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It's arrived -- thanks in part to a successful Kickstarter campaign, this nearly comprehensive compendium of American 'Race Films' is here in a deluxe Blu-ray presentation. Pioneers of African-American Cinema Blu-ray Kino Classics 1915-1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 952 min. / Street Date July 26, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 99.95 Directed by Richard Norman, Richard Maurice, Spencer Williams and Oscar Micheaux

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Black Cinema History? We didn't hear a peep about any such thing back in film school. Sometime in the 1980s PBS would broadcast a barely watchable (see sample just below) copy of a creaky silent 'race movie' about a 'backsliding' black man in trouble with the law, the Lord and his wife in that order. The cultural segregation has been almost complete. It wasn't until even later that I read articles about a long-extinct nationwide circuit of movie theaters catering to black audiences, wherever the populations were big enough to support the trade.

It’s hard to consider the release of a piece of entertainment, specifically a DVD and Blu-ray box set, as a culturally significant moment, but then again there are few items quite like the newest release from the team at Kino Lorber.

After a refreshingly successful Kickstarter campaign, Kino Lorber has finally released their groundbreaking collection, Pioneers Of African American Cinema, and to call it one of the year’s best home video releases is to truly understate the sociological import carried within this release.

Silent era and early-talkie cinema, as seen by many a film aficionado, is a deeply problematic world. Primarily helmed by white men, films more than occasionally featured everything from frustratingly cartoonish caricatures of African-American characters (furthering stereotypes like the “Mamie”) to white actors donning black face (of which there is also a great deal within this set as well) in what is seen today as a disturbing bit of racism.

The news was announced yesterday that singer and actor Herb Jeffries passed away on Sunday at the ripe old age of 100. With a career that spanned over 60 years, starting in the early 1930’s, Jeffries was still performing until the mid-1990’s and made his mark with his signature smooth voice, appearing in nightclubs, concert halls, television, and dozens of recordings, and at one time, was a featured singer with Duke Ellington’s orchestra.But among Jeffries’ biggest claims to fame were the series of western “race” films he starred in, that were made for black filmgoers during the late 1930’s: Harlem Rides the Range, The Bronze Buckaroo, Two Gun Man from Harlem, and Harlem on...

Jazz singer and actor Herb Jeffries, the first black singing cowboy to grace Hollywood screens, died of heart failure today in West Hills, CA, reports the La Times. He was 100. Jeffries was born Umberto Alexander Valentino in 1913 to an Irish mother and a father of Sicilian, Ethiopean, French, Italian and Moorish descent. A singer with the Duke Ellington band and other pop orchestras in the 1940s, the blue-eyed Jeffries embraced his mixed heritage and played up his African-American roots. He made his screen debut in 1937′s Harlem on the Prairie, the first of many “sepia movies” he would star in aimed at black audiences. In 1939′s The Bronze Buckaroo he warbled tunes like “I’m a Happy Cowboy” and established himself as Hollywood’s black Gene Autry. He also starred in low-budget Westerns Harlem Rides The Range and Two-Gun Man From Harlem, and starred opposite Angie Dickinson in 1957′s musical romance Calypso Joe.

Herb Jeffries, the first black singing cowboy of the movies, who starred in such 1930s films as Harlem on the Prairie and The Bronze Buckaroo, has died, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was 100. Jeffries, who later became a recording star as a member of Duke Ellington's orchestra, died of heart failure Sunday at West Hills (Calif.) Hospital & Medical Center, Raymond Strait, who had been working with the actor on his autobiography, told the newspaper.  Jeffries also had the title role in the 1957 film Calypso Joe, playing a singer who helps Angie Dickinson find the right

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