The Homesteader

The Homesteader (1919) is a lost black-and-white silent film by African American author and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.

Plot

The Homesteader involves six principal characters, the leading one being Jean Baptiste (Charles Lucas), a homesteader far off in the Dakotas, living where he alone is black. To this wilderness arrives Jack Stewart, a Scotsman, with his motherless daughter, Agnes (Iris Hall). In Agnes, Baptiste meets the girl of his dreams. Agnes, however, does not know that she is not white. Peculiar fate threw her in the company of the Homesteader, but their love is forbidden by the custom of the country. Baptiste eventually sacrifices the love of this girl of his dreams, goes back to his own people and marries the daughter of a preacher.

McCarthy, the embodiment of vanity, deceit and hypocrisy, really admires the marriage his daughter has made. He speaks of the "rich" young man she has married, praises him to the highest. Baptiste does not know, however, that McCarthy requires and is in the habit of having people praise him. Baptiste does not do it because he is not of the temperament to do so. Because of this failure grows the tragedy of mismarriage to Orlean (Evelyn Preer), a sweet girl, kind and good, but like her mother, without the strength of her convictions.