Spencer Williams Movies

During World War II, a young African American is forced to continue his family’s tradition of military service when he is drafted into the...

Bad News Johnson, a con artist from Memphis, Tennessee, arrives in Dallas, Texas, accompanied by his dim sidekick July Jones with only twenty-five...

Musical film with an all-black cast.

Privacy Robson is a downtrodden husband who takes advice from his friend Florian Slappey. He eventually gets the upper hand after starting divorce...

Virtually unseen for more than eighty years, Spencer Williams’s first film is a one-reel comedy short in which a rivalry between two men is...

After losing their parents in a flood at a young age, two brothers grow up to become a police officer and a lawyer, working with a local newspaper...

A filmed variety show featuring the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra with special guests.

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

A newlywed couple is visited by a strange old woman who harbors a secret about the young girl's father.

US Navy produced short stars Joel Fluellen as a draftee from his civilian job at a black newspaper through boot camp and an assignment in the...

The history of the television version of "Amos and Andy" and the public outcry to cancel it.

The film is set in Memphis, Tennessee and focuses on a street sweeper who comes upon a large parcel of money. He uses the newly acquired wealth to go...

Film by Spencer Williams.

Daisy Mae Walker is an aspiring singer from a small town in Texas, who comes to a Big City to pursue a show business career. A kindly cab driver and...

A wandering cowboy and his sidekick try to resolve a murder.

A cowboy is wrongfully accused of murder. He winds up in Harlem, where he assumes the identity of a preacher-turned-gangster who looks like him. He...

A Harlem nightclub entertainer arrives on the Caribbean island of "Rinidad" to perform as the headliner in a revue at the Paradise Hotel. She quickly...

A nightclub owner's wife, jealous of his attentions to his star singer, schemes to get her fired.

A cowboy helps a pretty young woman find lost gold. Restored by the Academy Film Archive with additional funding from the National Endowment for the...

The owner of a juke joint arranges to frame an innocent preacher with a scandalous photograph, but his scheme backfires when his own adoptive mother...