Movies About Racism That Explain Why Black Lives Matter

Many people are perplexed regarding the movement for black lives. Social media shows that the concept of racism is understood differently by many people across the world. These movies about racism aim to explain and highlight the great injustice meted out to black people in society. This list includes television shows, mini-series, documentaries and films about racism, police brutality, and injustice against black people.

Clemency:

Years of carrying out death row executions are taking a toll on Warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares for another one, Williams must confront the psychological and emotional demons that her job creates.

13th

Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay’s examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country’s history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America.

In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom. It is one of the important movies about racism.

Hidden Colors

This film discusses some of the reasons the contributions of African and aboriginal people have been left out of the pages of history. Traveling around the country, the film features scholars, historians, and social commentators who uncovered such amazing facts about things such as: The great west African empires; The presence of Africans in America before Columbus; The real reason slavery was ended.

Hidden Colors is a documentary about the real and untold history of people of colour around the globe. Later parts have been criticised but it deserves a place on any list on movies about racism. It has five parts as of this writing;

Part 1: The Untold History Of People Of Aboriginal, Moor, and African Descent
Part 2: The Triumph of Melanin
Part 3: The Rules of Racism
Part 4: The Religion of White Supremacy
Part 5: The Art of Black Warfare

Crime + Punishment

In 2010, New York City banned quotas on arrests and summonses. In 2015, a group of 12 minority NYPD officers filed a class-action lawsuit against the NYPD, alleging the illegal and continued use of quotas. Amidst a landmark class action lawsuit over illegal policing quotas, this film chronicles the real lives and struggles of a group of black and Latino whistleblower cops and the young minorities they are pressured to arrest and summons in New York City.

The Innocence Files

Through the lens of The Evidence, The Witness and The Prosecution, The Innocence Files shines a powerful light on the untold personal stories behind eight cases of wrongful conviction that the nonprofit organization the Innocence Project and organizations within the Innocence Network have uncovered and worked tirelessly to overturn.

The untold personal stories behind eight cases of wrongful conviction that the Innocence Project and organizations within the Innocence Network have uncovered and worked to overturn.

Just Mercy

After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned or those not afforded proper representation. One of his first cases is that of Walter McMillian, who is sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of an 18-year-old girl, despite evidence proving his innocence.

In the years that follow, Stevenson encounters racism and legal and political manoeuvrings as he tirelessly fights for McMillian’s life. You can rent this movie for free on several streaming services — including Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, and Google Play throughout this month.

When They See Us

In 1989 a jogger was assaulted and raped in New York’s Central Park, and five young people were subsequently charged with the crime. The quintet, labeled the Central Park Five, maintained its innocence and spent years fighting the convictions, hoping to be exonerated.

Five teens from Harlem become trapped in a nightmare when they’re falsely accused of a brutal attack in Central Park.

Whose Streets?

When unarmed teenager Michael Brown is killed by police and left lying in the street for hours, it marks a breaking point for the residents of the St. Louis area and beyond. Whose Streets? is an unflinching look at the Ferguson, Missouri uprising. As the national guard rolls in, a new generation mounts a powerful battle cry not just for their civil rights, but for the right to live.

An account of the Ferguson uprising as told by the people who lived it. The filmmakers look at how the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown inspired a community to fight back and sparked a global movement.

Do The Right Thing

Salvatore “Sal” Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighbourhood local, Buggin’ Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria’s Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin’ Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighbourhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin’ Out and to other people in the neighbourhood, and tensions rise.

On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone’s hate and bigotry smoulders and builds until it explodes into violence. One of the early movies about racism that is still relevant today.

The Hate U Give

Based on the best selling book by Angie Thomas, this film follows Starr Carter, an African-American teenager, who faces pressure from various communities and tries to stand up for what is right after she witnesses the shooting of her best friend by the police. Watch this and discover why its present on every compilation of movies about racism.

I Am Not Your Negro

In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, “Remember This House.” The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the time of Baldwin’s death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of this manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished.

Fences

Troy, an African-American man who once longed to be a baseball player, misses the opportunity due to racism. A dejected man, he takes out his frustration on his loved ones and ruins his son’s future.

Fruitvale Station

Though he once spent time in San Quentin, 22-year-old black man Oscar Grant is now trying hard to live a clean life and support his girlfriend and young daughter. Flashbacks reveal the last day in Oscar’s life, in which he accompanied his family and friends to San Francisco to watch fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and, on the way back home, became swept up in an altercation with police that ended in tragedy.

The story of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident, who crosses paths with friends, enemies, family, and strangers on the last day of 2008.

12 Years A Slave

Solomon Northup, a free African-American, is promised a fortnightly job by Brown and Hamilton. However, after arriving in Washington DC, he realises that he has been sold into slavery. One of the great movies about racism and slavery.

If Beale Street Could Talk

In early 1970s Harlem, daughter and wife-to-be Tish vividly recalls the passion, respect and trust that have connected her and her artist fiancé Alonzo Hunt, who goes by the nickname Fonny. Friends since childhood, the devoted couple dream of a future together, but their plans are derailed when Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit.

Harlem of the ‘70s comes alive in this story of pregnant Tish and her crusade to free her fiancé, Fonny, who’s in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. No list of movies about racism will be complete without this.

Selma

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally desegregated the South, discrimination was still rampant in certain areas, making it very difficult for blacks to register to vote. In 1965, an Alabama city became the battleground in the fight for suffrage.

