Within Our Gates

 Megan Kettler

01/30/2023

Within Our Gates

Within Our Gates by Oscar Micheaux is about a woman named Sylvia who goes to the north, to Boston, in search of $5,000 for a black school in the south that was in danger of closing due to low funds. While in Boston, someone stole all her money but Dr.Vivian saw it happen and was able to catch the thief. She later gets hit by a car and it happened to be a rich white lady who wanted to give her the money she needs for the school. The white lady's friend from the south tells her that she should not give money to a school for black people because they should not be getting an education. She then tries to convince her to give money to a black preacher who thinks it is important for blacks not to get an education or become rich so that they can get into heaven. The lady, however, does not agree with her southern friend and decides to give Sylvia $50,000 for the school. She ends up falling in love with Dr.Vivian while in Boston and the movie ends with them getting married. 

Between the movie Within Our Gates and the movie Birth of a Nation there are some similarities but there are a lot of differences as well with how black people are depicted. In Within Our Gates black people were treated better in the north but there was still lynching and racism taking place, just not to the extent as the south. Towards the end of Within Our Gates they show a backstory on Sylvias family. It shows that her dad was set up and made to look like he murdered a white man. The family goes into hiding in the woods and the white people are getting tired of not being able to find them, so they end up hanging a black man who had nothing to do with the crime other than being the witness. They soon find the family in the woods, and they hang both of her parents. This treatment of black people is similar to that in Birth of a Nation when the black man tried to rape the white woman causing her to commit suicide. Members of the KKK captured him and lynched him. 

Although both films show the mistreatment of blacks, it was much more problematic in Birth of a Nation. For example, in Within Our Gates Micheaux had actual African Americans playing their parts, but in Birth of a Nation, they had people in black face. Also, in Birth of a Nation the white people feel as if black America is a threat to white America. The heroes of their story end up being the Ku Klux Klan, so it is a blatantly racist film that led to the lynching of many black Americans in real life. 

    Within Our Gates gives African Americans a voice and shows them as human beings. It shows that racism is still strong in the south and that there was a struggle between white and black people on giving blacks the right to vote. However, it also showed that even though it was still there, racism was getting better in the north. They showed this with the rich white lady deciding to give her money to the black school in the south even though her white southern friend tried to convince her that black people should not be allowed to get an education.