Best movies & TV Shows like Separate but Equal
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Separate but Equal Starring Sidney Poitier, Burt Lancaster, Richard Kiley, Cleavon Little, and more. If you liked Separate but Equal then you may also like: On the Basis of Sex, Once Upon a Time... When We Were Colored, A Raisin in the Sun, Remember the Titans, Roe v. Wade and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A two-part miniseries. Dramatizes the events leading up to the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school desegregation, "Brown vs. Board of Education."
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Once Upon a Time... When We Were Colored
This film relates the story of a tightly connected Afro-American community informally called Colored Town where the inhabitants live and depend on each other in a world where racist oppression is everywhere, as told by a boy called Cliff who spent his childhood there. Despite this, we see the life of the community in all its joys and sorrows, of those that live there while others decide to leave for a better life north. For those remaining, things come to a serious situation when one prominent businessman is being muscled out by a white competitor using racist intimidation. In response, the community must make the decision of whether to submit meekly like they always have, or finally fight for their rights.
A Raisin in the Sun
Dreams can make a life worth living, but they can also be dashed by bad decisions. This is the crossroads whare the Younger family find themselves when their father passes away and leaves them with $10,000 in life insurance money. Should they buy a new home for the family? Perhaps a liquor store? While no choice is easy, life on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s is even harder.
Remember the Titans
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.
Roe v. Wade
Dr. Bernard Nathanson and Dr. Mildred Jefferson square off in a national battle in this untold conspiracy that led to the most famous and controversial court case in history.
Roe vs. Wade
Holly Hunter plays a lonely, single, poorly educated Texan who finds herself pregnant with no means to support a child. To avoid giving up the child, she seeks an abortion. Denied an abortion in Texas the young woman hires a novice lawyer to plead her case in the US supreme court. Eventually the law is changed, but for the character it takes longer than nine months.
The Jackie Robinson Story
Biography of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player in the 20th century. Traces his career in the negro leagues and the major leagues.
Glory Road
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.
Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment
During a two-day period before and after the University of Alabama integration crisis, the film uses five camera crews to follow President John F. Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama governor George Wallace, deputy attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and the students Vivian Malone and James Hood. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause.
A Soldier's Story
In a rural town in Louisiana, a black Master Sergeant is found shot to death just outside the local Army Base. Military lawyer, Captain Davenport—also a black man—is sent from Washington to conduct an investigation. Facing an uncooperative chain of command and fearful black troops, Davenport must battle with deceit and prejudice in order to find out exactly who really did kill the Master Sergeant.
A Raisin in the Sun
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.
First Monday in October
For the first time in history a woman is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she becomes a friendly rival to a liberal associate.
Ghosts of Mississippi
A Mississippi district attorney and the widow of Medgar Evers struggle to bring a white supremacist to justice for the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader.
Gideon's Trumpet
True story of Clarence Gideon's fight to be appointed counsel at the expense of the state. This landmark case led to the Supreme Court's decision which extended this right to all criminal defendants.
Mississippi Burning
Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.
Suspect
When a Supreme Court judge commits suicide and his secretary is found murdered, all fingers point to Carl Anderson, a homeless veteran who's deaf and mute. But when public defender Kathleen Riley is assigned to his case, she begins to believe that Anderson may actually be innocent. Juror Eddie Sanger, a Washington lobbyist, agrees, and together the pair begins their own investigation of events.
Hurry Sundown
Following the Second World War, a northern cannery combine negotiates for the purchase of a large tract of uncultivated Georgia farmland. The major portion of the land is owned by Julie Ann Warren and has already been optioned by her unscrupulous, draft dodging husband, Henry. Now the combine must also obtain two smaller plots - one owned by Henry's cousin Rad McDowell, a combat veteran with a wife and family; the other by Reeve Scott, a young black man whose mother had been Julie's childhood Mammy. But neither Rad nor Reeve is interested in selling and they form an unprecedented black and white partnership to improve their land. Although infuriated by the turn of events, Henry remains determined to push through the big land deal. And when Reeve's mother Rose dies, Henry tries to persuade his wife to charge Reeve with illegal ownership of his property, confident the the bigoted Judge Purcell will rule against a Negro.
Confirmation
Judge Clarence Thomas' nomination to the United States' Supreme Court is called into question when former colleague, Anita Hill, testifies that he had sexually harassed her.
The Rosa Parks Story
A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
Selma, Lord, Selma
In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested when she joins others in the famed march from Selma to Montgomery.
Ruby Bridges
When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.
Mr. and Mrs. Loving
A moving and uplifting drama about the effects of interracial marriage in the 1960s. Friends since childhood, and loved by both families, this couple are exiled after their wedding and have to wage a courageous battle to find their place in America as a loving family.
