Word: slaves
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...lurid tans. But to white readers who object to their violent brushwork they might truthfully reply: Negro life is violent. Author Turpin's story traces the fortunes of a Negro family from its uprooting in the Civil War to its rootless present. Martha, daughter of a plantation slave, died too soon to prevent her daughter from growing up in a bawdy house. Her granddaughter, starting off as a respectable farmer's wife, ended up on the Harlem stage, mothered a high-minded athlete who was painfully settling down at story's end to teach his compatriots...
...dinky Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad was laid, Bolivar's rich bottomlands were an uninhabited jungle. The railroad, eager for customers along the route, but fearing that white men would die off under the hot summer sun, decided to try Negroes. Isaiah T. Montgomery, a onetime slave of Jefferson Davis, and his cousin Benjamin T. Green were induced to start a colony. Thus was founded the town of Mound Bayou. Last week every day was carnival in Mound Bayou, for it was celebrating its 50th anniversary as a self-governing 100% Negro community...
...Slave Ship does not touch upon the sporting background of the bark that plays its title role, but records some of the more sombre legends which sailormen repeated about The Wanderer. She had been launched in blood, killing a workman who was pinioned on the ways as she slid down into the water. Fire and plague beset her voyages. Slaving, outlawed by international agreement in 1814, was practiced in the middle of the century by a few renegade skippers who risked hanging for the $600 to $1,000 per head they could obtain...
Skipper Jim Lovett (Warner Baxter) decided to quit slaving after the Sunday morning when, on his way to get drunk, he met Nancy (Elizabeth Allan) on her way to church. Failing to share his reformation, the Slave Ship crew shanghaied him and his bride, obtained the keys to the gun locker, pointed the bark's nose for the Congo. Thompson (Wallace Beery), the wily mate, planned to leave Captain Lovett on the beach after the cargo was aboard, but Lovett climbed aboard from a native proa. Annexing the arsenal, Lovett and Nancy, helped by the cabin boy (Mickey Rooney...
...Slave Ship is not for the squeamish. Its eight reels contain an incredible amount of knifing, jaw-punching, conking on the head, lashing in chains, shooting, slapping and assorted casual brutalities. Sometimes its violence is shrewdly planned and powerful; sometimes, particularly when Director Tay Garnett uses for comedy the same form of physical surprise which a moment earlier he was using for horror, it is inept. But the action is generally lusty and well-integrated. Best minor role: Mickey Rooney as the resolute, bewildered cabin boy whose loyalty veers hazardously between the brutal mate and the romantic skipper...