While no movie will adequately convey even a chapter of history, with Hollywood's liberal use of dramatic license and time constraints, the best documentaries, historical dramas, and biopics can provide a sense of what's happened and give an idea of how the world used to look. African-American history includes countless unsung heroes, some of whom actually managed to change the world. Most stories of Black excellence -- and tragedy -- never show up in school lesson plans but some films can be used as a jumping-off point. The following movies are the best of what Tinseltown has to offer in regard to the African-American experience of the past. So watch 'em all and then head to the library and your local bookstore to learn more. But to be clear, these are good movies -- none of them feel like homework. Enjoy.
9. Judas and the Black Messiah
Appropriately debuting during Black History Month, almost exactly three years after the wide release of Black Panther, comes another great movie focusing on Black heroes -- except this one's about American Black Panthers. Judas and the Black Messiah recounts the true story of how Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois branch of the famed civil rights organization was set up to be assassinated by the FBI working with a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and Chicago police.
The film accurately depicts how Hampton's murder (at 21-years-old) was facilitated by federal informant William O'Neal. O'Neal, an African-American, was recruited for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's secretive counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO), designed to discredit and dismantle the Civil Rights Movement, after his arrest for car theft and impersonating a federal agent. Offered an opportunity to avoid a potential five-year prison sentence in exchange for gathering information that could be used to further FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's mandate to eradicate the Black Power movement, O'Neal effectively became a spy for the federal government.
The film follows O'Neal as he insinuates himself into both the Black Panther Party organization, working his way up to security chief, and Hampton's life, revealing a snippet of a filmed interview with the actual Bill O'Neal before the credits and informing the viewer that he took his own life later that evening.
Already named one of the 10 best movies of the year by AFI and nabbing nominations from the both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild (the Oscars have been pushed back to April due to the coronavirus pandemic), Judas is poised to either become an awards-season favorite or the latest in a long line of Black movies to be snubbed in spectacular fashion.
In light of the documented, widespread instances of police brutality against African-Americans participating in the many protests against racially-motivated murders of Black men at the hands of law enforcement throughout 2020, one of the overriding themes of Judas is sadly, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
Chris Rock's 2014 movie Top Five features the comedian as a movie star who headlines the fictional film Uprize as Dutty Boukman, the real-life educated slave who inspired the Haitian Revolution. The Revolution, a slave revolt which resulted in the permanent end of French rule on the island of Hispaniola and the founding of Haiti, has never been represented in an actual movie.
The Birth of a Nation depicts another piece of American history that isn't taught in public schools. The film details, for the first time onscreen, the events that transpired leading up to, during, and following a bloody 1831 slave rebellion in Southhampton County, Virginia. The leader of the uprising, Nat Turner, was a literate slave and minister who led an eventual 70 co-conspirators in a house-to-house mutiny that resulted in the killing of approximately 65 wealthy white men and women. Though he initially planned to begin the revolt on July 4, Independence Day, it was postponed due to illness until Turner interpreted an August 13 solar eclipse as a black man's hand covering the sun and took it as a signal to initiate his revolution.
Turner is portrayed by star, co-producer and co-writer Nate Parker in his directorial debut. Nation premiered to a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival back in January where it won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize. It was sold to Fox Searchlight Pictures for a record-breaking $17.5 million following a bidding war for the film's worldwide rights. Subsequently, both Parker and the film garnered widespread critical acclaim and Nationimmediately became the front-runner for the 2017 Oscar race. However, in the months leading up to the film's October 7 wide release, the national news media seized upon a chapter of Parker's history that was previously largely ignored by the press, despite his 12-year career in Hollywood.
In 1999, as a Pennsylvania State University student, Parker and the film's co-writer Jean McGianni Celestin were accused of raping a fellow student. Parker was found not guilty on all four counts with which he was charged. In 2001, Celestin was sentenced to six months to one year in prison after being convicted of sexual assault. However, his conviction was reversed in 2005 and prosecutors declined to pursue a re-trial.
