African American Classics
by philiposan | created - 15 Jun 2021 | updated - 2 months ago | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. John Lewis: Good Trouble (2020)
PG | 96 min | Documentary
The film explores Georgia representative's, 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health care reform, and immigration.
Director: Dawn Porter | Stars: Elijah Cummings, Anthony Johnson, Hillary Clinton, Ayanna Pressley
Votes: 1,053
2. Moonlight (I) (2016)
R | 111 min | Drama
A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.
Director: Barry Jenkins | Stars: Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Trevante Rhodes, Alex R. Hibbert
Votes: 331,814 | Gross: $27.85M
3. Green Book (2018)
PG-13 | 130 min | Biography, Comedy, Drama
A working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver for an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.
Director: Peter Farrelly | Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini, Sebastian Maniscalco
Votes: 571,902 | Gross: $85.08M
4. Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley (2013)
Not Rated | 72 min | Documentary, Comedy
A look at the work and influence of African-American stand-up comedienne, Moms Mabley.
Director: Whoopi Goldberg | Stars: Debbie Allen, Kaye Ballard, Harry Belafonte, Dick Cavett
Votes: 343
5. Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story (2019 TV Movie)
TV-G | 56 min | Documentary, Biography
"Backs Against The Wall: The Howard Thurman Story" explores the extraordinary life and legacy of one of the most important religious figures of the 20th century, Howard Thurman. Born the ... See full summary »
Director: Martin Doblmeier | Stars: Keith David, Martin Doblmeier, Walter Earl Fluker, Jesse Jackson
Votes: 17
6. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
R | 119 min | Drama, Romance
A young woman embraces her pregnancy while she and her family set out to prove her childhood friend and lover innocent of a crime he didn't commit.
Director: Barry Jenkins | Stars: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Teyonah Parris
Votes: 52,494 | Gross: $14.92M
7. 12 Years a Slave (2013)
R | 134 min | Biography, Drama, History
In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free Black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.
Director: Steve McQueen | Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt
Votes: 741,213 | Gross: $56.67M
8. White Men Can't Jump (1992)
R | 115 min | Comedy, Sport
Black and white basketball hustlers join forces to double their chances of winning money on the street courts and in a basketball tournament.
Director: Ron Shelton | Stars: Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, Rosie Perez, Tyra Ferrell
Votes: 98,288 | Gross: $76.25M
9. Straight Outta Compton (2015)
R | 147 min | Biography, Drama, History
The rap group NWA emerges from the mean streets of Compton in Los Angeles, California, in the mid-1980s and revolutionizes Hip Hop culture with their music and tales about life in the hood.
Director: F. Gary Gray | Stars: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Neil Brown Jr.
Votes: 218,459 | Gross: $161.20M
10. Do the Right Thing (1989)
R | 120 min | Comedy, Drama
On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.
Director: Spike Lee | Stars: Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson
Votes: 112,403 | Gross: $27.55M
11. Just Mercy (2019)
PG-13 | 137 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
World-renowned civil rights defense attorney Bryan Stevenson works to free a wrongly condemned death row prisoner.
Director: Destin Daniel Cretton | Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Charlie Pye Jr.
Votes: 75,723
12. Malcolm X (1992)
PG-13 | 202 min | Biography, Drama, History
Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster, to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his eventual assassination.
Director: Spike Lee | Stars: Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Delroy Lindo, Spike Lee
Votes: 102,013 | Gross: $48.17M
13. Hidden Figures (2016)
PG | 127 min | Biography, Drama, History
The story of a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program.
Director: Theodore Melfi | Stars: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner
Votes: 255,238 | Gross: $169.61M
14. Selma (2014)
PG-13 | 128 min | Biography, Drama, History
A chronicle of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965.
Director: Ava DuVernay | Stars: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Wilkinson
Votes: 95,470 | Gross: $52.08M
15. BlacKkKlansman (2018)
R | 135 min | Biography, Comedy, Crime
Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer from Colorado Springs, Colorado, successfully infiltrates the local Ku Klux Klan branch aided by a Jewish surrogate who eventually becomes its leader. Based on actual events.
Director: Spike Lee | Stars: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace
Votes: 291,072 | Gross: $49.28M
16. The Banker (2020)
PG-13 | 120 min | Biography, Drama
In the 1960s, two African-American entrepreneurs hire a working-class white man to pretend to be the head of their business empire while they pose as a janitor and chauffeur.
Director: George Nolfi | Stars: Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicholas Hoult, Nia Long
Votes: 35,684
17. Song of Freedom (1936)
TV-PG | 66 min | Drama, Music
A black British dockworker named Johnny Zinga becomes a famous singer and learns that he is the rightful king of the African island of Casanga.
