The best Lorraine Toussaint’s drama movies

Former Marine Louanne Johnson lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what the cost.

A Los Angeles journalist befriends a homeless Juilliard-trained musician, while looking for a new article for the paper.

A young woman dreams of making it big in the world of hip hop, but her parents demand that she finish her university degree. She dutifully agrees to complete her education, but her spoken word proves to have a powerful impact in the classroom.

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt takes a year off before college to find herself, all the while chronicling her adventures in an anonymous blog into which she pours her innermost secrets. Eventually, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge.

An equal rights crusader, journalist and activist: Gloria Steinem embodies these and more. From her role in the revolutionary women's rights movement to her travels throughout the U.S. and around the world, Steinem has made an everlasting mark on modern history. A nontraditional chronicle of a trailblazing life.

Three stories portray women coping with unplanned pregnancies in various social climates, the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s. In 1952 the newly widowed nurse Clare goes and sees a back-street abortionist in order to put an end to her pregnancy. After giving birth to three children, Barbara at last has the realistic hope of finding a job again, but then a new pregnancy thwarts her plans. In 1974 abortion is already legal; however, this fact does not make it any easier for Barbara to take the right decision. In 1996 Christine, a student, consults an abortion clinic to get information on abortion. While doing this, she is being harassed by militant anti-abortionists.

Sent to live with his estranged father for the summer, a rebellious teen finds kinship in a tight-knit Philadelphia community of Black cowboys.

When an innocent young girl finds herself befriended by two sexy, uninhibited girls at a small-town bar, she discovers that they have more planned than just a party-and she's central to the action.

John is a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she learns an unforgettable lesson about the power of words and the true meaning of freedom.

In a small Southern town in the autumn of 1941, Sophie’s lonely life is transformed when an Asian man arrives under mysterious circumstances. Their love affair becomes the lightning rod for long-buried conflicts that erupt in bigotry and violence with the outbreak of World War ll.

Sprinter tells the story of Akeem Sharp who is set to be Jamaica's next big track-and-field sensation. Akeem hopes to rise in the track and field world will take him to the U.S. to reunite him with his mother who has supported the family while living as an illegal resident for over a decade. But Akeem's rising star is weighed down by turmoil at home: a volatile father, and an unruly older brother who insinuates himself into Akeem's career as a means of escaping - or perhaps enhancing - his scam artist hustle. Not only does Akeem have to prove to himself and everyone that he can succeed, but also overcome the struggles that may ultimately bring him down.

Made especially for the HBO cable network, this well-wrought feature is comprised of three short stories by three noted black American authors, each of which is directed by a respected black director.

When her husband is sentenced to eight years in prison, Ruby drops out of medical school in order to focus on her husband's well-being while he's incarcerated - leading her on a journey of self-discovery in the process.

A young woman, struggling to become a novelist, has her life go into a tailspin. Her first novel is rejected, her non-committal boy friend decides to take a powder, her best friend moves to Mexico for an acting job, and her mother announces that her long presumed dead father is actually a hippie photographer who has come to town to meet her. Sinking into a depression at being a total failure at 28, she starts fantasizing about suicide. In her depths of despair she meets various eccentric characters including a chain-smoking Santa Claus and an obnoxious literary agent. But her belief in herself is only restored when she meets a patient in a hospital where she does volunteer work.