The Birth of a Nation's title, in a bit of intentional irony, is appropriated from a 1915 silent movie of the same name that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic organization and, in fact, spurred a resurgence in the group's membership and popularity.
Nation is the kind of film that's difficult for African-Americans to watch. Seeing your ancestors being degraded, tortured, mutilated, sexually abused and murdered is no easy thing -- not even when you know that all of these actions are being done to, and carried out by, actors. One particularly disturbing scene details a plantation owner's solution to an attempted hunger-strike. A slave's teeth are broken one-by-one and food is slid down the funnel that is forced down his throat. Another scene reveals an overseer in bed with a little girl. As graphic as they are, not including scenes like these would only serve to further perpetuate a distorted and incomplete view of history. These are the kinds of things that happened to actual people -- repeatedly. And it's important that they be acknowledged -- by everyone.
Nation is by no means the first film to present the horrors of American slavery on the big screen. In fact, 12 Years a Slave, also based on a true story, won the Best Picture Oscar at the 86th Academy Awards. What makes Nation the first of its kind is its presentation of an actual slave insurrection against plantation owners.
An old adage states: "History is written by the winners." Is it odd that Spartacus, and now Nat Turner, both leaders of ultimately unsuccessful slave rebellions, have made it to the big screen and the Haitian Revolution never has?
7. Ali
6. Devotion
Ali explores a decade in the life of legendary heavyweight boxing champion and political activist Muhammad Ali. The movie begins in 1964, the year that Ali, then known as Cassius Clay Jr., defeated Sonny Liston to become only the second-youngest (at 22 years old) fighter to win the heavyweight title. Liston refused to continue the bout before the seventh round. Prior to the fight, Clay verbally harassed Liston, describing him as a "big, ugly bear". Jeering opponents would be a signature of Clay's. After befriending civil rights activist Malcolm X, Clay joins the Nation of Islam and is renamed Muhammad Ali (he was initially renamed Cassius X) by the group's leader, Elijah Muhammad. However, when a rift develops between X and the Nation leadership, Ali sides with the NOI and abandons his friend. The two never reconcile prior to X's 1965 assassination.
The following year, Ali is drafted to serve in the Vietnam War but refuses based on his religious and political beliefs. He famously declares, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong...They never called me nigger." However, his refusal results in his being stripped of his heavyweight title (which he'd successfully defended in a rematch with Liston), losing his boxing license and his passport. He's also criminally charged, convicted of refusing to serve and faces five years in prison as well as a $10,000 fine.
Ali's conviction is finally overturned in 1971 and he goes on to challenge undefeated Philadelphia-native Joe Frazier in a title bout billed as the Fight of the Century. Ali's loss, by decision, is the first of his career. However, Frazier is subsequently defeated by George Foreman who later agrees put his title on the line against Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The 1974 fight, billed as the Rumble in the Jungle, is promoted by Don King and is preceded by a concert headlined by music legend James Brown. During the bout, attended by 60,000 fans and watched by one billion on television, Ali employs his famous rope-a-dope strategy and beats the previously undefeated Foreman with an eighth round knockout. Ali's victory over Foreman, who was seven years his junior, making him the the first boxer to win the heavyweight belt twice.
5. Marshall
Thurgood Marshall made history in 1967 when he became the very first African-American U.S. Supreme Court justice. But the film that bears his name is set much earlier in the legal pioneer's career. Marshall takes place in 1940 and 1941 when a then 33-year-old Marshall was still a practicing attorney employed by the NAACP. The movie focuses on his involvment in the State of Connecticut v. Joseph Spell case. The case centered on a white woman, Eleanor Strubing, who accused her African-American chauffeur, Spell, of rape, kidnapping and attempted murder. Because the presiding judge, Carl Foster (a friend of prosecutor Lorin Willis' family), prohibited Marshall from speaking in the courtroom, he teamed with local, caucasian insurance attorney Samuel Friedman (in reality, Friedman was hired because it was believed that the white jury would more readily identify with him than with Marshall). Under Marshall's guidance, Friedman's cross-examination of Strubing exposed inconsistencies in her story. It was ultimately revealed in court that she and Spell had engaged in consensual sex and that Strubing made the false accusation out of fear that her extramarital liason with a Black man might be exposed by an accidental pregnancy. After more than 12 hours of deliberation, Spell was acquitted by the all-white jury, eliciting audible gasps in the courtroom.
