In the hands of a less responsible filmmaker, Leadbelly's saga might have been just another tale of a poor, downtrodden Sambo butting his head against "The Man"; but it just didn't happen that way, and [in Leadbelly] Parks avoids Black clichés as if they were recruiting slogans for the Ku Klux Klan. (Too bad he didn't also avoid showing the whites in prison-guard assignments as stereotypical potbellied crackers.)…

Not a great movie, but there's more meaning and truth for Blacks here than Mahogany had in one of its lime-green sequined fake fingernails.

Rex Reed, "Movies: 'Leadbelly'," in Vogue (courtesy Vogue; copyright © 1975 by The Condé Nast Publications Inc.), Vol. 166, No. 1, January, 1976, p. 33.