Unscrupulously ambitious, Brutus Jones escapes from jail after killing a guard and, through bluff and bravado, finds himself the emperor of a...

A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face...

Duke Ellington plays hot jazz in a fictional story that finds him down on his luck; he tries in vain to dissuade his friend, dancer Fredi Washington,...

A female journalist travels to a new neighborhood after getting a (false) lead and is surprised by what she finds.

The well-known explorer and hunter Captain Spaulding has just returned from Africa, and is being welcomed home with a lavish party at the estate of...

A well-respected boxer is framed by his enemies in the death of a policeman during a raid on a local gambling establishment. He is convicted and...

In Haiti, a black female plantation owner enacts a voodoo curse, and revives zombies for revenge on a white male neighbor, who has chosen a white...

A planter's wife shoots a neighbor, but tells conflicting stories of what happened.

In this short film, musical and dance acts perform, first at a night club, then at a "rent party".

Ossie Davis narrates a history of "race films," films made before 1950 which catered to a primarily black audience.

This jazz musical short has a comedy plot about marital infidelity. Bandleader Cab Calloway plays a ladies man who dates the wife (Fredi Washington)...