16 things to watch to educate yourself about systemic racism

Reading books and watching documentaries is a part of education, but fictional movies or dramatizations of real stories can be equally illuminating.

Thursday, June 19, is Juneteenth, which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in the US. To mark the holiday, we picked 16 movies and TV shows that will help people understand the history of racism in this country, from the Martin Luther King Jr. biopic “Selma” to the 1961 film “A Raisin in the Sun” to the horror-comedy “Get Out.”

Keep scrolling for our recommendations of movies and TV shows to watch to educate yourself.

“Nickel Boys”

A 2025 nominee for best picture at the Academy Awards, “Nickel Boys” is a film based on the Colson Whitehead novel of the same name.

It’s told from the point of view (literally) of Elwood, a Black teenager in 1960s Florida who has been unjustly convicted of stealing a car when he had just been hitching a ride. He’s then sent to Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school where the white students are treated well, while the Black students are beaten, forced to do manual labor, and given little to no education.

Even though much has been written about “Nickel Boys'” innovative cinematography, the film is much more than that.

“‘Nickel Boys’ is a triumph. Its unique approach brings a new dimension to its source material, while amplifying the emotional resonance between the present and a horrifying past,” wrote Kambole Campbell for Empire Magazine.

“Nickel Boys” is streaming on MGM+.

“The Hate U Give”

“The Hate U Give,” which is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Angie Thomas, follows Starr after her best friend, Khalil, is fatally shot during a traffic stop.

“Now, facing pressure from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and stand up for what’s right,” IMDb writes.

“It’s so gripping to watch — as well as being, in places, just delightfully funny — that you never feel you’re being preached to. It picks you up in one place and sets you down in another,” wrote Stephanie Zacharek of Time.

The film’s director, George Tillman Jr., announced on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “The Hate U Give” was free to stream in June 2020 after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes.

“I hope the film provides a bit of understanding. Our story is a reminder to never be afraid to raise our voice in the name of justice. We must stand up for what we believe. The time for change is now!” Tillman wrote.

You can rent or buy “The Hate U Give” online.

“Just Mercy”

Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx starred in “Just Mercy” in 2019, which is based on the real case of Walter McMillian and his lawyer, Bryan Stevenson.

Stevenson, a well-known civil rights attorney known for founding the Equal Justice Initiative, works throughout the film to free McMillian, a man who has been wrongfully convicted of killing a white woman and put on death row.

“‘Just Mercy’ captures Bryan Stevenson’s story for posterity’s sake. We shall never forget,” wrote Alan Ng of Film Threat.

You can rent or buy “Just Mercy” online.

“When They See Us”

Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries, “When They See Us,” is based on the case of the Central Park Five — now called the Exonerated Five —a group of teenagers who were wrongfully convicted in the rape of a jogger.

The series, which is split into four parts, delves deep into the fear and racism that surrounded the case, as reported by the BBC.

Hannah Giorgis of The Atlantic wrote, “In rendering their journeys, DuVernay pays careful attention to the terrifying power of language, especially the animalistic rhetoric with which prosecutors and journalists referred to the teens.”

“When They See Us” is streaming on Netflix.

“Loving”

“Loving” is about Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple whose arrest for interracial marriage in Virginia kicked off a legal fight that led to the Supreme Court’s historic 1967 decision ending anti-miscegenation laws.

“What is radical about [Jeff] Nichols’ film is the extent to which he focuses not on the legal fight and ensuing national attention but on the Lovings themselves,” wrote Newsweek’s Tom Shone.

You can rent or buy “Loving” online.

“Fruitvale Station”

“Fruitvale Station” is another dramatization of a real crime — the San Francisco Chronicle reported Oscar Grant died in 2009 after he was detained and shot in the back by a police officer at a San Francisco BART station. He was 22 years old.

Ryan Coogler’s directorial debut, “Fruitvale Station,” tells the story of the last day of Grant’s life before he was shot. If you were a fan of “Sinners” and want to dive into Coogler’s filmography, “Fruitvale Station” is a great place to start.

Matthew Lucas of The Dispatch wrote, “It’s a rough sit, sometimes unpleasant, and ultimately deeply painful, but somehow an essential watch.”

“Fruitvale Station” is streaming on The Roku Channel, Plex, and Prime Video.

“Selma”

“Fueled by a gripping performance from David Oyelowo, ‘Selma’ draws inspiration and dramatic power from the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr. — but doesn’t ignore how far we remain from the ideals his work embodied,” according to Rotten Tomatoes. 

“‘Selma’ is spectacularly staged, impressively acted and narratively satisfying. But it is also something much, much more and we need much, much more like it,” wrote Ryan Syrek of The Reader.

Director Ava DuVernay announced on X that Paramount made “Selma” free to rent for the month of June 2020. “We’ve gotta understand where we’ve been to strategize where we’re going. History helps us create the blueprint. Onward,” her tweet read.

“Selma” is streaming on Paramount+ and MGM+.

“Get Out”

No spoilers; the twists and turns of “Get Out” should be seen on screen. But the basic gist: An interracial couple, Rose and Chris, travel to Rose’s parents’ house so Chris can meet them, but Rose and her parents are white, and her parents don’t know her boyfriend is Black. Drama and uncomfortable jokes ensue.

“The villains here aren’t southern rednecks or neo-Nazi skinheads, or the so-called ‘white supremacy.’ They’re middle-class white liberals. The kind of people who read this website. The kind of people who shop at Trader Joe’s, donate to the ACLU, and would have voted for Obama a third time if they could,” Lanre Bakare of The Guardian wrote.

You can buy or rent “Get Out” online.

