The Blood of Jesus
About The Blood of Jesus
Martha Jackson is baptized in a rural river while her husband Ras is out poaching. At home his rifle falls and shoots her, and the congregation prays. An angel takes her spirit to a crossroads, where Satan's agent Judas Green steers her into a nightclub job. She runs, and Satan's crowd scatters when a voice challenges them. The crossroads sign becomes a crucifix, blood falls on her face, and she wakes to a husband who has taken up religion.
Cast & crew
More about The Blood of Jesus
Spencer Williams wrote, directed, and plays Ras Jackson. Cathryn Caviness plays Martha. Alfred Sack's company handled the picture, which was made in Texas with church amateurs and Reverend R. L. Robinson's Heavenly Choir. It opened on 26 April 1941. Another title is The Glory Road.
Themes
Background
Sack Amusement Enterprises circulated race films to Black theaters that the major studios did not book.
In film history
Julie Dash has said the riverside baptism in Daughters of the Dust (1991) came from this film.
Making
Juanita Riley and Reather Hardeman play sisters of the church. Eddie DeBase plays the club owner Rufus Brown. Williams staged the baptism with a local congregation.
Reviews
Dave Kehr wrote about it in The New York Times. J. Hoberman wrote about it in The Village Voice. Thomas Cripps, in Black Film as Genre, discussed its literal staging of Christian myth.
Music
Reverend R. L. Robinson's Heavenly Choir sings spirituals, several of them in arrangements by Henry Thacker Burleigh, including "Go Down Moses," "Amazing Grace," and "Were You There."
Preservation
A print found in a Tyler warehouse in the mid-1980s is the source of the surviving film. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1991.
Notes
- Frank H. McClennan plays Judas Green, James B. Jones plays Satan, and Rogenia Goldthwaite plays the angel.
- It was the first race film placed on the National Film Registry, in 1991.
- Prints were treated as lost until a copy turned up in a Tyler, Texas warehouse in the mid-1980s.
- Thom Andersen used passages from it in the 2015 essay film Juke.
- Time later put it on a list of 25 films about race.
- The nightclub band plays "Weary Blues," sung by Gussie Smith.
Scenes
- Martha is lowered into the river at the baptism.
- Ras's rifle goes off in the house.
- The crossroads sign turns into a crucifix and blood falls on her face.
Influenced
- Daughters of the Dust (1991), whose baptism sequence Dash linked to this film
Also available
- Internet Archive (blood_of_jesus)
