Birthright

This movie may have been released in 1939, but it may have been released in 1938. I'm going with it.

The first two reels (20 minutes) of this movie are missing and summarized in this print.  It is a movie that was created for the segregated black audiences of the time. It is (almost) all about race issues in the South. It is by the same director as Swing!, which I think is a better movie.

A black man from Hooker's Bend (somewhere in the South) goes to Harvard and then returns to his hometown to start a school for higher education for Negroes. He is met with trickery and bullying from the well-to-do white folk, ridicule from the less-well-to-do whites folk, and open hostility from most of the black folk.

As far as race relations go, this movie seems to aver that all is right in the North, but still horrible in the South.  Also, the forward thinking blacks are all very light skinned.  I am not sure what messages are being sent with this movie.  The race relations had some complex undertones that were probably easily understood by its audience.

Production values were poor.  Here is an interesting exchange (with closed captioning turned on so you can see the dialog):

Let your seed wither in your loin,