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Thomas Cripps, one of black cinema's leading historians, notes that anachronism must be avoided in approaching black films. "Miracle in Harlem was about free enterprise, which for economically deprived blacks was an almost revolutionary goal," says Cripps. "Bourgeois values are not necessarily at odds with social progress."
Miracle in Harlem premiered on unsegregated Broadway. At the same time, the first Hollywood movies that gingerly took up racial themes (Pinky, Lost Boundaries—also featuring Greaves—Home of the Brave) began to appear, effectively pre-empting the black cinema on its home turf. By the late '40s, black production had fallen victim to the economic shrinkage imposed on the entire business by television. Still, black pictures should not be forgotten. Especially in the rural South, where they routinely played in schools and church basements, "they showed the kids something in a world where there was nothing," as Cripps puts it. It is a point seconded by Greaves:
"They gave people a chance to laugh and to dream and to take their minds off the social pressures." Above all, he adds, by portraying an all-black society, where no white man intruded from above, they offered "a feeling of dignity that flows out of the sense that it is your world and you can control it." —By Richard Schickel