Director: J. Elder Wills | Stars: Paul Robeson, Elisabeth Welch, Esme Percy, Robert Adams
Votes: 444
18. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
TV-PG | 195 min | Drama, History, War
The Stoneman family finds its friendship with the Camerons affected by the Civil War, both fighting in opposite armies. The development of the war in their lives plays through to Lincoln's assassination and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Director: D.W. Griffith | Stars: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper
Votes: 26,338 | Gross: $10.00M
19. Within Our Gates (1920)
Not Rated | 79 min | Drama, Romance
Abandoned by her fiancé, an educated black woman with a shocking past dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished black youths.
Director: Oscar Micheaux | Stars: Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, James D. Ruffin, Jack Chenault
Votes: 3,625
20. The Emperor Jones (1933)
Not Rated | 72 min | Drama, Music
Unscrupulously ambitious Brutus Jones escapes from jail after killing a guard and through bluff and bravado finds himself the emperor of a Caribbean island.
Directors: Dudley Murphy, William C. de Mille | Stars: Paul Robeson, Dudley Digges, Frank H. Wilson, Fredi Washington
Votes: 1,260
21. Show Boat (1936)
Approved | 113 min | Comedy, Drama, Musical
Despite her mother's objections, the naive young daughter of a show boat captain is thrust into the limelight as the company's new leading lady.
Director: James Whale | Stars: Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger, Paul Robeson
Votes: 3,692
22. Borderline (1930)
Not Rated | 63 min | Drama
A negro woman having an adulterous affair with a white man causes his wife to go mad and re-enforces the towns-folk's prejudice against Negroes.
Director: Kenneth MacPherson | Stars: Paul Robeson, Eslanda Robeson, Hilda Doolittle, Gavin Arthur
Votes: 576
23. Roots (1977)
TV-14 | 74 min | Biography, Drama, History
A dramatization of author Alex Haley's family line from ancestor Kunta Kinte's enslavement to his descendants' liberation.
Stars: LeVar Burton, Robert Reed, John Amos, Louis Gossett Jr.
Votes: 18,874
24. The Color Purple (1985)
PG-13 | 154 min | Drama
A tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Avery
Votes: 97,326 | Gross: $98.47M
25. Racism: A History (2007– )
176 min | Documentary
Explores the impact of racism on a global scale and chronicles the shifts in the perception of race and the history of racism in Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia.
Star: Sophie Okonedo
Votes: 150
26. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)
R | 94 min | Drama, Music
Tensions rise when trailblazing blues singer Ma Rainey and her band gather at a recording studio in Chicago in 1927.
Director: George C. Wolfe | Stars: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo
Votes: 57,930
27. The Help (2011)
PG-13 | 146 min | Drama
An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African American maids' point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.
Director: Tate Taylor | Stars: Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard
Votes: 492,759 | Gross: $169.71M
28. Fences (2016)
PG-13 | 139 min | Drama
A working-class African-American father tries to raise his family in the 1950s, while coming to terms with the events of his life.
Director: Denzel Washington | Stars: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jovan Adepo
Votes: 118,007 | Gross: $57.68M
29. Stormy Weather (1943)
Passed | 78 min | Comedy, Drama, Music
The relationship between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress provides a retrospective of the great African-American entertainers of the early 1900s.
Director: Andrew L. Stone | Stars: Lena Horne, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway and His Cotton Club Orchestra, Katherine Dunham and Her Troupe
Votes: 2,888
30. I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
PG-13 | 93 min | Documentary, History
Writer James Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America with his unfinished novel, Remember This House.
Director: Raoul Peck | Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X
Votes: 23,500 | Gross: $7.12M
31. Black Orpheus (1959)
PG | 100 min | Drama, Musical, Romance
A retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, set during the time of the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro.
Director: Marcel Camus | Stars: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes de Oliveira, Léa Garcia
Votes: 12,255
32. They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970)
GP | 108 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
In San Francisco, a high-priced call girl is murdered and the case is assigned to Police Lieutenant Virgil Tibbs.
Director: Gordon Douglas | Stars: Sidney Poitier, Martin Landau, Barbara McNair, Anthony Zerbe
Votes: 4,369 | Gross: $5.12M
33. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Approved | 110 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
A black Philadelphia police detective is mistakenly suspected of a local murder while passing through a racially hostile Mississippi town, and after being cleared is reluctantly asked by the police chief to investigate the case.
Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant
Votes: 83,547 | Gross: $24.38M
34. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
Approved | 108 min | Comedy, Drama
A couple's attitudes are challenged when their daughter introduces them to her African-American fiancé.
Director: Stanley Kramer | Stars: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton
Votes: 48,904 | Gross: $56.70M
35. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Approved | 129 min | Crime, Drama
Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer in Depression-era Alabama, defends a Black man against an undeserved rape charge, and tries to educate his young children against prejudice.
Director: Robert Mulligan | Stars: Gregory Peck, John Megna, Frank Overton, Rosemary Murphy
Votes: 332,839
36. Small Island (2009)
TV-MA | 180 min | Drama
A gentle Jamaican woman reunited with her husband in post-World War II London encounters both racism and homesickness as she adjusts to her new life.
Stars: Naomie Harris, Hugh Quarshie, Ruth Wilson, David Oyelowo
Votes: 1,584
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