Oscar Micheaux The Great and Only : The Life of America's First Black Filmmaker

By Patrick McGilligan
 
Oscar Micheaux was the Jackie Robinson of film, the black D. W. Griffith, a bigger-than-life American folk hero whose important life story has been nearly forgotten today. The son of freed slaves, he roamed America as a Pullman porter before making his first mark as a homesteader in South Dakota and going on from there to become the king of the "race cinema" industry, producing and/or directing nearly forty films during a time of Jim Crow segregation when African-American artists were not welcome in Hollywood.
In this groundbreaking new biography, Oscar Micheaux The Great and Only, award-winning film historian Patrick McGilligan offers a vivid and fascinating portrait of a true pioneer of American culture who was equal parts visionary, hustler, huckster, innovator, and raffish Barnum-like showman and the first great African-American filmmaker.