Ebony Magazine - Top Black Movies of All Times, November 1998 (25)

Follows the lives of three young males living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles, dissecting questions of race, relationships, violence, and future prospects.

Contemporary version of the Bizet opera, with new lyrics and an African-American cast.

On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.

Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster, to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam and his eventual assassination.

A languid, impressionistic story of three generations of Gullah women living on the South Carolina Sea Islands in 1902.

The story of the troubled life and career of the legendary Jazz singer, Billie Holiday.

A bittersweet, idyllic story about a year in the life of 14-year-old Newt Winger, born into a poor Black family in Kansas, who learns about love, fear, racial injustice, and immorality.

A black man and his school-teacher wife face discriminatory challenges in 1960s America.

A substantial insurance payment could mean either financial salvation or personal ruin for a poor black family.

The oldest son of a loving and strong family of black sharecroppers comes of age in the Depression-era South after his father is imprisoned for stealing food.

In the 1970s Harlem, garbage collector Roop feels intimidated by the idea of dating Claudine who is a single mother of six on welfare.

A tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry.

In 1839, the revolt of Mende captives aboard a Spanish owned ship causes a major controversy in the United States when the ship is captured off the coast of Long Island. The courts must decide whether the Mende are slaves or legally free.

What did little Eve see--and how will it haunt her? Husband, father, and womanizer Louis Batiste is the head of an affluent family, but it's the women who rule this gothic world of secrets, lies, and mystic forces.

Robert Gould Shaw leads the U.S. Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices from both his own Union Army, and the Confederates.

A charismatic old acquaintance drifts into town, stirring up trouble for a mild-mannered family.

A crime lord hires black private eye, John Shaft, to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter.

A wagon master and a con-man preacher help freed slaves dogged by cheap-labor agents out West.

A compulsive gambler dies during a shooting, but he'll receive a second chance to reform himself and to make up with his worried wife.

Two Harlem cops investigate a robbery, believing that a reverend has staged it in order to steal the money he's collected for a local fundraiser.

A retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, set during the time of the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro.

A dramatization of a 1923 horrific racist lynch mob attack on an African-American community.

Story of a woman and her three lovers.

The relationship between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress provides a retrospective of the great African-American entertainers of the early 1900s.

After saving a Black Panther from some racist cops, a black male prostitute goes on the run from "the man" with the help of the ghetto community and some disillusioned Hells Angels.