Netflix and Amazon Prime recently released or reorganized a slew of free Black content on their streaming sites to include a sizable selection of Black documentaries.
As a student of Black Studies and journalism, the documentary genre lives at the intersection of my two greatest loves, Black History and storytelling. In short, Black history documentaries are my love language.
I’ve expressed my love of learning about Black History by visiting museums at home and while we travel. But museums aren’t the only medium filled with lessons on Black History. Documentaries chronicle untold narratives to add depth and context to events, eras, and sometimes entire generations.
Here’s a list of some of the current offerings of Black documentaries (in alpha order) that you might want to add to your binge-watching queue:
Amazon Prime
- A Century of Black Cinema
- After Selma
- Althea
- Anita: Speaking Truth to Power
- Answering the Call
- August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand
- Back to Natural
- Becoming Barack: Evolution of a Leader
- Before the West Coast
- Black, White & US
- Bud Fowler and the Page Fence Giants
- Death of a Black Panther Fred Hampton
- Escape from Candyland
- February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four
- Fresh Dressed
- Half the Picture
- Harriet Tubman: The call her Moses
- I Am Not Your Negro
- John Lewis: Get in the Way
- John L. Walker: Striving for Equality
- Ken Burns: Jackie Robinson
- Ken Burns: The Central Park Five
- King: Man of Peace in a Time of War
- Little White Lie
- Major!
- Marcus Garvey: A Giant of Black Politics
- Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall & The NAACP
- My Life with Rosie
- Obama to Selma
- Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me
- Salute
- Sis, You OK?
- Spies of Mississippi
- Tell Them We Are Rising
- The Black Miami
- The Black Panthers
- The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
- The Legend: Bessie Coleman
- The Trials of Muhammad Ali
- The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till
- TV in Black the First 50 years
- Two Black Men a Week
- When They Were Young

Legend: Bessie Coleman (image courtesy of amazon.com)
Netflix
- 13th
- Becoming
- I am Bolt
- LA 92
- Let It Fall
- miles davis: birth of the cool
- Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story
- Quincy
- Strong Island
- Teach Us All
- The Black Godfather
- The Death and Life o Marsha P. Johnson
- The Innocence Files
- The Two Killings of Sam Cooke
- They Gotta Have Us
- Time: The Kalief Browder Story
- Uppity: The Willie T. Ribbs Story
- What Happened Miss Simone?
- Who Killed Jam Master Jay?
- Who Killed Malcolm X?
- Who Shot the Sheriff?
Legend: Bessie Coleman (image courtesy of amazon.com)