Racism - Movies

John Garfield and Gregory Peck

Philip Schuyler Green (Gregory Peck) is a widowed journalist who has just moved to New York City with his son Tommy (Dean Stockwell) and mother (Anne Revere). Green meets with magazine publisher John Minify (Albert Dekker), who asks Green, a Gentile, to write an article on anti-Semitism ("Some people don't like other people just because they're Jews"). He is not very enthusiastic at first, but after initially struggling with how to approach the topic in a fresh way, Green is inspired to adopt a Jewish identity ("Phil Greenberg") and writes about his first-hand experiences.(Wikipedia)

Elsa Cárdenas and Dennis Hopper as
Jordan Benedict III

Carroll Baker as Luz Benedict II, Elsa Cárdenas as Juana Guerra Benedict, Elizabeth Taylor as Leslie Benedict and Rock Hudson as Jordan 'Bick' Benedict Jr.

Mickey Simpson as Sarge and Rock Hudson

The next day, on their way home, the Benedicts stop at a diner with a sign at the counter saying, "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone," which during the mid-twentieth century in the southern United States was often taken as meaning that ethnic minorities were not welcome. The racist owner, Sarge, insults Juana and her and Jordy's son Jordan IV. When the owner goes on to eject a Mexican family from the diner, Bick tells Sarge to leave them alone. Bick fights Sarge, who beats him, but then takes down the sign and tosses it on top of Bick. Back at the ranch, Bick laments that he has failed to preserve the Benedict family legacy. (Wikipedia)

Airman Joe Kelly (Red Buttons), who is Ace's enlisted crew chief, is about to wed a Japanese woman, Katsumi (Miyoshi Umeki), in spite of the disapproval of the United States military establishment, which will not recognize the inter-racial marriage. The Air Force, including Ace, is against the marriage. Ace and Joe have an argument during which Ace uses a racial slur to describe Katsumi. Ace eventually apologizes, then agrees to be Joe's best man at the wedding. (Wikipedia)

In the summer of 1957 in the West Side's Lincoln Square neighborhood in Manhattan, there is tension between a white American gang, the Jets, led by Riff, and a Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, led by Bernardo. (Wikipedia)

Gregory Peck and Brock Peters

Atticus, a lawyer, strongly believes all people should be treated fairly, in turning the other cheek, and to stand for what you believe. Many of Atticus' clients are poor farmers who pay for his legal services in trade, often giving him fresh produce, firewood, and so on. Atticus' work as a lawyer often exposes Scout and Jem to the town's racism, aggravated by poverty. As a result, the children mature more quickly.
Atticus is appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell. Atticus accepts the case, heightening tension in the town and causing Jem and Scout to experience schoolyard taunts. (Wikipedia)

Sidney Poitier as Gordon Ralfe and Elizabeth Hartman as Selina D’Arcey

Selina convinces her grandfather to take her to the park, where she happens to meet Gordon Ralfe, an educated and soft-spoken black man working night shifts in an office. The two quickly become friends, meeting at the park almost every day. Gordon learns that she was blinded at the age of five when Rose-Ann (Shelley Winters) threw chemicals on her while attempting to hit her husband, and also that she was raped by one of Rose-Ann's "boyfriends". (Wikipedia)

Wallace Ford as
Ole Pa and Shelley Winters as Rose-Ann D’Arcey

Finding Selina missing from the apartment, Rose-Ann takes Ole Pa to the park and confronts Gordon. Despite Rose-Ann's resistance, Gordon manages to take Selina away, and Ole Pa stops Rose-Ann from chasing after them, telling her that Selina is not a child anymore. (Wikipedia) a

Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs

Rod Steiger as Gillespie and Warren Oates as Sam Wood

Larry Gates as Endicott

...Tibbs initially suspects plantation owner Endicott, a genteel racist and one of the most powerful individuals in town, who publicly opposed the new factory. When Tibbs interrogates Endicott, Endicott slaps him in the face and Tibbs slaps him back. Endicott sends a gang of hooligans after Tibbs. Gillespie rescues Tibbs and tells him to leave town for his safety, but Tibbs is convinced he can solve the case and take Endicott down. Gillespie points out to Tibbs how bitter he has become. (Wikipedia)

Sidney Poitier as John Prentice and Katherine Houghton as Joanna Drayton

Twenty-three year old Joanna Drayton's unannounced early return from her Hawaiian vacation causes a stir when she brings her new fiancé to her upper-class family home in San Francisco. He is John Prentice: a 37-year-old black (the 1967 dialogue uses the term Negro throughout) physician and medical professor, whom she met just 10 days prior, whose first wife and young son were killed in a train accident eight years earlier. (Wikipedia)

Isabel Sanford as Tillie and Sidney Poitier as John Prentice

he Draytons' black maid for 22 years, Tillie, is even more horrified, telling Joanna that John is trying to "get above himself" by marrying a white woman, but Joanna asks why it is okay that she loves Tillie but she shouldn’t love John, who is “just as black”.(Wikipedia)

