Oscar Micheaux, the son of former slaves, was born in Illinois and grew up in Kansas . When he was 17 he became a porter on the railway, but within a few years left the railroad and homesteaded in South Dakota.
Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux
Homesteader to Author
He wrote about his farm life and self-published The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer in 1913. In 1915 he lost the farm.
In 1917 he again self-published a book, The Homesteader. After a film deal fell through for the story, Micheaux decided to expand his publishing company. It became Micheaux Film and Book Company in 1919.
Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux
Author and Filmmaker
The Homesteader film was the first film made by an African-American. It starred Evelyn Preer.
Unlike the white-controlled film industry which portrayed blacks with stereotypes, Micheaux’s films had black characters in mysteries, gangster films and westerns. His films were written, directed, produced and portrayed by predominately all black cast and crew.
In 1924 he introduced the movie-going world to Paul Robeson in the film, Body and Soul.
Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux
Real characters
Given the times, his accomplishments in publishing and film are extraordinary, including being the first African-American to produce a film to be shown in “white” movie theaters. In his motion pictures, he moved away from the “Negro” stereotypes being portrayed in film at the time. Additionally, in his film Within Our Gates, Micheaux attacked the racism depicted in D.W. Griffith’s film, The Birth of a Nation.
The Producers Guild of America called him “The most prolific black – if not most prolific independent – filmmaker in American cinema.”
Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux
Filmography
1919
* The Homesteader
* Within Our Gates
1920
* The Brute
* Symbol of the Unconquered
1922
* Gunaslaus Mystery
* Deceit
* The Dungeon
* The Virgin of the Seminole
* Son of Satan
1923
* Jasper Landry’s Will
1924
* Body and Soul
1926
* The Spider’s Web
1927
* Millionaire
1928
* When Men Betray
* Easy Street
1929
* Wages of Sin
1930
* Darktown Revue
1931
* The Exile
1932
* Veiled Aristocrat
* Black Magic
* Ten Minutes to Live
1933
* The Girl From Chicago
* Ten Minutes to Kill
1934
* Harlem After Midnight
1935
* Lem Hawkin’s Confession
1936
* Temptation
* Underworld
1937
* God’s Stepchildren
1938
* Swing
1939
* Birthright
* Lying Lips
1940
* The Notorious Elinor Lee
1948
* Betrayal
Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux
Biography
In 2008, Patrick McGilligan published Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of America’s First Black Filmmaker. McGilligan refers to Micheaux as, “…the Jackie Robinson of American film … a Muhammad Ali decades before his time” who “deserves to be considered in the same breath as the sainted D. W. Griffith.”
In his review of the book, Phillip Lopate is critical of McGilligan’s high praise for Micheaux’s work. He wrote, “…we do a disservice to the achievements of truly superb black auteurs, like Charles Burnett, Spike Lee and Ousmane Sembène, by pretending Micheaux was a great filmmaker. The man had his own validity, as a pathfinder and as the creator of an intriguing, curious body of work, which reveals much about America’s past social and racial contradictions, and its melodramatic conventions.”
Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux
Within Our Gates
Here is his “Within Our Gates” from 1919. It is the earliest known surviving feature film directed by an African American. The Library of Congress preserved it in 1993 from a single print found in Spain.
The story line is that a man abandons his fiance, an educated black woman. She dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished negro youths.
Within Our Gates was created in response to The Birth of a Nation which depicted southern whites in need of the Ku Klux Klan to protect them from blood thirsty blacks.
Micheaux showed the reality of racism, where a black man could be lynched for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Black Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux
Death
Micheaux died in Charlotte, North Carolina while on a business trip. His body was returned to Great Bend, Kansas, where he was interred in the Great Bend cemetery with other members of his family.
From 1831–1862: The Underground Railroad Approximately 75,000 slaves escape to the North and to freedom via the Underground Railroad, a system in which free African American and white “conductors,” abolitionists and sympathizers help guide and shelter the escapees.
Birth and education
October 2, 1800: Nat Turner was born on the plantation of Benjamin Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, the week before Gabriel Prosser (see Aug 30) was hanged after a failed slave insurrection in Richmond, Virginia.
Nat Turner’s mother was enslaved woman named Nancy, who was captured from West Africa. His father, presumed to be a slave named Abraham, ran away from the Southampton, Virginia, plantation when Nat was about ten years old
Benjamin Turner allowed Nat Turner to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion.
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
First vision
While still a young child, Nat was overheard describing events that had happened before he was born. This, along with his keen intelligence, and other signs marked him in the eyes of his people as a prophet.
Nat was given as a gift, along with his mother and grandmother, to Benjamin’s son Samuel around 1809, and formally willed in 1810.
