12 Films That Dared to Tackle Slavery From Roots to Django Unchained

By Brett Johnson, theRoot

Sankofa

In Haile Gerima’s 1993 film, a self-important black American model named Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano) visits one of Ghana’s shorefront castles where slave traders housed and shipped Africans to distant lands. She meets the titular character, a local mystic man who has the spirit world on speed dial. In a bit of magic realism, Mona gets transported back a few generations and faces her new identity as a slave who ultimately must fight for her freedom. It’s perhaps every out-of-touch black Westerner’s worst nightmare come true. But Mona, upon her return to reality, learns the essential lesson of Sankofa, which also happens to be an Akan word that translates to “It is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.” In other words, don’t forget where you came from.

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Amistad

Before this 1997 Steven Spielberg blockbuster, Djimon Hounsou was mainly known as that buff chocolate dude running in the Herb Ritts-directed music video of Janet Jackson’s “Love Will Never Do (Without You).” In this film he plays Cinque, a slave who leads a revolt on a Spanish ship bound for Cuba. The former prisoners think that two white survivors are sailing them to Africa, but the whites really bring them to the U.S., where they eventually earn their freedom via the grandiloquence of President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins), who arguably steals the movie despite Hounsou’s breakthrough performance. It’s hard to outshine the acting vet, but it helps you come close when you have Hounsou’s hulking screen presence and the ability to roll your R’s: “Give us free!” remains the film’s most memorable quote.

Roots

The screen adaptation of Alex Haley’s biography about his family’s rise from slavery to eventual liberation was a major landmark television event when it aired over several episodes in 1977. It featured an all-star cast of black Hollywood icons, including LeVar Burton (Kunta Kinte), Ben Vereen (Chicken George), Lou Gossett Jr. (Fiddler) and Leslie Uggams (Kizzy). However, a cloud of suspicion has hovered over Roots, with reports of Haley having plagiarized sections of his book. The miniseries is still worth watching for its outstanding performances and attempt to dramatize the journey of generations of Africans sold into bondage.

Click here to learn about the best and worst attempts at depicting the shackled past of African Americans.

If you prefer to read, visit our online exhibit about slavery.

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