Within Our Gates

Oscar Micheaux, Micheaux Book and Film, opened Chicago January 1920. Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) tries to raise money for a Southern school and is pulled back into a lynching she survived. Library of Congress calls it the earliest known surviving feature directed by an African American. The print we have is a Spanish one, La Negra; most English titles were rebuilt in 1993 from Micheaux's novels and Body and Soul. Chicago's board sat on it for months. The Defender later advertised that 1,200 feet had already been cut.