
Wife:
Alice Burton Russell
June 30, 1892 – December 1984
Was an African-American actress.