The Long Walk Home
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.
Murder in Mississippi
In 1964, members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered three Civil Rights workers who had traveled to the South to encourage African-American voter registration. Examines the last three weeks in the lives of the slain activists.
And the Children Shall Lead
Mississippi in the early '60s is the setting for this story of a 12-year-old African-American girl who, along with her white friends, tries to ease increasing racial tensions.
Crisis at Central High
The historic federal-state controversy over the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, as seen through the eyes of Elizabeth Huckaby, one of the teachers and girls' vice principal.
Soul of the Game
Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson are the greatest players in the Colored leagues, and everyone expects that one of them will make the leap to the Major Leagues, now that there is talk of integration. But, unexpectedly, it's the rookie with the army record, Jackie Robinson, that gets tapped to be the first.
The Ernest Green Story
Follows the story of Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine who were the first blacks to integrate into an all white school.
Miss Evers' Boys
The true story of the US Government's 1932 Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments, in which a group of black test subjects were allowed to die, despite a cure having been developed.
Color of Justice
Four young black men kill a white woman. Now the D.A. is very cautious how to pursue this case because it might start a riot. And adding fuel to the fire is a bombastic and vocal black community leader, who's saying that they will not have a fair trial and that they were justified in their actions because they were in fear for their lives
The Tuskegee Airmen
During the Second World War, a special project is begun by the US Army Air Corps to integrate African American pilots into the Fighter Pilot Program. Known as the "Tuskegee Airman" for the name of the airbase at which they were trained, these men were forced to constantly endure harassement, prejudice, and much behind the scenes politics until at last they were able to prove themselves in combat.
Swing Vote
A newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice must settle a controversial moral and legal dilemma with his tie-breaking decision which may also have serious implications on his own family's harmony.
Prom Night in Mississippi
A high school in a small-town in Mississippi prepares for its first integrated senior prom.
The Loving Story
This documentary film tells the dramatic story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple living in Virginia in the 1950s, and their landmark Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia, that changed history.
I Am Not Your Negro
Working from the text of James Baldwin’s unfinished final novel, director Raoul Peck creates a meditation on what it means to be Black in the United States.
Same Sex America
In the spring of 2004, Massachusetts began the final battle of its journey towards legalizing same-sex marriage. This documentary follows a few local couples & their families through the months leading up to & shortly after that defining occasion in LGBTQ+ history, culminating in their respective weddings. Also includes interviews with active opponents attempting to discourage the movement (& failing, of course). Premiered at the Independent Film Festival of Boston in April 2005, just a month short the decision's one-year anniversary.
The Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History
From its inception in 1866 to it's diminished but still vocal brotherhood in the modern era, this release takes a close look at the ways in which the Klan has evolved through such events as the Civil Rights Movement and affirmative action. In addition to informative interviews with such subjects as Hooded Americanism author David Chambers and The Fiery Cross author Craig Wade, this film also seeks to get the story from the inside by offering revealing interviews with Grand Dragon Edward Foster and Imperial Wizard Jeff Bary.
The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson
A film about the early life of the baseball star in the army, particulary his court-martial for insubordination regarding segragation.
Journey to Justice
This documentary pays tribute to a group of Canadians who took racism to court. They are Canada's unsung heroes in the fight for Black civil rights. Focusing on the 1930s to the 1950s, this film documents the struggle of 6 people who refused to accept inequality. Featured here, among others, are Viola Desmond, a woman who insisted on keeping her seat at the Roseland movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia in 1946 rather than moving to the section normally reserved for the city's Black population, and Fred Christie, who took his case to the Supreme Court after being denied service at a Montreal tavern in 1936. These brave pioneers helped secure justice for all Canadians. Their stories deserve to be told.
Free, White and 21
A motel owner in Texas is accused of raping a civil-rights worker from Sweden.
Eyes on the Prize
The definitive story of the Civil Rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberation continue to be felt today.
Show Me a Hero
Mayor Nick Wasicsko took office in 1987 during Yonkers' worst crisis when federal courts ordered public housing to be built in the white, middle class side of town, dividing the city in a bitter battle fueled by fear, racism, murder and politics.
America Beyond the Color Line
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard's chair of Afro-American Studies, travels the length and breadth of the United States to take the temperature of black America at the start of the new century. He explores this rich and diverse landscape, social as well as geographic, and meets the people who are defining black America, from the most famous and influential to those at the grassroots.
Women of the Movement
A limited series focusing on Mamie Till Mobley, who devoted her life to seeking justice for her son Emmett Till following his brutal murder in the Jim Crow South.
On the Basis of Sex
Young lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg teams with her husband Marty to bring a groundbreaking case before the U.S. Court of Appeals and overturn a century of sex discrimination.