RetroClips

This was Paul Robeson's first film role, and he plays two parts -- the corrupt "Reverend" seen here, and that man's honest twin brother -- a dual performance Micheaux built the entire film around. Micheaux wrote, directed, produced, and distributed the picture independently outside the studio system, one of the so-called "race films" made explicitly for Black audiences at a time when most American theaters were segregated. New York's censors found its portrait of a fraudulent preacher offensive enough that they forced Micheaux to cut the original nine-reel version down to five before it could screen at all; that shortened cut is the only version known to survive.