The mission of The Department of Afro-American Research Arts and Culture to identify the global significance of the creative contributions pioneered by an international diaspora of Blackness
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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The Blood of Jesus (1941)






















Starring: 


Storyline
In the rural south of the United States, a godly young woman is accidentally wounded by her unchurched husband. She succumbs to the injuries, whereupon a good angel bids her to journey with him to the Crossroads of Life. Before she can travel far, the devil lures her with the temptations of juke joints and the city. Can she regain the straight and narrow before it's too late? And what is to become of those she left behind?

Murder on Lenox Avenue (1941)





























Starring:

 
Storyline
The crowded rooms of Harlem tenement buildings become crucibles of populist politics and powerful passions. Crooked businessman Leon Marshall runs the local Better Business League as his personal fiefdom, enriching himself at the expense of the poor. He faces a challenge from Pa Williams, a respected patriarch in the community. Marshall and his hunchback henchman Lomax are determined to end Williams' political life - not with ballots, but with bullets.

Swing! (1938)















Starring:

Storyline
When Mandy Jenkins catches her husband Cornell out on a date with Eloise Jackson in a small cabaret in Birmingham, Alabama, she and Jackson have a fight. Months later, Eloise is living in Harlem and about to star in a musical, produced and directed by Ted Gregory, who hopes to be the first black producer to put on a show on Broadway. Mandy, meanwhile, has also moved to Harlem, and is hired by Gregory as wardrobe mistress at the suggestion of his secretary, Lena, with whom Gregory has fallen in love. But Gregory has problems getting backing for the show, and is unhappy that Eloise often comes drunk and late to the rehearsals. And things look hopeless when Eloise breaks her leg falling down a stairway while in a drunken stupor.