Within Our Gates(1920) In this silent film, abandoned by her fiancée, an educated African-American woman, with a shocking past, dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished African-American youths. The film portrays the contemporary racial situation in the United States during the early twentieth century, the years of Jim Crow, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration of blacks to cities of the North and Midwest, and the emergence of the "New Negro". It was part of a genre called race films. Evelyn Preer, Director: Oscar Micheaux.