Some outstanding black performers are saluted this month in a range of movies exploring various facets of the African-American experience. "Coming of age" stories include Sounder (1972), in which the Oscar®-nominated team of Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson give brilliant performances as sharecroppers in 1933 Louisiana, with Kevin Hooks as the young son who goes on a memorable odyssey with his pet hound. Josephine Baker, in a category all her own, sparkled in such French films as Zou Zou (1934), in which she plays a laundress who succeeds in show business. Religion is explored in King Vidor's early talkie triumph Hallelujah! (1929), with compelling performances from Daniel L. Haynes as a Southern preacher and Nina Mae McKinney as the beautiful dancer who tempts him. Musicals include Show Boat (1936), with Paul Robeson's electrifying delivery of "Ol' Man River"; and Vincente Minnelli's Cabin in the Sky (1943), the first MGM musical with an all-black cast Ð including Ethel Waters, Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong. Facing racism was the courageous stance of such films as The Defiant Ones (1958), with Oscar®-nominated Sidney Poitier as a black prisoner chained to a prejudiced white man (Tony Curtis). By Roger Fristoe