[original article can be found here]
Part 1 describes how Micheaux depicts african americans in a way that is described as more authentic than many others; a majority of depictions of african american life were intended for a white audience, as a sort of glorification or justification of african american culture and existence. Whether because of this pressure, or a personal desire to avoid reinforcing racist views towards african americans, there was a dominant desire to present only the most palatable, to play respectability politics with the characters one created or depicted in films.
What Micheaux does in his oeuvre is that he complicates this narrative; Butters describes that Micheaux’s characters include gamblers, criminals, and sellouts; he recognizes the upward aspirations of the poor/uneducated farmers, and he has a sympathetic eye towards the pressures that might force an individual to sell out his community, and the psychological toll that this might take on a man’s pride and self-image. He also breaks from the South-bad, North-good dichotomy; while he recognizes that things were better in the North, he acknowledges that lynchings and racism still occurred there.
(As an aside, one might consider this examination of the preacher’s story a form of ideology critique of religion- he examines the way that religion can be used to keep a community passive, to valorize a condition of docility and poverty that makes it easy for a community to be controlled.)
In Part 2, Butters describes the second storyline of Within Our Gates. He presents a relatable, honest sharecropper with modest hopes and strength of character, which, Butters asserts, is a “radical cinematic view” of Black masculinity; if an African American man held positive characteristics and aspirations, it would become easier for white people to relate to them, and harder to justify their racist attitudes and behaviors.
Through a series of vicious misunderstandings, the aforementioned honest family man, Jasper, ends up being framed for a murder by another black man, Efrem. His family is lynched, except for Sylvia, who barely escapes being sexually assaulted when her attacker realizes that she is his daughter. Efrem is even lynched, despite protesting that he was the one who told on Jasper. The film ends with Sylvia being reassured that she is a patriot and believes in the US as she is comforted by her husband.
Butters finds it compelling that Micheaux produced relatable and positive depictions of sharecroppers, who had mostly been portrayed as bumbling fools, much less capable than their city-dwelling counterparts.
Butters also lays out the three negative examples of African American men, whose commonalities lay in a lack of allegiance to their own communities, and either leave them dead or take a psychological toll on them (in the case of the preacher).
Ultimately, Butters also questions that Micheaux ended on a positive note- After portraying the depths of mob injustice and violence, as well as exposing some of the entire apparatus of racism, he ultimately comes down on the side of the US. Butters asserts that it was likely either to be an issue with censorship, or one of Micheaux balancing a critique of then-contemporary race relations with patriotism; that he may have believed that a unity between the two was possible.