Marshall retired in 1991, 16 months before his death, and was consequently succeeded by Clarence Thomas. Fifty-two years after Marshall's appointment, Thomas, who still sits on the Supreme Court bench, is the last African-American justice to join the court.
4. 12 Years a Slave
12 Years a Slave is the film adaptation of Solomon Northrup's 1853 memoir of the same name detailing his kidnapping and subsequent enslavement on a cotton plantation in Louisiana. Though tough to watch, it's no accident that 12 Years won the 2014 Oscar for Best Picture.
3. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
Muhammad Ali may be the greatest, but Jack "the Galveston Giant" Johnson is the first. The first African-American Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World. Indeed, Ali has Johnson to thank for his penchant for taunting opponents prior to meeting them in the ring.
Unforgivable Blackness represents the first time that a sports figure was given the Ken Burns treatment (the second, and only other to date, is 2016's Jackie Robinson).
Johnson, the son of two former slaves, went on to be crowned the first African-American Champion of the World the day after Christmas in 1908.
He won $1.50 for winning his first prizefight. He once knocked middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel's front teeth out -- they were still stuck in Johnson's glove after the fight.
Unforgivable is not the first time Johnson's story was told on film. 1970's The Great White Hope, starring James Earl Jones, is the movie adaptation of a play based on Johnson. Opposition to Johnson's dominance of the sport was so high during his reign that promoters offered retired champ James J. Jeffries $120,000 (equivalent to $3 million today) to lose 100 lbs and step back into the ring to face him (Johnson won when Jeffries' corner threw in the towel). Johnson was paid $65,000 ($1.7 million today). His victory resulted in race riots in 50 cities across the U.S.
A certain segment of America loves the idea of the "Great White Hope". Jack Johnson is the man who first inspired that dream.
2. Selma
Selma is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. film that got it right. And better than anyone could have hoped. Like previous non-documentary films featuring the civil rights leader, it's not about King. The title is appropriate because the focus of the film is the series of protest marches conducted in 1965 in Alabama in order to pressure lawmakers into legislating protection for the voting rights of African-Americans.
Selma feels legitimate. It's neither a sweeping, grandiose epic nor a melodramatic character study into the depths of a famous person's soul. It's a matter-of-fact depiction of events in the lives of history-making, celebrated men and women. In some cases, the film is a glimpse into the political beginnings of future elected officials. The film notes that Andrew Young was ultimately appointed UN Ambassador by President Carter after serving three terms in Congress, and was later twice-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986 and has served in Congress ever since. Hosea Williams went on to serve on the Atlanta City Council, Georgia General Assembly and Dekalb County Commission, one of the few Georgia politicians to ever be elected to seats in city, county and state government.
Several members of the cast have turned in their finest performances to date. Much has been made of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' (the organization that awards Oscars) failure to nominate David Oyelowo for Best Actor, and rightly so. Oyelowo, however, is not the only overlooked actor here. Carmen Ejogo manages to downright illuminate King's wife, Coretta. She stands by her man, and in his shadow, but Ejogo shows us a three-dimensional person behind the solemn image that we know. Media-mogul Oprah Winfrey uncharacteristically, but wholly, disappears into her role as Annie Lee Cooper, who famously punched Selma Sheriff Jim Clark in the jaw in front of the Dallas County Courthouse in 1965. Rapper-turned-actor Common, whose track, "Glory", is nominated for Best Original Song at the 87th annual Academy Awards, is perhaps the biggest surprise. He was probably hired mostly because he bears an uncanny resemblance to the SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education James Bevel, who conceived the idea of marching from Selma, Alabama to the state capital, Montgomery. The rapper really has unexpectedly, if only this once, turned into an actor and fits in rather nicely with the professionals.
