richardmurray

Community Service Labor - a friend of mine stated the following idea: Mayor Mamdani can use community service to get people to shovel the snow instead of hiring people for twenty eight dollars an hour. I [them not richard murray] argue it can be used for many things, to bring forth community. In Amendment- I searched to see what can be used for community service in NYC, how many acquire community service in NYC and realized it is many. It is an idea that can work. The problem is that, this cuts against the revenue earning philosophy of labor. To be blunt, the problem is, the USA has a heritage of individuals abusing labor from other individuals to make fiscal fortunes while it has a heritage of laborers upholding a fantasy of merited labor as the basis of labor in the usa. Said two heritages have mutated to become an inability of people in the usa to accept that their labor doesn't warrant financial return no matter what it is, while the wealthy want to use tools to make a permanent fiscal underclass which temporally will never occur. Wisdom which is something only experience or natural inclination can generate in humans prove that all things end and all things include the use of any tool or the existence of any government. When? who knows outside nature, but it will happen. INFORMATION I FOUND New York City community service -> HOW DO I KNOW IF I CAN DO COMMUNITY SERVICE FOR MY VIOLATION?: You will be allowed to do community service, instead of paying a fine, only if your summons is on this list [ LOOK BELOW] and if: You admit to the charge that is listed on the summons on or before the hearing date that is printed on your summons; or After your OATH hearing, you receive a decision where the Hearing Officer says that you have the option to perform community service. COMMUNITY SERVICE OPTIONS: If any one of the above items is true and you would like to do community service, then you can choose one of the following options to satisfy your summons' community service requirement: If this list shows that you can do either one or two hours of community service, then you can either: complete an online educational course; or complete the community service over the phone. If this list shows that you can do three hours of community service, then you can complete the community service by webcam; or You can complete the community service in person, in our Help Center office. website https://www.nyc.gov/site/oath/help-center/oath-community-service.page List of New York City penalties you can get community service for. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/oath/downloads/pdf/CJRA-Penalty-Chart-effective.pdf New York State community service standard https://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/opca/communityservicestandards.htm POST URL Do you believe in first come first serve in hiring? Would you implement community service to expand the labor force? https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12584-do-you-believe-in-first-come-first-serve-in-hiring/ PRIOR EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/675-economic-corner-37-03102026/ NEXT EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/682-economic-corner-39-03242026/ COMMENT 03152026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12584-do-you-believe-in-first-come-first-serve-in-hiring/#findComment-80714 osted just now @Pioneer1 I have relatives who were alive during that time, most of those jobs went to whites though blacks did get some and considering black hiring in the private sector which was corretly 99% white didn't hire blacks, that action from FDR was huge for black people in the arena of labor. @ProfD 8 hours ago, ProfD said: Sure, i believe in 1st come 1st served in hiring as long as folks are *qualified* to do the *work*. hmmm, qualification standards in labor in the united states of america has two historic problems, which are still relevant in modernity. 1) qualifications being met rarely equate to the quality of performance by one in a job. for example, many lawyers or engineers exists in the usa , to fit in any demographic category, and yet, the judgable performance of lawyers/elected officials who are mostly lawyers/corporate executive officiers who are mostly lawyers/engineers/the ceos who are engineers through private practices, laws made in government, publicly traded firms products or operations are very poor in the united states of america. The proof that qualifications being met don't relate to quality in the job is throughout the usa in many examples. 2)qualifications rarely matter to the acquisition of a job. I don't need to remind anybody not white or male that only from 1980 onward has a majority of jobs in the usa been remotely possible for someone not white male christian to acquire. I can tell you from my own parents how many jobs they were denied for being black. They fit all of those stated qualifications and it didn't mean a damn thing cause the person in charge of hiring, whether they admitted it or not, was looking for someone white, and probably a friend or relative, in opposition to caring about stated qualifications for whatever labor they offer. So I comprehend your desire to have first come first serve attached to some qualification, assuming the qualification can be made even which... is doubtful. But, qualifications to be blunt, is another form of gatekeeping on job opportunities, which straightly impedes the goal of getting jobs moving. Now maybe you are arguing that the qualifications set for most jobs in the usa are erroneous or negative or imbalanced to the jobs in question. But that goes back to the lack of quality to whomever is in charge or the labor opportunities. Meeting halfway, I think a better thing isn't to have qualifications , but to have more well defined probationary periods, not one period but periods. MEaning most jobs have an unwritten probationary period or a probationary period that is unchallenging. I argue, all jobs expose what you know or don't know, what skills you have or don't have , to perform the task any job need. For example, a brain surgeon, instead of a degree or doctor of philosophy from the massachuestts institute of technology, what if a first probationary period determing whether you are a decent doctor is key? do you know how to fill out forms, handle cuts bruises, handle emergency situations with many injured, speak to the ill plus their loving ones. if you show you do then you go to the next tier. in the next tier, can you stitch a stomach wound, scan perform an invasive procedure in the arm. 03162026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12584-do-you-believe-in-first-come-first-serve-in-hiring/#findComment-80731 osted just now @ProfD 18 hours ago, ProfD said: I would prefer that a brain surgeon be *qualified* to perform that work. Nobody wants their head cut open & brain exposed by someone who watched a few Youtube videos & think they got it. I would prefer too, all would and will prefer, but the question is what determines qualification? the key is the question of how is qualifications determined? When relatives of mine have been malpracticed on by doctors, what was the penalty to said doctors, who are supposedly qualified because of pieces of paper from columbia and MIT and Johns Hopkins? the answer is nothing. So, your correct, all people want the best healthcare BUT what determines the person who is the best? pieces of paper. Again, the united states of america is a case study on the lack of quality. The Newspapers reporters or owners are clearly lacking in quality because Hospitals have daily malpractice suits, from supposed qualified folk , supposedly trained to be the best doctors Law Enforcement agencies have mounds of domestic violence or domestic abuse claims unattended from supposedly qualified folk, supposedly trained to be the best law enforcers. Billion Dollar firms in the usa continually are bankrupt and need saving administered by supposedly qualified folk, supposedly trained to be the best business operators or lawyers. The Newspapers will put on page one when a black child steals an apple or a black adult holds a knife. But medical malpractice in the united states of america has always been rampant, and always protected from negative public opinion by media. And medical malpractice occurs from those supposedly qualified so... where is their demerit? how are they then unqualified? Don't tell me a doctor that has medical malpractice is still qualified. And for anyone who feels doctors have earned the right of mistake, well I want you to lose someone you love right now and then tell me how you feel. Law Enforcement costs the usa billions in civil court because of law enforcers committing crimes. PEople talk about city budget but the NYPD has cost NYC since the 1970s billions of dollars in civil court. And, lets not go into the fact that the NYPD alone has a much longer history of criminal activity that it was completely protected from. So , do their badges burn when their fail in quality? How do they remain qualified ? When the entire banking industry went bankrupt in the united states of america filled with massachusetts of institute of technology graduates, doesn't that mean MIT's teaching qualifications or Goldman Sach's and simila firms accounting qualifications are proven false? Don't tell me it was their plan to go bankrupt and beg for money worse than any black woman on welfare ever did, or as well as white women on welfare have. Yes, people learning online may be no better as doctors or law enforcers or corporate executive officers but if they are learning from what is given in a short time, how is that worse than people supposedly trained to be the best whom have already shown a lack of quality and lost any admission of qualification if honest? I don't sense penalty in the usa for those who are supposedly qualified to do anything, whether it is failing elected officials, failing corporate executive officers, failing doctors , failing law enforcers all of whom are plenty in modern day , 2026 , usa. So maybe first come first serve as a penalty for proving oneself unqualified is the answer. 03172026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12584-do-you-believe-in-first-come-first-serve-in-hiring/#findComment-80737 osted just now @ProfD 19 hours ago, ProfD said: Qualifications are determined & taught by subject matter experts in a given field. who or what determines who is a subject matter expert? better questions... who does profd rely on to determine who is a subject matter expect? how does profd determine who is a subject matter expert? I will speak for myself and say, pieces of paper mean nothing to me in determining if someone is an expert 19 hours ago, ProfD said: Reads like your relatives didn't hire the *right* lawyers. let's jump beyond my relatives, all the black people in the usa who deal with tons of abuses, sometimes leading to death, daily, from law enforcers, from banks, from hospitals. I assume you feel the answer to these abusers is in the court room? So these abusers outside of being penalized after someone takes them to court or just free to continue? 19 hours ago, ProfD said: any people &/or their families have won medical malpractice lawsuits. Doctors with a track record of failure lose their medical licenses. not most people win medical malpractice lawsuits let alone as you asserted earlier, most people provide a lawsuit from this little unimportant thing to you called fiscal poverty. why does a track record have to occur? how many errors on a record warrant demeriting? Funny, when a black child steals an apple, black people have no mercy in claiming that child did a wrong above wrongs but a white man with a piece of paper, needs how many strikes before he is outcase as a doctor? what number is it exactly? Or is it a random number? Gardless, most doctors with a track record of failure don't lose their license, and more importantly , in the usa at least, most doctors are allowed at least one failure which goes to my point. qualifications mean nothing when no penalty exist. 19 hours ago, ProfD said: ll jurisdictions put a certain amount aside for civil litigation. Are you suggesting the city of new york has a surplus of cash left from its reservoir of losing lawsuit money. You do realize what your saying? I hope you do. Your telling me NYC had 1.5 billion dollars prepared for 2024 for civil litigation, who gave them this money? the federal government has never done anything like that. NYC gets money from new york state which it has to beg for every year, without new york state money new york city is collapsed with no question. Your telling me NY state gave ny city 1.5 billion dollars in preparation:) come on! but ok, if that is your position, just give me a yes or no and be gone https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/city-paid-1-45b-in-settlements-last-fiscal-year-nyc-comptroller-finds-in-fy-2023-claims-report/ 19 hours ago, ProfD said: Some law enforcement officers have been stripped of their badges or fired or imprisoned for committing crimes. not most, this goes back to the jim crow era, the black populace in the usa from 1865 to 1980 had millions of cases that never went to court based on white terrorism. Millions of cases. I am 100% certain less than one percent of the law enforcers who abused black people at any given year from 1865 to 2026, any year, not one percent of the combined years, less than one percent of any given year. And I extend that to all fiedls. to restate, less than one percent of the incidents of law enforcers who serve white no matter their phenotype, doctors who serve white no matter their phenotype, white owned firms abusing/terrorizing/harming black people were taken to court in any given year from 1865 to 2026. So then from the less than one percent of court cases that even were started by black people against their white abusers in whatever form, then you have the rate of success of court cases which means ten percent of cases had success. Cause white law enforcement/ white medical services /white fiscal firms usually win ninety percent of the time. So, ten percent of less than one percent which is VALUE: if WhiteTerror ~ to millions of incidents of terror by white to blacks per year VLAUE= (WhiteTerror/.99/10) Your correct, it is some, the question then is, to any black person, is that some something you respect or view positively or not. I view it as feces, you view it as something to be noted. ok, even enough 19 hours ago, ProfD said: Failure of banking systems is a function of greed fueled by risky & bad investments. The qualified people know exactly what they're doing even if it means running a business into the ground. A logic people like you keep saying makes no sense to people like me, you keep touting greed as a negative element in fiscal capitalsim, when by default greed is inherent. Greed has nothing to do with it. The fiscally successful business is greedy. The fiscally ruinous business is greedy. It is quality and the point is, a failing business is not a sign of positive quality. By your words, a firm failing or succeeding is not a measure of quality. Because someone you deem qualified no matter what results you can't delete your deeming, cause you consider the results of their actions never warranting declassficiation or dequalification. That is dysfunctional to me, but ok. 19 hours ago, ProfD said: Experience & track record among other factors separates the amateurs & pros. Are you saying that those you label amateur are not qualified and those you label pros are qualified? the issue here is qualification . You have now added two terms that in my mind have nothing to do with qualification. 19 hours ago, ProfD said: There are penalties for failure. We don't always hear about it. Qualifications do not equal perfection. Humans are flawed. They will make mistakes too. However, I believe legitimate doctors save more lives than they lose. I don't know everything that happens in humanity, your right. I can only guess everything that happens in humanity. But I can tell you from all that I have heard, less than one percent of those deemed qualified gets penalty for harming black people in the usa. I promised the following beforehand , I hope everyone in your family get sick in hospitals, hurt by law enforcement and cheated by firms and then tell me about mistakes. That is third term you have added, to me, legitimate/amateur/pros are unrelated terms to qualified or qualification. Legitimate means of the law. The law can't qualify anything outside the law. Quality is a measure of oneself. A law's quality is in the law itself, its results. A doctors quality is in the doctors results. a law enforcers quality is in how they enforce the law. a fiscal firms quality is in their ability to make money/fiscus. Amateur/lover + professional/pros/one who does a thing are misused words in modernity that have nothing to do with their literal intent, it is another linguistic statianism. But one deemed an amateur in modernity is differenced by one deemed a professional in modernity by revenue to labor or scale to profit. But as for the gathering of doctors in the usa, do I think they heal[not just save lives] more than they harm[not just murder]? that is a great question you pose. sadfully, I don't know. I can't give a weight to either side. I know doctors in the usa have harmed and are harming, while also healed and are healing. Belief in this case will require me to give benefit of doubt to the usa or its people and i never have and never will, the majority of people in the usa will always be scum for me. 03172026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12584-do-you-believe-in-first-come-first-serve-in-hiring/#findComment-80740 osted just now @ProfD 1 hour ago, ProfD said: Herein lies your issue. It is with the system of racism white supremacy. Please share your idea(s) of how to dismantle it. Well, I treat each government in humanity individually. China isn't the usa, the usa isn't nigeria, nigeria isn't bolivia. governments have alliances or agreements but those ties can be changed or manipulated... I don't have an issue with any system in the usa because in my view, the usa is what it always was starting from european colonies and always will be, a country composed of various peoples who are dysfunctional as groups with nothing in common in an integrated chaos led by individuals continually funneled in by immigration from various peoples outside the usa who keep it afloat with their individuality in various arenas from government to finance. To rephase, a potent shithole of individuals. Benjamin Franklin who published join or die begged england to bend a little to keep the colonies in the english empire. Thomas Jefferson alone wrote the declaration while he and all of his peers in private showed total disbelief to everything he wrote. George Wahsington went against nearly all his peers and stepped down voluntarily. James Forten , a black man, was a business owner literally fighting aside white men who felt the 95% of black people enslaved to whites had to stay in that condition. All these show the actions of individuals. If Franklin acted as the group he was apart of he wouldn't had made the newspaper snake, if jefferson acted as the group he was apart of he would never had written the declaration as is, if washington acted as the group he was apart of he would had been kind, if forten acted as the group he was apart of he would have fought against the creation of the usa 100%. But, all of them are individuals. That is the usa system. Faux Community. And you see this consistently all the time in the usa. Individuals using groups , screwing over groups, lying about their intent being best for groups. I only have one issue with the usa or its people and it is in the very declaration of independence, it is lies. I don't like liars , I never have, and I never try to lie. but the usa's individualism loves to lie, breeds liars all over, and that does get to me, admittedly. Outside of that, i am merely speaking the truth to the usa. 1 hour ago, ProfD said: Not sure of why you would hope that everyone in my family suffers misfortune. However, I can assure you that being keenly aware of the ups & downs of life & ultimately human mortality, I've never been adversely affected emotionally by it including my own family members, friends & associates. Such is a part of life. To answer why I said the following prior, I despise quoting myself, but ... 22 hours ago, richardmurray said: And for anyone who feels doctors have earned the right of mistake, well I want you to lose someone you love right now and then tell me how you feel. in the following comment https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12584-do-you-believe-in-first-come-first-serve-in-hiring/#findComment-80731 1 hour ago, ProfD said: I'm not surprised. it comes through in your posts. yes, even as a kid, and while I can tell personal events in my life or sad history before my life, if I am blunt, I just don't care for the USA. In my mind I think, it makes sense that some black descneded of enslaved will not like the usa in their blood. Absent proof, even spiritual proof, it makes sense a little bit.