Despite violent opposition, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers pressed forward on an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, and their efforts culminated in President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This is an award-winning movie about racism.

To Kill A Mockingbird

In the Depression era, Atticus Finch, a lawyer, sets out to defend a black man, who is accused of raping a white woman. Meanwhile, his children, Scout and Jem, spy on their reclusive neighbour. This is one of the earlier movies about racism.

Told through the eyes of “Scout,” a feisty six-year-old tomboy To Kill A Mockingbird carries us on an odyssey through the fires of prejudice and injustice in 1932 Alabama.

Ninth Floor

In her first feature-length documentary, director Mina Shum takes a penetrating look at the Sir George Williams University riot of February 1969, when a protest against institutional racism snowballed into a 14-day student occupation at the Montreal university.

In 1969, students occupy a ninth floor computer lab at Sir George Williams University to protest the administration’s handling of racist accusations.

Journey To Justice

This documentary pays tribute to a group of Canadians who took racism to court. They are Canada’s unsung heroes in the fight for Black civil rights. The history of Canadian discrimination against minorities in the 20th century and the civil rights challenges of it. This is one of the most incredible movies about racism in Canada.

Blackkklansmen

Ron Stallworth, an African-American detective, embarks on a mission to infiltrate his town’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist hate group.

The Colour Of Beauty

Renee Thompson is trying to make it as a top fashion model in New York. She’s got the looks, the walk and the drive. But she’s a black model in a world where white women represent the standard of beauty. Agencies rarely hire black models. When they do, they want them to look “like white girls dipped in chocolate.” The Colour of Beauty examines racism in the fashion industry.

The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution

The film combines archival footage and interviews with surviving Panthers and FBI agents to tell the story of the revolutionary black organization Black Panther Party. Filmmaker Stanley Nelson examines the rise of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and its impact on civil rights and American culture.

Time: The Kalief Browder Story

The documentary recounts the story of Kalief Browder, a Bronx high school student who was imprisoned for three years, two of them in solitary confinement on Rikers Island, without being convicted of a crime. He was accused at 16 of stealing a backpack.

The Black Power Mixtape

The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 is a 2011 documentary film, directed by Göran Olsson, that examines the evolution of the Black Power movement in American society from 1967 to 1975 as viewed through Swedish journalists and filmmakers.

Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland

This film explores the death of Sandra Bland, a politically active 28-year-old African American who, after being arrested for a traffic violation in a small Texas town, was found hanging in her jail cell three days later.

An investigation into what happened to political activist Sandra Bland, who died while in police custody.

3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets

On Black Friday, 17-year-old Jordan Davis and three friends drove into a gas station in Jacksonville, Fla. Davis and his friends got into a verbal altercation with white 45-year-old Michael Dunn, who took issue with the volume of the teenagers’ rap music. When Davis refused to turn down the music, Dunn opened fire on the car of unarmed teenagers. He fired 10 bullets, three of which hit Davis, who died at the scene.

Dunn fled, but was taken into custody the next day. He claimed that he shot in self-defense. This documentary shows the aftermath of this fatal encounter.

83 Days

His family was forced to leave town and George was forced to face these charges alone. On April 24th, in less than 12 hours George was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by electric chair. His defence attorney, a tax attorney with political aspirations and no criminal experience, didn’t call a single witness, offered no cross-examination, and he didn’t even file an appeal. This is one of the greatest examples of racism.

Even though there were no witnesses, no evidence, and no written confession, on June 16, 1944, at 7:30 pm George Stinney Junior, at just 14 years old, was put to death. From the time of his arrest until the time of his execution was 83 Days. At 14, he was the youngest person in US History to be put to death by electric chair. Watch the trailer.

Detroit

A civil unrest arises after the Detroit Police Department launches a raid on a group of African-Americans. The public anger reaches its peak as the officials respond with retribution than justice.

Fact-based drama set during the 1967 Detroit riots in which a group of rogue police officers respond to a complaint with retribution rather than justice on their minds. The deaths of three African American men at the hands of Detroit police in 1967 ignite civil unrest.

The Trials Of Darryl Hunt

This documentary details the conviction and eventual exoneration of Darryl Hunt. Hunt, an African-American, was convicted in 1984 of the rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, a white newspaper editor in North Carolina. Maintaining his innocence throughout, Hunt is convicted due in large part to false testimony by a witness who was later found to have ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

Darryl Hunt spent nearly twenty years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Even though DNA evidence in 1994 proved his innocence, the North Carolina legal system didn’t release Hunt until 2004.

Slavery By Another Name

Based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name tells the stories of men, charged with crimes like vagrancy, and often guilty of nothing, who were bought and sold, abused, and subject to sometimes deadly working conditions as unpaid convict labor.

One of many documentary movies about racism that recounts the many ways in which American slavery persisted as a practice many decades after its supposed abolition.

Strong Island

The forces of family, grief and racial injustice converge in this Oscar-nominated documentary exploring the murder of filmmaker Yance Ford’s brother.

Filmmaker Yance Ford takes an emotional and unflinching look at his family’s devastation and lingering pain after the murder of their son and brother, William Ford.

This is not an exhaustive list of movies about racism. There are many great works of art depicting police brutality and injustice. However, this list of movies about racism is a great start. Which of these movies about racism will you watch? You can also recommend movies about racism and police brutality that moved you in the comments.

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*All images are from the racism movies mentioned and are the property of the copyright owners.