Selma ranks right up there with universally lauded biographical works such as Gandhi, Malcolm X, Coal Miner's Daughter, The Social Network and yes, even Patton.
Selma received a standing ovation when it premiered in Los Angeles. When I went to see it, the audience applauded when the film ended. Without exaggeration or hyperbole, Selma is simply - and unequivocally - the best film of 2014.
1. Malcolm X
Based on the ferociously intelligent civil rights leader's legendary autobiography, published in 1965 -- the same year that its subject was assassinated -- Malcolm X is a film that was begging to be made. Though the man was murdered nearly three decades earlier, the years that preceded the movie's release were marked by an intense resurgence in interest in his life, in part fueled by the use of X's speeches in the works of hip hop acts such as Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy. The charismatic speaker's renewed popularity was also partly spurred by the omnipresent "X" emblazoned on t-shirts, jackets, hoodies -- and especially -- hats. Sales of his autobiography rose by 300% from 1988 to 1991.
The film would be the second of four collaborations between pro-Black director Spike Lee and star Denzel Washington, who inhabits the title role so perfectly that the differences in appearance between the actor and the activist are rendered completely irrelevant by Washington's performance -- the best of his career. The Academy of Motion Picture and Sciences, the organization responsible for deciding who wins Academy Awards, even saw fit to nominate him for a Best Actor Oscar in 1993.
The movie begins in Malcolm Little's childhood, a point in his life when his father, a minister, was murdered by members of the Black Legion -- an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan -- and his mother was committed to a mental institution. From there we get a glimpse of his criminal career, when he was known by the street name Detroit Red in the Harlem underworld. Following a stint as a porter, "Red" makes a living running numbers for his mentor, West Indian Archie. After Archie makes an attempt on his life, Red flees to Boston, where he establishes a robbery ring and that includes his married white girlfriend.
After his Massachusetts licks land him a 10-year prison sentence, Red meets a member of the Nation of Islam behind the wall who inspires him to abandon criminality and to educate himself. His new mentor, Baines, facilitates an introduction to the group's leader, Elijah Muhammad, upon his release. After joining the Nation, the newly named Malcolm X (the "X" symbolizes the unknown African name that was taken from his ancestors during slavery) quickly rises to be the organization's most well known speaker. He preaches self-sufficency, Black Pride and aggressive rejection of white society and institutional racism, the latter of which contrasts sharply with Dr. Martin Luther King's message of peaceful protest. During an appearance at a Harlem rally, X delivers one of his most famous speeches, in which he warns: "I say and I say it again, Ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! This is what he does..." He also utters the following line (paraphrased for the film) from his "Ballot or the Bullet" speech, delivered in 1964: "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us!" X also befriends and mentors boxing legend turned civil rights activist Muhammad Ali.
During an obligatory pilgrimage to the ancient city of Mecca (birthplace of Islamic prophet, Muhammad) , X has an epiphany that transforms his rejection of whites to a more inclusive philosophy. However, his new views conflict with those of Elijah Muhammad, leading to X's departure from the group that he made famous. On February 21, 1965, X is assassinated while giving a speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom.
The film ends with a montage of U.S. and African children saying the simple phrase, "I am Malcolm X." After repeating the phrase himself, anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela recites a quote from one of X's speeches: "We declare our right on this earth, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being, in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."
In 1990, the year prior to the movie's production, Mandela was released from prison after serving a 27-year sentence for activities against the South African government for its practice of segregation and racial oppression against Black people. In 1994, he was elected the first Black president of the country.
Originally Posted 1/29/19
Updated Updated 1/12/23
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