Wycliffe Gordon's Within Our Gates

Trombonist/composer/bandleader Gordon created a powerful evening-length work for his big band to accompany the historic Within Our Gates (1920), a silent film believed to be the African American response to D.W. Griffiths' "Birth of a Nation" that dramatically exposes America's racial situation during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro." Produced, written and directed by novelist/filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, it is the oldest known surviving film made by an African-American.

Presented in collaboration with Jazzmobile