Within Our Gates

While watching the film, I saw many interesting things. One of the things that stuck out the most was the use of color for the characters. The main characters in the movie who were black were very light skinned, while those who had smaller parts were darker. Although it may have not been on purpose, the movie gives the view that only lighter colored skinned blacks were educated and important, while the darker skinned blacks were the ones who were uneducated and had small parts. It almost seems like the film was going against what it was actually trying to promote, that is that blacks are equal to whites and need to be educated just the same. What the use of lighter and darker colored blacks, it appears as if blacks themselves were not able to get over the barrier, so how is it that whites are supposed to treat blacks equal when blacks cannot treat each other equally?
Another thing that stuck out about the film was the use of flashbacks. I thought that the use of flashbacks was unique in that many films of the time did not or could not use the effect. What the flashbacks in this film did was fill in the story line later on. This effect helped explain the part where Sylvia decided to leave the South to go to the North to raise money for the school so it could stay open. After this scene I was left with the question of how much money she needed to raise, but due to the fact that flashbacks were used, the film showed a clip where Sylvia got a letter from the school saying that it needed $5,000. This small flashback helped answer my question as well as add to the story.
Both of these things stuck out in my mind throughout the film, they added aspects to the film that I did not expect to see.