Ernest J. Gaines

Story of a black woman in the South who was born into slavery in the 1850s and lives to become a part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. (imdb)

A regular day in a Louisiana sugarcane plantation changes course when a local white farmer is shot. A group of old, black men takes a courageous step by coming forward en masse to take responsibility for the killing of a white racist, whom one of their members has shot.

In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing of a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince the schoolteacher to go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity. (imdb)

A young boy named James comes of age in 1940s Louisiana and grapples with what it means to be black during a time of racism and poverty. James's mother accompanies her son to town to see about the boy's nagging toothache, and his journey soon becomes an eye-opening odyssey.