“A Raisin in the Sun”

The movie, based on the Lorraine Hansberry play of the same name, centers on the Youngers, a Black family living in a city. The family must decide what to do with a $10,000 life insurance check. It deals with themes of racism, feminism, and economic inequality, among others.

A 2019 retrospective from Film Frenzy calls the film “a groundbreaking work that manages to be both specific to the African-American experience and universal in its themes of hope, change, and upward mobility.”

“A Raisin in the Sun” is streaming on Tubi.

“If Beale Street Could Talk”

The film centers on Tish and Fonny, who have begun dating after being friends their whole lives. When Fonny is falsely accused of rape, Tish and her family work together to support each other and try to get Fonny freed.

Matthew Norman of the London Evening Standard wrote, “[Director Barry] Jenkins doesn’t scratch the surface of the Black American experience. He takes you deep into its bones and suggests that far less has changed than the naive may believe.”

“If Beale Street Could Talk” is streaming on The Roku Channel, Plex, and Prime Video.

“Do the Right Thing”

Spike Lee’s seminal film “Do the Right Thing” takes place on the hottest day of the summer in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bed-Stuy. And as the heat rises, so do tensions between the Black residents of Bed-Stuy, the Italian-American owner of the local pizzeria, and the Korean immigrants who own a local convenience store.

“If you think Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’ is dangerous, let me ask you: Aren’t the problems he addresses, and our silent neglect of them, far more dangerous?” asked Eva Yaa Asantewaa of OutWeek.

“Do the Right Thing” is streaming on Netflix.

“BlacKkKlansman”

“BlacKkKlansman” is based on the 2014 memoir “Black Klansman” by Ron Stallworth, the first Black detective in Colorado Springs, and was also directed by Spike Lee.

The film tells the story of Stallworth’s real-life infiltration into a Colorado chapter of the Ku Klux Klan with the help of his fellow officer Flip Zimmerman. In the film, Stallworth is played by John David Washington, while Zimmerman is played by Adam Driver.

While communicating over the phone with KKK leader David Duke (played by Topher Grace), Stallworth also deals with racism within his own police department and his reluctance to tell the woman he’s dating that he’s a cop.

As Slate’s Lawrence Ware wrote, positing what it will feel like to watch “BlacKkKlansman” 20 years from now, “We can hope it will feel dated, but as ‘BlacKkKlansman’ argues, and the previous three decades of Lee’s movies have taught us, it’s likely to feel as pertinent as ever. Time may pass, but the struggle against racism in America remains largely the same.”

“BlacKkKlansman” is streaming on Prime Video and Paramount+.

“Sorry to Bother You”

In “Sorry to Bother You,” released in 2018, LaKeith Stanfield stars as Cash Green, an unemployed Black man who gets a job at a shady telemarketing company. But he can only get ahead using his “white voice” (voiced by David Cross).

As he climbs the corporate ladder, he distances himself from a union drive at his company and makes moral compromises he didn’t think he had in him — and a lot more, but we don’t want to spoil the truly absurd turn this movie takes.

“It’s about exploitation and profit, about the fetishization of Black bodies and the indignities of code-switching, about giving up your dignity and trying to find love. Careening from office comedy to something like horror, ‘Sorry to Bother You’ is weird and funny and unsettling, and not quite like anything I’ve seen before,” wrote Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson.

“Sorry to Bother You” is streaming on Pluto TV, Plex, and Prime Video.

“Hidden Figures”

“Hidden Figures,” loosely based on the book of the same name, focuses on three Black women working at NASA in the 1960s: Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (played by Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (played by Janelle Monáe), as they confronted both racism and sexism in the workplace.

After years of their contributions to NASA and space travel being erased, “Hidden Figures” is a celebration of their hard work and perseverance, as well as a hard look at what it was like in the struggle to be taken seriously by their peers.

“It might be one of the few Hollywood movies about the civil rights era to imagine that Black lives in the ’60s, particularly Black women’s lives, were affected not only by racism but also by the space race and the Cold War,” wrote K. Austin Collins for The Ringer.

You can buy or rent “Hidden Figures” online.

“Judas and the Black Messiah”

“Judas and the Black Messiah,” released in 2021, stars Daniel Kaluuya in an Oscar-winning performance as Fred Hampton, a Black Panther leader who was assassinated by police officers backed by the FBI.

But where did they get their information? From an informant in the Black Panthers organization, Bill O’Neal, played by LaKeith Stanfield — although, according to the film, O’Neal, who was originally recruited to clear his own criminal record, tried to quit multiple times when he became too invested in Hampton and the cause.

The New York Times’ A.O. Scott called the film “a political tragedy” and discussed how the title refers to “the paranoia of J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen), who saw African-American militants as the gravest internal threat to national security and feared the emergence of a popular, crowd-inspiring national leader” — and thus, felt the need to remove him from the playing field.

You can buy or rent “Judas and the Black Messiah” online.

“Dear White People”

“Dear White People” is a 2014 dark comedy about what it’s like for Black students to attend a prestigious, mainly white college, and how the four students the film focuses on (Tessa Thompson’s Sam, Teyonah Parris’ Coco, Tyler James Williams’ Lionel, and Brandon P. Bell’s Troy) each experience life at Winchester College.

But when a frat on campus throws a blackface-themed party, the four are united in their outrage.

“The film explores how two members of the same race can have vastly different experiences depending on how dark their skin is, as well as why certain people can say and act one way, but not others,” wrote IndieWire’s Jenna Marotta.

“Dear White People,” the 2014 film, is streaming on Prime Video. The 2017 TV series based on the film is streaming on Netflix.

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