"We follow Micheaux through his early years in small-town Illinois, his jobs as a Pullman porter, 'factory drudge' and coal miner, until he had the pivotal experience of his life as a South Dakota homesteader. There he fell in love with a white woman, then regretfully gave her up and married the more socially acceptable black daughter of an officious Chicago clergyman. His wife did not adapt well to farm life, especially after their child was stillborn, and she returned to her father’s house. He would reuse this painful episode in numerous novels and films, often supplying the wish-fulfillment happy ending he craved, by having the white woman discover that she does in fact have some Negro blood, allowing the two lovebirds to go off together."
Phillip Lopate reviews Patrick McGilligan's Oscar Micheaux, The Great and Only: The Life of America’s First Black Filmmaker in The New York Times.
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