The untold story of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – brilliant African-American women working at NASA and serving as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history – the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.
Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.
Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.
The story of an old Jewish widow named Daisy Werthan and her relationship with her black chauffeur, Hoke. From an initial mere work relationship grew in 25 years a strong friendship between the two very different characters, in a time when those types of relationships were shunned.
A teenage girl living in Baltimore in the early 1960s dreams of appearing on a popular TV dance show.
Celebrated author and Nation magazine sports editor Dave Zirin tackles the myth that the NFL was somehow free of politics before Colin Kaepernick and other Black NFL players took a knee.
In the aftermath of Cassius Clay's defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964, the boxer meets with Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown to change the course of history in the segregated South.
A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
After leading his football team to 15 winning seasons, coach Bill Yoast is demoted and replaced by Herman Boone – tough, opinionated and as different from the beloved Yoast as he could be. The two men learn to overcome their differences and turn a group of hostile young men into champions.
Two women, black and white, in 1955 Montgomery Alabama, must decide what they are going to do in response to the famous bus boycott led by Martin Luther King.
In 1966, Texas Western coach Don Haskins led the first all-black starting line-up for a college basketball team to the NCAA national championship.
The life story of Richard Pryor (1940-2005), the legendary performer and iconic social satirist who transcended racial and social barriers with his honest, irreverent and biting humor.
Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.
Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.
This made-for-TV movie dramatizes the historic boycott of public buses in the 1950s, led by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A man in a gleaming white suit comes to a small Southern town on the eve of integration. He calls himself a social reformer. But what he does is stir up trouble--trouble he soon finds he can't control.
In 1946, Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, took a stand against Major League Baseball's infamous color line when he signed Jackie Robinson to the team. The deal put both men in the crosshairs of the public, the press and even other players. Facing unabashed racism from every side, Robinson was forced to demonstrate tremendous courage and let his talent on the field wins over fans and his teammates – silencing his critics and forever changing the world by changing the game of baseball.
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
In 1935, 99-year-old former slave Shadrach asks to be buried on the soil where he was born to slavery, and that land is owned by the large Dabney family, consisting of Vernon, Trixie and their seven children, and to bury a black man on that land is a violation of strict Virginia law.
A narrator tells the story of his childhood years in a tightly knit Afro-American community in the deep south under racial segregation.