Baldwin, Davarian L. Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

While the book follows the stories and innovations of Madame CJ Walker, Thomas A. Dorsey, Oscar Micheaux and baseball's Rube Foster, it also provides a space in which we get to hear the thoughts and words of everyday people, those who sat in beauty parlors, enjoyed the early years of cinema, and made a way despite the racial, social and economic limitations. While the book is a scholarly monograph, Baldwin's expedition into social and cultural theory is so nuanced as to make the book accessible to a wider audience. Davarian Baldwin argues overall that this mass consumer marketplace generated a vibrant intellectual life and planted seeds of political dissent against the dehumanizing effects of white capitalism.

This book overall is great wonderful if you want to learn about black innovators in Chicago. But if you are interested in Oscar Micheaux in particular, then the best chapter would be the fourth entitled, “The Birth of Two Nations: White fears, black jeers, and the rise of a race film consciousness”.  The chapter begins by discussing the history and impact of Birth of a Nation. It was an escape in which the traditional white power structure of the South was asserted and black migrants had never come north. But Baldwin proves this point invalid in his historical evidence and he also shows that Griffith’s film created two nations because people like Micheaux had to respond to the story that was told in Birth of Nation. A really interesting point that he mentions is that fact that films like Within Our Gates had to constantly battle with showing the truth of the South to the masses, but also still keeping the traditional black amusement forms. He calls this “sensational realism”. He then goes on the mention Micheaux’s life and Baldwin notes the significance of Oscar Micheaux's five silent and nine sound films in constructing a New Negro racial consciousness. He gives plenty of historical evidence and reviews from the time, which helps to put the films in a clear cultural perspective.