In 1821, Turner ran away from Samuel, but returned after thirty days because of a vision in which the Spirit had told him to “return to the service of my earthly master.”
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
Second Vision
By 1822, Samuel had died, and his widow, Elizabeth Turner, oversaw Nat until she married Thomas Moore, who took formal ownership of Nat in 1823.
According to a National Geographic article, “After Elizabeth’s death, Moore married Sally Francis, who became a widow and then married Joseph Travis, Nat’s last master, although Sally’s 10-year-old son, Putnam, was legally Nat’s owner.”
In 1825: Nat Turner had a second vision. He saw lights in the sky and prayed to find out what they meant. Then “… while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn, as though it were dew from heaven, and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood; and then I found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens.”
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
Third Vision
May 12, 1828: Turner “…heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first… And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work, and until the first sign appeared I should conceal it from the knowledge of men; and on the appearance of the sign… I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons.”
By 1830, Southampton County was home to 6,573 whites, 1,745 free blacks, and 7,756 enslaved African Americans.
It was in 1830 that Turner was moved to the home of Joseph Travis with his official owner being the young child Putnum Moore. Turner described Travis as a kind master, against whom he had no complaints. The Travis plantation was lived 411 acres and had 17 slaves working his property in 1830.
Records show that Nat married an enslaved woman named Cherry who lived on a neighboring plantation, and they had at least one child, a son named Reddick. Nat would have to obtain a pass from his masters to visit his family.
Records show that he was outspoken in his beliefs that blacks should be free, and that freedom would be theirs one day; an opinion for which he was whipped in 1828.
Nat Turner preaches religion. “”Knowing the influence I had obtained over the minds of my fellow-servants…by the communion of the Spirit, whose revelations I often communicated to them… I now began to prepare them for my purpose.” (Image Credit: The Granger Collection, New York)
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
Signs from the heavens
February 1831: there was an eclipse of the sun. Turner took this to be the sign he had been promised and confided his plan to the four men he trusted the most, Hark Moore, Henry Porter, Nelson Edwards, Sam Francis, Will Francis, and Jack Reese . They decided to hold an insurrection on July 4 and began planning a strategy. However, they had to postpone action because Turner became ill.
August 13, 1831: there was an atmospheric disturbance in which the sun appeared bluish-green. Turner interpreted this as the final sign.
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
Revolt
August 21, 1831: Turner, Moore, Porter, Edwards, Sam Francis, Will Francis, and Reese met in the woods to eat a dinner and make their plans.
At 2:00 AM they launched the rebellion by entering the Travis household, where they killed the entire family as they lay sleeping, save for a small infant. They moved from one farm to the next, killing all slave-owning whites they found. As they progressed through Southampton county, other slaves joined in the rebellion.
They continued on, from house to house, killing all of the white people they encountered. Turner’s force eventually consisted of more than 40 slaves, most on horseback.
August 22, 1831: Turner decided to march toward Jerusalem, the closest town. By then word of the rebellion had gotten out to the whites; confronted by a group of militia, the rebels scattered, and Turner’s force became disorganized. After spending the night near some slave cabins, Turner and his men attempted to attack another house, but were repulsed. One slave was killed and many escaped, including Turner.
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
Escape
In the end, the rebels had stabbed, shot and clubbed at least 55 white people to death.Turner escaped and remained free for nearly two months.
In those two months though, the militia and white vigilantes instituted a reign of terror over slaves in the region. Hundreds of blacks were killed. White Virginians panicked over fears of a larger slave revolt and soon instituted more restrictive laws regulating slave life.
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
Capture
August 30, 1831: The Richmond Enquirer published a description of the rebels’ “murderous career” that likened them to “a parcel of blood-thirsty wolves rushing down from the Alps; or rather like a former incursion of the Indians upon the white settlements.” The lesson gleaned by the writer of the article from the case of Turner, “who had been taught to read and write, and permitted to go about preaching,” was that “No black man ought to be permitted to turn a Preacher through the country.”
Credit was given to “many of the slaves whom gratitude had bound to their masters, that thy had manifested the grestest alacrity in detecting and apprehending many of the brigands.”
According to the article, General Broadnax, the militia commander of Greensville County, was “convinced, from various sources” of the “entire ignorance on the subject of all the slaves in the counties around Southampton, among whom he has never known more pefect order and quiet to prevail.” [full text of article]
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobs, born into slavery in North Carolina in 1813, eventually escaped to the North, where she wrote a narrative about her ordeal of slavery.
In Chapter Twelve of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Jacobs describes the harassment of blacks in Edenton, North Carolina, following the rebellion.
