This post on Malcolm X is not intended to be a biography, but only something to highlight several important dates in this American hero and civil rights paragon.
Malcolm Little
Malcolm Little was born on May 18, 1925.
His father, Earl Little, was a Baptist lay speaker and his mother, Louise, were both active members of Marcus Garvey‘s Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Being Black and quiet in the American white world could still be dangerous. Being Black and outspoken in that world could be lethal. Their home was burned and later Earl was killed in questionable trolley car accident in 1931.
New York to Pay $26 Million to Men Wrongly Convicted of Killing Malcolm X
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.
Four short weeks after Jimi Hendrix closed the generation-defining Woodstock Festival with a soul-stirring, whammy-bar laden performance of the Star Bangled Banner, Toledo fans got a homegrown opportunity to air out their freak flags courtesy of the daylong Toledo Pop Festival.Culled primarily from the S.E. Michigan/N.W. Ohio axis of high-energy rock’n’roll, the day’s slightly disparate line-up featured a virtual who’s who of Rust Belt axe-slingers: Brothers Wayne Kramer and the late-great Fred “Sonic” Smith from the MC5; Ted Nugent from the Amboy Dukes; The Frost’s Dick Wagner, who would later go on to co-write, record, and tour extensively with the likes of Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, among others; Ron Koss of Savage Grace; Gary Quackenbush of SRC; Steve Correll of The Rationals; and, the soon-to-be-known-as “Leather Tuscadero” in the persona of one Miss Suzi Quatro, performing bass, vocal and jail-bait duties for the Pleasure Seekers, a band consisting chiefly of her brothers and sisters.
1969 Toledo Pop Festival
PDGB wonders if the concert promoter’s somewhat curious decision to place feel-good hit-makers The Turtles atop a bill filled largely with outfits known for their aggressive, potentially incendiary histrionics was -at least in part- a conscious decision intended to serve as a musical blow-off valve, The Turtles cheery melodies and infectious lyrics helping to ease the attendees transition from frenzied jam kick-outing to the parking lot slough that awaited them. Then again, maybe they just needed a big name to sell some tickets.
Either way, we’re sure the inevitable twenty minute-plus live rendition of “Happy Together” didn’t go unnoticed, reshuffling the synapses of numerous first-time psychedelic users so completely that even now, some forty-years later, the simple act of hearing said melody errantly whistled by passerby is capable of triggering intense psychotic episodes of such severity that even immediate medical attention followed by years of therapy can’t guarantee the return of normal brain activity. Way to go Boomers!
Held at Toledo Raceway Park (which we assume is the Horse racing facility of approximately the same name that still stands in North Toledo today) the $5.00 admission ($4.25 Advance) was an unbelievable bargain, even adjusted for inflation.
