In this parable, sinners of all kinds board a hell-bound train conducted by Satan, while others choose not to board or leave and repent.
A con man uses magnets to help his pal win a golf game. A godless man who accidentally shot his wife fervently prays while she dreams of redemption.
At the gates of Heaven, Truth defends an unmarried woman who died in childbirth. People fight despair and Satan's temptations on the way to heaven.
A light-skinned black woman falls for a kind black man who thinks she's white. Both become targets of a self-loathing biracial man passing as white
Two men thrown out of a big vaudeville show put on their own show back home. To win his sweetheart, a man "helps" her scientist dad reanimate a mummy.
A Harvard-educated black man goes back to his Southern hometown to start a school, but racism and love for a local girl throw obstacles in his path.
When a young black man who passed for white in college returns to his hometown, he finds his light-skinned sister has fallen for a darker-skinned man.
A woman victimized by a cousin who secretly loved her fiancé tries to save a school for black children, but her past and society work against her.
After a federal agent falls for a Mississippi teacher and saves her from a crime kingpin, the pair escapes to Harlem, where safety still eludes them.
After a mill owner loses everything to an incorrigible vice lord, he becomes a drunkard -- until fate intervenes.
Donald Heywood's Choir performs several songs. Tim Moore and other comedians appear in sketches between songs.
A former World War I flying ace becomes a railroad detective to go after a romantic rival and fellow aviator who pulls off a large payroll robbery.
A writer who believes man's psyche can take refuge in lower animal forms falls asleep while working on a story and has a bizarre dream.
A famous and very flirtatious Harlem stripper visits a tropical island, where her past and her conscience catch up with her.
A policeman tries to arrest a sleeping man in a boardinghouse, but he escapes, runs through the neighborhood, then hides in a Chinese laundry.
An escaped criminal hides in a small town, posing as a pastor to steal from his congregation, work as a bootlegger and conceal his own depravity.
A young composer marries a poor girl to save her from her stepfather's advances, but society's failure to help women like her continues to haunt them.
When cowboy Bob Blake learns that his friend Joe needs help, he rides to Joe's ranch but discovers he's been missing for weeks.
A black man leaves Chicago and becomes a successful farmer, but after falling for a white woman, he returns and gets entangled with an old flame.
At a Harlem nightclub, a woman receives a note saying she has only 10 minutes to live. The reason is connected to a murder from years before.
The following sequence was derived from a behind-the-scenes Hollywood newsreel. Although the action is clearly staged, the brief clip is the only known footage of Oscar Micheaux on the set of one of his films, most likely The Brute (1920).
Excerpt: Logging Community near Loughman, Florida
The following excerpts are derived from 42 minutes of raw footage filmed by Zora Neale Hurston in the Sea Islands community of Beaufort, South Carolina. Audio was taken from field recordings in the Hurston Collection at the Library of Congress. The sound is not intended to synchronize with the image, and is provided here to suggest the atmosphere in which the footage was shot.
Pioneers of African-American Cinema: An Introduction
The Films of Oscar Micheaux
Excerpts for the National Museum of African American History & Culture
The Color Line
Ten Nights in a Bar Room: An Introduction
About the Restoration
Religion in Early African-American Cinema
Eleven P.M. An Introduction
S. Torriano Berry Discusses the Works of James & Eloyce Gist
The Veil Aristocrats Promo
Birthright Promo
The Tyler Texas Black Film Collection The Missing Link in Black Cinema
The Films of Zora Neale Hurston
The Films of Spencer Williams
The End of an Era
The following sequence comprises all the surviving fragments of the 1921 film By Right of Birth. It was produced by the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, the first production company owned and operated by African-Americans