There was a brief vogue 10 years ago or so, led by a few film buffs like Siskel and Ebert, for "revival" of the old "black films" of the 1940's. They started in the 30's and gradually died out in the 50's, like the old Negro Leagues in baseball and for the same reason: Hattie McDaniel, Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier got called up to the majors in film, in much the same way as baseball players did.
But before the era faded away, what the black filmmakers recorded -- they made a record, not just films -- was the state of the "colored" community at the time. The films were eye-opening for anyone who lived through the 70's and the "blaxploitation" films: Shaft, Blacula, Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song. They featured fully-functional neighborhoods in Upper South and Midwestern cities, men with trades, businesses, and professional practices making ends meet for intact families, men and women who spoke conversational English, not "Ebonic" or some other "street" dialect.
The English used in those days was close enough to standard usage, that neologisms, turns of phrase, and humor migrated quickly across into the wider community: I remember an Encyclopedia Britannica entry, I think it was, about humor, in the 1954 edition that we had at home. The writer commented on American humor in particular and its difference from British and other Old World humor. The example given was a street scene: two black workers were talking one day (example from the 1930's, I suppose), one of them commenting on a rent collector walking down the other side of the street: "There goes vulture boy, pickin' his teeth." The point of the article was, it would never in God's world have occurred to an Englishman, to make those same easily-understood words come out of his own mouth, never mind that rent collectors were just as common in England.* They just didn't talk like that. But we did. Nowadays, the situation is different, and commented on when street slang comes up for discussion.
* I suppose it's also worth commenting on, that someone would remember that expression -- purely from memory -- more than 40 years after reading it.
Interesting subject. The other night, I watched the movie, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” with Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy,and Katherine Hepburn. While this was a comedy, this movie made an impact on me. As you know, it is about a white girl and and a black man who fall in love and want to marry. The black man, played by Poitier, is confronted by his father at his fiancee’s house for even wanting to go beyond his station in life. Poitier responded that his Dad saw himself as a colored man but he sees himself as a man. His Dad was holding back but the son saw unlimited potentials and was stepping out of the stereotype of a black man. Truly, we need more black men who see themselves as men, not just black men.