Dive into the rich and constantly evolving world of Black culture with these sixteen powerful documentaries. With thought-provoking storytelling and impactful education, these documentaries offer an insightful journey into the heart of Black life.
MAY THE LORD WATCH: THE LITTLE BROTHER STORY (2023)
Director: Holland Randolph Gallagher
Logline: Little Brother is composed of rappers Phonte, Big Pooh, and (formerly) producer 9th Wonder, the underground legends that bridged the gap between The Roots and Kendrick, Tribe and Cole, and De La and Drake. The documentary follows the rise, breakup, and reunion of Little Brother, detailing the vast impact of the preeminent 2000’s rap group.
Watch: Streaming on YouTube
THE FINAL BOW (2023)
Directors: Ebony Blanding and Rita Harper
Logline: The Atlanta Taekwondo Academy has been a staple in the East Point community of Atlanta, Georgia for the past 23 years. The Final Bow is a cinematic testament to the meaningful work of the Atlanta Taekwondo Academy and its owner, GrandMaster Thomas, that gives an alternative lens on the impact of COVID-19 on locally black owned small businesses.
Watch: Streaming on Vimeo
STAY PRAYED UP (2022)
Directors: D.L. Anderson and Matt Durning
Logline: A spirited celebration of 82-year-old Lena Mae Perry and her legendary North Carolina gospel group The Branchettes. The film documents The Branchettes as they record their first, fully live album. Through shared prayer, laughter, hardship and praise, this “church gospel noisy crew” demonstrates that music, like faith, ain’t nothing without some fire inside.
Watch: Streaming on Tubi
OUTTA THE MUCK (2022)
Directors: Ira Mckinley and Bhawin Suchak
Logline: An astounding and intimate narrative of Black achievement focusing on the self-determined Dean family, seven generations of their history, and the resilient community of rural Pahokee, Florida.
Watch: Streaming on PBS
THE NEUTRAL GROUND (2021)
Director: CJ Hunt
Logline: The Neutral Ground documents the City of New Orleans’ fight over monuments and America’s troubled romance with the Lost Cause. In 2015, director CJ Hunt was filming the New Orleans City Council’s vote to remove four confederate monuments. But when that removal is halted by death threats, CJ sets out to understand why a losing army from 1865 still holds so much power in America.
Watch: Streaming on Prime Video
LITTLE SATCHMO (2021)
Director: John Alexander
Logline: Little Satchmo is an intimate exploration of the iconic Louis Armstrong’s life and legacy through his relationship with the daughter that the public never knew existed. Based on a revealing memoir written by Armstrong’s silent daughter, the film seeks to correct a historical narrative relying on caricature for too long.
Watch: Streaming on Prime Video
CITIZEN ASHE (2021)
Directors: Rex Miller and Sam Pollard
Logline: Directors Rex Miller and Sam Pollard explore the enduring legacy of tennis legend and humanitarian Arthur Ashe in CITIZEN ASHE, an elegant and poignant feature documentary. The film charts Ashe’s personal evolution from Grand Slam champion to global activist against a tumultuous backdrop that included the civil rights movement, South African apartheid, and the AIDS epidemic.
Watch: Streaming on Prime Video
UNMARKED (2021)
Directors: Brad J. Bennett and Chris Haley
Logline: Much of America’s rich history is being lost to time. In the South, vast amounts of African-American grave sites and burial grounds for enslaved persons have been disappearing over the years. In Virginia alone, stories of thousands at rest could vanish from history altogether if these locations are not restored. Those with personal connections to these burial sites have recently begun to uncover and maintain locations across the state. However, there is much work to be done in order to preserve this part of America’s history. Unmarked not only explores these untold stories of the past but also the efforts underway to preserve them.
Watch: Streaming on Vimeo
THE PASSING ON (2020)
Director: Nathan Clarke
Logline: Three professions ushered Black former slaves from poverty to the American dream: preacher, teacher, and undertaker. Now, renowned embalmer James Bryant puts his faith in a new generation to continue this vanishing legacy. He’s met with resistance from his young intern, Clarence Pierre, who himself is conflicted about his commitment due to the judgment he feels from the Black community as a queer, Christian man.
Watch: Streaming on Tubi
ALWAYS IN SEASON (2019)
Director: Jacqueline Olive
Logline: When Lennon Lacy is found hanging from a swing set in rural North Carolina, his mother’s search for justice begins while the trauma of more than a century of lynching African Americans bleeds into the present.
Watch: Streaming on PBS
MOSSVILLE: WHEN GREAT TREES FALL (2019)
Director: Alexander Glustrom
Logline: As a centuries-old black community, contaminated and uprooted by petrochemical plants, comes to terms with the loss of its ancestral home, one man standing in the way of a plant’s expansion refuses to give up.
Watch: Streaming on PBS
BLACK BEACH / WHITE BEACH: A TALE OF TWO BEACHES (2017)
Director: Ricky Kelly
Logline: Racial tensions reach a boiling point in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when two motorcycle festivals — one primarily Black, one predominantly white — converge over Memorial Day weekend in this historically segregated town.
Watch: Streaming on Tubi
CHAIRMAN JONES: AN IMPROBABLE LEADER (2016)
Director: Anna Jones
Logline: Chairman Jones tells the story of the director’s father, James H. Jones, a farmer who emerges as a trailblazer during the 1969 school desegregation crisis sparked when Northampton County refuses to implement Brown v Board of Education. After freeing himself from sharecropping in the 1950s, Jones launched a personal campaign to free black children from Jim Crow education.
Watch: Streaming on PBS
ALTHEA (2014)
Director: Rex Miller
Logline: A documentary focused on the trailblazing athlete Althea Gibson, the first African-American to play and win at Wimbledon and Forest Hills.
Watch: Streaming on Tubi
SPIES OF MISSISSIPPI (2014)
Director: Dawn Porter
Logline: Enter the chilling world of anti-civil rights espionage. Spies of Mississippi reveals in shocking detail the state of Mississippi’s effort to undermine the civil rights movement using a vast network of spies. Their identities will shock you. Whites and Blacks spied for Old Dixie. And the Sovereignty Commission would stop at nothing, even murder, to retain the “Mississippi way of life”.
Watch: Streaming on Prime Video
THE LOVING STORY (2011)
Director: Nancy Buirski
Logline: 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.
Watch: Streaming on Tubi