ECONOMIC CORNER Two Types of learning with modern computing, none or it all MY THOUGHTS The problem is the issue isn't learning, the issue is fiscal capitalism. First no one can learn everything, the fact that someone suggest one person can learn everything is a terrible lie. On the reverse side, people using modern computing as a crutch to get through their labors without working is true too. It isn't that they are learning nothing. The problem isn't how people are using the tools but how the tools are used in context with fiscal capitalism. For example, a child in an indios/native American village with a connection to the internet is not going to become financially wealthy through the use of modern computing. It isn't an accident that inheritance is still the majority delivery of wealth between generations. All the models of fiscal wealth building and you still have people selling some technology can break that mold. In modernity, the tools to learning are more expansive, more interwoven than arguably any time before in human history. But, work ethic or learning has never been connected to fiscal wealth. Again, if work ethic or learning led to fiscal wealth, every single enslaved populace in the history of humanity would had ended up fiscally wealthy. History proves most if not all enslaved populaces do not end up fiscally wealthy and if anything end up being branches of the slaving populace. Why? because wealth is about destructive power, and knowledge isn't inherently destructive power, nor is education destructive power, nor is work ethic destructive power. Bill Duke [ https://x.com/RealBillDuke ] reposted Mark Cuban just described the sharpest divide in the modern economy. And most people are already on the wrong side of it. Cuban: “There’s two types of approaches to AI. Some people who use it so they don’t have to learn anything, and some people who use it so they have the opportunity to learn everything.” Two sentences. The entire future of human capital compressed into a single binary. The first group sees the most powerful knowledge infrastructure ever built and uses it to avoid thinking. They offload reasoning, skip the friction, and call it efficiency. What they’re actually doing is hollowing out the one thing that can’t be replicated. Their own cognition. Cuban: “AI is a tool, it’s a way to learn, it’s a democratization of knowledge.” For centuries, elite knowledge was locked behind institutions, geography, and capital. The right university. The right city. The right network. Entire generations of potential buried because the information was never accessible. That wall just came down permanently. The second group understands what that actually means. Same tool. Compressing decades of learning into months. Entire disciplines on demand. Mental models that once required years of expensive education now available to anyone willing to ask the right questions. The knowledge is democratized. The ambition is not. That’s the divide Cuban is actually describing. Not technical literacy. Not access. Pure cognitive initiative. The first group is outsourcing their mind. The second is expanding it. Atrophy doesn’t announce itself. It just arrives. https://x.com/r0ck3t23/status/2031003976619962406 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 | 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 from Ann - Michelle Thurmond URL https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amthurmond_aistrategy-operatingmodel-governance-activity-7431680492623638528-Z9je?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAC9jwHcBhMdyfurNH2JmdlAPjJgXHivmWR8 EMBED MY REPLY yeah, exactly, computers are here, no matter the power level, and definitely at the level called AI. So the issue is how to use them. And in the usa i argue, the same model is being used as in the gold/oil rushes. most are spending money on tech they can't afford or will cost them eventually, like land deeds or spikes. The profiteers are the ones providing services and buying and reselling or leasing products. but they are also learning the better practices. it is a hands on approach. POST URL LEarning USing Modern Computing If you were teaching a person in your home today, any age, how would you use or not use the computer programming commonly called artificially intelligent? https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12583-learning-using-modern-computing/ PRIOR EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/664-economic-corner-36-02282026/ NEXT EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/676-economic-corner-38-03102026/

OSCAR MICHEAUX THEATER https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/677-oscar-devereaux-micheaux-books-plus-films/ "Within Our Gates" from OScar Micheaux Still from Within Our Gates, portraying the lynching of Jasper Landry (William Stark) and his wife (Mattie Edwards) Still from the 1920 Oscar Micheaux film Within Our Gates featuring Grant Gorman and Evelyn Preer Title Within our gates Summary Sylvia Landry, a young black woman, is visiting her cousin, Alma Prichard, in the North. After Alma uses her wicked step-brother Larry to break Sylvia's engagement, Sylvia returns to the South. She meets Rev. Jacobs, a minister who runs a school for black children, which is facing closure. Sylvia volunteers to go to Boston to attempt to raise funds. Upon arriving, her purse is stolen, but a local man, Dr. Vivian, manages to get it back for her. Dr. Vivian falls in love with Sylvia, and gradually learns of her tragic past: her adoptive mother and father were both the victims of lynching and she was the victim of attempted rape, after a meeting between her adoptive father, sharecropper Jasper Landry, and the plantation owner, Philip Girdlestone, ends with Girdlestone dead. Meanwhile, despite setbacks, Sylvia has managed to raise $50,000 for the school from a generous philanthropist. After a second difficult encounter with Larry, Sylvia and Dr. Vivian are happily reunited. Names Micheaux, Oscar, 1884-1951, film director, film producer, screenwriter, actor Preer, Evelyn, actor Clements, Flo, actor Lucas, Charles D., actor Ruffin, James D., actor Chenault, Jack, actor Jacks, S. T. (Samuel True), 1887-1955, actor Starks, William, 1879-1937, actor Edwards, Mattie, 1866-1944, actor Micheaux Film Corporation, production company Created / Published 1993. Headings - African American educators - African American schools - African American physicians - Hoodlums--United States - Educational benefactors--United States - Race relations - Racism--United States - Lynching--United States Genre Race films Social problem films Silent films Feature films Fiction films Notes - Originally released in the U.S. in 1920 by the Micheaux Book and Film Co. and Quality Amusement Corporation, both under the states rights system. - At approximately 46 minutes into the film, Oscar Micheaux appears in a cameo as a criminal doing business with the gambler, Larry Prichard, who is Alma's step-brother. - LC also holds the Spanish language version, entitled La Negra in the AFI/Filmoteca Española Collection and a 1/2 in. viewing copy entitled The African American cinema I : Oscar Micheaux's Within our gates in the LC Collection. - Sources used: Eagan, D. America's film legacy, p. 64-68; AFI catalog online, viewed March 22, 2024; Internet movie database, March 22, 2024; San Francisco Silent Flm Festival WWW site viewed March 22, 2024 (Within our gates essay). - Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, Charles D. Lucas, James D. Ruffin, Jack Chenault, S.T. Jacks, Mrs. Evelyn, William Stark, Mattie Edwards, Ralph Johnson, Grant Gorman, E.G. Tatum, Grant Edwards, Jimmie Cook, William Smith, Bernice Ladd, Oscar Micheaux. - Reconstructed in 1993 from a nitrate print of La Negra, a version with Spanish language intertitles. The new English language intertitles are a translation from the Spanish back into English, with English diction, slang, and syntax drawn whenever possible from Oscar Micheaux's novels or from his 1925 film, Body and soul. - This film was selected for the National Film Registry. Medium 1 video file (digital) (78 min.) : si., b&w. Source Collection AFI/Filmoteca Española Collection (Library of Congress) Digital Id https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mbrsmi/ntscrm.00046435 Library of Congress Control Number 2024600507 Online Format image video LCCN Permalink https://lccn.loc.gov/2024600507 Additional Metadata Formats MARCXML Record MODS Record Dublin Core Record CITATION Chicago citation style: Micheaux, Oscar, Film Director, Film Producer, Screenwriter, Actor, Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, Charles D Lucas, James D Ruffin, Jack Chenault, S. T Jacks, William Starks, and Mattie Edwards. Within Our Gates. produceds by Micheaux Film Corporationuction Company 1993. Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/2024600507/. APA citation style: Micheaux, O., Preer, E., Clements, F., Lucas, C. D., Ruffin, J. D., Chenault, J. [...] Edwards, M. (1993) Within Our Gates. Micheaux Film Corporationuction Company, prod [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2024600507/. MLA citation style: Micheaux, Oscar, Film Director, Film Producer, Screenwriter, Actor, et al. Within Our Gates. prod by Micheaux Film Corporationuction Company 1993. Video. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2024600507/>. Format Film, Video Contributor Chenault, Jack Clements, Flo Edwards, Mattie Jacks, S. T. (Samuel True) Lucas, Charles D. Micheaux Film Corporation Micheaux, Oscar Preer, Evelyn Ruffin, James D. Starks, William Dates 1993 Location United States Language No Linguistic Content Not Applicable Subject African American Educators African American Physicians African American Schools Educational Benefactors Feature Films Fiction Films Hoodlums Lynching Race Films Race Relations Racism Silent Films Social Problem Films United States "Within Our Gates 1920" review from Movies That Move We Video link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pDDAem6CS8 Embed video 0:1717 secondsHey, 0:3333 secondsWhat does it mean to tell your own story when the world has decided it doesn't want to hear it? 0:4141 secondsWhat does it cost personally, 0:4444 secondsfinancially, spiritually to force truth onto a screen that which 0:5151 secondsthe entire industry was built to suppress? That question is at the center of what we'll be discussing today. And I 0:5858 secondsthink the question makes Oscar Marco one of the most important figures in American film history, not just black 1:061 minute, 6 secondsfilm history, American history. Welcome back to Movies That Move We. I'm Nay and 1:121 minute, 12 secondstoday we're going to deep dive into one silent film from 1920 that was nearly lost forever. abandon multiple cities 1:221 minute, 22 secondsand directly challenge the most successful films of the area the era. 1:271 minute, 27 secondsToday we're talking about within our gates by Oscar Mo. 1:321 minute, 32 secondsNow if you watched the episode last month we covered Marco Marco's background in depth. So we're not going 1:401 minute, 40 secondsto repeat that today. But there are two things that you need to keep on the sticky side of your brain before we can 1:471 minute, 47 secondstalk about this film. first Lincoln Motion Picture Company. They wanted to 1:541 minute, 54 secondsadapt Mo's novel, The Homesteader, but they told him he couldn't direct it himself. So, he started his own company. 2:032 minutes, 3 secondsJust like that, he started the MO film and Book Company in 1918. 2:092 minutes, 9 secondsHe raised the money by selling shares directly to black farmers and community members. That independence is everything and that's why this film exists at all. 2:222 minutes, 22 secondsSecond, and this is important, you cannot understand within our gates without understanding what it was 2:292 minutes, 29 secondsresponding to. Birth of a nation by WD Griffith, which came out in 2000, I'm sorry, 1915. 2:382 minutes, 38 secondsI'll make it plain. technically innovative, cinematically influential, 2:442 minutes, 44 secondsand deeply devastatingly racist. It glorifies the KKK as heroes and portrays black men as animalistic and predatory. 2:542 minutes, 54 secondsPresident Woodro Wilson screened this at the White House. The NAACP tried to have 3:013 minutes, 1 secondit banned and failed. It became the highest grossing film of its era and was used as a clan recruitment tool. 3:113 minutes, 11 secondsHistorians have linked it directly to the resurgence of clan membership in the years that followed. 3:183 minutes, 18 secondsThis is what Oscar Mako was working against. 3:233 minutes, 23 secondsNot just the images on a screen, but real world violence that those images enabled. 3:313 minutes, 31 secondsThen comes 1919, 3:343 minutes, 34 secondsthe Red Summer. Race massacres across the country. White mobs attacking black neighborhoods. Hundreds of Africanameans 3:433 minutes, 43 secondskilled. The country was burning. Within our gates is released January 1920. 3:513 minutes, 51 secondsIt is a direct answer and it doesn't flinch. 3:573 minutes, 57 secondsThe version that we have today is incomplete. 4:034 minutes, 3 secondsThe film was believed to be entirely lost until 1993 when a print was discovered in a Spanish 4:114 minutes, 11 secondsarchive in Madrid. It was cataloged under its Spanish title, Lanra. 4:184 minutes, 18 secondsWhat we have runs about 79 minutes, more than likely shorter than the original. 4:264 minutes, 26 secondsand some of the intertitles have been reconstructed from the Spanish translation. 4:324 minutes, 32 secondsSo, we're working with an important but still extraordinary artifact. 4:384 minutes, 38 secondsThe central character in this film is Sylvia Landry, played by Evelyn Prayer. 4:454 minutes, 45 secondsIf you don't know that name, we need to take a moment because she's one of the most important figures in this entire era of black film cinema. 4:564 minutes, 56 secondsSome film historians credit her as the first black movie star in the modern sense. Someone with 5:055 minutes, 5 secondsgenuine screen presence, a recognizable name, and an audience that specifically 5:125 minutes, 12 secondswanted to see her. She Marco had one of the great professional partnerships of American film history. She was his 5:215 minutes, 21 secondsleading lady across multiple films. She was his instrument for showing the world what black women on screen could look 5:305 minutes, 30 secondslike when somebody actually cared about their interiority. 5:355 minutes, 35 secondsTragically, she died in 1932 at just 36 years old due to complications following childbirth. Her daughter Eva survived, 5:475 minutes, 47 secondsbut black cinema lost one of its brightest lights far too soon. When you watch this film, know that you're 5:545 minutes, 54 secondswatching someone at the height of her powers. Give her the attention she deserved. 6:026 minutes, 2 secondsNow, back to the character that she played, Sylvia. She's educated, 6:086 minutes, 8 secondsdignified, she's complex. She's exactly the kind of black protagonist that Hollywood simply was not putting on the 6:166 minutes, 16 secondsscreen. The story opens up with Sylvia in the north caught in a messy romantic situation with a man named Conrad. 6:276 minutes, 27 secondsHe's engaged to someone else. A jealous woman, specifically her cousin named Elma, 6:346 minutes, 34 secondsemploys a petty criminal to interfere in Sylvia's life. 6:406 minutes, 40 secondsSylvia travels back to the south to raise money for a school, the Pineywood School, which was serving black and poor 6:496 minutes, 49 secondschildren in the rural South. The school is actually based on a real institution, 6:546 minutes, 54 secondsthe Pineywoods Country Life School in Mississippi. 7:007 minutesShe believes deeply in education as uplift. 7:057 minutes, 5 secondsShe secures a donation for the school from a white northern philanthropist named Alina Warick. 7:137 minutes, 13 secondsBut the film's most devastating sequence comes through flashback. Sylvia's adoptive father, Jasper Land Lands 7:227 minutes, 22 secondsLandry, I'mma get this out. Is a sharecropper falsely accused of murdering his white land owner, 7:317 minutes, 31 secondsGriddlestone. In reality, in reality, 7:347 minutes, 34 secondsGriddle Stone was killed by his white neighbor. 7:397 minutes, 39 secondsBut in this America, a black man accused is a black man hunted. What follows is a lynching sequence. 7:497 minutes, 49 secondsJasper and his wife are killed by a white mob. And in the flashback, a young Sylvia is attacked by Griddlestone 7:567 minutes, 56 secondshimself. It's clearly framed as an attempted sexual assault. And then in a 8:038 minutes, 3 secondsgeniusly stunning narrative turn, he stops because he recognizes by a scar on 8:108 minutes, 10 secondsher chest that she's his biological daughter. 8:158 minutes, 15 secondsThe woman he sees as less than human is his own child. The film ends with Sylvia 8:248 minutes, 24 secondsback in the north. She's been shot. She recovers. And a doctor named Viven who 8:328 minutes, 32 secondsloves her is at her side. And they're united. 8:378 minutes, 37 secondsIt's more than a hopeful ending. More It's a more hopeful ending than the film's brutality might suggest, 8:468 minutes, 46 secondsthough. That hope feels hard. One earned through an unflinching look at what black life in America actually look like. 8:578 minutes, 57 secondsMy co was working with real formal craft. This is not a rough or primitive 9:049 minutes, 4 secondsfilm even by 1920s standards. He uses close-ups, especially on Preer's face to 9:139 minutes, 13 secondscapture that emotion for a character that Hollywood typically keeps flat. The 9:219 minutes, 21 secondsparallel ending during the lynching sequence mirrors a technique Griffith used in Birth of a Nation. Cutting between locations to build tension. 9:339 minutes, 33 secondsThat segment is in fact very intense. 9:389 minutes, 38 secondsBut my co completely flips the moral framework where Griffith was using that 9:449 minutes, 44 secondstechnique to frame white women as needing protection and rescue from black men. My co uses it to indict white 9:559 minutes, 55 secondsviolence against black people. He's using the master's tools deliberately. 10:0410 minutes, 4 secondsThere are a number of themes to look at here. The first would be the counter nar narrative as a political act. My co- 10:1410 minutes, 14 secondsunderstood something that we now take for granted in media criticism. 10:2010 minutes, 20 secondsRepresentation is never neutral. 10:2410 minutes, 24 secondsImages teach people who is human and who's not considered 10:3110 minutes, 31 secondshuman. They shape how communities see themselves and how they're seen by others. Birth of a Nation was actively 10:4010 minutes, 40 secondsharming black Americans, not just offending them. The images in that that film gave psychological permission for violence. 10:5110 minutes, 51 secondsThey confirmed a worldview that said black people were dangerous and subhuman. 10:5810 minutes, 58 secondsMy co on the other hand responds by creating images that insist on black humanity in all of its complexity. 11:0711 minutes, 7 secondsSylvia is not a saint. She's navigating a messy romantic situation at the film's 11:1311 minutes, 13 secondsopening. She's made compromises. She's fully human and that full humanity is a 11:2111 minutes, 21 secondspolitical statement. The second theme is the in intracial 11:2811 minutes, 28 secondsdebate. Here's something to miss on a casual watch. My co is 11:3611 minutes, 36 secondsalso engaging with a major intracial debate happening in real time. 11:4311 minutes, 43 secondsThis is the era of doce versus Booker T. 11:4711 minutes, 47 secondsWashington. Do is arguing for full civil rights and higher education. 11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsWashington, on the other hand, is arguing for industrial education and accommodation within white power 12:0012 minutesstructures. The film has characters who represent different positions. There's a 12:0612 minutes, 6 secondspreacher named Old Ned who is sickant towards white patrons. He 12:1312 minutes, 13 secondsperforms the version of himself they want to see. And my co treats that attitude with real contempt. 12:2212 minutes, 22 secondsThen there's Sylvia. She's committed to education and uplift, 12:2812 minutes, 28 secondsbut she has to navigate white patronage to do it. When she secures a donation 12:3412 minutes, 34 secondsfrom Elena Warwick, the film doesn't present it simply. Where does the money come from? Who does it ultimately serve? 