In early American film, African-Americans were portrayed in a very offensive and racist way. An example of this is in D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation. This film is what helped spark the beginning of Black American Cinema. An African-American director named Oscar Micheaux responded to Griffith’s film and created many films portraying African-Americans as being perfectly normal and realistic. This paper will discuss how Micheaux changed the way African-Americans were portrayed in cinema and how he helped start Black American Cinema. This can be seen by studying some of Micheaux’s earliest films including: The Homesteader (1919), Within Our Gates (1920), and Veiled Aristocrats (1932). D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation was very controversial because of the way black men were portrayed. There is a scene in which a black man attempts to rape a white woman. This scene tries to make black men seem evil and dangerous. Also all of the black men in the film are shown to be very unintelligent. “Mainstream film companies portrayed black men largely as humorous objects – dim witted, slow moving, shiftless caricatures who would not threaten mainstream audiences" (Butters 5). Many of the actors were not even black. A lot of the actors were white men dressed in blackface. This film also shows the Ku Klux Klan as being the good guys of the story and also being heroic. “A deeply racist film glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation was bitterly attacked on its release by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its allies” (Stokes 20). This film caused many African-Americans to protest the film. There were race riots and protests in many urban cities. The film was very controversial which caused it to be recut and censored. “Repeatedly recut by censors who deemed the harrowing sequences of lynching and attempted rape too incendiary in the wake of the Chicago race riots of 1919” (Zimmermann 122). This film was a prime example of the racism that existed during this time period. The African-American Civil Rights Movement didn't start until the mid 1950s and even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there is still racism in the world. Oscar Micheaux was a very important figure in the starting of Black American Cinema. He made films that depicted black men as being intelligent and educated. “Throughout the silent era, Micheaux created cinematic portrayals of African-American manhood that stood in sharp contrast to Hollywood’s depictions” (Butters 5). Micheaux’s films along with films made through the Lincoln Motion Picture Compa