Alec Lovejoy

It is the story of a comedian Lem Anderson who dreams of playing in Shakespeare scenes but he is applied only role in Harlem Vaudeville. One day he is the witness of a crime and the mobster strongly advised him to leave the town...

Ted Gregory is trying to be the first black producer to mount a show on Broadway, but he has trouble with his star singer.

After graduating from Harvard University, Peter Siner returns to his small Tennessee hometown, where he hopes to start a school for black children.

Duke Ellington plays hot jazz in a fictional story that finds him down on his luck; he tries in vain to dissuade his friend, dancer Fredi Washington, from working with heart trouble even though it means work for his band. Sure enough, she collapses on stage...

Hardworking Minnie (Cora Green) marries "Dollar" Bill (Bud Harris) a shady gambler after her money and her attractive daughter, Sue (Izanetta Wilcois). Sue meanwhile, is in love with Bob (Carl Hough), an idealist fond of looking out over the skyline and saying "Harlem... there's so much to be done here--it's fairly screaming for leadership." When Bob decides to organize the community against local racketeers he little realizes would-be father-in-law Dollar Bill is one of them. Bill meanwhile has problems of his own: A vicious white mob from lower Manhattan is muscling in on his action, and bullets are about to fly.

A Black night watchman at a chemical factory finds the body of a murdered white woman. After reporting it, he finds himself accused of the murder.

Naomi, a light-skinned Black child, is abandoned by her mother and raised by the virtuous Mrs. Saunders. When the girl's fixation with whiteness turns her against her own race, she is sent to a convent. Hopelessly in love with her adoptive brother Jimmie, Naomi consents to marry his friend, but is repulsed by his darker skin and unrefined ways.

Reverend Jesse Hampton has a bone to pick with the management of Club Harlem, a wildly popular nightspot where drinking and dancing are the rule. No old-fashioned prude, the Reverend tries to see the positive side of the juke joint activities, knowing that the jitterbuggers are basically decent kids who just need to blow off a little steam. But the preacher sees red when the club opens on the Sabbath, threatening to turn the good townsfolk into Sunday sinners. An upcoming dance contest seems destined to become a showdown between the powers of light and darkness.