''Of One Blood'' is a 1944 American

race film The race film or race movie was a genre of film produced in the United States between about 1915 and the early 1950s, consisting of films produced for black audiences, and featuring black casts. Approximately five hundred race films were produce ...

directed, written by and starring

Spencer Williams Spencer Williams (October 14, 1889 – July 14, 1965) was an American jazz and popular music composer, pianist, and singer. He is best known for his hit songs " Basin Street Blues", "I Ain't Got Nobody", "Royal Garden Blues", "I've Found a New B ...

. The film focuses on two orphaned

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

brothers who grow up to become a lawyer and a police officer, and who work together to break up a crime ring run by a miscreant who turns out to be their long-lost oldest brother.

Release, reception, and legacy

Like many race films, all of Williams' works were thought to have been

lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography *Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland * Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

. At the time, films were printed on nitrate film, which is highly flammable and liable to decompose, and only a few

prints In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserve ...

of Williams' films were made due to their low budget. However, most of his 1940s films have been rediscovered; many were found in a

Tyler, Texas Tyler is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the largest city and county seat of Smith County, Texas, Smith County. It is also the largest city in Northeast Texas. With a 2020 census population of 105,995, Tyler was the List of cities in Texa ...

warehouse by film historian G. William Jones in 1983, alongside a number of independent exploitation films and prints of popular Hollywood films from the 1930s and 40s. Williams' works recovered in the collection were restored and now held at

Southern Methodist University , mottoeng = "The truth will make you free" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = SACS , academic_affiliations = , religious_affiliation = United Methodist Church , president = R. Gerald Turner , prov ...

(SMU) as the Tyler, Texas, Black Film Collection. Jones (1991), pp. 1314. ''Of One Blood'' was one of few films of Williams' not found in the Collection. However, a copy has been preserved in a different SMU collection, and another at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

. Jones (1991), pg. 217.

Footnotes

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

* 1944 films American black-and-white films Films directed by Spencer Williams Race films Films about Christianity American drama films 1944 drama films 1940s English-language films 1940s American films {{1940s-US-film-stub

Release, reception, and legacy

See also

Footnotes

References

Bibliography

External links