Virgínia Christine as Hilary St John

One of Christina's art gallery employees, Hilary, who had briefly met John and Joanna earlier in the day, stops by the Draytons' home to express her disapproval over the relationship. (Wikipedia)

Roy Glenn as Mr. Prentice and Beah Richards as Beah Richards
Mrs. Prentice

Spencer Tracy as
Matt Drayton And Katharine Hepburn as Christina Drayton

Joanna's parents – newspaper publisher Matt Drayton and his wife, art gallery owner Christina – are avowed liberals who have always instilled in her the idea of racial equality. Although they try to hide it, Joanna's parents and in particular her father are initially upset that she is planning to marry a Negro man. (Wikipédia)

Jane Alexander and James Earl Jones

Set between 1910 and 1915, the story follows Jack Jefferson, patterned after real-life boxer, Jack Johnson, going on a hot streak of victories in the boxing ring as he defeats every white boxer around. Soon the press and racists announce the search for a "great white hope", a boxer who will defeat Jefferson for the heavyweight title. Meanwhile, Jefferson prepares for a few more matches, but he lets his guard down by courting the beautiful, and very white, Eleanor Bachman, and when everyone, including Jack's black "wife", discover this, the tensions grow to fever pitch. Jack's close black friends become scared over his pushing the envelope of success and the white authorities conspire to frame him with unlawful sexual relations with Eleanor and thereby take away his title. It leads to jealousy, a run from the law, and finally, disaster. (Wikipedia)

Danny Glover as Moses

Sally Field as Edna Spalding

It is 1935 and Waxahachie, Texas, is a small, segregated town in the midst of a depression. One afternoon the local sheriff, Royce Spalding, goes to investigate trouble at the rail yards. He dies after being accidentally shot by a young black boy, Wylie. Local white vigilantes tie Wylie to a truck and drag his body through town before hanging him from a tree.
The sheriff's widow, Edna Spalding, is left to raise her children alone and maintain the family farm. (Wikipedia)

...”That night, Moses is accosted by Ku Klux Klan members and savagely beaten. (Wikipedia)

Gene Hackman as Agent Rupert Anderson and
Willem Dafoe as Agent Alan Ward

In 1964, three civil rights workers — two Jewish and one black — go missing while organizing a voter registry for African Americans in Jessup County, Mississippi. The FBI sends two agents, Rupert Anderson, a former Mississippi sheriff, and Alan Ward, to investigate. The pair find it difficult to conduct interviews with the local townspeople, as Sheriff Ray Stuckey and his deputies exert influence over the public, and are linked to a branch of the Ku Klux Klan. The wife of Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell reveals to Anderson in a discreet conversation that the three missing men have been murdered. Their bodies are later found buried in an earthen dam. Stuckey deduces Mrs. Pell's confession to the FBI and informs Pell, who brutally beats his wife in retribution. ( Wikipedia)

Ginny Yang and Steve Park

Danny Aiello and Richard Edson

Spike Lee and Danny Aniello

Mookie (Spike Lee) is a 25-year-old delivery man living in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with his sister Jade (Joie Lee). He and his girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez) have a toddler son named Hector (Travell Toulson). He works at the local pizzeria, and lacks ambition. Sal (Danny Aiello), the pizzeria's Italian-American owner, has been in the neighborhood for 25 years. His older son Pino (John Turturro) intensely dislikes black people, and does not get along with Mookie.
During the day, the heat and tensions begin to rise. The local teenagers open a fire hydrant and douse the street, before police officers intervene. Mookie and Pino begin arguing over race. Mookie confronts Pino about his negative attitudes towards African Americans, although the latter's favorite celebrities are black. Various characters express flowery racial insults to the camera: Mookie against Italians, Pino against African Americans, Latino Stevie (Luis Antonio Ramos) against Koreans, white police officer Gary Long (Rick Aiello) against Puerto Ricans, and Korean store owner Sonny (Steve Park) against Jews.
The film ends with two quotations that express different views about violence, one by Martin Luther King and one by Malcolm X. It fades to a photograph of the two leaders shaking hands. (Wikipedia)

Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman

In 1948, Daisy Werthan, or Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy), a 72-year-old wealthy, Jewish, widowed, retired schoolteacher, lives alone in Atlanta, Georgia, except for an African American housekeeper, Idella (Esther Rolle).
The film explores racism against African American people, which affects Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) at the time. The film also touches on anti-semitism in the South. After her synagogue is bombed, Miss Daisy realizes that she is also a victim of prejudice. But American society is undergoing radical changes, and Miss Daisy attends a dinner at which Dr. Martin Luther King gives a speech. (Wikipedia)

Michelle Pfeiffer as Lurene Hallett, Dennis Haysbert as Paul Cater and Stephanie McFadden as
Jonell

Racism is prevalent throughout the film, as well as displays of discontent from the black community concerning Kennedy's efforts to improve race relations. (Wikipedia)

Denzel Washington as Malcolm X

Malcolm begins religious conversion as a disciple of Elijah Muhammad. During this fervent immersion into the Nation of Islam, he becomes an incendiary speaker for the movement, changes his name to Malcolm X, and marries Betty Shabazz. Malcolm X preaches a doctrine of separation from white society. However, a pilgrimage to Mecca softens his beliefs, teaching him that Muslims come from all races, even whites, and he endeavors to break free of the strict dogma of the Nation of Islam, with tragic results. He is assassinated on February 21, 1965, in New York City. (Wikipedia)

Matthew McConaughey and Samuel L. Jackson

In the town of Canton, Mississippi, ten-year-old African American Tonya Hailey (Rae'Ven Larrymore Kelly) is abducted, raped, and beaten by two local white men, Billy Ray Cobb (Nicky Katt) and Pete Willard (Doug Hutchison). The duo dump her in a nearby river after a failed attempt to hang her. Tonya survives, and the two men are arrested by Sheriff Ozzie Walls (Charles S. Dutton).

