Rev. S.S. Jones Home Movies: Reel 8: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A home movie featuring footage taken in Oklahoma during the middle and late 1920s by Solomon Sir Jones. It is the eighth in a collection of nine films and consists of a single reel of silent 16mm black-and-white acetate film.

The film begins with men and women walking down the front stairs of a building. The same men and women are shown in a procession down the road wearing Masonic scarves and aprons. The camera shows the men and women standing in front of the building and also a wider angle view of the entire exterior of the building. There are also about half a dozen cars in front of the building. The next scene shows a motorcade with cars and motorcycles driving down a street. Some of the men on motorcycles appear to have on police officer uniforms. The next scene shows people at a racetrack watching jockeys and horses race. The next scene shows men and women walking out of the front door of a building and passing the camera. The men and women then stand in a semicircle and pose for the camera. The camera pans the crowd, and then they all wave to the camera. The next scene is on a farm. A woman feeds chickens, a man stands nearby with a horse, and another man plays with a pig. There is a brief scene of a woman in a carriage and on a horse. The next scene shows a family get into a car and drive away. There is a brief scene of two men racing, one is dressed in running clothes and the other in semi-formal clothes. In the next scene, a family comes out of a house, acknowledges the camera, and then goes back into the house. There is another scene of a farm that appears to be a different farm than the previous one. There are a lot of pigs in the yard, and a man lets horses out of a barn into the same yard. A car and a truck pass in front of the camera. A woman feeds chickens. There is some brief footage of a gas station and some people greeting one another on front porches at the end of the film.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1924-1928
• Directed by: Rev. S. S. Jones, American, 1869 - 1936
• Type: silent films
• Type: home movies
• Type: black-and-white films (visual works)
• Type: 16mm (photographic film size)
• Medium: acetate film
• Dimensions: Duration: 10 Minutes
• Dimensions: Length (Film): 275 Feet
• Place filmed: Oklahoma, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Agriculture
• Topic: American South
• Topic: American West
• Topic: Amusements
• Topic: Associations and institutions
• Topic: Baptist
• Topic: Communities
• Object number: 2011.79.8.1a
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Naomi Long Madgett
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: No Known Copyright Restrictions Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.