Sinners, the Oscars, and Piercing the Veil of Blackness in Film
Every year during Oscar season, I think of a different Oscar—a director many people don’t know. On the night of the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, Oscar Micheaux was a decade into his directing career. He wasn’t the first black filmmaker creating movies for an audience suffering the oppression of white supremacy, but Micheaux was the most prolific. His movies embodied the “race film,” an independent cinematic movement born in response to director D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. With forty-three movies to his credit, neither Micheaux nor his films were ever acknowledged by the Academy in his lifetime, let alone considered for one of the prestigious awards that shared his name.
Oscar Micheaux, pioneer of the “race film.”When examining the history of film, the contributions of black creatives like Micheaux are excluded almost as often as the discussion of the damaging effect of more than a century of distorted portrayals of African Americans. Micheaux and his contemporaries fought to bring humanity to the black image in film. And in what could easily be called a “Hollywood ending,” I imagine the spirit of Micheaux watching the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, waiting to see if director Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the great-grandchild of the race film, will win any of its record-setting sixteen Oscar nominations, possibly sweeping the awards and earning an undeniable place in motion picture history. This scene exists vividly in my imagination, recalling the transcendent moment in Sinners, when the music of Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) pierces the veil separating the past, present, and future.
And it won’t just be Micheaux at the ceremony, the spirits of countless filmmakers, actors, artists, and technicians—most of them forgotten by history—will be seated in a row reserved for the pioneers of black cinema. Micheaux will be sitting next to brothers Noble and George Johnson, and they, along with directors like Maria P. Williams and William D. Foster, and actors like Bert Williams and Madame Sul-Te-Wan, will celebrate as award after award is bestowed upon Sinners. Some people won’t understand the jubilation of Tressie Souders, the first black woman to direct a feature film, as she embraces Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Oscar for acting, when Wunmi Mosaku’s name is read. But Dorothy Dandridge will understand, as will Juanita Moore, because those that never won an Academy Award, or were never even nominated, will be seeing the culmination of everything they did in the performances by the cast of Sinners, even if no one else sees it.
After the award ceremony, the party begins at Club Alabam on Central Avenue, the premiere black night club in 1940s Los Angeles. Cab Calloway and his band will be tearing the roof off the joint, while the Nicholas Brothers are dancing on the tables.. Spencer Williams, wearing his director’s hat, lovingly tells them to stop stealing the spotlight from Coogler and his cast and crew, but Paul Robeson reminds Williams that the celebration is for more than Sinners. “This is for all of us,” says Robeson. before making his way through the crowded room. He passes Michaeux bending Coogler’s ear, James Wong Howe talking cinematography with Autumn Durald Arkapaw, and Sidney Poitier congratulating Michael B. Jordan. With tears in his eyes, Robeson leans in close and whispers into the ear of Delroy Lindo, “Well done my good man. Well done.”
But, what if Sinners doesn’t win? What if the Academy voters don’t recognize the achievements of the cast and crew, dismissing the film because it falls under the umbrella of horror, or because the glorious blackness of the movie is too…well…black?
If that’s the case, at the same party, where Cab Calloway is leading the crowd in a call-and-response of “Minnie the Moocher,” and Harold and Fayard Nicolas are knocking over drinks as they leap from table to table, a muffled silence falls over the packed room when Orson Welles raises his glass in a toast to the crew and cast of Sinners. “The real victory doesn’t come from the awards you or your film win, but in how it is remembered after you’re gone, and what is does to elevate the artistry of this medium,” says Welles. And no one knows this better than Welles, whose Citizen Kane didn’t win Best Picture, Best Director, or Best Cinematography. Frank Capra shrugs his shoulders in agreement, because It’s a Wonderful Life shared a similar fate to Citizen Kane, having lost most of the Oscars it was nominated for, while growing into one of the most beloved movies of all time.
People forget how much James Baldwin loved the movies, and that he was a film critic. In The Devil Finds Work: An Essay, Baldwin wrote about the lies of the camera, explaining that “the camera sees what you want it to see. The language of the camera is the language of our dreams.” Referencing this as he addresses the crowd, Baldwin looks towards Ryan and Zinzi Coogler, co-producer Sev Ohanian, and the cast and crew of Sinners, reminding them that they have created a dream that speaks to the humanity of black Americans in a way few other films have done, and certainly more than any film with vampires ever should.
Film’s true history is a legacy built on a foundation that denies black people their humanity. The Birth of a Nation was more than a watershed moment in the art of cinematic craft; it was the immortalization of a curse placed upon black people. The Jazz Singer, the first film with synchronized sound, reinforced that curse, as Al Jolson, in blackface, stripped black people of their humanity. The cultural appropriation of blackness, dehumanization, and ugly stereotypes that plague black people were not created by film. But motion pictures and the industry it spawned was a willing accomplice in a crime that is still being perpetrated to this day. Sinners is merely one of many responses to that crime.
The real victory of Sinners won’t be measured by money earned, or awards collected. No, the real victory is the collaboration of a long and diverse group of talented people, working under the guise of making a horror film, and taking ownership of blackness. But to be clear, Sinners had more collaborators than those listed in the credits. Generations of filmmakers and artists of varying races, genders, and ethnicities gave of themselves to the art of film, making this moment possible. These are the cinematic ancestors without whom Sinners wouldn’t exist. This is the culmination of more than one hundred years of fighting to control how black existence is portrayed on the screen. And the real victory of Sinners is how a movie with vampires has given black folks the humanity that time and time again has been denied since before motion pictures began to move. – David F. Walker
Check out my new book, Black Film: A History of Black Representation and Participation in the Movies, on sale March 24, 2026 from Ten Speed Press. Order you copy HERE.
