Black Novelist as White Racist: The Myth of Black Inferiority in the Novels of Oscar Micheaux

In exceptionally close analyses of six novels by black writer Oscar Micheaux (1884—1948?) beginning with The Conquest, written in 1913, The Forged Note (1915), The Homesteader (1917), The Wind from Nowhere (1941), The Case of Mrs. Wingate (1945), and The Story of Dorothy Stanfield (1946), Young traces the development of Micheaux's racial theories and of his stance as apologist for American imperialism. Young argues that these novels are examples of the detrimental effect of oppressive myths...