Micheaux, Oscar (1884–1951)

US film producer. During the 1920s he produced, among many other silent films, Within Our Gates, a treatment of the Leo Frank lynching in Atlanta, Georgia; The Brute, featuring the black boxer Sam Langford; and The Symbol of the Unconquered, an indictment of the Ku Klux Klan. Micheaux was born in Metropolis, Illinois. He worked as a Pullman porter, farmer, and rancher, and wrote novels before he produced the first motion pictures for African-American audiences (from 1919). Always hampered by lack of funds and poor distribution, he lapsed into bankruptcy in the early 1940s.