12:4412 minutes, 44 secondsWhat are the unspoken terms? My code doesn't give you easy answers. 12:5112 minutes, 51 secondsThis film is an active conversation with black intellectual tradition. 12:5912 minutes, 59 secondsThe third theme, womanhood and sexual violence. Let's make it plain. 13:0613 minutes, 6 secondsOne of the things within our gates does that is genuinely radical for 1920 13:1213 minutes, 12 secondsor frankly for any era is to put the sexual violence against black women on 13:1913 minutes, 19 secondsthe screen as historical and present reality. 13:2513 minutes, 25 secondsThe griddlestone assault on Sylvia is not ambiguous. It's the realization that 13:3113 minutes, 31 secondshe is her biological father. a product of an earlier assault on her black 13:3813 minutes, 38 secondsmother. It collapses the central mythology white southerners used to justify lynching. 13:4713 minutes, 47 secondsThe narrative was always we're protecting white women from black men. 13:5413 minutes, 54 secondsMy co on the other hand says look at what's actually happening. Look at who's actually assaulting whom. Look at the 14:0314 minutes, 3 secondschildren that violence is producing because how much more evidence do you need? 14:1014 minutes, 10 secondsIda B. Wells has been documenting this or had been documenting this in her journalism for decades. 14:1814 minutes, 18 secondsMy co put the argument on film and notably Sylvia survives. 14:2414 minutes, 24 secondsShe endures. She carries this history in her body and she continues. and how much 14:3114 minutes, 31 secondsof that is just what black women do even now. 14:3814 minutes, 38 secondsThere is something deeply important in that refusal to let her be defined only by what was done to her. 14:4814 minutes, 48 secondsThe fourth theme is censorship. 14:5214 minutes, 52 secondsChicago sensors initially refused to allow the film, citing concerns that the 15:0015 minuteslynching sequence would provoke racial unrest. Think about that for just a 15:0515 minutes, 5 secondsmoment. A film depicting racial violence was rejected because it might upset 15:1415 minutes, 14 secondspeople who saw the depictions of racial violence. 15:1915 minutes, 19 secondsThe concern wasn't for black audiences processing their trauma on the screen. 15:2615 minutes, 26 secondsThe concern was for white comfort. 15:3015 minutes, 30 secondsMy co fought back. The man was tenacious. He negotiated. 15:3615 minutes, 36 secondsHe may have made some cuts. We don't know exactly what changed because we don't have the original print of the 15:4315 minutes, 43 secondsfilm. But the film got shown. It played to black audiences across the country. 15:5015 minutes, 50 secondsThe Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Cur Courier, they covered this film seriously. 15:5815 minutes, 58 secondsSo, this is a film that we nearly lost. 16:0416 minutes, 4 secondsOf the roughly 44 films that Michael made, we have 12. And I don't think I 16:1216 minutes, 12 secondshave my Yes, I do. We have 12. The rest are lost because the films deteriorated. 16:2116 minutes, 21 secondsNo one with institutional power. And this is the entire collection here. No one with institutional power saw fit to 16:2916 minutes, 29 secondspreserve them. Nitrate film which was used at the time is fragile and race 16:3616 minutes, 36 secondsfilms were not prioritized. They weren't considered worthy of archiving. 16:4216 minutes, 42 secondswithin our gates survived because a Spanish archive preserved a print under a different name. 16:5216 minutes, 52 secondsHad someone not cataloged it correctly, 16:5516 minutes, 55 secondswe may have never known that this film existed. 16:5916 minutes, 59 secondsThe film preservation was not a neutral act. What gets saves tells you what a 17:0617 minutes, 6 secondsculture values and what it's willing to let disappear. It's it goes back to that 17:1417 minutes, 14 secondsthing we've repeatedly said here, that thing that Walter Mosley says about 17:2017 minutes, 20 secondsbooks, which is if you're not in the the story, you're not in the culture. And 17:2917 minutes, 29 secondsthe fact that we were able to find this film, find 12 of the 44 films, it puts 17:3817 minutes, 38 secondsus back into the silent film movie era era and it solidifies us within the 17:4617 minutes, 46 secondsAmerican culture of that time as something other than slaves and in servitude to anybody else. 17:5617 minutes, 56 secondsThe Library of Congress added within our gates to the National Film Registry in 1993. 18:0418 minutes, 4 secondsIt's now recognized as one of the most significant American films ever made. 18:1118 minutes, 11 secondsThink about my co's lineage. What did he get started here? 18:1818 minutes, 18 secondsYou have my co to the LA Rebellion filmmakers to Spike Lee to Julie Dash to Ryan Cougler to Ava Duivere. 18:3118 minutes, 31 secondsIt's a whole line. The insistence on determination, 18:3618 minutes, 36 secondsthe refusal to wait for Hollywood to tell your story accurately, the willingness to go directly to your audience and say this is for us. 18:4818 minutes, 48 secondsMy co was doing what black filmmakers are still doing today, fighting for the right to depict black life in its full complexity. We're not a monolith. 19:0219 minutes, 2 secondsHe just had to do it with far fewer resources in a far more hostile environment. Remember we talked about this last month. You had, you know, 19:1419 minutes, 14 secondsWarner Brothers, Fox, Paramount. They were fighting each other to get started. 19:2019 minutes, 20 secondsBut at a certain point, they fought so that they could get the resources, the films, the cameras, everything, and 19:2719 minutes, 27 secondsfocus on building their empires. And at a certain point their infighting became 19:3419 minutes, 34 secondshealthy competition. But even in that even when they were at war with each other and fighting for position to be 19:4319 minutes, 43 secondsthe Hollywood studio collectively they were not including black people. 19:5319 minutes, 53 secondsWhat does this film demand of us now? When you watch Within Our Gates today, 20:0120 minutes, 1 secondyou can and you can um it's in the public domain. This is more than a hundred This film is more than a hundred years old. 20:1020 minutes, 10 secondsUm and I'll make sure that I post the links for you. It demands something from you. The lynching sequence is hard to 20:1920 minutes, 19 secondswatch and you know it it's not filmed like it would be today where you know 20:2820 minutes, 28 secondsyou get visuals and closeups of of what's happening. But the pace of the 20:3620 minutes, 36 secondsfilm at that point makes it hard to watch and you find yourself tensing up. 20:4220 minutes, 42 secondsI know I did. Even though I could see in the filming that maybe they had someone standing on a stool at a certain point, 20:5220 minutes, 52 secondsit was no less impactful. 20:5420 minutes, 54 secondsHe wasn't making art for comfort. He was making art as testimony. 21:0121 minutes, 1 secondBut what I found most powerful is not the horror. 21:0621 minutes, 6 secondsIt's Evelyn Prair's face. the moments where his camera simply rests on her, 21:1521 minutes, 15 secondslets her think, lets her feel. Even though there are no audible words in 21:2221 minutes, 22 secondsthis film, the actors emoted wonderfully. 21:2721 minutes, 27 secondsThose moments are as radical as anything else in the film. He's saying her inner 21:3421 minutes, 34 secondslife matters. her character is worth your attention in 1920 21:4121 minutes, 41 secondson screen. And when you really think about it, that in itself is a revolutionary act. 21:4921 minutes, 49 secondsAnd knowing what we know now, knowing that she would be gone just 12 years later at 36 years old, there's something 21:5721 minutes, 57 secondsvery precious about every single film that she's in. Watch her closely. 22:0522 minutes, 5 secondsSo, that's all I have for you today. Um, the film was banned, nearly erased, 22:1422 minutes, 14 secondsrediscovered in a foreign archive, and is now exactly where it belongs, at the 22:2122 minutes, 21 secondscenter of conversation about what American cinema is to be and what it refused to be. Oscar Mako didn't ask 22:2922 minutes, 29 secondspermission. He raised money from his community. He built his own infrastructure and he made the films he believed needed to exist. 22:4222 minutes, 42 secondsI think I said this in the last episode. He was ahead of his time. And because he was and because he did, 22:5122 minutes, 51 secondswe have a 79 minute survival. This piece of testimony that is still speaking a 100 plus years later. 23:0223 minutes, 2 secondsIf you watch one film after this, make sure it's within our gates. It's on YouTube. It's in the Library of Congress. It's on MGM. 23:1423 minutes, 14 secondsYou can get it from your local library. 23:1623 minutes, 16 secondsYou can find this film for free. Give Evelyn Prayer your full attention. 23:2423 minutes, 24 secondsGive M give Oscar my co the engagement that he was fighting for. really study his study his film, study him. 23:3723 minutes, 37 secondsYou know, as I watched the film, I thought about what he had to do to be a filmmaker. 23:4423 minutes, 44 secondsHe was a key figure in building the black film industry. Not the only, but the well-known figure. 23:5623 minutes, 56 secondsI wondered what would he think of the black film industry today. 24:0324 minutes, 3 secondsAll right. Well, that's it. Thanks for spending your time with me. Like and follow our Facebook and YouTube page, 24:1224 minutes, 12 secondsMovies That Move Wee, and share this if it meant something to you. If you got anything out of it, go ahead and share 24:2024 minutes, 20 secondsit with someone you know. Until next time. Bye. MY THOUGHTS What does it mean to tell your own story when others with more power decide they don't want to see it? What does it mean to tell stories that the larger industry was designed to oppress? 1919 The red summer, was the USA burning or was the black populace in the usa being burned? 4:22 the Spanish title is La Negra, the black... Within Our Gates Spanish title is , the black. 5:41 I didn't know Evelyn Preer died in child birth The funny thing is Micheaux's stories had more complex characters than white financed films for decades after. 6:50 Piney Woods Country Life School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piney_Woods_Country_Life_School The largest boarding school for black descended of enslaved, one of four Black DOS boarding schools. https://www.pineywoods.org/ 9:59 well said, Michaeux reverses the roles from "birth of a nation" 10:30 good point, representation is never neutral. 11:05 Also, shows the power of white violence, but also treats whites with a humanity, that his white peers do not do for blacks. 11:59 hmmmm well WEB Dubois/ Booker T Washington/ Marcus Garvey/ Frederick Douglass are all at the same time. They all advocate for the rights of Black individuals or groups. They all advocate for learning, greater learning among black individuals or groups. I think their variance is in the response to white violence and sequent actions or goals to black people. Dubois heading the white jewish financed National association for the advancement of colored people don't take even one percent of the crimes against black people by whites to court, while he supports a phenotypically integrated workplace. I argue, Dubois wants civil rights but can only demand it as a public request to whites, alongside a request to allow blacks in white owned labor environments based on merit. But paid labor is rarely based on merit. Washington wants Black people who at that time for ninety percent in the former confederacy states, to remain in the south and uphold a less intertwined form of integration. Washington doesn't want segregation but he wants to comfort whites by staying out of their towns/schools/business areas and getting black people to focus on building their own. The variance between Dubois side Washington is in their end goals. Dubois end goal is to have communities/workplaces/schools where whites side blacks are one people. With that kind of goal, you can't have historic black colleges side historic white colleges. You can't have blacks towns side white towns. Government for Dubois is a tool to force total/holistic integration. This suited the white jew financiers for Dubois whose strategy was to guide blacks to have a holistic integration to get whites who are not jewish to embrace the white phenotypical populace with no boundaries in gender/religion/language/geographic ancestry. Looking at the future the White jews got what they wanted as the modern white populace at the time of this writing doesn't have any of the internal blockades to whites who are not male/Christian/European descent as in the eighteen hundreds or early nineteen hundreds. Washington's end goal is to have black communities/black schools/black businesses that only relate to whites financially, and stay out of government. The whites who financed Washington didn't have any allegiance to poor whites in the south and saw the black populace of the south as a potential offset to the poor white populace of the south. The Jim crow laws in many ways were pushed by financially poor whites who realized the black southern populace if not kept in an extremely negative financial state using the governments of the southern states, would be a rival and upend their position in bargaining with rich whites. Looking at today and the southern states, and how the white southern populace is the base for the anti immigrant position, it shows truth. The white southern populace didn't mind immigrants as long as they were hindering black financial growth by being cheaper labor or blockaded from bettering poor whites by their illegal status or extended jim crow laws. Marcus Garvey though supported black rights plus education. The problem is Garvey didn't believe anywhere in the American continent was plausible for black rights to be upheld or for black education to lead to opportunity. And it is truthful, if you look at Mexico, brazil, the usa, even Haiti after henri Christophe died, the entire American continent, canada to argentina, before jean Jacques Dessalines or after henri Christophe in Haiti, was an anti black place. yes, examples throughout the American continent existed for black individual examples, going through many white walls. But, what is the point of life? is the point of life to struggle? I argue no. I argue the point of life is to have it good, have it easy, have it fun and ninety nine percent of black people in the entire American continent , canada to argentina, late eighteen hundreds or early nineteen hundreds, didn't have anything good or easy or fun. So leave the American continent. The tragedy is the same whites from Canada to Argentina who preached dislike of blacks hated the idea of black people leaving. Why? because white unity was only based on the presence of black people , in the entire American continent. The native American, indios had already been decimated in populace in such a way, they will never have the numbers to threaten, thus whites can't unify around an empty threat. As for Frederick Douglass, he was older but his point wasn't to support dubois/washington/garvey but to state his belief, that the usa warrants surviving. Douglass point is the usa can become something no other government can and if black people leave en masse or don't seek complete integration, the usa can never become what he dreamed it become, a country of humans. On one side note, Booker T Washington's wife was a white Asian and it is interesting that when you look at white Asians as a populace in the usa, they act the way booker t Washington wanted black descended of enslaved to act. Don't get involved in government, focus on your own everything. Not criminalizing integration but make everything a financial position first or foremost. In cheap retrospect, the one thing Washington didn't comprehend, and this connects to Haiti. Black DOSers relationship to the usa isn't fiscal, it isn't fiscal capitalistic. Black DOSers are not in the united states of America to make money. Black DOSers are in the usa because whites wanted it. Black DOSers can not find any reason to support the usa based on enslaved forebears. Ala, the often said while very erroneous, our forebears helped build the usa line. It is the great Black DOSer sin saying that line. My forebears were enslaved, but for anyone to suggest they cared one bit about anything in the usa, is an ugly lie. And this is the fundamental problem with said four leaders, each was bound to fail. WEB Dubois was being used to make unify white groups. Booker T Washington couldn't protect black people from fiscally poor whites violence. Garvey didn't believe in the usa or the American continent as a good place for blacks and whites in majority wanted blacks to change their minds, to anything but anti America. Frederick Douglass felt the Black DOS populace should fight through anything to remain in the usa for a greater human achievement that wouldn't benefit blacks in any of the ways they wanted but would support humanity in a way he felt it needed. 13:07 very true, i can't think of any other film showing white violence to black women that strongly, made in the usa. 14:19 i wonder your thought to passing? 15:18 good point, white comfort, this goes back to gone with the wind, a song of the south, birth of a nation, even king kong, make white people feel good about themselves, by not showing white people in any negative light. 16:37 yes, what gets saved isn't neutral and is also expensive. You have to say, what were black wealthy people doing? they could had saved. 17:21 good quote from mosely, if you are not in the story, you are not in the culture. 18:29 thank you for mentioning Julie Dash 20:00 What does watching the film demand today? 21:27 yes, lovely emotion from the thespians. 22:13 great show Oscar Micheaux biography from Movies That Move We https://youtu.be/1C5hxGrohps?si=hnAH78ulXh4-pyMg my comment What are your thoughts to the film passing? Thanks for mentioning Julie Dash. Great review... Oscar Micheaux in many ways incorporated WEB Dubois's philosophies aside Booker T Washington's philosophies in the production of this film. I even wonder how many non blacks saw his films and were inspired by his work. Great question, what would he think of the black film industry today? What would he think of the Black film industry in or out of the USA? Black identity today is global but is of many parts. Each part has its own environment. What would he think of Nollywood? What would he think of the Black film industry in the USA which monetarily is based on a handful of black producers: blacks with money or who can access money to make films? That is such an engaging question you ask at the end. I wish he was alive to answer. I wish he had a journal. I wish I had all his screenplays. I know he wrote books alongside the films but it seems many are lost. Profile of OScar Micheaux video link https://youtu.be/1C5hxGrohps?si=LKAo5vDY1-rQksl9 Embed video 0:2929 secondsHey, 0:3131 secondsHey everyone, welcome back to another edition of Movies That Move We. 0:3737 secondsThis is the place where film isn't just entertainment. It's history, it's culture, it's memory. 0:4545 secondsSome episodes that we do are about the movies, you know, commentary, ratings, 0:5252 secondsall of that stuff. But but today, this is just about one man. This month we're 0:5959 secondsfocusing on black film history and today we're going to be profiling Oscar Mako. 1:081 minute, 8 secondsWhy is this episode different? 1:111 minute, 11 secondsThis is different like I said because there's no reviews, no ranking. We're doing a profile of someone who is very important in black film history. 1:211 minute, 21 secondsWe're talking about how film history gets made and who gets left out of it. 1:291 minute, 29 secondsYou know, while Hollywood was being built, Oscar MO was already working. 1:371 minute, 37 secondsExcuse me. He was a writer, director, producer, distributor, 1:461 minute, 46 secondspromoter. He was independent before independence was ever really a category. 1:551 minute, 55 secondsNow, one of the movies that I mentioned um that we should watch and it brings context to this conversation is Titans: 2:062 minutes, 6 secondsThe Rise of Hollywood, which you can find on Netflix. 