Within Our Gates - Response

Response

Within Our Gates was initially rejected by the Board of Censors in Chicago when Micheaux submitted the film in December 1919. An article in the Chicago Defender of 17 January 1920 asserted, "This is the picture that required two solid months to get by the Censor Boards." A week later the Defender reported,

"Those who reasoned with the spectacle of last July in Chicago ever before them, declared the showing pre-eminently dangerous; while those who reasoned with the knowledge of existing conditions, the injustices of the times, the lynchings and handicaps of ignorance, determined that the time is ripe to bring the lesson to the front."

Critics of the film feared that the lynching and attempted rape scenes would spark interracial violence in a city still tense from the riots of July 1919. Officials in Omaha (which also suffered a racial riot), New Orleans, and other cities objected for similar reasons when they blocked the screening of the film or demanded that those scenes be cut.

When released in January 1920 against reports of the controversy, the film garnered large audiences in Chicago . It was screened in differently cut versions. For example, an article in the Defender reported that on February 24 of 1920, Within Our Gates would be shown at the States Theater in Chicago "without the cuts which were made before its initial presentation." Other evidence of cuts were extant film stills of scenes that did not appear in the surviving film copy, and viewers' descriptions that differed from the current version of the film.

It is considered an important expression of African-American life in the years immediately following World War I, when violent racist incidents occurred throughout the United States, but most frequently in the South. In 1992, Within Our Gates was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant".