This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
Oscar Micheaux broke ground as a homesteader and as a filmmaker. The twentieth-century author, director and producer was a homesteader in Gregory County, South Dakota, before he went to Hollywood.
Marty Watson is a scholar from that same county. She joins In the Moment to cover Micheaux's life, legacy and how his homesteading beginnings cropped up in his later films.
Learn about her event at the Brookings Public Library.
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Lori Walsh:
Welcome back to In The Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I'm your host, Lori Walsh. Well, February is Black History Month, and the first Black filmmaker in the United States has Deep South Dakota connections. Oscar Micheaux was a homesteader in Gregory County before his films hit the silver screen. Marty Watson is an anti-racism scholar who's from the same county Micheaux homesteaded in. She's giving a presentation tonight in Brookings about the filmmaker. And ahead of her talk, she joins us now on the phone to talk about his life, his career, and his legacy. Marty, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Marty Watson:
Well, thank you for having me, Lori.
Lori Walsh:
I think we've only done a handful of stories about Oscar Micheaux, and I always think I want to know more. So, for people who don't know who this man was at all, how did he end up homesteading in Gregory County?
Marty Watson:
Well, that is a very exciting story. Oscar Micheaux was born back in 1884, both his parents were slaves and he had 11 brothers and sisters. And he grew up in a home that felt education was very important. He was an avid reader. He did well in school. And so well that he really didn't even make it to the end of school because he was so curious and so interested in pursuing new things and learning new things. He was from Metropolis, Illinois, south of Chicago. And in about 16 or 17 years old, he went north to Chicago where many of the Black from the South went to find things to do, to find work, to find a new life, and he worked at a variety of jobs. And then as many of the Black men did, he became a Pullman porter on the railroads. He was hired for a very exciting job.
It wasn't easy to get those jobs. He had to wait for a while and went to school there to become a Pullman porter in Chicago. And then got on the railroad and became very educated actually by seeing the land, by traveling back and forth across the country, talking to people, learning what was available as far as out West. And people were moving out West to settle land. He wanted to own something. He was an entrepreneur almost by spirit. When he was a 10, 12 years old and his parents were farming and growing vegetables, he was the one that went to town, and in the market would be the one that sold the vegetables and he would get to know the people. He just seemed to be a natural at getting acquainted, and a listener and a learner about things. And as he worked... Go ahead.
Lori Walsh:
No, you go ahead. It's fine.
Marty Watson:
As he was being that, riding those rails, he also realized what he was earning was barely covering what his expenses were. And he realized that he was going to be needing to do something more to achieve his dreams of entrepreneurship and of moving forward. And as he saved enough, he started realizing the opportunities that were for him if he would purchase land. And he probably knew something about farming because he grew up on a farm, and he was becoming very dissatisfied with the kinds of jobs he could get there in Chicago. They were really pretty much didn't get him anywhere and he realized he wasn't going to be able to realize his dreams, but maybe if he got out West, if he got land, he could realize something new, something different growing up with this new land.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. I want to jump in here because I want to make sure to ask you about how his relationship with the prairie, with South Dakota land, with homesteading showed up in his films. Do you see evidence of that throughout his body of work?
Marty Watson:
Absolutely, because the land that he approached and wanted to become part of was in Gregory County. It was at that time called the Rosebud Indian Reservation, and it was open to a lottery system. And he was able to actually apply in 1904, he could buy basically a lottery ticket, fill out the paperwork and have a chance to win a quarter of land. He didn't actually win, but he was able to go back in 1905 and buy a relinquishment. So, there he was in Gregory County, which is now Gregory County. But this land was new, it was not farmed. And as he approached the land that he bought, in his writing, he talks about how this felt, he was just amazed, in awe. And he started with everyone else that was there. Everyone was there together trying to farm. They had to break the sod, they had to build some kind of a building.
The railroad wasn't there yet, it was going to come in two years. It was a very exciting place. And he was there together. And what happened for him, and we know so much because his first book is all about this experience, the conquest, he was able to actually break the land, achieve things faster than his white neighbors around him. And that gained a lot of respect. It was a place... Since I grew up in Gregory County, his story was really my family's story, and it was a place that he was able to actually buy additional land besides that 160 acres that he bought first. He then moved on to Tripp County, which was the next county that opened in the same way. He bought more land there. And he was achieving. And he married, he went to Chicago and actually brought a bride back to that land and settled with her.
Lori Walsh:
The producers and I were looking at the Library of Congress website to sort of preview Within Our Gates this morning, and it was so captivating as a piece of film history. Tell me just a little bit, we have just a minute left, about how he revolutionized how Black people were seen on screen. They're living lives, they're complex characters, they're in love, they're betrayed. It's not a stereotype, which was really counter to what was happening at the time and even today.
Marty Watson:
He absolutely was always for his people, and he wanted to show them in a light other than what was being shown in typical movies. He wanted their real stories. And he was passionate about that, he wanted their real stories. And he had a lot to tell, he had lived in the South. He knew things that were good, and he knew things that were bad, and he wanted to show both of those things for his people. And it was so appealing, his movies, that they could be shown. They were called race movies in that his race could appreciate what they had to give and what they had been going through in many situations with the difficulties in the South. Very revolutionary actually, to see those things.
Lori Walsh:
Marty Watson, thank you so much for bringing just a sliver of this knowledge to us today. I think it's so fascinating. We really appreciate it.
Marty Watson:
Thank you very much, Lori. Great to be here.
