
Oscar Micheaux, 1938: a Harvard graduate (Carman Newsome) comes home to Tennessee to start a school and walks into the town that did not ask for him. From T.S. Stribling's novel; a remake of Micheaux's own 1924 silent, now lost. Sound, independent, the race-film circuit. Micheaux is blunt. The land, the bank, the girl, the men who run the county. It is not Hollywood's South. It is a Black director insisting the graduate is the hero and the town is the problem.
A Harvard man comes home to Tennessee to build a school, and the county has other plans. A remake of his lost 1924 silent, and the sound has finally settled down. Late Micheaux: quieter, still not asking permission.