2:112 minutes, 11 secondsSo, let's talk about it. You know, the start of the American film industry was early 1900s. 2:192 minutes, 19 secondsUm that was the period of the short film. 2:252 minutes, 25 secondsUm the industry itself was very tight and what I mean by that is there were a few men controlling the whole industry. 2:382 minutes, 38 secondsIt started in New York. It was in cities like New York and Chicago. And in these 2:452 minutes, 45 secondscities there were a group of people who you had to go to for everything for the 2:522 minutes, 52 secondsfilm for camera set for everything. You could only use certain actors and you couldn't use anybody else's actor or producer. 3:043 minutes, 4 secondsIt was giving very what some might call moblike. 3:103 minutes, 10 secondsThis group that ran everything was called the trust. 3:173 minutes, 17 secondsAnd this particular group consider included excuse me included Thomas Edison. 3:283 minutes, 28 secondsMhm. That one that Thomas Edison he controlled production and distribution. 3:363 minutes, 36 secondsum at the time he in America he was the one who was making cameras. That was the only person that you could go to. 3:443 minutes, 44 secondsSo it made it very difficult for people to be filmmakers. But they did it. 3:543 minutes, 54 secondsAnd at the point that we have three early titans come up, the film industry is shifting from novelty to industry. 4:054 minutes, 5 secondsPower consolidated very quickly. 4:094 minutes, 9 secondsSo again, the early Titans, Thomas Edison, he controlled the patents. He controlled who could legally make a 4:164 minutes, 16 secondsfilm. And then you have these three players who enter who their their work still stands today. 4:264 minutes, 26 secondsThese companies still exist. You have Adolf Zukor. 4:324 minutes, 32 secondsHe created Paramount. Um he was the first one to go with feature length films, meaning 4:404 minutes, 40 secondsearly films were only a few minutes long and they were silent. 4:464 minutes, 46 secondsAll you had to read was body language and dramatic gestures. That's what early films were. Um he created the feature 4:554 minutes, 55 secondslen length film which was 30 minutes an hour long. He created the star system. 5:015 minutes, 1 secondSo all of a sudden we have people who are marketed and promoted as this is who 5:085 minutes, 8 secondsyou want to be. Is very New York centered early on. More about him later. 5:165 minutes, 16 secondsUm Car Carl Lamel he opened a theater making movies accessible to the general public. Um 5:255 minutes, 25 secondsagain films at this time were a luxury item novelty. You got dressed up. It was like going to the theater you know and 5:345 minutes, 34 secondsonly certain people could afford that luxury. 5:395 minutes, 39 secondsBut he brought it to the people and he was one who fought Edison and one of the 5:475 minutes, 47 secondspeople in the industry who was the first to move to California and build Universal City that was around 1915. 5:595 minutes, 59 secondsWilliam Fox that Fox brought vertical integration, 6:056 minutes, 5 secondsmeaning he brought the production, the distribution, and the theaters to the 6:116 minutes, 11 secondssystem. For him that was ideal because he did it all, including creating a place to show his films exclusively, 6:226 minutes, 22 secondswhereas everybody else was shopping around to see who would be willing to present their films. 6:316 minutes, 31 secondsLewis B. mayor, one-third of the MGM uh film company. He brought brought to 6:406 minutes, 40 secondsthe uh the industry the prestige, the glamour. Again, going off of uh what 6:476 minutes, 47 secondsLamel also brought to it all the glitz and the branding power and the razledazzle 6:546 minutes, 54 secondsthat um comes with Hollywood that we know of uh in Hollywood. 7:027 minutes, 2 secondsanother person that um she isn't mentioned as one of the big three but 7:087 minutes, 8 secondsshe was still influential and that's Mary Pigford. She was an actress 7:157 minutes, 15 secondsum and she brought her writing skills as well as her acting talents to the industry. 7:247 minutes, 24 secondsSo important clarification that I want to make here is that it wasn't one man that moved Hollywood west. 7:357 minutes, 35 secondsZukor wasn't the one who led the move to the west coast. He followed 7:427 minutes, 42 secondsLamel and Fox were the first two to move to California. 7:497 minutes, 49 secondsWhy California? 7:517 minutes, 51 secondsIt was ideal because it offered an escape from Thomas Edison. 7:577 minutes, 57 secondsThe weather was ideal. They could film outdoors. They had plenty of of landscape to choose from. They had the 8:058 minutes, 5 secondsspace. And most importantly, they had control. They didn't have to answer to 8:138 minutes, 13 secondsthe trust. they could do their own thing, set their own rules, and they did. 8:218 minutes, 21 secondsHollywood was built with capital, land, and legal protection. 8:298 minutes, 29 secondsOkay? In short, infrastructure equals power. And in the film industry, 8:378 minutes, 37 secondsthey became the power. 8:408 minutes, 40 secondsJust consider for a moment how quickly the industry grew. In just 20 years, it 8:488 minutes, 48 secondswent from those short five minute silent reels to featurelength productions with 8:558 minutes, 55 secondsdialogue and razledazzle and music and fanfare. Um, 9:039 minutes, 3 secondsit it moved very quickly. 9:079 minutes, 7 secondsOne important truth, something to keep in mind is Hollywood wasn't neutral. It was white, 9:169 minutes, 16 secondsit was male, and it was capital backed. 9:239 minutes, 23 secondsBlack presence in the industry was visible, 9:289 minutes, 28 secondsbut it was limited. So you saw um the servant, the butler or on the other end 9:389 minutes, 38 secondsof the spectrum people who were involved in crime and immorality, the stereotypes. 9:459 minutes, 45 secondsUm black people weren't missing necessarily, but they were locked out of 9:539 minutes, 53 secondsthe system. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. In contrast, you have Oscar Mako. 10:0210 minutes, 2 secondsHe had no studio lot. He had no patents. 10:0710 minutes, 7 secondsHe had no theater chains. And he didn't have any legal protection. Let me tell you a little bit about him. 10:1510 minutes, 15 secondsHe was born in 1884. His parents were former slaves. They moved as a part of 10:2110 minutes, 21 secondsthe great migration from Kentucky to the Chicago area, Illinois. Um his mom was a 10:3310 minutes, 33 secondsbig fan of um Booker T. Washington, you know, and she w she was in full agreement with what he 10:4210 minutes, 42 secondssaid about being educated. And of course, this is what she taught her son Oscar about. And so you'll see that in 10:5110 minutes, 51 secondshis films where you have the the educated, you have the class differences. You'll see all of that 10:5910 minutes, 59 secondsstuff in his films. Again, more about that later. Um he was one of the early 11:0711 minutes, 7 secondshomesteaders when the government was giving away land out left out west. He went ahead and he put in his bid and he got himself a plot of land in Oklahoma. 11:1911 minutes, 19 secondsand he worked the land and he proved to his neighbors because this was a community. Homesteading was a community, 11:2711 minutes, 27 secondsnot just something you did independently. He proved to his white neighbors around him that he could do this. He did it well. Now, during one hard winter where he couldn't harvest, 11:4011 minutes, 40 secondscouldn't bring in crops or anything like that, and again, that's something everyone in that area was going through at the time, not just him. He sat down 11:4811 minutes, 48 secondsand he wrote his first novel called Homesteader. It's not an autobiography, 11:5511 minutes, 55 secondsbut it is based on his experience. Um, 12:0012 minutesand he he went ahead and he self-published that, you know, he went door todo with it. Um, same thing 12:0912 minutes, 9 secondsapplied with his films. He wrote his scripts and he self- financed those films. Okay. 12:1712 minutes, 17 secondsUm, Lamel escaped Edison. Mo escaped Hollywood. 12:2612 minutes, 26 secondsHe didn't have to avoid it. He didn't have to engage with it either. 12:3112 minutes, 31 secondsWhat did he put on screen? He talked about, as I was mentioning earlier, 12:3812 minutes, 38 secondsall of the topics that were important to the black community at the time, um, like colorism, 12:4712 minutes, 47 secondspassing, tension between the classes, sexual violence, religious hypocrisy, 12:5612 minutes, 56 secondsum, migration, ambition, and moral compromise. 13:0213 minutes, 2 secondsSomething important to note, his work was not uplift only. It wasn't 13:0813 minutes, 8 secondsconsidered safe or sanitized. He was telling complex stories and censoring 13:1513 minutes, 15 secondsAfrican-American people in these stories. He wasn't trying to comfort uh 13:2213 minutes, 22 secondswhite people or um play what do you call it? Respectability politics with black 13:2913 minutes, 29 secondspeople. He was telling plain truth. This is what life looked like from the black perspective. 13:3913 minutes, 39 secondsHe wasn't alone in this pocket of independent uh film industry. 13:4713 minutes, 47 secondsThe system for black filmmakers was fragile. 13:5113 minutes, 51 secondsAnd so you had people out there who were trying to show films, who were making films. Their work, unfortunately, was not preserved. 14:0314 minutes, 3 secondsNot all of Oscar MO's work was preserved, but we have more of his films available than we do some of the other players in the industry. 14:1314 minutes, 13 secondsSome of those folks were William D. Foster. 14:1714 minutes, 17 secondsHe was a black film producer, um, owner of Lincoln Mo Motion Picture Company. 14:2414 minutes, 24 secondsUh, Sherman H. Dudley is another. He started the black theater circuit and 14:3114 minutes, 31 secondsthe black vaudeville circuit which later became the theater owners booking association 14:3914 minutes, 39 secondsalso known as Toba. Um he was key in distribution and getting these things 14:4714 minutes, 47 secondsinto uh certain spaces in black spaces. Um, 14:5414 minutes, 54 secondsOscar Mako's films were they were played in black theaters, 15:0015 minutesblackowned theaters. There weren't a lot of them, but they were played in blackowned theaters. They were played in segregated theaters. He had the support of churches, 15:1115 minutes, 11 secondslodges, community halls, and and road showings, um, screenings, excuse me. 15:1915 minutes, 19 secondsUm, another way that his films made it into the community were uh Midnight 15:2615 minutes, 26 secondsRambles, which were usually white owned theaters that would show black films after midnight so that the 15:3615 minutes, 36 secondsblack and white patrons would never meet and they didn't have to worry about hearing complaints from white patrons 15:4415 minutes, 44 secondsabout, oh my gosh, what why are these people even in this building. So those 15:5015 minutes, 50 secondsthings were were how his films made it to to the masses. Um key cities, 15:5915 minutes, 59 secondsyou hear people talk a lot about uh the Chitlin Circuit. Well, 16:0716 minutes, 7 secondsthey focused on, and when I say they, 16:0916 minutes, 9 secondsI'm talking about um oh gosh, I just lost the name. um Foster and Dudley and 16:1816 minutes, 18 secondsOscar Mako and other filmmakers of the time, you know, they focused on 16:2516 minutes, 25 secondsdistributing their films in places like Chicago, Harlem, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Kansas City, 16:3416 minutes, 34 secondsthe great migration cities because that's where we were coming from. That's where we were going to when we were 16:4216 minutes, 42 secondsmoving from the south. There were some spaces where they did show films, these black films in the south, but of course they had to be very careful about that. 16:5516 minutes, 55 secondsHollywood asks, "How do we control the market?" Oscar Mo asks, "Who already has 17:0117 minutes, 1 seconda screen actors and impact?" 17:0917 minutes, 9 secondsyou know, he started a lot of careers and I wish I wrote down the names of uh 17:1617 minutes, 16 secondssome of them, but one of the most notable, most recognized is Paul Robson. 17:2317 minutes, 23 secondsUm Paul Robson, he was a football player, of course, if you've ever heard of him, he had a magnificent singing 17:3117 minutes, 31 secondsvoice. He acted in Oscar Mico's film Body and Soul 1925. 17:4017 minutes, 40 secondsIt was a dual role. So he played both a preacher and a con man in this film about moral complexity. 17:5117 minutes, 51 secondsDoes that sound familiar? Sinners. Anybody? Yeah. He did it first before Michael B. 17:5917 minutes, 59 secondsJordan. Why does this matter? Again, this story challenged stereotypes. 18:0718 minutes, 7 secondsIt addressed themes of race, morality, 18:1118 minutes, 11 secondsstruggles of the black community, and of course, it did it from the black perspective, 18:1918 minutes, 19 secondsblack audience. What What did he make possible with this? Why did this film matter so much? because his films and he 18:2818 minutes, 28 secondsdid over 40 in his career trained the expectations of the black 18:3518 minutes, 35 secondscommunity. What they should expect from black stardom. It normalized seeing black people on film. And again, 18:4518 minutes, 45 secondsnot being the stereotype, but being professionals, 18:5118 minutes, 51 secondsnot living in a shack somewhere, but living in the big city and having careers and things like that. Um, think 19:0019 minutesabout actors and actresses like Lena Horn, 19:0519 minutes, 5 secondsDorothy Dandridge, and Harab Bella Fonte. They were some of the the the 19:1219 minutes, 12 secondsfolks that took on complex roles laid complex roles later on in in black film history. He didn't launch their careers, 19:2319 minutes, 23 secondsbut he did make them possible by laying the groundwork. 19:3119 minutes, 31 secondsHow many films are left? A lot of his films are lost. Um, like I mentioned, he 19:3919 minutes, 39 secondsI think he did 44 films in his career. 19:4619 minutes, 46 secondsAnd this right here is what's left of his film collection. I believe this is 15 19:5519 minutes, 55 secondsof his films. Um, Within Our Gates is one. I did watch that one. It's actually 20:0220 minutes, 2 secondsvery good. Um, this was done in 1920 and it's 73 minutes long, but that one again covers those themes of migration. Um, 20:1520 minutes, 15 secondsand actually one of the things that he focused on in that film was a woman's ability to choose and move freely. Um, 20:2520 minutes, 25 secondsso if you haven't get this collection, check that film out. But again, 20:3320 minutes, 33 secondshis films really spoke to the community. Okay? And 20:4020 minutes, 40 secondswhen you think about how come so many of his films were lost, how come we don't have any of Dudley or Fosters's work, 20:4820 minutes, 48 secondsit's not because they didn't matter. 20:5220 minutes, 52 secondsIt's because preservation follows power. 20:5820 minutes, 58 secondsThink of it this way. How many how many films can you think of that are when 21:0421 minutes, 4 secondstheir their titles are called it's like oh yes this is pinnacle great film th 21:1221 minutes, 12 secondsthis goes down in film history this is a must-see film this is you know 21:1821 minutes, 18 secondsdefinitely something that framed or shaped culture um those films are 21:2721 minutes, 27 secondsprotected and I'm pretty sure if you start running them back in your mind. 21:3121 minutes, 31 secondsWhen I when I hear it, I think of um like the Woody Allen films, Martin Scorsesei films. People will hold those 21:3821 minutes, 38 secondsin high standards. Those films by those uh writer, directors, producers will be 21:4621 minutes, 46 secondsupheld and preserved. We'll have them forever. 21:5121 minutes, 51 secondsUm they're protected, 21:5521 minutes, 55 secondsthey're preserved, and they're celebrated. Film history isn't neutral, 22:0222 minutes, 2 secondsit's curated. 22:0522 minutes, 5 secondsJust kind of let that sit with you for a minute. 22:1122 minutes, 11 secondsEven though Oscar Mako doesn't get mentioned at as much in film conversations, 22:1822 minutes, 18 secondsthere are many beneficiaries of the road that he built. Um, again, think about Ava Duivere, 22:2722 minutes, 27 secondsIssa Ray, Jordan Peele. Um, they all have ownership archives of their own 22:3522 minutes, 35 secondswork. Um they've done things like they build on smaller platforms first and 22:4222 minutes, 42 secondsthen present like it's you know she started with um Awkward Black Girl and 22:5022 minutes, 50 secondsrolled that into a television series eventually. And you have Jordan Peele um 22:5622 minutes, 56 secondswho he has narrative control over his work. he can decide these themes and even if people don't get it, he's not 23:0523 minutes, 5 secondslocked in again to being a stereotypical um filmmaker where he can only focus on the hardships 23:1423 minutes, 14 secondsof black life. No, he gets into some real cerebral stuff. Okay. Um and and 23:2323 minutes, 23 secondsthis isn't important. He he didn't choose he didn't chase Hollywood. He he was well aware that 23:3123 minutes, 31 secondsthey're not going to let me into those gates. 23:3523 minutes, 35 secondsI have to create my own path. He built endurance. 23:4223 minutes, 42 secondsSo with that in mind, and you can share your thoughts on this down in the comments, 23:4923 minutes, 49 secondswhat does it mean to create when the system isn't built for you? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. What 23:5823 minutes, 58 secondsdoes it mean to create when the system isn't built for you? 24:0324 minutes, 3 secondsOscar Mako in film history is not a footnote. He is the foundation 24:1024 minutes, 10 secondsfor what we know as the black film industry now. 24:1624 minutes, 16 secondsSo tell me again, share your thoughts on this one. If Oscar Mah were alive today, 24:2424 minutes, 24 secondswould he join Hollywood or do you think he would still continue to build something of his own? Let me know what you think. 24:3424 minutes, 34 secondsOkay. 24:3624 minutes, 36 secondsOne of the things that I keep coming back to with Oscar Mako is that he didn't want to be validated. 24:4224 minutes, 42 secondsHe wasn't worried about being on um the Paramount Star system. He wasn't 24:5024 minutes, 50 secondslooking for the the the awards. He wanted to talk to his people and he did that. He didn't wait for permission. He 24:5824 minutes, 58 secondsdidn't wait for the resources. He didn't wait for history to catch up. He just created. 25:0725 minutes, 7 secondsAnd that's what we do here at Movies That Move We. That's what we're really about. The stories that move us because they remind us of what is possible. 25:2025 minutes, 20 secondsSo, thank you for joining me and spending time with me today. Um, if this episode moved you, share it with someone who loves film history. And, you know, 25:3225 minutes, 32 secondsdon't forget to share, follow, subscribe to our pages on YouTube and Facebook. 25:3825 minutes, 38 secondsYou can find us at Movies That Move Wee. 25:4325 minutes, 43 secondsI'm Nay. This has been Movies That Move Wee, and we'll see you next time. Bye. MY THOUGHTS 2:44 thank you for saying it started in New York city, many don't know that. 5:23 I wonder what zukor will think to paramount today 5:58 Lamel made, Universal city, so in the end, the movie industry moved west to get as far from Edison or New York City as possible. 6:37 Fox created the proper business model, you need to own theaters to make money. 6:55 Mayer supported the star system. 7:07 Mary Pickford was connected. 8:37 good point on infrastructure. 10:46 thanks for informing about his mom who was a philosophical adherent of booker t Washington, thus he supported black strength in his films, but it wasn't anti white as much as anti "negative behavior" 12:27 I knew Micheaux self published, in Japan called Doujinshi, but I love hearing it. 13:17 good point, like booker t Washington, he wasn't trying to comfort whites or blacks, but telling the truth while supporting black empowerment. 14:17 William d foster [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Foster ] , Sherman h Dudley, theater owners booking association toba [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_H._Dudley ] 17:23 thank you for mentioning PAul Robeson started with an OScar Micheaux film. 18:49 and also integrated. The key is not merely showing Black positive lives, but showing black positive lives while in the environment of the USA. my comment thank you for mentioning PAul Robeson started with an OScar Micheaux film. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_and_Soul_(1925_film) ] hahaha Sinners! well done. and spencer williams [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blood_of_Jesus ] Thinking on Nollywood, I wonder. As a Booker T Washington philosophical adherent, he would be pro USA. But, when you look at Nollywood, to be blunt, it is the biggest Black film industry in humanity. Bigger than the black film industry in south america/north america/southern asia. Posse/Daughters of the Dust/Within Our Gates/ Emitai/ Ceddo are the first films that come to my mind with your question of films that need to be preserved. Now I want to say I am lucky, I remember seeing Within Our Gates when it was first refurbished. A black film organization exist in harlem that shared it. and I will tell you that most of the people in that showing were black. They existed in the Adam Clayton Powell state office building. What does it mean to create when the system/environment is opposed to you as a creator or anything you create? hmmmm,I always say the following, growing up as a kid, I recall so many books about black fantasy, not just history. Many black people... descended of enslaved or not, can recall biographies. And nothing is wrong with biographies. But I recall as a very little boy, thick books on black dos mythology, Haitian mythology, African myths, fables. I didn't just grow up learning about Madame CJ Walker side Malcolm side KWame Nkrumah side Ida B Wells...I learned about High John, The Devils Daughter, John Henry, Brer Rabbit. My point being, creating is a way to continue your heritage, what you carry side who you are. And if you don't create, you risk your heritage dying and future cultures, what people grow, being absent. Creating is everything when it comes to artistic expression of self. When you create in an environment opposed to you creating, it is more than just an artistic challenge. Creating in an environment supporting you creating is a blissful thing. Underrated often in how valuable it is, how emboldening it is. When you look at white film makers you see this. Whites could present their false narratives of the south , as supported creators. But when you are not supported in the environment you live in, you are making a specific statement. Said specific statement is, even though you are against me.. you have more power than me... I exist and I will not cower or delete my identity because I have impotencies. It is interesting, because someone like Marcus Garvey will say it is better to find a supportive environment than create in an unsupportive one. and I concur to garvey, he is correct. It is unwise to create ... exist, in an environment opposed to you. But what Micheaux displays, what all black filmmakers in the USA display, is what W.E.B. Dubois/ Booker T Washington/ Frederick Douglass all embodied or worked for. That even though a passion/suffering will happen when one creates in an environment opposed to one self, it is more valuable to create in an environment opposed to you creating to define not only yourself but to make a call, legally or militaristically impotent as it may be, to demand change to the environment that opposes. And that call has a power/value that can reach to a future with greater impotency than militaries or laws. If Oscar Micheaux were alive today would he join Hollywood or would he do his own? Micheaux would be independent. He would be an independent creator. I think he would also embrace internationalism in all earnest. I think he would learn languages to be into the film industries that don't speak English. COMMENTARIES https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-have-you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComment-80617 osted just now @aka Contrarian Micheaux never did mammy figures or tragic mulattoes or righteous reverend figures, in any of his films i saw. he did evil tricksters, but they were rarely pantomime and he did romantic leads, but they were human men. Check out within our gates in the main post, it is free to view , you will see https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-have-you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComment-80622 osted just now @aka Contrarian well you know that most of Marcheaux's films , over ninety percent , have never been seen by anyone alive. So unfortunately, we only have a small section of films to view, and of the ones that are around today don't show those characterizations. I am not even certain all of Marcheaux's films are known. MAny have cited a list but ... unfortunately, absent a time machine, marcheaux's work like black descended of enslaved history from the early nineteen hundreds to fourteen ninety two is eternally incomplete. Yes, all the black pantomime characters come from white theater. Jim Crow itself is a pantomime character. Before movies, theater plays plus recorded music was the prime media tools and were very commercial. Race music was huge, al jolsten was a white jew but the larger industry of race music/race theater, which had black writers like joplin, was huge in the united states of america. Such that when films come about they took the pantomime black characters from stage and music of the late eighteen hundreds, and put them on screen. The interesting historical process for me is the analogous existence of Black fictional slave works, like clotel linked below, alongside the black pantomime. The black late 1800s fiction is of fictional slave narratives. High John was still popular as a fable, and high john's nemesis is literally Massa, a white man with bone white skin with bone white clothes. Clotel to me is a fictional account but a pure indictment on the white populace of the usa. To restate, black late eighteen hundreds fiction arguably makes pantomime white villains/criminals/baddies. Oscar Micheaux emitted the vibe of the black written fictional slave narratives. The white late 1800s fiction is of fictional slaver narratives. The films birth of a nation, gone with the wind, song of the south all reflect late eighteen hundreds white fictional slaver fiction literally made as a reply to black late 1800s fictional slave narratives. And yes, in modernity, both late 1800s genres are no longer highly read or known or ... majority popular. Both fictions were highly popular among the phenotypical groups they were made for with some crossover fans but blacks seemed to dislike the black fictional slave narratives as a genre. Whites slowly lost taste with the white fictional slaver narrative. The question is why did Blacks dislike the black fictional slave narrative genre. Arguably the first fiscally successful genre in the usa. https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/496-clotel-or-the-presidents-daughter-a-narrative-of-slave-life-in-the-united-states-by-william-well-brown/ https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/495-le-mulâtre-from-victor-séjour-two-versions-split-by-an-essay/ https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-have-you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComment-80636 osted just now @ProfD 3 hours ago, ProfD said: Films depicting slavery aren't going to be very popular. Mainly because it des not make people feel better about themselves. Entertainment is a form of escapism not intended to cause depression. You sound like a very good friend of mine, a director, he always says, entertainment is to escape and I always tell him hogwash. I have never felt that way with entertainment, especially growing up. I have never wanted to be anyone but me, I like myself. II have never wanted to live anywhere than the harlem of yore that is now long gone. Now I admit, maybe having a loving home with both my parents in a small section of harlem that was happy/peaceful/black empowered meant I didn't feel bad about my home or the local area I live in the world. and thus no need to escape. As a brother of mine said, to a parent, maybe he is happy at home. It took me years to comprehend how fortunate I was. If anything the fact that so many people in the usa, a country whose majority populace in modernity is descended on uninvited or unwanted people from the first peoples who came to this country to be happy as they were unhappy wherever they were from, find escapism through entertainment says alot about the ability of immigrants to find happiness in the usa. When I first saw within our gates I wasn't depressed, I was interested. When I read poetry or stories in my contest/ challenges I am not looking to escape or be made to smile, I want to comprehend what the artists is saying. When I look at music, I never forget, mahalia jackson saying she would rather sing gospel than the blues cause she would rather be uplifted than sad and ... I call feces on that. I love black music, all of it, from various corners of the world and all the genres born in the land that is today the united states of america. Not all blues is sad. And mahalia should had known that. But, to your point Profd, mahalia jackson was making the same case , saying blues music is the same as fictional slave narratives, too sad, too negative, thus the need to escape, the truth, escape the things people don't want to hear or read or see because they remind them of reality that they don't want to deal with. Better to sing gospel, and not see the truth of the usa or your peoples place in it. Better to see the huxtable clan whom have none of the problems ninety percent of black people have than to see sanford and son. Even though as red fox said correctly, all black shows are dishonest, including sanford. But then, we have in the same black populace, black people saying how black people need to want to be president and ceo and all of this stuff. I think the entertainment black people like over the years is telling to our mental states as a collective. Thank you for your answer, I think , your 100% correct. I didn't want to face the answer is as simple as dismissal of certain aspects in the arts... maybe my variance is i look at things as the arts not exactly entertainment, if something I find funny happens I will laugh but I don't need to laugh de facto ... anyway, I think its interesting. PRofd, isn't it a thoughtful dichotomy. Black people in majority have never been happy in the usa or the european colonies that preceded it , at any time including modernity, and yet, blacks went from enjoying fictional slave narratives as the most popular black fiction, to now in modernity not wanting any mention of enslavement in any fiction. The same black people who will say love the usa and their forebears died for them to be president, will then dismiss seeing enslaved to whites, black children tortured by whites in media. To me, that says they are lying to themselves. I start with myself, if I didn't know any black history as a child, my parents for whatever reason didn't tell me the truth, provide me books with the truth , and I was just presented escapisms, I imagine my whole stance toward the usa would be different today than what it is. As a tutor I always told the children the truth, about everything. And this post has made me think about some of the other adults one time. I didn't think on it then but now I see why they looked at me a certain way... Thank you again. .. I realize now how many black people don't get black truth in their fiction, in their learning. It seems like many black adults want black children to be adults, circa twenty, before black truth is given... and this isn't something derived from whites, this is a black heritage. I must admit , this topic has aided me in something, hmm thank you 3 hours ago, ProfD said: Well, the archaeologists had to dig up Within Our Gates from a Spanish copy of the film. They had to edit to clean up/fix & translate it back to English. Do you know the spanish subtitle for Within our gates is La Negra, the black woman. It is so basic, and a little crude and yet telling. Though I must admit the real story is how a copy of the film found its way to somewhere in spain. @aka Contrarian 3 hours ago, aka Contrarian said: @richardmurray: this same TV channel that I mentioned watching (back in the 1960's) showed old black movies from the past that did feature the stereo-typical black characters I mentioned. That's how l became aware of them. And they were "talkie" movies, not pantomimed, filmed during the late 1920s and early 1930s by black movie producers, lesser known than Oscar Marcheaux. Incidentally, the acting was very amateurish and stilted, the sound and camera work of poor quality. Even so, they were treasures which I hope are stored away in vaults somewhere. well yes I know what you speak. That is why i mentioned scott joplin, i love his rag works, but he did race music and it was very financially profitable for him. My point being... The hsitory of black comedians of the usa warrants a whole history section in the history of entertainment. You have whites who historically are most entertained by blacks or whites mocking blacks... immitation/bufoonery/jestering... the cakewalk started on plantations with black people mocking whites for a piece of cake. So whites historically love to be entertained, ala, made to laugh by blacks in the usa. Then you have especailly in the jim crow era, 1865 to 1980, blacks who increasingly want to escape as Profd said correctly. This leads to black entertainers developing to serve both audiences an interesting style. magical bufoonery. But yes, Michaeux was an outlier, but he also owned his own more than most black entertainers/filmmakers. @admin please share what you think after you view it, I want to know. URL- only an excerpt 'Within Our Gates': The only copy of the oldest African-American film was hidden in Spain as 'La negra' | Culture | EL PAÍS https://elpais.com/cultura/2021-11-09/la-unica-copia-de-la-pelicula-afroamericana-mas-antigua-se-encontraba-en-espana-escondida-como-la-negra.html Wayback machine full version https://web.archive.org/web/20211109050628/https://elpais.com/cultura/2021-11-09/la-unica-copia-de-la-pelicula-afroamericana-mas-antigua-se-encontraba-en-espana-escondida-como-la-negra.html The only copy of the oldest African-American film was hidden in Spain as 'La negra' 'Within Our Gates', the original title of Oscar Micheaux's film released in 1920, was kept at the Filmoteca, where it will be screened tomorrow, Wednesday, and was returned to the United States in the nineties A moment from the film 'La negra', directed by Oscar Micheaux and released in 1920. Elsa Fernández-Santos Madrid - 08 Nov 2021 - 03:53 CET In a letter dated July 23, 1979, one of the highest authorities on African-American cinema, Thomas Cripps, expressed his enthusiasm to one of the heads of the Spanish Film Archive, Catherine Gautier, for what seemed to be the discovery of a lost relic of the history of cinema. Gautier, a legendary programmer for more than four decades, had shown him the copy weeks earlier in Madrid and Cripps had come to the conclusion that the material could correspond to Within Our Gates, by the pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. The film had been born as a response to the racism of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, but neither whites nor blacks liked it. After its premiere in Chicago, it began to be censored or ignored until its only four copies were lost. One of them, however, travelled to Spain in the fifties where it was preserved under the title La negra or La negressa. After traveling to Madrid and seeing the material in a moviola, Cripps informed Gautier that it could be three different titles by Micheaux in which actors, "a black informant" and the obsession with the culture of lynching, something recurrent in his films since he himself had witnessed a famous case as a child, that of Leo Frank, a young Jew who was the victim of a human pack that accused him of the murder of a minor whom he never killed. The three films were The Gunsaulus Mystery, from 1921, Lem Hawkins' Confession, from 1935 or, the one that finally was, the oldest of all, Within Our Gates, released on January 12, 1920. Considered a National Asset, the film rescued in Spain is available on the internet, and can be seen tomorrow Wednesday as part of a cycle organized by the Filmoteca and the Reina Sofía entitled, Black Films Matter. After a long process, La negra passed into the hands of the American Film Institute. In 1993, it was restored by the Library of Congress, returning the intertitles from Spanish to English and, with the help of some of Micheaux's books, reinterpreting the dialogues in slang. "We did an exchange for Sierra de Teruel [by André Malraux, with a screenplay by Max Aub]," recalls Catherine Gautier. "I was in charge of relations with the other film libraries, where we looked for materials that we didn't have by Buñuel. We sent the first positive test to the United States in 1988. The internegative, a year later. They were excited, the film became a success." Micheaux was attracted to interracial conflicts and used to reverse roles in his films. In Within Our Gates, it is a gossipy servant who causes the misunderstanding that ends with an older and innocent marriage on the gallows. They are the adoptive parents of the protagonist of the film, a mulatto, the black woman of the title, played by Evelyn Peers. The young woman has had the privilege of studying and in the first shot of the film, she appears dressed in white and reading in a flirtatious living room in a city in the north of the United States. She is a black woman with privileges, who defends the right to education and the vote of her own but who hides a traumatic past. The entire final part of the film is a long and dramatic flashback in the Mississippi Delta. There, on the plantation where their adoptive parents lived, the protagonist helps them add and subtract their savings so that they can collect from the boss without being deceived. From the beginning of the footage, Micheaux refers to lynchings, from which he does not even save the abolitionist North. The owner of the plantation is presented as a tyrant, hated by whites and blacks, to whom his slanderous and drunken servant goes with stories of the other blacks who aspire to have an education. In the film they try to lynch four people, the only one who escapes death is a child, the protagonist's younger brother, who manages to flee. The noose around the neck is only explicitly seen in a dream of the gossipy servant, who also ends up beaten by the mob. The terrible sequence of the old couple executed closes with an ellipsis in which we only see how the rope on which they have been hanged is cut. To top off the horror, there is also an attempted rape, of such realism that actress Evelyn Peers remembered the sequence years later as the best and most brutal of her career. It is in this attempted rape that the origins of the character will be clarified, who her real father was and why she, unlike others, had agreed to an education. Churches and film clubs Within Our Gates was released in Chicago and Detroit in 1920, but the screenings began to be increasingly conflicting and the film stopped circulating in the main market to move only in churches and film clubs. Micheaux's style, who went on to shoot 40 more films always on the margins of the industry, is intense and at the same time sloppy, a disjointed editing that for some analysts responds to the style of improvised jazz. In any case, the film we know today is incomplete. The nitrate copy that arrived in Spain in 1956 was sold to the Filmoteca in a lot that includes titles such as La cabrita tira al monte, Pilar Guerra or a short film by Félix el Gato. Its price was 4,000 pesetas. "The Filmoteca bought the nitrate copy from Manuel Rabanal Taylor, who was national head of the SEU film clubs," explains Laura Carrillo Caminal, head of the Documentation and Cataloguing Service. "Subsequently, in 1961, the Arroyo laboratories were commissioned to produce a negative duplicate and a new 35 mm copy on acetate support, which was a non-flammable support and therefore safer. These commissions to the laboratory were, and are, common in the Filmoteca as part of its conservation policy. The original copy is not preserved, it would probably be lost because it is in poor condition." Writer, director, producer and distributor, the figure of Micheaux has not ceased to gain relevance in recent times. The recently opened Academy Museum