LibGuides: Racial Justice Resources: Films

Films on Various Streaming Platforms

13th (Netflix)

"In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom."

I Am Not Your Negro (Amazon Prime)

"Told entirely in the words of James Baldwin, through both personal appearances and the text of his final unfinished book project, I Am Not Your Negro touches on the lives and assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Medgar Evers to bring powerful clarity to how the image and reality of Blacks in America today is fabricated and enforced."

Just Mercy (streaming free for the month of June)

"A powerful true story that follows young lawyer Bryan Stevenson and his battle for justice as he defends a man sentenced to death despite evidence proving his innocence." In order to learn more about the systemic racism that plagues our society, this film is available to rent for free during the month of June across various platforms.

If Beale Street Could Talk (Amazon Prime)

"Based on the novel of the same name by James Baldwin, the film follows an African-American couple, Fonny and Tish, in New York City in the 1970s. After Fonny is wrongfully arrested for a crime he didn't commit, a pregnant Tish sets out to try and prove his innocence."

The Hate U Give (currently free to stream on Amazon and YouTube)

"In this powerful drama based on the best-selling novel, when a teenager witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood friend, she must find her voice and stand up for what's right."

Selma (currently free to stream on Amazon)

"From the Oscar-winning producers of 12 Years a Slave and acclaimed director Ava DuVernay comes the true story of courage and hope that changed the world forever."

American Son (Netflix)

"Time passes and tension mounts in a Florida police station as an estranged interracial couple awaits news of their missing teenage son."

Time: The Kalief Browder Story (Netflix)

"This series traces the tragic case of Kalief Browder, a Black Bronx teen who spent three horrific years in jail, despite not being convicted of a crime."

Black Lives Matter Collection on Netflix

"Black lives matter. Learn more about racial justice and the Black experience in America with this collection of films, series and documentaries."

Films Available at the MLIC and McFarlin Library

Below is a small sample of films available through the MLIC and McFarlin Library. To find additional films, please search the catalog. We welcome film suggestions. Please contact an MLIC librarian (mlic@utulsa.edu) or a McFarlin librarian (mcfarlinlibrary@utulsa.edu) for help finding additional resources.

