It’s official: the most powerful country on earth has
an African American president. Well how did the United States arrive at
this point? It certainly wasn’t easy, as America has long grappled with
the issue of race in general and the depiction of blacks specifically.
But now that we’re closer to Dr. King’s dream being realized, it’s only
fitting that we highlight some of the films that have over the years
attempted to tackle the centuries-long struggle for racial equality in
America. –dewayne rogers
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A Raisin in the Sun (1961) Paired with director Daniel Petrie, budding film star Sidney Poitier provided a new image of the black man. Explosively playing Walter Lee, Poitier shows a black man who is concerned with lifting his family out of their current dead-end existence. No longer was the black man portrayed as a servant or a railroad porter. Poitier’s character was both intelligent and ambitious. |
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Roots (1977) The six part, 10-hour television adaptation of Alex Haley’s novel beautifully reopened the country’s eyes to the rich history of blacks, recalling the dawn of the slave trade and a people forcefully ripped from their existence in Africa. Even today, the importance of “Roots” hasn’t waned. |
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Glory (1989) When Denzel Washington won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his extraordinary work in Glory, it did two things. For starters, it allowed the torch to be passed from Sidney Poitier to Washington as the leading black man charged with the unenviable task of creating strong black images on the silver screen. And secondly, the film provided a passionate portrayal of blacks who fought for a country that hadn’t loved them back. |
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Separate But Equal (1991) The importance of Thurgood Marshall cannot be underscored, and the release of this 3-hour TV movie made sure that his contributions had not gone unnoticed. Even before he rose to prominence as the first African American chief justice of the Supreme Court, Marshall was an overworked attorney for the NAACP responsible for taking a supposedly small South Carolina court case all the way to the Supreme Court, resulting in the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education court case. Poitier nobly plays Marshall, once again portraying a strong, intelligent, and highly capable black man able to perform at the highest of levels, and against the greatest of odds. |
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4 Little Girls (1997) Spike Lee had always tackled race in his movies, most notable with the 1989 film Do The Right Thing. But his most stirring work to date may be the documentary that he produced chronicling the horrific incident in 1963 when a bombing in Birmingham, Alabama killed four little girls attending Sunday School. The emotionally gripping film further humanized the black experience for white America, fully displaying the gross injustices and struggles blacks had been forced to endure. |
The awareness of black America created by these trailblazing films, and others like Malcom X, King, Nothing But A Man, and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
should not be forgotten. And now that this country has indeed taken
significant strides with the election of Barack Obama, the legacy of
these movies becomes all the more important as they — in their own
small, but significant way — paved the way for America’s acceptance of
Barack Obama.