Her “Fear of Insurrection” begins with a statement that captured the irony of white society’s fear: NOT far from this time Nat Turner’s insurrection broke out; and the news threw our town into great commotion. Strange that they should be alarmed when their slaves were so “contented and happy”! But so it was. [full text]
October 30, 1831: Turner captured and imprisoned in the Southampton County Jail, where he was interviewed by Thomas R. Gray, a Southern physician. Out of that interview came his now famous “Confession.”
Convinced that “the great day of judgement was at hand,” and that he “should commence the great work,” Turner took the eclipse of the sun to mean that “I should arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons.”
Gray described Turner as being extremely intelligent but a fanatic. He went on to say: “The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm; still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered with chains, yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven; with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man, I looked on him and my blood curdled in my veins.”
Nat Turner Slave Revolt 1831
Trial and execution
November 5, 1831: Nat Turner was tried in the Southampton County Court and sentenced to execution. (BH, NT, & SR, see Nov 10)
November 10, 1831: Nat Turner hung. He was buried the following day.
No grave marker exists for Nat Turner, nor for his fellow soldiers. The rebels were caught, tried, and executed in different places, and their scattered remains lie under unmarked soil.
The November 14, 1831, Norfolk Herald reported that: “He betrayed no emotion, but appeared to be utterly reckless in the awful fate that awaited him and even hurried his executioner in the performance of his duty! Precisely at 12 o’clock he was launched into eternity.”
In total, the state executed 55 people, banished many more, and acquitted a few. The state reimbursed the slaveholders for their slaves. But in the hysterical climate that followed the rebellion, close to 200 black people, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were murdered by white mobs. In addition, slaves as far away as North Carolina were accused of having a connection with the insurrection, and were subsequently tried and executed.
The state legislature of Virginia considered abolishing slavery, but in a close vote decided to retain slavery and to support a repressive policy against black people, slave and free.
The basic information for this blog entry came from Brotherly Love, a PBS article.
The tropical depression that became Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. It’s path led it over Florida before moving out into the Gulf of Mexico, regaining strength, and moving onto the Gulf coast again.
When the storm made landfall again, it had a Category 3 rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale–it brought sustained winds of 100–140 miles per hour–and stretched some 400 miles across.
And while Katrina affected a huge region, I will limit this blog entry mainly to New Orleans.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
First landfall: Florida
August 25, 2005: at 6:30 PM EDT Hurricane Katrina made its first landfall in Florida as a Category 1 hurricane near Hallandale Beach, Florida on the Miami-Dade/Broward county line.
After landfall, instead of travelling as originally forecast, Katrina moved hard left (south/southwest) almost parallel to the coastline in densely-populated metropolitan Miami, Florida. As many as six people were killed, including three people killed by falling trees and two boaters that attempted to ride out the storm in their crafts.
August 26, 2005: Katrina was downgraded to a tropical storm. At 5:00 AM EDT, the eye of Hurricane Katrina was located just offshore of southwestern Florida over the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles (80 km) north-northeast of Key West, Florida.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Headed toward New Orleans
August 27, 2005: Katrina reached Category 3 intensity. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced a state of emergency and a called for a voluntary evacuation.
August 28, 2005: Katrina reached Category 4 intensity with 145 mph winds. By 7:00 AM CDT it was a Category 5 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph , gusts up to 215 mph.
In a press conference at roughly 10:00 AM CDT, Mayor Ray Nagin declared that “a mandatory evacuation order is hereby called for all of the parish of Orleans.”
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Storm surge
August 29, 2005: Katrina’s storm surge caused 53 different levee breaches in greater New Orleans, submerging eighty percent of the city.
August 30, 2005: Louisiana Governor Blanco ordered that all of New Orleans, including the Superdome, be evacuated due to the flooding of the city.
August 31, 2005: New Orleans’s Mayor Ray Nagin announced that the planned sandbagging of the 17th Street Canal levee breach had failed.
At the time, 85% of the city was underwater. President Bush returned early to Washington from vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Though he did not stop in Louisiana, Air Force One flies low over the Gulf Coast so that he can view the devastation in Air Force One.
September 1, 2005: President Bush appeared on Good Morning America, and said that he understood the frustration of Katrina victims, many of whom are still waiting for food, water, and other aid.
“I fully understand people wanting things to have happened yesterday,” Bush said. “I understand the anxiety of people on the ground. … So there is frustration. But I want people to know there’s a lot of help coming.”
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Heck of a job
September 2, 2005: President George W. Bush told Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” during a tour of Hurricane Katrina damage in Alabama.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Danziger Bridge
September 4, 2005: in New Orleans, Sgt. Kenneth Bowen and Sgt. Robert Gisevius and Officers Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon jumped in a Budget rental truck with several other officers and raced to the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans, responding to a distress call.