3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets
Call Number: Law media; KF225.D86 A13 2016 BluRay
On November 23, 2012, a black seventeen-year-old named Jordan Davis and three friends drove into a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. Davis and his friends go into a verbal altercation with 45-year-old Michael Dun, a white man who took issue with the volume of the teenagers rap music. When Davis refused to turn down the music, Dunn opened fire on the care of unarmed teenagers. He fired ten bullets, three of which hit Davis who died at the scene.
4 Little Girls
Call Number: Law media; F334.B69 N43 2000 DVD
When a bomb tears through the basement of a black Baptist church on a peaceful fall morning, it takes the lives of four young girls; Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins. This racially motivated crime, taking place at a time when the civil rights movement is burning with a new flame, could have doused that flame forever. Instead it fuels a nation's outrage and brings Birmingham, Alabama to the forefront of America's concern.
Aftershock
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; E668 .A38 2007 DVD
"In 1866, the year immediately following the end of the war, America was supposed to be reuniting, healing its wounds, and moving past years of civil unrest. However, a closer look into this historic time reveals a sinister snapshot of a discordant nation caught in the midst of deadly race riots and angry insurgencies ... Examines the disturbing reality behind the murder, terrorism, and chaos that marked the uncertain period of Reconstruction in America"--Container.
Beyond Brown: Pursuing the Promise
Call Number: Law media; LC214.2 .B49 2004 DVD
Explores the legacy and impact of Brown vs. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision ending legal segregation in American education.
Black America since MLK: And Still I Rise
Call Number: Law media; E185 .B53 2013 BluRay
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. embarks on a deeply personal journey through the last fifty years of African American history. Joined by leading scholars, celebrities, and a dynamic cast of people who shaped these years, Gates travels from the victories of the civil rights movement up to today, asking profound questions about the state of black America, and our nation as a whole.
Black Indians: An American Story
Call Number: Law media; E98.R28 B573 2003 DVD
Narrated by James Earl Jones and with music by The Neville Brothers this video explores the issue of racial identity among Native and African Americans. This in-depth documentary examines the coalescence of these two groups in American history.
BlacKkKlansman
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; PN1997.2 .B53 2018 DVD
"In the early 1970s, Ron Stallworth becomes the first African-American detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Determined to make a difference, he bravely sets out on a dangerous mission: infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. He recruits a seasoned colleague, Flip Zimmerman, into the undercover investigation. Together, they team up to take down the extremist organization aiming to garner mainstream appeal. BlacKkKlansman offers an unflinching, true-life examination of race relations in 1970s America that is just as relevant in today's tumultuous world."--Container.
Broken On All Sides: Race, Mass Incarceration & New Visions for Criminal Justice in the U.S.
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; HV9950 .B765 2012 DVD
More African Americans are under 'correctional' (prison) control today than were enslaved in 1850. Why? The movie explores mass incarceration across the U.S. and the intersection of race, poverty, and the criminal justice and penal systems.
The Central Park Five
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; HV 6568.N5 C397 2013 DVD
Chronicles America's complicated perceptions of race and crime through the story of the "Central Park 5"--A group of minority teenagers wrongfully convicted and jailed for brutally raping a white woman in New York.
Citizen King
Call Number: Law media; E185.97.K5 C58 2004 DVD
This story begins on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 when a 34-year-old preacher galvanized millions with his dream for an America free of racism. It comes to a bloody end almost five years later on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. In the years since those events unfolded, the man at the center, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has become a mythic figure, a minister whose oratory is etched into the minds of millions of Americans, a civil rights activist whose words and image are more hotly contested, negotiated and sold than almost anyone else's in American history.
Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; E184.A1 C733 2012 DVD
"In the U.S., race --more than any other demographic factor-- determines levels of individual educational achievement, health and life expectancy, possibility of incarceration, and wealth. This film reveals a self-perpetuating system of inequity in which internal factors play out in external structures: institutions, policy and law. Designed for dialogue and learning, Cracking the codes : the system of racial inequity works to disentangle internal beliefs within, as it builds skills to recognize and address the external drivers of inequity."
Do The Right Thing
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; PN1997 .D535 2001 DVD
"The hottest day of the year explodes onscreen in this vibrant look at a day in the life of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. A portrait of urban racial tensions sparked controversy while earning popular and critical praise, "--Container.
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement
Call Number: Law media; E185.61 .E936 2006 DVD
Vols. 1-3 tell the story of America's civil rights years from 1954 to 1965; vols. 4-7 examine the new America from 1966 to 1985, from community power to the human alienation of urban poverty.
For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska
Call Number: Law media; E78.A3 F67 2009 DVD
"In 1867, when the United States purchased the Alaska territory, the promise of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights didn't apply to Alaska Natives. Their struggle to win justice is one of the great, untold chapters of the American civil rights movement, culminating at the violent peak of World War II with the passage of one of the nation's first equal rights laws."--Container.
Fruitvale Station
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; PN1995.9.M854 F784 2014 DVD
Filmmaker Ryan Coogler makes his feature directorial debut with this drama centered on the tragic shooting of Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan), a vibrant 22-year-old Bay Area father who was senselessly gunned down by BART officers on New Year's Day in 2009, and whose murder sent shockwaves through the nation after being captured on camera by his fellow passengers.
