Black & White Movie Night: “Within Our Gates”

Our second Black & White Movie Night! In honor of Black History Month, we are showing impactful silent film Within Our Gates (1919). Written, produced, and directed by Oscar Micheaux, this film is considered the earliest known surviving film by a black director. The film is considered a response to D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation in which the Ku Klux Klan is shown in a heroic light.

Summary of Within Our Gates via the Library of Congress: Abandoned by her fiancé, an educated negro woman with a shocking past dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished negro youths. Within Our Gates was created in response to The Birth of a Nation which depicted southern whites in need of the Ku Klux Klan to protect them from blood thirsty blacks. Micheaux shows the reality of Dixie racism in 1920, where a black man could be lynched for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Retired university professor and film historian Steve Schroer will provide an educational introduction for Within Our Gates and will host an open discussion for interested participants after the film.

Free popcorn provided by Woodbury 10 Theatre.

Please be advised: this film depicts numerous racial epithets, unfair and inaccurate portrayals of black culture and a two brief scenes depicting lynching. We are mindful of these harmful themes and encourage the audience to view this film as a learning opportunity, not a promotion or acceptance of those practices and mindsets.