Movies: Black history

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

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 ...

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...

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

A moving recording of the late writer and renowned jazz singer Abbey Lincoln is captured in this new film from Brooklyn-born director Rodney Passé, who has previously worked with powerhouse music video director Khalil Joseph. Reading from her own wor...

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...

Art Kane, now deceased, coordinated a group photograph of all the top jazz musicians in NYC in the year 1958, for a piece in Esquire magazine. Just about every jazz musician at the time showed up for the photo shoot which took place in front of a bro...

Realizing he may have sheltered his son for too long, Brian begrudgingly agrees to send his son B.J. on a college tour with his grandfather in the hopes that Joe can teach him a thing or two about Black History and the real world....

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...

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

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

An animated satire on the question of self-image for African American women living in a society where beautiful hair is viewed as hair that blows in the wind and lets you be free. Lively tunes and witty narration accompany a quick-paced inventory of ...

The story of Dr. George Washington Carver (1864-1943), black educator and horticulturist. He is perhaps most well known for developing over 140 products from all parts of the peanut plant, including the shells and husks. He also developed products ba...

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

A haven for Black intellectuals, artists and revolutionaries—and path of promise toward the American dream—Black colleges and universities have educated the architects of freedom movements and cultivated leaders in every field. They have been unapolo...

The true story of the neighborhood that inspired David Simon's fictional HBO television series "Tremé", from slave revolts and underground free black antebellum resistance through post-Katrina rebuilding, set to a fabulous soundtrack of New Orleans m...

An affluent black couple deal with the envitability of a white mob coming to kill them during the 1921 Oklahoma race riots....

Harlem, 1926. A “sweetman” Zeddy, living off a woman, brings a country girl he’s trying to impress to a gay-owned cabaret. There he meets a friend, Jake, whose girlfriend, Congo Rose, is the singer there. Drama swirls around the characters as Zeddy c...

In 1936, 18 African American athletes dubbed the "black auxiliary" by Hitler defied Nazi Aryan Supremacy and Jim Crow Racism to win hearts and medals at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin. The world remembers Jesse Owens. But, Olympic Pride Amer...