As a result, police killed two civilians, 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison an wounded four other civilians.
All of the victims were African-American. None were armed or had committed any crime. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back. (officers, see January 3, 2007)
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Media limitations
September 9, 2005: U.S. Army Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré and New Orleans Director of Homeland Security Terry Ebbert announced a “zero access” policy with regards to the media, in order to prevent members of the media from reporting on the recovery of dead bodies in New Orleans. CNN filed a lawsuit, then obtained a temporary restraining order to prevent government agencies from interfering with news coverage of recovery efforts.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Brown resigns
September 12, 2005: in the wake of what was widely believed to be incompetent handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by state, local and federal officials, FEMA director, Michael Brown, resigned, saying that it was “in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president.” His standing had also been damaged when the Boston Herald revealed his meager experience in disaster management before joining FEMA.
September 15, 2005, : President George W. Bush, addressing the nation from storm-ravaged New Orleans, acknowledged the government failed to respond adequately to Hurricane Katrina and urged Congress to approve a massive reconstruction program.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Death toll
September 19, 2005: Louisiana’s official death toll stood at 973.
September 21, 2005: the official death toll was raised to 1,036, with 63 additional deaths recognized in Louisiana. This marked the first time since 1928 that a natural disaster in the U.S. had been officially acknowledged to have killed at least 1,000 people. State-by-state death tolls: Louisiana 799, Mississippi 218, Florida 14, Alabama 2, Georgia 2, Tennessee 1.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Police charged
January 3, 2007: seven New Orleans policemen charged in a deadly shooting in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina turned themselves in at the city jail. More than 200 supporters met them in a show of solidarity.
Each of the indicted men faced at least one charge of murder or attempted murder in the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings on the Danziger Bridge. Two people died and four were wounded in the shooting.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Indictments dismissed
August 13, 2008: District Judge Raymond Bigelow dismissed the indictments against the New Orleans police officers after his finding that the prosecutors had wrongly instructed the grand jury and that testimony of three of the accused officers had been divulged to other witnesses in the case.
The US Dept of Justice and the FBI will subsequently investigate the case.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Guilty pleas
February 24, 2010: Officer Michael Lohman, who had encouraged the officers to provide false stories in the shooting incident entered a plea of guilty to obstruction of justice in federal court.
March 11, 2010: Officer Jeffrey Lehrmann pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony for failing to report the cover-up.
April 7, 2010: Michael Hunter, one of the seven officers originally charged with attempted murder in 2007, pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony and obstruction of justice.
July 13, 2010: a federal grand jury indicted Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon, and Anthony Villavaso in connection with the shooting and subsequent cover-up.
Additionally, Arthur “Archie” Kaufman (lead investigator on the case) and Gerard Dugue (another investigator) were charged with falsifying reports and false prosecution in the conspiracy to cover-up the shooting. [Times-Picayune article]
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
More guilty verdicts
August 5, 2011: guilty verdicts were handed down for Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman. [Times-Picayune article]
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Sentencing
April 4, 2012: the four officers directly involved in the shooting were sentenced in federal court to lengthy terms ranging from 38 to 65 years, while a police sergeant who was charged with investigating the shooting, and instead helped lead the efforts to hide and distort what happened, was sentenced to six years.
Three police officers who pleaded guilty and later testified at the trial were involved in the shooting on the bridge and received sentences ranging from five to eight years.
Two others, a detective and a police lieutenant who helped orchestrate the cover-up, were sentenced to three and four years. [FBI report]
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
Vacated convictions
September 17, 2013, following a year-long probe into the defendants’ claims, U.S. District Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt vacated the convictions of Bowen, Faulcon, Gisevius, Villavaso and Kaufman, and ordered a new trial.
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
2015
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
New guilty pleas
April 20, 2016, the five officers pleaded guilty to charges of deprivation of rights under color of law, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. In return, they were sentenced to significantly reduced sentences of three to 12 years in prison, with credit for time served.
November 4, 2016, Gerard Dugue pleaded guilty in federal court to “a misdemeanor charge of accessory after the fact to deprivation of rights under the color of law.”
He was sentenced to one year of probation, making him the only NOPD officer who plead guilty in the case but was not sent to prison.
December 19, 2016: New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu apologized and announced a settlement agreement. [NOLA dot com article]
The settlement included payments for the families of victims killed or injured in the shooting of unarmed civilians; for the beating death of Raymond Robair, 48, who was killed before the storm; and for the fatal shooting of Henry Glover, who was killed by a police officer standing guard outside an Algiers shopping center.”
2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
