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Within Our Gates, by Ocsar Micheaux (1919) is a film in response to the D.W. Griffith film Birth of a Nation (1915). The movie follows an African American woman Sylvia Landry in her struggle to raise money for a poor black school in the south. The movie’s major themes are class struggle emphasizing on race as a whole, breaking it into multiple aspects. Race amongst whites towards blacks show to be dominant, for example; near the end of the movie when Alma tells to Dr. Vivian the story of Sylvia and the Landry’s, how they were framed and lynched, based off of false information. The idea of race goes further, however, within this scenario; when Mr. Gridlestone’s butler, a gossiper runs and tells as many white people as he can that Mr. Landry killed Mr. Gridlestone for his own gain. Micheaux depicts here the tensions within race and society, what some with do for their own personal gain, despite the consequences to those of their own.
Micheaux also shows through Mrs. Warwick and in a small aspect the white police officer the closing of the racial gap. Mrs. Warwick, a philanthropists offer to donate the needed $5,000 to Sylvia, and upon talking to Mrs. Stratton, a racist southerner for advise on the best way to go about it, she tells her not to bother and rather donate to the black church which will keep them in their place. Mrs. Warwick upon hearing this decides rather to donate $50,000 to the school. The police officer who aids Sylvia and Dr. Vivian after her purse was stolen shows how in the north racism is much less of an issue and that the police officer will help everyone, easing what could be beliefs hen as they are now that the police do not care to help African Americans.
The closing moments of the film wrap up the all lose ends, when Dr. Vivian is sitting with Sylvia describing to her that we must be proud of our country, talking of the heroics of African Americans in recent military campaigns and closes telling Sylvia that “we were never immigrants”.