The Black Kino Fist: Black life as depicted in film history

The Homesteader (1919)



This Oscar Micheaux film was the first feature length film to have an all Black cast and crew. 

The Plot: In South Dakota, Agnes Stewart, a Scottish girl takes refuge in an isolated house during a blizzard. Hearing cries outside, she rescues Jean Baptiste, a Black homesteader who was in danger of freezing to death. Baptiste falls in love with Agnes, who does not know that she is not White. Baptiste despairs of overcoming the social barriers that prevent their union. He returns east and marries Orlean, the daughter of McCarthy, a vain and greedy minister. Baptiste is persecuted by McCarthy and by Ethel (McCarthy’s other daughter), who, like her father, possesses “all the evil a woman is capable of.” When Orlean goes insane and commits suicide, Baptiste returns to South Dakota, finds Agnes and discovers that she is really Black. The two are able to be together and find happiness at last.

Status: Lost.

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