Oscar Micheaux: Deterred But Not Defeated

Long before Spike Lee directed his first film, before we ever knew the name Morgan Freeman, even before Sidney Poitier captured America’s attention, another Black film director left an indelible mark on cinema.

His name was Oscar Micheaux, and over the better part of three decades, he would direct an astounding 44 feature films while writing seven novels. His story has some key lessons for us.

Micheaux was born in rural Illinois in 1884, the son of former slaves, before eventually settling as a homesteader on a farm in South Dakota.

He led a steady life in agrarian America initially, but when a major drought hit the planes and Micheaux’s wife delivered a stillborn son, she decided to move back to Illinois alone, and he was left nearly penniless.

Deterred but not defeated, he used his time alone to become a literary connoisseur, penning newspaper pieces and writing memoirs about his experiences as an African-American man in the Midwest. He sprinkled in themes of romance and murder to his work, knowing that they would appeal to wide audiences.

One of his books, “The Homesteader,” was so popular that a black-owned film company approached him about converting it into a movie. Instead, Micheaux decided to produce it himself.

He would work on countless other provocative films, many of them silent, about taboo subjects that frustrated both Black and White audiences.

“Black audiences were sometimes upset over the depiction of the lower black class. Whites did not like the depiction of racist villainy,” The New York Times recently wrote.

Micheaux died in Charlotte, N.C., in 1954, but he left behind a transcendent legacy that has some pivotal lessons for us today.

Micheaux was a visionary and an iconoclast whose work largely focused on what he knew best. He used adversity — of which he encountered plenty — as opportunity, and he was unapologetic about offending some people on occasion.

We don’t have to have his background, the same skillset or the same ambitions. But we’d all benefit from applying some of Oscar Micheaux’s fortitude, confidence and unwavering ability to navigate criticism.

His story is one we should know.

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