Mahalia Jackson - trouble of the world

saw a film from the 50s last night about racial tensions in america called 'imitation of life', about a down and out black woman with a mixed race daughter who looks white, who are taken in by a soon to be rish and famous white woman with a daughter, and their developing relationship as shit goes down. concentrates on the mixed race girls obsession with not wanting anyone to find out her mum is black, as she runs away from her mother to start life fresh as a 'white girl'. it ends with her mum dying of a broken heart, and she apologises in tears over her mums dead body.

it was strange because while it was a groundbreaking liberal attack on racism at the time - it was also unintentionally very racist itself. sort of like the first steps towards the civil rights movement, where they said "okay you can use the bus, but you have to sit at the BACK of the bus..." anyway, a highlight was this performance by mahalia jackson at the funeral. there are better videos of her on youtube, but you cant embed most of them, so this will have to do. all in all it was a pretty awful film, but id kind of recommend seeing it anyway as an education on what was considered forward thinking 50 years ago.