Within Our Gates

CTL-E-6009 · Work · film · 1920

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07239 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6009.

Within Our Gates is a 1920 silent feature written, directed and produced by Oscar Micheaux, the earliest surviving feature by a Black director. Its story follows Sylvia Landry, a Black schoolteacher played by Evelyn Preer, who works to keep a Southern school for Black children open and travels north seeking funding, while flashbacks expose the racial violence of the Jim Crow South, including a lynching presented from a Black point of view. The Library of Congress National Film Registry essay describes the film as Micheaux's direct engagement with the most controversial aspects of American race, made in the shadow of The Birth of a Nation (1915). When Micheaux opened it in Chicago and Detroit in January 1920, authorities in several cities demanded cuts on the stated threat of unrest, and he could afford only four prints. Long considered lost, the film survives in a single print found in Spain under the title La Negra, with only four of its original intertitles remaining; the restored version carries reconstructed titles. The film was added to the National Film Registry in 1992.

The record

• Also known as: La Negra

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 3 — 747 Program, Wave 10; third Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Within Our Gates entity in the live graph at 3,683 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-6009 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 2 packet ordered reserve, position 4 of 25 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #944). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — the earliest surviving feature by a Black director, opened in Chicago in 1920; Black film core scope. Vital status: n/a (Work). Creator Oscar Micheaux DECEASED (1951, per the homed record CTL-E-4550). STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Opened in Chicago and Detroit in January 1920; Micheaux could afford only four prints (Library of Congress essay). Production budget estimated in the essay at between $5,000 and $15,000. Surviving print found in Spain; only four original intertitles remained at restoration. National Film Registry: 1992 (Library of Congress). MEDIA: photo HELD (Within Our Gates film still of Evelyn Preer as Sylvia Landry (Library of Congress restoration frame) named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6009-within-our-gates.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Relationships

• Oscar Micheaux — authored by
  Within Our Gates was written, directed and produced by Oscar Micheaux (CTL-E-4550), per the Library of Congress National Film Registry essay.

Referenced by

• Evelyn Preer — starred in → this record

Sources

• Daniel Eagan, National Film Registry essay, "Within Our Gates" (Library of Congress, accessed 2026-10-16) — Micheaux's financing and production method; the Sylvia Landry storyline; the January 1920 Chicago and Detroit openings and censorship demands; the four-print limit; the single surviving Spanish print titled La Negra with four original intertitles; Registry induction in 1992 — https://loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/within-our-gates-eagan-essay.pdf (primary source · build store)
• JSTOR Daily, "How Oscar Micheaux Challenged the Racism of Early Hollywood" (accessed 2026-10-16) — independent scholarly-press account: the film as a rebuttal to The Birth of a Nation, its banning and censorship, the lost-film decades, the Spanish print's recovery, and the Library of Congress's description of it as the earliest known surviving feature directed by an African American — https://daily.jstor.org/how-oscar-micheaux-challenged-the-racism-of-early-hollywood/ (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6009 · Combined Graph record U-07239 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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