in Hollywood, in Los Angeles, has made questionable museological decisions by minimizing the figure of the great patriarch of cinema, D. W. Griffith, for the Southern exaltation of The Birth of a Nation. While tiptoeing around the man who according to Eisenstein taught everything "to everyone", author of Broken Lilies or Intolerance, the focus is on Micheaux's work and his cinema through extensive documentation that situates the context in which Within Our Gates was shot and released and why it is considered a response to racism in The Birth of a Nation, whose premiere in 1915 provoked protests from the African-American community. "Micheaux's importance as the first great African-American filmmaker cannot be underestimated," explains Zoran Sinobad, curator and head of film at the Library of Congress. "Not only was he the first African-American to direct feature films, but he was also the first whose films were screened in white theaters. This is especially important in the context of his work's commitment to racial injustice, a theme that was virtually non-existent on American screens in the 1920s. Micheaux was a groundbreaking filmmaker whose films challenged the stereotypical representations of black men and women that were prevalent in Hollywood at the time and provided a uniquely black perspective on race and life in the United States." The Black Films Matter cycle that La Filmoteca and the Museo Reina Sofía present this month and which will last through December and January, aims to "give voice and space" to a series of filmmakers whose works have hardly been seen in Spain or Europe. [ https://www.museoreinasofia.es/actividad/black-films-matter ] The films of "pioneers such as Micheaux and Zora Neale Hurston; champions of race films such as Spencer Williams; revolutionaries such as Melvin van Peebles, Charles Burnett or Cheryl Dunye". All of them, fundamental names in the construction of an identity whose struggle to break with stereotypes was born in a film that chance brought to Spain. Museo reina sofia of spain Black Films MAtter BLACK FILMS MATTER (1920-2020) Date and time Held on 10 Nov 2021 Yes, black film matters. From the oldest surviving feature film directed by a black filmmaker, Within Our Gates (1920) by Oscar Micheaux, to the frenetic contemporary proposals of Arthur Jafa in the Trump era, this cycle proposes a journey through the American independent black film and does so in an anthological retrospective organized by the Reina Sofía Museum and the Spanish Film Archive that, For the first time, it brings together a century of films directed solely by African-American filmmakers. With this essential condition, the cycle seeks to avoid the racial stereotypes in representation that characterized, in the past, the work of legendary black actors and actresses. Some thirty sessions – during two months of programming – claim and tell another great story of this medium in the United States, which places at the center the subaltern and resistant gaze of the black minority. A story that obeys one of the most urgent and necessary desires throughout an entire century: that of the struggle for life. As filmmaker Arthur Jafa and philosopher Fred Moten remind us, it is possible to make film noir with the same power, beauty and alienation of black music. Both have a common aspect: not obeying rules but undoing them and recombining them in an improvisatory logic that animates blues, jazz, hip-hop or house, but also the images and sounds of black film. The route cannot, therefore, be traced chronologically and linearly, but in a spiral and with leaps back and forth, in a syncopated composition that governs the dialogues between the projections of both venues. The programming, far from the canon or the emblem, proposes a story based on film manifestations that do not deal externally or observationally with the black population, but are made by this same community that shows their way of life and unique experience. BLACK FILMS MATTER (1920-2020) is, therefore, a cycle of singular films with resonances and confluences between them, rather than a theoretical program. It consists of various sessions that, as units of meaning, give underlying shape to this beat of films. In this way, archaeology is made of the pioneers of cinema, including the films of the first African-American directors in history, Oscar Michaux and Zora Neale Hurston. These are the so-called race films of the early twentieth century, an alternative industry that developed in the silent period and that still remains unknown due to its enormous potential for destabilization. In this way, Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates is an anti-racist response to the aberrant xenophobic monumentality of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), a milestone in the orthodox histories of cinema. After this period, we connect with the emergence of black consciousness and the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, characterized by the insurgency of the Black Power movement and the LA Rebellion, collectives where film giants such as Charles Burnett, Melvin van Peebles or Billy Woodberry stand out. In turn, the politics of difference unite feminism, blackness, and queer identities in the work of Julie Dash, Cheryl Dunye, and Cauleen Smith. There is also room for a popular street cinema in the cycle, which addresses the neighborhood as territory and battlefield, as is the case with the films of Spike Lee, Gordon Parks, Michael Schulz or John Singleton, aimed at a new specifically black mass audience, a "counter-audience" that transforms American entertainment cinema. The sessions by contemporary artists, which feature Kevin Jerome Everson, Arthur Jafa and Kara Walker, function as counterpoints – regardless of a chronology – that return to foundational moments of black film, such as the origins of the pioneers or the revolts of the 1960s and 1970s. The program seeks to reintegrate these historical genealogies into a contemporary Black consciousness that incorporates the past while being able to manifest today, in unison with one of the great social movements and hopes of our time, Black Lives Matter, that Black lives (and the cinema that inhabits them) matter. Program Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second pass: session 30. Screening and closing concert with The Silent Entertainers Band. Thursday, January 20 and Saturday, January 22, 2022 / Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 1. Pioneers I Thursday, November 11, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Second screening: Wednesday, December 29, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 2. Pioneers II Friday, November 12, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Saturday, December 18, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 3. Kara Walker Saturday, November 13, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Friday, December 17, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 4. Melvin Van Peebles Sunday, November 14, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Second screening: Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 5. L.A. Rebellion I. Don Amis and Charles Burnett Monday, November 15, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Sunday, December 5, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 6. Julie Dash Tuesday, November 16, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Monday, December 27, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 7. Pioneers III Wednesday, November 17, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Friday, December 3, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 8. Kevin Jerome Everson Thursday, November 18, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Tuesday, December 7, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 9. Pioneers IV Friday, November 19, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Second screening: Thursday, December 23, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 10. Pioneers V Saturday, November 20, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Friday, December 10, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 11. Gordon Parks Sunday, November 21, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Second screening: Sunday, November 28, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 12. Michael Schultz Monday, November 22, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Thursday, December 9, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 13. Pioneers VI Tuesday, November 23, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Sunday, December 5, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 14. Pioneers VII Wednesday, November 24, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Saturday, December 4, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 15. Bill Gunn Thursday, November 25, 2021 - 7:30 p.m. / Second screening: Monday, December 13, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 16. Ivan Dixon Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Thursday, December 23, 2021 - check schedule on the website of the Spanish Film Archive Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema Session 17. Larry Bullard and Carolyn Y. Johnson Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Wednesday, December 22, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 18. Spike Lee Sunday, November 28, 2021 - 5:00 p.m. / Second screening: Sunday, December 19, 2021 - 12:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 19. John Singleton Monday, November 29, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Saturday, December 11, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 20. Stephen Winter Tuesday, November 30, 2021 - 9:00 p.m. / Second screening: Wednesday, December 8, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 21. Cheryl Dunye Thursday, December 2, 2021 – 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Sunday, December 26, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 22. L.A. Rebellion II. Haile Gerima Friday, December 3, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Tuesday, December 28, 2021 - check schedule on the website of the Spanish Film Archive Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema Session 23. L.A. Rebellion III. Larry Clark Monday, December 6, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. / Second screening: Friday, December 10, 2021 - check schedule on the website of Filmoteca Española Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 24. Cauleen Smith Tuesday, December 21, 2021 - check schedule on the Spanish Film Archive website / Second screening: Friday, January 14, 2022 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 25. Feminist Short Films Wednesday, December 1, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website / Second screening: Saturday, December 11, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Cine Doré / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 26. Arthur Jafa Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - check schedule on the Spanish Film Archive website / Second screening: Saturday, January 15, 2022 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 27. Kathleen Collins Sunday, December 12, 2021 - 12:00 / Second screening: Wednesday, December 22, 2021 - check schedule on the Filmoteca Española website Museo Reina Sofía, Sabatini Building, Auditorium / Second screening: Filmoteca Española, Cine Doré Session 28. L.A. Rebellion IV. Billy Woodberry Sunday, December 19, 2021 - check schedule on the Spanish Film Archive website / Second screening: Monday, December 20, 2021 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 29. Gordon Parks Thursday, January 20, 2022 - check schedule on the Spanish Film Archive website / Second screening: Saturday, January 22, 2022 - 6:00 p.m. Spanish Film Archive, Doré Cinema / Second screening: Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini Building, Auditorium Session 30. Screening and closing concert with The Silent Entertainers Band https://vimeo.com/640315746?fl=pl&fe=sh 03142026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-have-you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComment-80649 osted just now @aka Contrarian 14 hours ago, aka Contrarian said: @richardmurrayI watched "Within Our Gates" and fully appreciated it for what it was. In fact, it inspired me to do some research on Oscar Micheaux because I was both curious and confused about him, even misspelling his name. I was, however, vaguely familiar with him which was why I was of the opinion that it must've been his movies that I was seeing quite a while back on a local TV channel that did not run them in prime time but instead put them on during the early afternoon, almost as if to fill in empty air space like the wrestling matches and The Liberace Show did back during the early days of TV. This would mean that my seeing these old films must've been back in the 1950s. Anyway, I learned, to my surprise, that Oscar Micheaux was born in 1884 in Metropolis, Illinois, a town I know of because I had friends from there, and that he died in 1951, so he was alive during my life time. I watched a couple of short YouTube videos about him and have concluded that at least some of those sound movies I was watching back then were ones produced by him later in his career. Finally, imo, some of the stereotypes I previously mentioned did appear in Micheaux's "Beyond the Gates". Certainly Sylvia Landry, the lovelorn heroine of "Within Our Gates, was a "tragic mulatto" whose real father was white and whose black adoptive parents were lynched, her adoptive and nurturing mother, Mattie, being a "Mammy" figure, and the wicked Larry, brother-in-law of Sylvia's cousin, being a villainous "Trickster", while the tattle tale Ephraim, was the "Coon" figure. The minister Jacobs, who ran a school for black children, represented the "Righteous Reverend"and Dr. Vivian, who falls in love with Sylvia, represented the "romantic hero". These personifications, rather than being pantomimed degrading figures, were transformed in "Within Our Gates", and I suspect the improved versions, like the film itself, were used to counteract the negative caricatures that "The Birth of a Nation" depicted. My introduction to Micheaux was probably about 70 years ago and I'm curious if those films I remember seeing were lost and no longer exist since the claim is being made that this movie is the last of its kind in existence. Btw, I also beg to disagree with your classifying the Cakewalk as a form of buffoon mockery. It was actually an elegant, joyful, high-stepping dance where couples competed against each other, with the winner being awarded the prize of a cake! Nor were minstrel shows totally without merit. They show cased sly humor, buck dancing and banjo artistry among other things. I mention this because there was a time when black Masons would stage their own minstrel shows and, having seen one put on by my father's lodge when I was a young girl in the 1940s, I remember being rather proud that my dad, was a member of a barbershop quartet that performed in a show his Masonic lodge staged. Just some thoughts... Expand Lovely thoughts, thank you for sharing them:) Well use of the word personifications, in that true persons change are not pantomime. Sylvia a true mulatto, definitely goes through trials or tribulations but she isn't tragic cause she wins in the end. She isn't clotel. Mattie is motherly, in the same way Mammy's are, but Mattie is a black woman married to a black man raising a black child... when a black maid is motherly to a white child that is the mammy figure, it isn't a black woman being motherly to a black child, that is expected? right? The landrys are both hanged and burned alive for a crime they didn't commit. hahaha LArry is the trickster, I admit he doesn't change. If anything he is the one true caricature. and Micheaux being like Pioneer:) one of these law abiding blacks, criminalizes black street people. All of larry's crimes are financial, none are violent. but yeah, larry is the pantomime black trickster, but knowing what I know of micheaux that makes sense. I as a writer don't view black hustlers negatively so... Efram wasn't the coon for one reason, in the film, he recants his actions in a confession to the audience so to speak. yes, he is the prototypical coon figure gestures, talk and all, BUT unlike most coon figures, he gets killed by whites, which is a very rare touch. even among black writers, they rarely give "black traitors" aka coons the death that micheax gave efram. People remember samuel l jackson's characters death in django, but he is murdered by a black man, django, Oscar micheaux murders his coon, efram through the true subjects whites, displaying the simple truth that whites are the enemy of blacks folks, whether the honorable, loving, law abiding Landry's or the lying, self hating scheming eframs. But the key is that efram confesses he hates himself, confesses he is wrong which is very rare in film, even black written films. And your correct, the Rev is the "righteous reverend" and Dr.."good hero" But at least with the rev. he is actually challenged. when sylvia rebukes his offer of marriage, that is a real test that again, so few righteous reverends have in many stories. to be challenged is key to testing the identity. but the doctor is an evergood hero:) which ok:) I wish I could see a complete version of symbol fo the unconquered. The partial I placed below. I think it is a response to birth of a nation, not within our gates. Why do I say this? In a general sense, because all of Micheaux's work involve the south plus black people and they are not like in griffith's film, they are all partially a response to birth of a nation, on a mere stylistic point. But in terms of agrarian fantasies, i argue, symbol of the unconquered is more of an agrarian fantasy which is what birth of a nation is, than within our gates. Birth of the nation is dismissive of the usa outside of the south, in birth of a nation the usa outside of the south, doesn't functionally exist. In that way, within our gates isn't a reply. Within our gates is very much holistic. It is showing black unity between blacks outside the south and to the south. Sylvia makes it where the black school in the south will thrive/survive/live but she lives in the north, has found love in the north, fled the south because of white terror, but doesn't ask other black people to leave the south. Within our gates i argue is more holistic to the usa. that complete nature is absent in birth of a nation. But symbol of the unconquered is all about black homesteaders. It is focused on a specific area in the usa like birth of a nation. And like birth of a nation has straight messages about certain persons or groups. Whereas the KKK is heroic supporting the traditions of the south in birth of a nation, the kkk is a terrorist illegal operating organization in symbol of the unconquered. whereas "birth's" female lead is so negatively biased she can jump off of a cliff to her death rather than be violated. the female lead in "symbol"fights through wind and rain and storms, to get her land. can be frightened but will never go to her death from fear. yeah, well , even though I don't prefer comedy usually, i think comedy is the art form most in need in the usa at all times, this countries history doesn't yield to seriousness well. lovely thought, thank you for sharing them 03152026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12582-have-you-seen-within-our-gates-from-oscar-micheaux/#findComment-80716 osted just now @Pioneer1 my pleasure, check out more films and content https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/677-oscar-devereaux-micheaux-books-plus-films/ @Troy ah cool:) some of the elements of within our gates are still rare to see. a black character who is publicly antiblack and confesses to it with shame before being killed by nonblacks, very rare to see //read/hear today in anything with a budget and getting paid to be made, even among black produced/financed work. the relationship between north and south black regions in the usa, the lead female character does not like the south for multiple reasons and yet still helps the black populace in the south , I recall I mentioned in the past how many fiscally wealthy blacks who live outside the former confederacy have never paid for one person to go to one historical black college or universtiy (HBCU) even demanded all the people they have paid college for get money only if they go to a hbcu.

