Best movies like The Rosa Parks Story

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

The story takes place in alternative America where the blacks are members of social elite, and whites are inhabitants of inner city ghettos. Louis Pinnock is a white worker in a chocolate factory, loving husband and father of two children. While delivering a package for black CEO Thaddeus Thomas, he is mistaken for a voyeur and, as a result, loses his job, gets beaten by black cops and his family gets evicted from their home. Desperate Pinnock takes a gun and kidnaps Thomas, demanding justice.

John is a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she learns an unforgettable lesson about the power of words and the true meaning of freedom.

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.

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.

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.

A look at the life of Cecil Gaines who served eight presidents as the White House's head butler from 1952 to 1986, and had a unique front-row seat as political and racial history was made.

The widows of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and how they carry on as single mothers after the assassination of their husbands.

A young, white school teacher is assigned to Yamacraw Island, an isolated fishing community off the coast of South Carolina, populated mostly by poor black families. He finds that the basically illiterate, neglected children there know so little of the world outside their island.

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.

An abused wife heads to California to become a movie star while her nephew back in Alabama has to deal with a racially-motivated murder involving a corrupt sheriff.

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.

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.

Several Black men take a cross-country bus trip to attend the Million Man March in Washington, DC in 1995. On the bus are an eclectic set of characters including a laid-off aircraft worker, a man whose at-risk son is handcuffed to him, a black Republican, a former gangsta, a Hollywood actor, a cop who is of mixed racial background, and a white bus driver. All make the trek discussing issues surrounding the march, including manhood, religion, politics, and race.

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.

A chronicle of Nelson Mandela's life journey from his childhood in a rural village through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.

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.

Panther is a semi-historic film about the origins of The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The movie spans about 3 years (1966-68) of the Black Panther's history in Oakland. Panther also uses historical footage (B/W) to emphasize some points.

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Successful New York attorney Sam Leibowitz travels to the South in 1933 to defend nine young black men accused of raping two women on an Alabama freight train.

Freedom Song (2000) is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle of African Americans to register to vote in the fictional town of Quinlan. In the midst of the Freedom Summer, a group of high school students in the small town are eager to make grassroots changes in their own community. The young activists meet resistance not only from white southerners, but from their parents, who have experienced firsthand the violence that can result from speaking out.[1] As high school students band together with the support of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, they make strides in registering African-American voters and gaining awareness for their cause.

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.

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.

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.

A number of slaves risk their lives to escape their masters with their only help coming from the famous secret slave escape network.

In 1948, Johns served as the outspoken spiritual leader of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Incensed at the racial injustice that pervaded the South, he was determined to fight for equality for all African Americans.

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 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.

A regular day in a Louisiana sugarcane plantation changes course when a local white farmer is shot in self defense. A group of old, black men takes a courageous step by coming forward en masse to take responsibility for the killing of a white racist, whom one of their members has shot. As the sheriff confronts the suspects, the young plantation owner stands alone in her daring defense of this group of men, provoking racial tension that makes a compelling drama.

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.

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.

The unintentional shooting by police of a star basketball player has profound personal, political and community repercussions in this acclaimed adaptation of the novel Hog Butcher by Ronald Fair. This was one of the more thoughtful urban dramas produced at the height of the "blaxploitation" craze. Also released under the title Hit the Open Man, it features the screen debut of Laurence Fishburne, who was barely a teenager at the time.

In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.

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.

Follows the story of Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine who were the first blacks to integrate into an all white school.

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.

In this story of a black policeman during South African apartheid, Danny Glover plays the cop, who believes he's trying to help his people, even while serving as a pawn of the racist government. When his son gets involved in the anti-apartheid movement, he finds himself torn between his family and what he believes is his duty.

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.

Ex-slave and former Union soldier Gideon Jackson represents other ex-slaves at the constitutional convention, and is soon elected to the U.S. Senate despite opposition from white landowners, law enforcement and the KKK. He unites with sharecropper Abner Lait, who helps Jackson unite ex-slaves and white tenant farmers.

Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.

Controversial film about an underground organization that kidnaps and 'deprograms' African Americans who sell out or deny their cultural heritage. Spike Lee is the Executive Producer.

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.

Walkout is the true story of a young Mexican American high school teacher, Sal Castro. He mentors a group of students in East Los Angeles, when the students decide to stage a peaceful walkout to protest the injustices of the public school system. Set against the background of the civil rights movement of 1968, it is a story of courage and the fight for justice and empowerment.

The true story of Mahalia Jackson, who began singing at an early age and went on to become one of the most revered gospel figures in U.S. history, melding her music with the civil rights movement.

A biography of the civil-rights activist and labor organizer Cesar Chavez. Chronicling the birth of a modern American labour movement, Cesar Chavez tells the story of the famed civil rights leader and labour organiser torn between his duties as a husband and father and his commitment to securing a living wage for farm workers. Passionate but soft-spoken, Chavez embraced non-violence as he battled greed and prejudice in his struggle to bring dignity to working people.

A film about the early life of the baseball star in the army, particulary his court-martial for insubordination regarding segragation.

A documentary that reviews the numerous contributions of African-Americans to the development of the United States. From the perspective of the turbulent late 1960s, the fact that their positive roles had not generally been taught as part of American history, coupled with the pervasiveness of derogatory stereotypes, was evidence of how Black people had long been victims of negative attitudes and ignorance.

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.

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.

After breaking ties with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a man marked for death...and it was just a matter of time before his enemies closed in. Despite death threats and intimidation, Malcolm marched on - continuing to spread the word of equality and brotherhood right up until the moment of his brutal and untimely assassination. Highlighted by newsreel footage and interviews, this is the story of the last twenty-four hours of Malcolm X. Featuring the music of jazz percussionist Max Roach.