Oscar Micheaux tackled a huge variety of subjects and topics in his films, all of special interest to his race. Mob violence, rape, economic exploitation, even inter-racial relationships are explored but as in many race films of the 20s and early 30s skin colour was important - light skinned Afro Americans represented the educated and elite while the poor and criminal classes were usually depicted as darker skinned. This movie was a bit different, yes Eve Mason, the heroine, is a light skinned African American who leaves her home in Selma, Alabama after inheriting some land from her grandfather. She then encounters Jefferson Driscoll a bitter and twisted mulatto with a deep hatred for black people - ever since his mother surprised him with a visit when he was romancing a white girl!! He takes Eve for a white girl but "her skin may be white but her eyes betray her origins"!! - once he realises his mistake he orders her to the barn and laughs maniacally when he sees her stumbling about in the mud.

She makes her way to the woods where her grand father's cabin and land is waiting for her. With the help of prospector and neighbour Hugh Van Allen, he is also able to help her chase off some intruders. Driscoll has sold his boarding house and is now a horse trader and Allen finds out how disreputable when the horses he bought in good faith prove to be broken down nags. He confronts Driscoll at the local saloon and after a realistic fight Driscoll is bested and vows revenge. He gets his chance when a dropped letter that falls into his hands shows that Van Allen's land is extremely valuable. He then enlists the head of the Ku Klux Klan to scare him off it!! The images of the Klan riding through the woods at midnight are scary - it looks so real. Quite a chunk of the rest of the movie is missing. I'm wondering whether it was deliberately censored by some Southern cinema owners as it showed the Klan's raid failing due to a "coloured man with a brick"!! That wouldn't have gone down too well in some of those towns.

The film resumes with Van Allen, a couple of years later, now an oil king, running his own company and visited by Eve now working for the Committee for the Defense of the Coloured Race. He was completely unaware of Eve's African American parentage and can now proclaim the love he had kept hidden.

Another powerful film from Oscar Micheaux but surely there must have been better music available than that 60 minute drum solo!!