Best African American Gangster Movies & TV Shows

Boyz n the Hood is the popular and successful film and social criticism from John Singleton about the conditions in South Central Los Angeles where teenagers are involved in gun fights and drug dealing on a daily basis.

Four Harlem friends -- Bishop, Q, Steel and Raheem -- dabble in petty crime, but they decide to go big by knocking off a convenience store. Bishop, the magnetic leader of the group, has the gun. But Q has different aspirations. He wants to be a DJ and happens to have a gig the night of the robbery. Unfortunately for him, Bishop isn't willing to take no for answer in a game where everything's for keeps.

“White Boy Rick”, as he was called, was a novelty: A white teenager seemingly running a major inner-city drug operation. In May of 1987, 17-year-old Richard Wershe Jr. was charged with a non-violent, juvenile drug offense. By the time of his arrest he was already a Detroit legend, frequently making front-page headlines and leading the local television news. In this film, gangsters, hit men, journalists and federal agents struggle to explain why he remains in prison at nearly 50 years old. The possible explanation is more stunning than the crimes Wershe was alleged to have committed.

A focus on life in a gang, Boulevard Nights portrays the dangers of street violence. Richard Yniguez plays a young Chicano who tries to get out of the gang, but he keeps finding himself drawn back into it.

Four inner-city Black women, determined to end their constant struggle, decide to live by one rule — get what you want or die trying. So the four women take back their lives and take out some banks in the process.

As four friends prepare for life after high school, different challenges bring about turning points in each of their lives. The dramas unfold and resolve at their local rollerskating rink, Cascade.

Story of a promising high school basketball star and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer and the other a former basketball star fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard.

Ace is an impressionable young man working for a dry cleaning business. His friend, drug dealer Mitch goes to prison. In an unrelated incident, he finds some cocaine in a pants pocket. Soon, Ace finds himself dealing cocaine for Lulu. Via lucky breaks and solid interpersonal skills, Ace moves to the top of the Harlem drug world. Of course, unfaithful employees and/or rivals conspire to bring about Ace's fall.

A tale of an inner city drug dealer who turns away from crime to pursue his passion, rap music.

A former drug lord returns from prison determined to wipe out all his competition and distribute the profits of his operations to New York's poor and lower classes in this stylish and ultra violent modern twist on Robin Hood.

Frustrated with being broke, Beans decides that the only way to grasp the American Dream is to take it.

On the streets they call cash dead presidents. And that's just what a Vietnam veteran is after when he returns home from the war only to find himself drawn into a life of crime. With the aid of his fellow vets he plans the ultimate heist -- a daring robbery of an armored car filled with unmarked U.S. currency!

After surviving a stabbing by a student, teacher Trevor Garfield moves from New York to Los Angeles. There, he resumes teaching as a substitute teacher. The education system, where violent bullies control the classrooms and the administration is afraid of lawsuits, slowly drives Garfield mad.

A gangster, Nino, is in the Cash Money Brothers, making a million dollars every week selling crack. A cop, Scotty, discovers that the only way to infiltrate the gang is to become a dealer himself.

An ex-convict (Tyrese) gets tangled up with a gang after his car is hijacked with his son inside.

Drug lord Dwayne Gittens rules Cincinnati with an iron fist. No wonder he's known as "God" on the streets. Determined to break Gittens' stranglehold on the city is undercover cop Jeffrey Cole. But as Cole takes on an assumed identity to penetrate Gittens' criminal empire, he makes a disturbing discovery -- he kind of likes being a gangster.

A young Chicano gang member in Los Angeles comes to realize that the gang life is not what he really wants but doesn't know how to get out.

A strange funeral director tells four strange tales of horror with an African American focus to three drug dealers he traps in his place of business.

Tommy Bundy and Sincere are best friends as well as infamous and ruthless criminals and shot-callers in the hood. Respected by many but feared by all. As the police are closing in on them and new players are looking for a come up, will their reign last?

Tommy Gibbs is a tough kid, raised in the ghetto, who aspires to be a kingpin criminal. As a young boy, his leg is broken by a bad cop on the take, during a payoff gone bad. Nursing his vengeance, he rises to power in Harlem, New York. Angry at the racist society around him, both criminal and straight, he sees the acquisition of power as the solution to his rage.

Four young men make a risky investment together that gets them into trouble with the mob.

New Jersey Drive is a 1995 film about black youths in Newark, New Jersey, the unofficial "car theft capital of the world". Their favorite pastime is that of everybody in their neighborhood: stealing cars and joyriding. The trouble starts when they steal a police car and the cops launch a violent offensive that involves beating and even shooting suspects.

Two inept criminals are mistakenly delivered a package of cocaine and think they've hit the jackpot, triggering a series of events that changes ten people's lives forever.

After a botched robbery escalates to homicide, a north Philly gun runner has to escape or outsmart the south Philly Italian mob as they close in for vengeance.