By Ralph Richardson

The most important black filmmaker of all time isn’t the one who put Brooklyn on the map when Nola Darling had to have it, nor is he the one who put South Central on the map and started a whole new genre of in the ‘hood movies.

Spike Lee and John Singleton are great—and significant—but neither blazed the trail or overcame the odds that the Father of African-American Cinema did. Indeed, they owe their careers to him, though few of the folk who go to see movies today even know who he is, or that he, a black man born less than 20 years after the Civil War, was an innovator and major influence in American cinema.

According to Wikipedia , “The Producers Guild of America called him “The most prolific black – if not most prolific independent – filmmaker in American cinema.” During his illustrious career, Oscar Micheaux wrote, produced and directed forty-four feature-length films between 1919 and 1948 and wrote seven novels, one of which was a national bestseller.”

Oscar Micheaux, the child of former slaves, and king of independent cinema, was born in 1884, in Metropolis, Illinois. One of 13 children, Oscar left home for the big city of Chicago at the age of 17. He was able to get one of the only good jobs available to black men at that time, a Pullman porter. Constantly thinking of a way in which he could make change, he became a big fan of Booker T. Washington and the “Go West” pioneer philosophy of Horace Greeley. Micheaux saved his money and purchased 320-acres of land in Gregory County, South Dakota, in 1905.

The ever pioneering Micheaux turned his experiences as a homesteader into his first novel, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer, which was published in 1913. In 1915, Micheaux lost his land, some say due to the drought, while some say to underhanded and murky circumstances. He moved to Sioux City, Iowa, where he rewrote the book into his most famous novel, The Homesteader, published in 1917.

Micheaux quickly established the Western Book and Supply Co. to publish and distribute the novel, selling it door-to-door to small businessmen and homesteaders in small towns. The success of his books caught the eye of the brothers George and Noble Johnson, African-American movie pioneers who ran the Lincoln Motion Picture Co. in Los Angeles. They wanted to make The Homesteader into a film, but would not meet Micheaux’s demands that he direct it.

Refusing to settle for less, Oscar Micheaux’s pioneering spirit came through once again. He cobbled together the financing, got the actors and the crew together and became the first African American to produce a feature-length film, The Homesteader, in 1919. Even Charlie Chaplin didn’t make his first feature length film, The Kid, until 1921.

Micheaux’s next film, Within Our Gates, released in 1920, was his response to D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, which had glorified the Ku Klux Klan and justified the violent oppression of African Americans. Within Our Gates flipped The Birth of a Nation on its head, showing black and white communities that racism should be challenged.

Over the course of his prolific career, Micheaux produced forty-four independent films, most of them in Chicago. He also wrote seven novels. During this time, not only did he become the most successful African-American film producer of the era, he also invented several cinematic techniques, including the technique of cross-cutting, which alternated the lynching scene in Within Our Gates with the attempted rape of a female character to create suspense and tension in the audience, and the “dream-flashback” technique, in which there are two consecutive flashbacks within a dream of a character. Micheaux was also the first African American to have a sound feature-length film with The Exile, in 1931.

Micheaux is the undisputed leader of American independent cinema. He serves as a constant reminder of overcoming long, arduous odds. “One of the greatest tasks of my life has been to teach that the colored man can be anything,” he said. In 1986, he was posthumously awarded a special Directors Guild of America award. In 1995, the Producers Guild of America established the Oscar Micheaux Award to honor “an individual or individuals whose achievements in film and television have been accomplished despite difficult odds.” The Oscar Micheaux Film and Book Festival is held in Gregory, South Dakota.

Soon, this creative and cinematic genius will receive another honor. It was announced by the U.S. Postal Service on January 27 that on June 22, Oscar Micheaux will join them and have a great American tribute paid for his hard work and visionary acumen: his likeness will be placed on a US postage stamp. This will be the 33rd in the Black Heritage Series of postage stamps.

Micheaux paved the way for every black person in cinema, from Kasi Lemmons to Tyler Perry, from Julie Dash to Lee Daniels. He belongs in the ranks of icons Mother Theresa, Katherine Hepburn, and The Negro Leagues. Hopefully, with this posthumous honor, more everyday folk will know and appreciate who Oscar Micheaux was and all he did for American film.

Ralph Richardson is a filmmaker who lives in Brooklyn with his family.