Get Out
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; PN1995.9.H6 G458 2017 DVD
A young black man meets his white girlfriend's parents at their estate, only to find out that the situation is much more sinister than it appears.
Ghosts of Mississippi
Call Number: Law media; PN1995.9.T75 G486 2010 DVD
After two hung juries and the passage of thirty years the widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers is joined by a district attorney with an interest in the case to bring the accused murderer to justice.
Hidden Figures
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; PN1995.9.B55 H53 2017
As the United States raced against Russia to put a man in space, NASA found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented them in U.S. history as true American heroes.
Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; E185.97.W55 I323 2004 DVD
Chronicles the life of Ida B. Wells, an early Afro-American journalist and activitist who protested lynchings, the treatment of Afro-American soldiers, and other forms of racism and injustice toward black Americans around the turn of the century. Her involvement in the women's suffrage movement is also described.
John Lewis: Get in the Way
Call Number: Law media; E185.97.L49 J64 2017 DVD
Follow the courageous journey of John Lewis, a civil rights hero, congressional leader, and human rights champion whose unwavering fight for justice spans the past 50 years. The son of sharecroppers, Lewis grew up in the segregated South and rose from Alabama's Black Belt to the corridors of power on Capitol Hill. His humble origins have forever linked him to those whose voices often go unheard.
Loving
Call Number: Law media; PN1995.9.B55 L68 2017 DVD
The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, whose challenge of their anti-miscegenation arrest for their marriage in Virginia led to a legal battle that would end at the US Supreme Court.
The Loving Story
Call Number: Law media; E185.62 .L685 2011 DVD
Documentary about the case of Richard & Mildred Loving, a white man & a black woman who were convicted by the state of Virginia for the crime of marrying across racial lines in the late 1950s.
Malcolm X
Call Number: Law media; BP223.Z8 L571 2000 DVD
Screen version of the life of Malcolm X, who through his religious conversion to Islam, found the strength to rise up from a criminal past to become an influential civil rights leader.
Marshall
Call Number: Law media; PN1997.2 .M37 2018 BluRay
About a young Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, as he battles through one of his career defining cases.
Mississippi Burning
Call Number: Law media; PN1995.9.H5 M57 2001
Set in Mississippi in 1964, this is a fictionalized version of the case of the murder of three young civil rights workers, the FBI's attempts to find the missing boys and the clash between the authorities and the locals in a Klan-dominated town.
Moonlight
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; PN1997.2 .M66 2017 DVD
A young black man struggles to find his place in the world while growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami.
Prom Night in Mississippi
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; E185.615 .P76 2009 DVD
In 1997, actor Morgan Freeman, a resident of the small town of Charleston, Miss., offered to pay for the senior prom at Charleston High School under one condition: the prom must be racially integrated. His offer was ignored. In 2008 he offered again, and the offer was accepted, changing the tradition of two separate proms for blacks and whites that had endured since the high school was integrated in 1970. Shows the problems and lessons learned as the event was planned and held.
Slavery by Another Name
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; E185.2 .S53 2012 DVD
ISBN: 1608836258
Challenges one of America's most cherished assumptions, the belief that slavery in the U.S. ended with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, by telling the harrowing story of how, in the South, a new system of involuntary servitude took its place with shocking force.
Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson's American Journey
Call Number: Law media; KF373.H45 S68 2005 DVD
Few judges provoke the ire of conservatives more than Thelton Henderson, Senior Judge of the Federal District Court of Northern California. His career in many ways parallels the larger historic arc of the Civil Rights movement and the changing vision of government -- from Jim Crow laws to Civil Rights victories and back again with recent attacks on affirmative action.
Thurgood
Call Number: Law media; PN1997.2 .T48 2011 DVD
ISBN: 0780682998
The remarkable celebration of the life and legacy of civil rights advocate and Supreme Court pioneer Thurgood Marshall, the first African American appointed to the nation's highest judicial bench. Filmed before a live audience at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater, this compelling one-man play written by Peabody Award and Emmy Award winner George Stevens, Jr. and directed by Emmy Award winner Michael Stevens stars the Emmy Award and Tony Award-winning actor Laurence Fishburne.
A Time to Kill
Call Number: Law media; PN1995.9.T75 T564 2009 DVD
A small-town lawyer is hired to defend an African American man who is accused of killing the white men who raped his young daughter.
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; PS3563.O8749 T66 2019 DVD
An artful and intimate meditation on the life and works of the acclaimed novelist. From her childhood in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio to '70s-era book tours with Muhammad Ali, from the front lines with Angela Davis to her own riverfront writing room, Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics, and colleagues on an exploration of race, America, history and the human condition as seen through the prism of her own literature.
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till
Call Number: Law media; HV6465.M7 U58 2005 DVD
The culmination of a 10-year investigation to uncover the details behind the nightmarish 1955 Mississippi murder of Emmett Louis Till, an African-American Chicago teenager. Till's death sparked the American Civil Rights Movement.
Voices of Civil Rights
Call Number: McF Browsing Level DVD Collection; E185.61 .C5855 2006 DVD
From the fearless resolve of a single woman to the remarkable voice of thousands marching, this History Channel special offers an overview of one of America's great defining periods. A compilation of materials on the civil rights movement, from personal narratives of life in the period, to insights into the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, to the 1965 march on Montgomery, along with biographies of two of the leaders of the movement.