The Symbol of the Unconquered: A Story of the Ku Klux Klan
(The Symbol of the Unconquered: A Story of the Ku Klux Klan)

The Symbol of the Unconquered is often described as Oscar Micheaux’s second rebuttal of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), following on from Within Our Gates, also made in 1920. It is one of the three surviving silent films out of the twenty-two films he directed between 1919 and 1930. Although the film’s narrative modalities are clearly different from those of his previous film, it is again a melodrama. Opening himself up once again to controversy, Micheaux develops themes on racism and its ambiguous consequences for the mixed-race, light-skinned characters, and on the violent social relations perverted by a predatory and concupiscent logic. Although all ends well, the film first etches out a profound disarray as it follows Eve Mason in her migration from her native Alabama to the North-West. JB