Of One Blood (film)

Of One Blood is a 1944 race film directed by and starring Spencer Williams. The film focuses on two orphaned African American brothers who grow up to become a lawyer and a police officer, and who work together to break up a crime ring that is run by a miscreant who turns out to be their long-lost older brother.
Release, reception, and legacy.
Like many race films, all of Spencer Williams' works were thought to have been lost. At the time, movies were printed on nitrate film, which is highly flammable and is liable to decompose, and only a few prints of Williams' films were made due to their low budget. However, most of his movies from the 1940s have been rediscovered; many of them were found in a warehouse in Tyler, Texas by film historian G. William Jones in 1983, alongside a number of independent exploitation films and prints of popular Hollywood films from the 1930s and 40s. Williams' works recovered in the collection were restored and now held at Southern Methodist University (SMU) as the Tyler, Texas, Black Film Collection. "Of One Blood" was one of the few films of Williams' not found in the Collection. However, a copy of it has been preserved in a different collection at SMU and another copy is held at the Library of Congress.