Movies: Black history

By the end of his illustrious career, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves may well have been the preeminent lawman of the Old West. He brought upwards of 3,000 outlaws to justice and served in law enforcement for 32 years during Reconstruction after the ...

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD....

A look at the Black revolution in 1970s cinema, from genre films to social realism, from the making of new superstars to the craft of rising auteurs....

The incredibly powerful and timely true story of the all-black Twenty-Fourth United States Infantry Regiment, and the Houston Riot of 1917. The Houston Riot was a mutiny by 156 African American soldiers in response to the brutal violence and abuse at...

The story of Jack Johnson, the first African American Heavyweight boxing champion....

The true life story of Wendell Scott, the first black stock car racing driver to win an upper-tier NASCAR race....

More than 60,000 of Ernest Cole’s 35mm film negatives were inexplicably discovered in a bank vault in Stockholm, Sweden. Most considered these forever lost, especially the thousands of pictures he shot in the U.S. Told through Cole’s own writings, th...

When the Civil War ended in 1865, more than four million slaves were set free. Over 70 years later, the memories of some 2,000 slave-era survivors were transcribed and preserved by the Library of Congress. These first-person anecdotes, ranging from t...

Using innovative animation and expert insights, this documentary based on Ibram X. Kendi's bestseller explores the history of racist ideas in America....

Documents the race riot of 1921 and the destruction of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With testimony by eyewitnesses and background accounts by historians....

Alice Ball, a 23 year-old African American Chemist living in 1915 Hawaii fights against racial and gender barriers to find an effective treatment for leprosy before Kalani, a 10-year-old patient is exiled into the leper colony of Molokai....

Through first person accounts and searing archival footage, this documentary tells the story of the local movement and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power in Low...

A 16mm experimental film that analogizes the discourse of racialized criminality and the carceral apparatus, which surveils and delimits the movements of Black people’s bodies, with the conventions and mechanics of the cinematic apparatus which regul...

Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier travel down memory lane to see what life was like back in the 1920s. Harry Belafonte introduces this musical, written by poet and playwright Langston Hughes, which pays tribute to Harlem in the 1920's. Sidney Poitie...

Green Flake, a southern slave, joins Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as a child. Later on in his life he is sent to pave the way to what is now the Salt Lake Valley and his faith sustains him....

Maurice Hines, a charming, gay African-American entertainer navigates the complications of show business while grieving the loss of his more famous, often estranged younger brother, tap dance legend Gregory Hines....

Explore the tumultuous life of Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr., a Jamaican political activist and advocate for Black Nationalism. From founding UNIA-ACL and finding prosperity through economic ventures to navigating financial hardships, assassination attemp...

Documentary film on events that happened on August 28th in African-American history, shown at the Smithsonian African-American History Museum....

A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkn...

75% of all enslaved Africans coming to America came in through Beaufort and the sea islands of South Carolina. This beautiful and picturesque tourist destination, by its unique history is the epicenter of the Gullah culture and the foundation of Afri...