Introduction to Jesse JAckson Juniors Eulogy Yesterday I listened for several hours of three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson,... He maintained a tense relationship with the political order, not because the presidents were White or Black, but the demands of our message, the demands of speaking for the least of these — those who are disinherited, the damned, the dispossessed, the disrespected — demanded not Democratic or Republican solutions, but demanded a consistent, prophetic voice that at no point in time sold us out as a people.” MY THOUGHTS Who is Jesse Jackson ? In cheap hindsight, Jesse Jackson is one of the Black Leaders, another is Shirley Chisholm , whose rise was in the last decade of the Jim Crow era, 1865 to 1980[eighteen sixty five to nineteen eighty , the period after the enslavement era from 1492 fourteen ninety two to 1865 eighteen sixty five], in the 1970s, nineteen seventies. What happened in the the 1970s? China + Japan , two white asian countries, each began a fiscal push, that in twenty twenty six have become pillars of modern fiscal activity, deleting the edge in engineering the usa had from the end of commonly called world war two. the USA installed the lickspittle puppet, the Shah of Iran in the nineteen fifties because the elected prime minister of iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, wasn't a lickspittle and was stopping the uneven oil business. I restate, Mosaddegh wanted to sell Iranian oil to iran's favor at market value, both things, and that is what led to United States of America plus the United Kingdom of England plus Israel overthrowing the government of iran and installing the shah as a monarchy. yes, the usa plus uk plus israel installed a monarchy to get what they each wanted financially. But that action led to the Muslim Revolution of Iran overthrowing the shah in the 1970s and publicly stating two countries who had a hand in overthrowing the elected government of Mosaddegh, , USA+Israel are correctly enemies of Iran. The inevitable failure of the civil rights laws in the private financial sector showed their reality. As Black populaces in white cities had a growing class of workers for city governments, aided with publicly funded schools, but the white flight was about to allow white cities to undercut staffing and undercut funding which ultimately derailed many black populaces in cities. What was Jesse Jackson's plan? Jesse Jackson realized the heritage of unpaid unelected advocacy in the Black descended of enslaved populace, whose members were continually murdered through the whole jim crow period needed to survive in the future; said heritage was about advocacy, working for something, that returns nothing to oneself. MEdgar evers/Fanni lou hamer/James Baldwin/Malcolm/ MLK jr/ Billie Holiday/ Mary Lou Williams all died through murder or poor condition of life, financially broke. None of them had money. They all had funerals paid for by others, had their childrens opportunities financed by others. Jesse Jackson's idea was, lets place Fannie Lou Hamer + Malcolm in the elected official class. Why? I argue Jesse Jackson saw with Jim Crow ending, the USA is going into a phase where individuals from many communities in the usa will be able to financially achieve great heights, unbounded, but they will be communally abvocates. Not advocates, those who work toward, but abvocates, those who work against. So, while financially a Black one percent will grow and those not of white european descent in a rainbow coalition, which came from Fred Hampton in chicago, will achieve financial wealth, the black fiscal poor as part of the greater fiscal poor of the united states of america will need an elected class who are not just filled with victors who own spoils abvocating to the districts that elected them, but communal advocates who have the same energy plus vibe that Jesse Jackson saw in the jim crow era before it was murdered by non blacks aside their black agents. Did Jesse Jackson succeed? No, To the victor goes the spoils is the oldest heritage for elected officials in the united states of america. It is a strong heritage because in a land where government post tend to not be inherited, the only fiscal profit in government is in extracting what you can in the short term. Supporting the short term fiscal value of elected positions in government is the rarity of advocates of highest quality that surrounded Jesse Jackson in the nineteen sixties. Being an abvocate , working against, to the people is easy , natural in the united states of america. Being an advocate to the people , and better yet one who is making no fiscal revenue, is a rare way of life in the usa. Jesse Jackson tried to create a culture of advocacy for all people within the elected class of government officials in the united states of america, who could make money and take money while being effective legislators or executives who forced profit to be made on mountains of unprofitable caring to prevent crimes in the future or the potency of crimes in any past. TRANSCRIPT 0:00 Yesterday 0:07 I listened 0:10 for several hours of three 0:14 [clears throat] 0:15 United States presidents 0:18 who do not know Jesse Jackson. 0:26 He maintained a tense relationship 0:30 with the political order. Not because 0:34 the presidents were white or black, 0:38 but the demands of our message. 0:40 Yes. 0:41 The demands of speaking for the least of 0:43 these, those who were disinherited, the 0:45 damned, the dispossessed, the 0:48 disrespected. 0:50 Yes, sir. 0:51 demanded not Democratic or Republican 0:54 solutions, but demanded 0:57 a consistent 1:00 prophetic 1:02 voice 1:03 that at no point in time ever sold us 1:06 out as a people. 1:10 And it speaks volumes about who the 1:13 Reverend Jesse Jackson 1:16 was. Our message has already been 1:20 delivered today. I can see it all over 1:23 my mother's face. 1:26 Rise, Jesse, rise. Give Jonathan Jackson 1:30 another great round of applause for 1:33 delivering our family message to the 1:37 world. 1:42 Let's hear it for the congressman. 1:50 [applause] 1:52 There'll be no different message that 1:55 leaves this service than the one that 1:56 Jonathan Jackson has blessed us with. 2:02 I want to thank my sister Ashley and on 2:05 behalf of all of our siblings, 2:08 there is something about the blood of 2:11 service that Jesse Jackson has given to 2:15 all of us. 2:17 Ashley is an extraordinary individual, a 2:21 very, very talented young lady, and I am 2:24 so grateful. We're all so grateful to 2:27 call her our sister. Thank you, Ashley. 2:32 [applause] 2:37 [applause] 2:41 a gift to us from our father. 2:48 Amen. 2:50 to my sister Santita 2:53 whose talents are so extraordinary that 2:57 I've always wondered why they're so 2:59 contained. 3:02 We're so grateful for her scholarship, 3:06 her input, her thinking, 3:09 her being our oldest 3:11 sibling. 3:14 She doesn't like oldest. She likes 3:16 eldest sibling. 3:20 We want to thank Cintita in a very 3:21 special way for her leadership. Give 3:24 Centa a great round of applause. 3:25 [applause] 3:27 Let's hear it for Centa. 3:33 [applause] 3:38 And if we can listen once again to four 3:40 presidents yesterday, three of whom 3:43 happened to be US presidents 3:46 who did not know my father, we can 3:48 certainly listen to Jqualine Jackson. 3:52 We can listen to Jqualine Jackson who 3:54 cared for my father. Give her the round 3:57 of applause that she deserves. 4:03 [applause] 4:13 And last but not least, 4:18 for 64 years before we heard of 4:22 progressive nuclear pausy or Parkinson's 4:25 disease, 4:28 my father at North Carolina ENTT said 4:30 that he was standing 4:32 at the cafeteria when he saw a young 4:34 fresh woman 4:37 walking across 4:39 the campus. 4:41 That's right. 4:44 And mommy, at least as the story was 4:46 conveyed to me, he said something to the 4:48 effect that you're going to be my wife 4:51 one day. 4:54 And mama said to him, "You going to have 4:56 to work hard to make that the case, my 4:58 brother. 5:04 for 64 years with a particular emphasis 5:07 since Reverend's diagnosis 5:10 of initially Parkinson's disease but a 5:13 further diagnosis that revealed 5:16 pseudonuclear Pauly 5:19 whether the weather was rain or whether 5:21 the weather was cold 5:23 whether things were going well or things 5:25 were not going well. 5:28 the mountain tops that marriages reach 5:30 as well as the valley that they reach. 5:32 Jqualine Jackson has been the enduring 5:35 force in the ministry of the Reverend 5:38 Jesse Jackson and she lent him to the 5:43 world. Give Mrs. Jackson the honor that 5:47 she deserves. 5:51 [applause] 5:55 [applause] 6:00 I want to remind everybody 6:03 Yes. 6:07 that we are burying our father today. 6:17 I was so grateful that he gave me his 6:18 name. 6:22 When he first gave it to me, it was a 6:23 good name, 6:26 Jesse Jackson. 6:28 Born March 11th, just a few short days 6:31 from now. 6:34 He had traveled from Chicago Theological 6:36 Seminary to Selma, Alabama. 6:41 He sent my mother to Greenville, South 6:43 Carolina. 6:49 because he wanted his firstborn son to 6:51 be born where he was born. 6:56 When I was born, the Selma to Montgomery 6:58 March was entering a new phase. And mama 7:02 called Selma to find out what 7:06 or to share with my father that his 7:07 firstborn son had been born. And 7:11 he was so overwhelmed by the moment that 7:13 he almost named me Selma. 7:21 But thank God for mama's better 7:23 judgment. 7:29 And my father had a lot of jokes. 7:32 Yes, sir. 7:33 My father was a funny man. 7:36 Those of you who knew my father knew 7:38 that he was an enjoyable man. Whatever 7:42 the media has to say about him, it has 7:45 nothing to do with what each and every 7:48 one of us knows about who Jesse Jackson 7:52 was and is in our thinking. 8:06 being Jesse is not easy. 8:09 And so, Dad and I had worked out some 8:12 understanding of why he would do this 8:14 and why I would do that. And a symbiosis 8:17 occurred in our personality because what 8:20 he did affected me one way and what I 8:23 did affected him the other way. But such 8:26 was the name Jesse Jackson. 8:30 And I remember when I was in prison. 8:40 [applause] 8:43 And I would think about the man 8:46 who brought Robert Goodman home. 8:48 Yes, sir. 8:50 Yes, sir. 8:51 Who called the Ayatollah in Iran and 8:55 asked him to release the Americans. And 8:58 when he wouldn't, he said, "At least 9:00 release the black ones because America, 9:03 don't use them as a human shield. 9:05 America don't care." 9:09 And Ayatollah heard Reverend Jackson's 9:12 voice and released the black prisoners. 9:20 [applause] 9:21 Jonathan and I were in Cuba when dad 9:23 brought, I believe, the Mario prisoners 9:26 home. 9:28 I think Yousef and Jonathan were in Iraq 9:32 when they met with Saddam Hussein 9:35 [snorts] and brought a 747 9:38 of filled with human shields home. 9:44 [applause] 9:49 And I remember mama when daddy would 9:51 come visit me in prison 9:53 and I would think about 9:56 all of the people my daddy could save. 10:07 He came to visit me one day and I said, 10:08 "Daddy, 10:11 do you think you can get me out of 10:12 here?" 10:18 [applause] 10:23 [applause] 10:25 He said, "I'm trying, son, 10:28 but don't give up." Yes, sir. 10:31 Hold your head high. 10:33 Stick your chest out. 10:35 You can make it. 10:38 And so, yesterday, I began a little 10:41 statement, and this ain't going to last 10:43 but about four more minutes cuz I 10:46 haven't had a chance to develop it. 10:48 [snorts] 10:50 Howard Thurman 10:54 because the message has already been 10:57 delivered. Rise, Jesse, rise. I'm 11:00 specifically hanging around Howard 11:03 Thurman yesterday because I don't want 11:06 the media to step on rise, Jesse, rise 11:10 in tomorrow's story. 11:14 It's a calculation. 11:16 Yes, sir. We Jackson have to think about 11:19 what we say so we don't have too many 11:22 messages emanating from the same 11:25 household. We think about it. 11:32 Howard Thurman his family grew up as a 11:34 sharecropping family and he had 11:36 experienced some of the horrific 11:38 treatment of African-Americans in the 11:40 South, not unlike my father. and his 11:43 family decided they didn't want young 11:45 Howard to be a sharecropper. So, they 11:47 put together all of their pennies and 11:50 quarters and nickels, and they came up 11:53 with just enough money to make sure 11:55 Howard Thurman could afford a ticket to 11:58 go to college. 12:03 And in the book, which Bill Clinton 12:05 referenced yesterday with Head and 12:07 Heart, he dedicates the book 12:11 to this story. 12:14 When he went to get his ticket, the 12:17 broken pieces of his life were in a 12:20 trunk that his family had given to him 12:23 with no handles. And he had tied the 12:25 trunk up with ropes. 12:28 Yes, sir. 12:29 Yes, sir. And the conductor said, "You 12:32 can get on the train, but your baggage 12:33 can't." 12:35 He said, "In that trunk was all of the 12:37 broken pieces of his life, his pictures, 12:40 his his clothes, all of his memories, 12:43 and 12:46 he wasn't leaving his broken pieces 12:49 behind." 12:52 So he went over in the corner of the 12:54 train station and he began crying 12:58 because his dreams and his hopes had 13:01 been thwarted about whether or not he 13:04 could go to college. 13:07 And crying and tears and mucus all lay 13:11 in a pile when he wiped his eyes and he 13:12 looked up mama and he saw a pair of old 13:16 rustic boots. 13:20 He continued to look up and he saw a man 13:23 in some overalls and he saw an old black 13:26 man wearing a straw hat and he said, 13:28 "Boy, 13:30 what you crying for?" And Howard said, 13:33 "Because I can't take my luggage with me 13:38 on the train. I've decided not to go to 13:41 college." And the old man reached in his 13:44 pocket and he grabbed a little leather 13:45 sack and pulled out a few coins and 13:48 bought a ticket for Howard Thurman's 13:51 luggage. 13:54 And Howard Thurman says he never got the 13:57 man's name. 14:00 Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And all he remembers 14:04 was his train was going in one direction 14:07 and he saw the old man walking down the 14:10 train tracks until he faded away. 14:14 He dedicates his autobiography 14:18 to the stranger 14:23 who restored his hope. 14:26 Yes, sir. 14:27 And sent him to college. Thank you, 14:30 Jesus. 14:31 I just want two more minutes to tell you 14:34 about who my daddy was. 14:38 [applause] 14:39 You see, when I was in prison, 14:41 Yes, sir. 14:42 I had to ask my daddy if he was 14:44 disappointed in me. 14:45 Yes, sir. Come on. Come on. 14:48 [snorts] 14:49 I announced this little old campaign for 14:51 Congress on his birthday, October 8th, 14:56 2025, because I wanted to remember his 14:59 birthday as long as I live. 15:02 Yes, sir. 15:05 Help. 15:06 You see, when I was in the hole 15:10 and I looked up and saw the ceiling, 15:14 I thought about the stranger. 15:19 And I said to myself, "My dad is the 15:23 stranger." 15:26 You see, he's the man who can save 15:28 people from prison and save people and 15:31 bring them from foreign leadership. He's 15:33 the man who can go around the world and 15:36 change it for everybody. 15:39 He's the man who spoke in the high 15:41 schools and told young people to stop 15:44 complaining about what they don't have, 15:46 to use what they got. 15:48 Yes, sir. Yes, sir. 15:51 He's the one who told them down with 15:53 dope and and up with hope. 15:56 He's the one who preached your funerals 15:59 for your families and married your loved 16:02 ones and helped bring them forward in 16:05 happily married matrimony. 16:08 He's the one we turn to at our lowest 16:12 hours. 16:13 And so, [gasps] not only in the life of 16:17 his family was he hope, 16:20 but he was a stranger Yes, sir. for 16:24 millions of people who knew not his 16:27 name. 16:28 You see, [cheering] 16:31 imminent Howard Thurman theologian said 16:34 that to Howard Thurman, the stranger was 16:38 the embodiment of God. 16:42 So when the stranger shows up in our 16:45 space, 16:46 I don't care if it's your daddy. I don't 16:49 care if it's your mama. I don't care if 16:51 it's someone that you don't get along 16:53 with. God is trying to tell you 16:55 something, judge. 16:57 Yes, sir. [applause] 17:00 Yes, sir. 17:01 I'm done. 17:03 [applause] 17:04 God help you. 17:05 When Jonathan delivered that message 17:06 today, 17:08 you 17:09 on behalf of this family and on behalf 17:11 of a people, 17:12 Yes, sir. 17:14 He covered every aspect that I know of 17:19 my father's life. 17:20 Yes, sir. 17:21 I am so grateful to each of the 17:23 iterations of Jesse Jackson that are 17:26 represented here today 17:28 because we've seen and you you you and 17:31 you have lifted this family and allowed 17:34 us the great privilege 17:37 Yes, sir. 17:39 [cheering] 17:39 of representing you 17:42 in some mighty amazing places. And so, 17:46 Santita, to God be the glory. [cheering] 17:50 For all of the wonderful things that he 17:54 has done. 17:56 I am grateful to all of you on behalf of 17:59 our family. Rise, Jesse. Rise. COMMENTARIES https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12576-president-obamas-eulogy-of-rev-jesse-jackson/#findComment-80620 sted just now @aka Contrarian well,I think what jesse jackson jr said was truth, clinton/obama/biden were each considered good guys, the southern white sax player, the mulatto with a black wife, the kindly old white guy, but each weren't the kind of elected advocate that Jesse Jackson senior hoped to brew as a common occurrence in the usa. I still feel ,with no proof, that what Jesse Jackson wanted, his purpose, was to get people with the quality of leadership of advocates, unpaid or unelected while totally committed, like fannie lou hamer or malcolm x to be elected officials, to improve the quality of elected officials, in the usa. Instead, the overall industry of government led to a bunch of pantomime black or non black elected officials who are all salespeople, who do nothing for blacks or non blacks while claiming their are acting in all humanities betterment. This is why Shirley Chisholm left government. She was an advocate who became an elected official, but she was surrounded by black plus non black salespeople. And three of said salespeople spoke during jesse jackson's funeral with the same quality inherent in insult that brooke shileds plus magic johnson spoke at michael jackson's funeral. 