ux Film and Book Corporation, later known as the Micheaux Film Corporation. This company was founded in 1918 and would continue producing films through the 1920s and 1930s (Sampson 42). Most of these films would be considered "C"-grade as Hollywood productions, and the lack of quality was a function of inadequate finances and little experience (Sampson 82).
Snead finds that the origins of the black film movement can be traced back to events in 1896. In New York, Thomas Edison demonstrated a major advance in film technology with large-screen projection; the second event was the Supreme court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson which endorsed "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites, a decision that would stand until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. This divided the potential film audience into two segments, one white and one black, and with the increasing negative images of blacks in white films, blacks sought to show their own films in their own theaters (Snead, "Images of Blacks" 16). The first black-owned movie theater opened in Chicago in 1905, and the opening of the first theater was accompanied by elements that would mark picture exhibition to this community in the era before the Depression: 1) there was an appeal specially directed to the black audience of the theater; 2) there was live entertainment rooted in African-American culture; and 3) it showed that race was a factor affecting access to mass entertainment:
In Chicago's black community, the picture houses provided a space for consciousness and assertion of social difference as well as the consumption of mass amusements (Carbine 234).
Oscar Micheaux was the leading black filmmaker of the silent era as far as artistic ability is concerned, and he addressed issues of black life directly, including the sensitive issue of race relations. Oscar Micheaux's film Within Our Gates (1919) offers a more ambiguous resolution of conflict and presents a more tro...