Tonya's father, Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), contacts Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey), a white lawyer who previously defended his brother. Brigance admits the possibility that the rapists will walk free. Carl Lee goes to the county courthouse and opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing both rapists and unintentionally injuring Deputy Dwayne Looney (Chris Cooper) with a ricochet, whose leg is later amputated. Carl Lee is arrested and Brigance agrees to defend him. (Wikipedia)

James Woods as Byron De La Beckwith and Whoopi Goldberg as
Myrlie Evers

Medgar Evers was an African-American civil rights activist in Mississippi murdered on June 12, 1963. It was suspected that Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist, was the murderer. He had been tried twice and both trials ended in hung juries. In 1989, Evers' widow Myrlie, who had been trying to bring De La Beckwith to justice for over 25 years, believed she had what it takes to bring him to trial again. (Wikipedia)

Denzel Washington

In 1985, a Federal District Court ruled that the prosecution in Carter's second trial committed "grave constitutional violations" and that his conviction was based on racism rather than facts. As a result, Carter was finally freed, and he summed up his story by saying, "Hate got me into this place, love got me out." (Wikipedia)

Halle Berry as Leticia Musgrove and Billy Bob Thornton as
Hank Grotowski

Leticia stops by Hank's home with a present for him, but he is not there. She meets Buck (Hank’s father), who insults her and implies that Hank is only involved with her because he enjoys sex with black women. Leticia, affected by the remarks, refuses to interact with Hank. After Hank is made aware of Buck's actions, he forces his father out of the house and into a nursing home. (Wikipedia)

Julianne Moore as
Cathy Whitaker and Dennis Haysbert as Raymond Deagan

Throughout Far From Heaven, one of the central conflicts faced by the main protagonist Cathy Whitaker comes from her attraction towards Raymond Deagan, the son of her recently deceased gardener, and how it develops in the face of her estrangement from her husband, Frank Whitaker, as he deals with his developing homosexual tendencies.[6] Set in the fall of 1957 in Hartford, Connecticut, the racial tensions emblematic of the era are reflected right away in the first scene Raymond makes an appearance, tending to his father's former duties as the Whitaker's gardener.[4] While Cathy is being interviewed for a society circular in her living room, she notices Raymond mulling around in her yard, and immediately becomes frightened, uneasy by the prospect of an unfamiliar colored man. While her interviewer Mrs. Leacock suggests calling the police, Cathy walks outside to confront him and learns the circumstances of the situation and how he came to be there, apologizing for her assumptions and demonstrating her capacity to see beyond his race and show sympathy for his recent father's passing. This is an action that is observed closely by Mrs. Leacock through the window, and ultimately makes its way into her article profiling Cathy and her "kindness to negroes. (Wikipedia)

Jonathan Ahdout as Esmail, Shohreh Aghdas as Nadereh,Ben Kingsley as Massoud Amir Beharani and Jennifer Connelly
(2003)

Former Imperial Iranian Army colonel Massoud Amir Behrani, who fled his homeland with his family, now lives in the Bay Area working multiple menial jobs. Living beyond his means, he maintains the façade of a respectable businessman so as not to shame his wife Nadereh, son Esmail, and daughter Soraya.(Wikipedia)

The film features racial and social tensions in Los Angeles. A self-described "passion piece" for Haggis, Crash was inspired by a real-life incident in which his Porsche was carjacked in 1991 outside a video store on Wilshire Boulevard. (Wikipedia)

Jack McGee, Shaun Toub and Bahar Soomekh

...Earlier the previous day, Farhad (Shaun Toub), a Persian shop owner, and his daughter Dorri (Bahar Soomekh) are in a gun shop arguing over what bullets they should buy. The gun store owner grows impatient and degrades the two of them by referring to Farhad as "Osama. (Wikipedia)

Terrence Howard, Matt Dillon, Ryan Philippe and Thandie Newton

Sergeant John Ryan (Matt Dillon) and his partner Officer Tom Hansen (Ryan Phillippe) pull over an SUV being driven by director Cameron Thayer (Terrence Howard) and his wife Christine (Thandie Newton), who was performing fellatio on him. After an intoxicated Christine mouths off to Ryan, he subjects the couple to a body search. Ryan molests Christine in front of her husband and Hansen who watches in disgust. Ryan releases them with a warning after Cameron apologizes. (Wikipedia)