Within Our Gates (1920)

FREE FOR EVERYONE!

This film is one of the earliest surviving films made by an African American filmmaker. Sylvia Landry is engaged to a soldier, but her rival Alma Pritchard arranges for him to catch Sylvia in an innocent but compromising situation. No longer engaged, she moves to the South to work as a teacher. When the school has financial problems, she returns to Boston to raise money for it. There, she is befriended by a doctor, Dr. Vivian, who falls in love with her. In a flashback, her rival tells the doctor how Sylvia lost her family. Sylvia’s father was unjustly accused of murder, and her parents were lynched. The only surviving print of WITHIN OUR GATES was found in an archive in Spain, and the titles had been rewritten in Spanish.

Directed by Oscar Micheaux
Starring Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements and James D. Ruffin
77 min, digital file