You’re horrified by the deaths of George Floyd and countless other people of color at the hands of police officers across the country over the years. If you’re not Black or a person of color, all those viral videos have convinced you of what they already know. You’re sympathetic to the protesters; maybe you’ve joined them. But what do you do? How do you help effect change? And what don’t you do?
Empty social media gestures such as black-boxing one’s Instagram feed or forwarding that (admittedly excellent) Trevor Noah YouTube video offer a dopamine rush of digital virtue: They advertise wokeness without the need to act on it in the real world. And the urge of too many white people to “find a black person” to express sadness to or to have racism “explained” by someone who experiences it is a feeling to be actively resisted. No one needs to teach you. You need to learn.
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To that end, there are endless African-American reading lists all around the Internet; Google the phrase and you’ll find them. They’ll lead you to writers classic (Baldwin, Hurston, Du Bois) and modern (Morrison, Coates, Ibram X. Kendi) and while some observers find the exercise too, too bourgeoise-book-club, as the old PSA said, the more you know. …
There’s an even stronger argument to be made for movies as a crash course in the realities of race in America, for anyone who needs it. They’re visual and visceral; whether fiction films or documentary, they put a viewer behind the eyes of people of color with an immediacy and a conviction that convinces. Following are 18 movies to start with; all are available on various streaming platforms.
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And after you’ve listened and watched and learned? After history, details, lived experience, and words have filled the part of your brain that formerly just “felt bad”? Then you can be better poised to argue and agitate for change, at the ballot box, in the streets, and especially among friends, family, and peers. After all, if anything is to improve America’s sorry state of racial inequality, it’s not the people of color who need to change. It’s everyone else.
13th (2016) Ava DuVernay’s deeply researched documentary shows the rise of the prison-industrial complex from the 1970s through today and its roots in a loophole in the 13th Amendment, which bans slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” A powerful, inarguable indictment. (Available on Netflix)
16 Shots (2019) In October 2014, Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shot a young man named Laquan McDonald 16 times in 15 seconds, claiming McDonald was attacking him with a knife. Van Dyke’s fellow cops destroyed local surveillance footage, but a leaked dash-cam revealed the truth. Rick Rowley’s doc traces the fall-out all the way up to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision not to run for re-election. A valuable testament to the Code of Silence and the police corruption it ensures. (Available on Showtime and DirecTV)
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) A galvanizing history of a movement, assembled from footage shot by Swedish journalists covering Black America in the post-civil rights era. My former Globe colleague Wesley Morris called it “powerful, vivid, inspiring, demoralizing, and damning.” (Available on Amazon Google Play, iTunes,, YouTube)
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Daughters of the Dust (1991) Julie Dash’s impressionistic tone poem is set on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, among the women of the Gullah people as one family prepares to move to the mainland. Stunningly filmed, it hints at an entire alternate history of Black America, told by a cinematic griot. (Available on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube)
Do Not Resist (2016) Craig Atkinson’s sobering documentary focuses on the militarization of local and urban police forces in the post-9/11 era and how an institution meant to serve and protect has become locked and loaded for war. (Available on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube)
Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee’s breakthrough film, one Brooklyn day that ends in riot, is an American classic and, sadly, more relevant than it was three decades ago. Maybe now you finally understand why Mookie throws the garbage can. (Available on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube)
Fruitvale Station (2013) Writer-director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan have gone on to box-office hits like “Black Panther,” but this dramatic re-creation of Oscar Grant’s killing by a Bay Area transit policeman — shot while lying face down on the ground — is still their most important work. Why watch it? To witness and to know. (Available on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube)
I Am Not Your Negro (2016) James Baldwin, one of this country’s greatest, most honest writers, died in 1987, but his voice speaks louder than ever. Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary is the introduction or reacquaintance you need. (Coolidge Coolidge virtual screening; available on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hoopla, iTunes, Kanopy, YouTube)
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Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992 (2017) Directed by John Ridley (writer of “12 Years a Slave”) in collaboration with ABC News, this is an epic examination of the 1992 uprising that followed the acquittals of the officers who beat Rodney King, with attention paid to the long-burning fuse of the relationship between the LAPD and the city’s minorities. (Available on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Netflix, YouTube)
Let the Fire Burn (2013) On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a building housing the radical group MOVE; the ensuing conflagration killed 11 people, including five children, and destroyed three city blocks. Jason Osder’s documentary is a riveting you-are-there account of institutional overkill. (Available on Kanopy)
Malcolm X (1992) Spike Lee’s widescreen bio-pic isn’t so much a celebration of the controversial Nation of Islam leader, portrayed by Denzel Washington (who really should have won the Oscar that Al Pacino got for “Scent of a Woman”), as a celebration of one towering figure’s lifelong evolution. (Available on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Netflix, YouTube)
The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971) A blistering work of investigative journalism about the Chicago civil rights activist and Black Panther who was gunned down in 1969 in his home during a night-time raid. The filmmakers’ footage of the crime scene effectively destroys the police version of events. (Available on Amazon)
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Pioneers of African American Cinema (various years) Now playing outside the paywall on the Criterion Channel subscription service (and available in a DVD set): 16 features and numerous shorts that testify to the immense creative ferment of Black moviemakers from the earliest days of silent cinema on. Curated by esteemed film historians Charles Musser and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart.
Queen & Slim (2019) One of the best films of 2019 got dumped with little fanfare at the end of the year, where not enough people saw it. An awkward Tinder date becomes a lovers-on-the-lam saga after a police stop goes south in ways all too awfully familiar. Stars Daniel Kaluuya and Jodi Turner-Smith are heartbreakingly good. (Available on Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes)
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019) A warm, candid, and penetrating portrait of a writer whose novels of Black life and struggle will flow through the lifeblood of this country for as long as it stands. (And if you haven’t read those novels, what are you waiting for?) (Available on Amazon, Google Play, Hoopla, iTunes, and YouTube)
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) More Spike Lee and possibly his crowning achievement, a two-part, four-hour documentary on Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans in 2005 and the struggle of the city’s people to come back from the brink of disaster. Also recommended: Lee’s “4 Little Girls” (1997), about the 1963 Birmingham, Ala., church bombing. (Available on DirecTV, HBO Go, HBO Max, HBO Now)
Whose Streets? (2017) The Ferguson protests as told not by the media but by the people in the streets; it’s the first crowd-sourced viral video documentary of the #BlackLivesMatter age and as such invaluable. (Coolidge Corner virtual screening; available on Amazon, Google Play, Hoopla, Hulu, iTunes, Kanopy, YouTube)
Within Our Gates (1920) Part of the “Pioneers” series above but worth seeking out on its own, this melodrama by the foundational Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux — acknowledging Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and white-on-black rape — was a response to 1915’s “The Birth of a Nation” and the 1919 Chicago race riots. (Available on Amazon, the Criterion Channel, DirecTV)
Ty Burr can be reached at ty.burr@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @tyburr.