03142026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12576-president-obamas-eulogy-of-rev-jesse-jackson/#findComment-80668 osted just now @aka Contrarian On 3/11/2026 at 6:04 PM, aka Contrarian said: Well, if you dont want the 3 Presidents to talk politics at the funeral of a political figure, then don't invite them, just to show how important the deceased was. And Al Sharpton certainly didn't mince any words about what's happening in the country in his remarks. If you want a dignified funeral, don't invite a bunch of dignitaries to speak, and hold the services at a huge hall to accommodate all the public mourners you opened the doors to. You're just asking for confusion and resentment and that's what the Jackson family got. You can't have it both ways. I am with you 100% Do I think jesse jackson spoke false ? no BUT I concur to your point that if you want no commercialization then make the funeral private and if you want a more public aspect, for jesse jackson was famous, known, then you need to have greater control over what happens plus over how what happens in the schedule. I concur to you. If you open the possibility for behavior you don't want at an event you control, then when the behavior you don't want happens you are partially and arguably mostly to blame. If Jesse jackson junior would had began mentioning where the jackson clan, or whomever was in control went wrong, that would had made his speech not only truthful but even. @Pioneer1 1 hour ago, Pioneer1 said: This shit has got to stop. Perhaps there should be a Black Law: If you're already light skinned, you shouldn't be allowed to dye your hair blonde. Maybe we should have a limit to how many "white" features a Black person is allowed to have before they are no longer considered Black....lol. i have to ask a simple question. who will enforce the black laws? you?:) you talk of law enforcement with white laws so i assume someone will enforce the black laws:) 03142026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12576-president-obamas-eulogy-of-rev-jesse-jackson/#findComment-80674 osted just now @Pioneer1 2 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: I guess if we could figure out who or what is influencing so many Black women to dye their hair blonde, we can figure out who or what can get them to stop. what if the influencer is the freedom of a woman to do whatever she wants with out having to worry about any penalty ? who is going to deny them their freedom to do what they want? what can deny them the freedom to do what they want? 03152026 https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12576-president-obamas-eulogy-of-rev-jesse-jackson/#findComment-80709 osted just now @Pioneer1 7 hours ago, Pioneer1 said: If the "freedom of a woman to do whatever she wants" was the influencer....where are the AfroAmerican women with naturally light hair dying it black or dark brown? When was the last time you saw a Black entertainer with naturally lighter hair dying it black? It's not about freedom, it's about them being conditioned to believe that blonde hair, light skin, and light eyes somehow makes them look better. I don't think they should be physically or even legally prevented from doing so, but I do think that we as AfroAmericans who ARE proud to be Black...should have a consistent campaign of self-love and promotion of African features like dark skin and dark hair and promote this especially to our children to COUNTER the effects from centuries of racist anti-Black brainwashing that our community has endured. Use the movies, television shows, and advertisements to promote dark skin and dark hair....especially to our children. Make them desire THOSE features, instead of the opposite. Expand In my experience most Black women don't have naturally light hair. so they would never need to dye it a dark color. In contrast i find many white women tend to have natural light hair and they dye it dark colors. I can't recall a Black Entertainer with naturally lighter hair. Black to dark Brown is the usual colors for Black entertainers. You are not wrong that conditioning exist, this is undeniably true. BUT, you hint at a greater challenge. I live in NYC , has more black women than any other city in the united states of america. If someone asks me what hairstyle do most black women have. I argue, a majority of black women in NYC today of younger generations have natural styles. And black women in nYC of older generations have a fifty /fifty natural to unnatural. Now, You mention a consistent campaign but when does this end? are you speaking of an eternal campaign? why do I ask? don't forget you live in the usa. There isn't a populace/peoples/group in the usa today that doesn't have many individuals in it who don't adhere to some code of appearance or conduct. Many people whose parents: don't speak english , don't speak spanish; dance the rumba; don't dance forms from latin america; are of asian descent, have been adopted by white europeans and barely know any asians. ... my point. If you are looking for 100% like another member of aalbc, or maybe yourself when it comes to black crime, then you can forget it in the united states of america. In my experience most black people desire being of some black tribe, in appearance, heritage, culture. But, not 100% and in my view, what your complaining about is the lack of 100% which I oppose. Pioneer you will always see black people who are white-philes in the usa, ALWAYS. But Black people have always been majority in love with being Black. I think black people like you love to cry emergency with the mere existence of black people who act as you feel they should not, even though said black folk have always been a minority in the black populace.

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Wishingwellsstamp-1307071478 EMBED CODE For the wishing wells challenge https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/665-wishing-wells-challenge-in-color-me-club/ My example lineart https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/660-preto-liberdade-wishing-well/

PRIOR ENTRY https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/669-art-comments-03042026/ NEXT ENTRY https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/718-art-comments-04172026/ COMMENT URL https://www.deviantart.com/comments/1/1306786656/5270319074 hope you feel better @leothefox @lockssteps they have a tutorial challenge, maybe you can do a tutorial for making digital art https://www.deviantart.com/beckykidus/journal/Tips-Tricks-and-Tutorials-the-Contest-1302807947 @artjwb what is upcycled art? name or link a song that reflects the sound of the band in creatures of the night three @HaiaShouster love the violence in the seascape, winter 506, acrylic right? @BERLINsART the haint of boogler hollow, nice title, for some reason I am thinking of Rat in fantastic mr fox @clover-teapot nice lineart, do you know about the following challenge? https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/journal/Wishing-Wells-1286745083 @j-o-h-a-n-l-a-n-d love passpartout acrobat, chef all around friend

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/journal/WATN-Wall-E-1286566667 supporting story https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/667-silver-inspirations/

This series is merely to help me record my replies to the lovely art galleries I see about. NEXT EDITION https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/671-art-comments-03072026/ Comment URL https://www.deviantart.com/comments/1/1305905496/5269724043 Thanks @Chaosfive-55 hope side your loving ones find yourselves this march happy plus healthy. Thanks for sharing my work @Elizabethexpresses the composition is lovely, the mountain range the arch of the female model, yourself and then the inverted arch of the rocky path under you. very nice. For above so below was the photo taken from a drone or helicopter. I gamble unfiscally, a drone. am I right? for those who may want to know the photogher websites are [ https://www.sensualight.com/ + https://nimblephotons.com/ ] I couldn't find them in deviantart. Elizabeth, maybe you can convince sensualight +nimblephotons them to join deviantart for a commercial page. deviantart has fiscal tools now. @3J-ART enjoyed the messaging , the movement the linear identity of the figures, the offsetting of the one who is different, facing toward the viewer, no red shadow, at an offangle to the line of the same in all three axis @Devilpig what inspired, sputchik? and nice title by the way, quite heavy ducts your plastic man is a perv is genius comedy, that is worth a mens magazine @Sparrow-Scratch17 ahh i didn't even know wizard of oz, dorothy and her crew are all in the public domain. hmm thank you. and very adorable, love the lion gesture, the hobo look of scrarecrow and very rusty tin man, nice @organicvision ahh the french alps, lovely, thank you... happy no paragliders messing up the shot @Ragcat392 for purple passion, what were your fractal settings? like scaling factor or fractal dimension? @yom94 I can be wrong but is that a paper cut out of an image on a wooden frame? for monkeybird paris @WonderErika well vampiress, after imagining I hope you don't pounce and decide to go home from the ceiling Question, are you a fan of vampirella? I know you love diana of paradise island. but who is your favorite female vampire in fiction? who is your favorite illustrator of female vampires? @assincr0n0 have you ever seen the film flow? @AnickinColor is william scheff on deviantart? we have a group called color me club which accepts inks that can be colored? and lovely coloring by the way. What inspired him to make the accordian head? @blackforeststeve that dog looked spoiled rotten all they want to do is shake water on people and get away with it @TheBarrelMan thank you, i never saw this art before. thanks for the history. What inspired the shape? what is it about phillipine heritage in the past or culture to that future that led to this? and just for the record, no one can put their head in their ass. @LaurainBurbank love the blue tones and shades. Did you manipulate the image with tones or shades separately or all in one go? what tool did you use? @Ustranga what is the difference between psychedelic art compared to surreal art? I will give it a gander and say based on your work , psychedelic and surreal work I know of. in psychedelic the colors, the unevenness uncommon unexpected colorings is the key but the shapes shouldn't be too far from cognizant. wheile in surreal, the colors may be bland or even natural, while the shapes are meant to be uneven, uncommon, unexpected. What say you ? Comment URL https://www.deviantart.com/comments/1/1301876991/5269737735 @leothefox will take a look here before I get to the best magazine on deviantart @300ChickenNuggets lovely ink, did you use a reference @dmorehead how long did the grimm fairy tale cost where do you put all these lovely sculptures? @BlaWhi well done, shadow is lovely @GiggleAddict if the land ever get mad @CapnDeek373 does bob's mom know grendel's mother? what is the thing Onyx is next to? Comment URL https://www.deviantart.com/comments/1/1304442539/5268959804 @Fafnir313 the war for the pallid throne chapter 1 intro is brilliant, sets a tone, gives an idea of the world, and appealing chapter title haha three hots and a cot, poor felix, nice structure, in one chapter, we know the most traumatic element in felix's life, we know the world he is in has religious fanatics, we know he lives in this world as an abused street thief who is about to join on organization who knows about him and his past , for survival, nice @Ustranga the lighthouse is in trouble @leothefox I read chapter eleven of the ways of sin.or the ways of baron potzroy on a scale of 0 myhtological saint to 10 more corrupt that dorian grey after a painting was made, what grade will you give baron potzroy? @ZaubererbruderASP the face of the resident of hell almost seems pleasant. to answer your question, they will have nothing to eat and thanks for introducing me to Lizdarkcroft her prose about photoshop role to commonly called AI is true. @TigerEgern the third stanza is my favorite fellow poet, in share these pages @LizDarkcroft , what will come out the egg? @Perzaart I asked someone somewhere else, what is the variance between psychedelic imagery compared to surreal imagery? I answered, in short form, psychedelic focuses on colors being the radical elements while surreal focuses on shapes being the radical elements. What is your answer? @zeroequalsq nice title, all expenses paid @Chaosfive-55 Will jack of the hearts tell the taste of the queen's tarts? Did he or the sheriff learn of Arwen's true darts? Nice use of their rivalry focus to start change her focus was so blinding she missed her fate's range @Peka98 in 20260130 203836 interesting storytelling as the knife has no blood on it @theyellowroom27 beautiful shadow don't go forward Dreadful Tales no. 61 A Saint's Appetite The Baron Returns in Strength Share these pages Ye Mad Minstrel Strikes Again

Submissions are now open for our new horror initiative with Tubi! [ https://blcklst.com/programs/tubi-black-list-horror-initiative?mc_cid=2d68c3555c&mc_eid=e0b642193c ] Emerging and established writers with a feature script in the horror genre are encouraged to submit their project for further consideration in the Tubi x Black List Horror Initiative. Submissions will remain open until June 30, 2026 – write that deadline down now and get to work, writers! Tubi intends to produce and distribute the selected script. The Black List will executive produce the project and will be collaborating closely with Tubi throughout the entirety of the program. Writers are welcome to upload new projects for consideration in this program. Fee waivers are also available for submitting writers! 100 fee waivers will be distributed at the discretion of Tubi and The Black List throughout the submission window. Learn more about how to apply for a program-specific or general fee waiver at blcklst.com/help. [ https://help.blcklst.com/kb/en/?mc_cid=2d68c3555c&mc_eid=e0b642193c ] We are so excited to expand our collaboration with Tubi with this incredible new initiative! If you have a horror script we strongly encourage you to learn more here. If any are interested in my style check out my screenplay free to read online [ https://www.kobo.com/ebook/the-nyotenda ] and if you are interested and want to brainstorm I can make a place in my discord or we can chat in aalbc or tumblr or deviantart:) If you are interested in other tales of mine consider [ https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/THE-PROMOTION-1255339028 ] which is part of my gallery of literature [ https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/gallery/81311721/my-tales-or-poetry ] FORUM POSTS https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12571-calling-all-black-writers/ https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12572-what-is-a-horror-storyelement-you-will-like-to-see-that-you-havent-seen-before/ NOTICE TEXT Calling all Black Writers! I have a screenplay I am working on already. I was planning for it to have another path but with this. the timing is perfect. Any black writers interested, join me on aalbc or wherever and lets discuss:) I will make a roundtable on my discord if need be. If you are interested in my style links to various pertinent works are in the page below. https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/668-tubi-x-blacklist-horror-initiative-2026-challenge-final-day/ #rmaalbc #aalbc #tubi #blacklist #horror #screenplay #richardmurray #kobo #kwl #hddeviant #deviantart #richardmurrayhumblr #tumblr #black337 #rmaalbc #aalbc #tubi #blacklist #horror #screenplay #richardmurray #kobo #kwl #hddeviant #deviantart #richardmurrayhumblr #tumblr

Story for the Where Are they Now Wall E challenge March 5th 2026 https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Silver-Inspirations-1297071893 Title: Silver Inspirations A rustic looking couple with a wooden wheel cart filled with old BNL starliner parts is crossing their towns original road; they see two elders sitting content, looking toward them, the road, the larger town beaming positivity; and they wave. The two elders wave back. And the couple continue onto home. Hakim and Harriet, two silver haired humans with chocolate colored skin, sitting on a stone weathered into a bench after many years, look on a simple walkway in a farming town on Earth. A blond-haired man with streaks of grey and light buff skin approaches, his blue eyes watery: "Grandmother, grandfather, are you alright?" Harriet reply, while Hakim smile: "We are fine Roncar, just looking at all our children and children's children and more generations, lovely little plants growing happily in this part of home" Hakim adds: "We went to where the Axiom landed and saw Wall-E and EVE" Roncar interjected: "Were they looking at their baby?" Harriet replied: "No, they have a grandbaby , very cute and little, their baby is fully part of the Earth now... but watching EVE and Wall-E be so attentive to the life or just being happy it is alive reminded us of why we were so inspired , so many years ago, to start this town around our compass post, and sit here to watch it live" Roncar cry: "Thanks for watching us grow" And Hakim taps the sitting stone, and Roncar sits next to his grandparents, watching life continue. from Richard Murray / @HDdeviant Audio version https://www.tumblr.com/richardmurrayhumblr/810019771872657408/written-by-richard-murray-hddeviant https://www.tumblr.com/richardmurrayhumblr/810019771872657408/written-by-richard-murray-hddeviant

participate for prizes by march 26th 2026 but open forever to challenge oneself https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/journal/It-s-a-Mad-Mad-Mad-Mad-Mad-Mad-March-1296319921 artistic example https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Yaffles-at-Yggr-or-Laughs-at-Odin-1303027466