

Abandoned by her fiancé, an educated black woman with a traumatizing past dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished black children.
Direction
Micheaux's fearless framing of lynching — unprecedented for 1920.
Acting
Evelyn Preer's face carries entire scenes without title cards.
Writing
Ambitious interweaving of romance, crime, and racial terror.

Director
Oscar Micheaux
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made partly as a direct response to The Birth of a Nation (1915), funded by Black investors and shown in segregated theaters.
The original negative was lost for decades; the surviving print was discovered in Spain with Spanish intertitles, later restored.