The Scar of Shame

Despite having an all African-American cast, this film doesn't deal explicitly with race, as its script could have been applied to white people, which is a nice thing for 1927. The film is in part about the dynamic between social classes, and has some good early scenes that deal with that. In one, we see the intertitle "One half the world doesn't know how the other half lives" while a poor woman is scrubbing the laundry over a washboard. Eventually it gets a little bit pushy in its message, which is for people to choose higher aspirations in life (education, the arts, steady jobs) vs. lower (gambling, drinking, violence), making it a simplistic morality tale, and one that is of course directed at the African-American community.

In that sense, it has everything to do with race, and says (1) look, we're people too, not the stereotypes Hollywood and white supremacist culture ordinarily portrays us to be (2) we can do better, that "Our people have much to learn." The plot and the love triangle which develops in the second half is more than a little melodramatic, but the screen presence of all three leads is undeniable (Harry Henderson, Lucia Lynn Moses, and Pearl McCormack), and had these actors been white they all might have been stars of the era. The film is pretty well made as well, making it a silent worth checking out.