Within Our Gates

Within Our Gates is the earliest surviving feature by legendary pioneering filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Created as a 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 shows the reality of Dixie racism in 1920, where a black man could be lynched for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His bold feature length productions which asserted an educated black man's point of view and featured black stars and all black casts, continued for three decades and included dramas, comedies, westerns and musicals.

Jilted by her fiance, Sylvia Landry returns down south to her roots, and takes a job teaching at the Piney Woods school for black children. With the school facing bankruptcy, Sylvia journeys north to try to raise funds. After much hardship, she secures the backing of a wealthy philanthropist and returns home in triumph to her beloved school. At the moment of her greatest joy a shadowy figure emerges to blackmail Sylvia. She is forced to either flee, or have her tragic and shameful past revealed.