The 20 movies that changed the discussion on diversity in America

This week marks the 50th anniversary of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." The movie about an interracial couple meeting one partner's white parents for the first time was groundbreaking; not only did it help normalize interracial marriage and dating, it premiered six months after the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that laws outlawing interracial dating were unconstitutional. In celebration of this milestone of a movie, here are 19 other films that got America talking about race.

If this 1989 movie by the foremost black American cineaste isn't considered part of the American cinema canon, then what's the point of having one in the first place? "Do the Right Thing" explores race relations between the white, Latino, and black residents of a Brooklyn neighborhood while capturing the hip-hop-heavy zeitgeist of the late '80s and early '90s.

Straight up, if "Get Out" doesn't win an Academy Award for something, it'll be proof that the Oscars will forever be #OscarsSoWhite. Jordan Peele's dark comedy/horror hybrid is "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" meets "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." It's a fantastic critique of white liberal racism. It's also really, really good.

If we're going to be having conversations about race as it pertains to movies, then we have to talk about "Birth of a Nation." D.W. Griffith's 1915 film – a blockbuster at the time – portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as sympathetic characters and black men as unintelligent savages driven by lust. Yes, "Birth of a Nation," which was screened at Woodrow Wilson's White House, fueled the conversation on race in America. It just did it for the worse.

Before Ryan Coogler directed "Creed" and the upcoming "Black Panther"—two films about black excellence—he made "Fruitvale Station." The 2013 film focuses on the last day Oscar Grant was alive (played by the incomparable Michael B. Jordan). On New Year's Day 2009, Oscar Grant was shot and killed while handcuffed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer. The film has become perpetually timely because of individuals like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and the countless more that will surely (and sadly) come after them. 

Easily the most underrated of Spike Lee's movies, 2000's "Bamboozled" centers around a black TV executive (Damon Wayans) who pitches an ironic minstrel show that actually gets made. Spoiler alert: the irony is lost on the movie's white characters. "Bamboozled" is brilliant because it not only explores the subject of race, but it also highlights the exploitative nature of television and how the powers that be tend to greenlight shows that border on caricature.

This wonderful and heartbreaking 1959 film about two single mothers—one white and one black—raising children is in the Library of Congress National Film Registry for good reason. "Imitation of Life" also has one of the most disturbing scenes of racially motivated domestic violence ever capture on film.

Ava DuVernay's 2016 Netflix documentary, "13th," borrows its name from the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery in America with one glaring exception: prisoners. DuVernay's film is a deep dive into how this caveat has largely been used to disproportionately enslave black men and women.

I hesitate to include this classic but if I didn't, i'd be excluding one of the few movies that actually acknowledge Latinos, who now constitute the largest minority group in America. "West Side Story" was written, directed, and produced by white men, but to its credit, it portrayed Latino characters as being as sympathetic as their white counterparts.

Based on the 1959 critically-acclaimed play, 1961's "A Raisin in the Sun" stars Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Claudia McNeill as members of a black family that comes into a significant amount of money after the patriarch of the family dies. The movie highlights how not even wealth can remove the obstacles that come with being a person of color in America.

Ralph Bakshi is a controversy magnet. His 1972 movie "Fritz the Cat" was the first animated movie to get an X rating. His 1975 movie "Coonskin" was picketed and protested to the point that Paramount refused to release it – though surprisingly, the NAACP cautiously endorsed it. Since then, this animated/live-action satire featuring the voices of Phillip Michael Thomas, Barry White, and Scatman Crothers has gone on to become a cult classic.

"O.J.: Made in America" is a five-part, 467-minute documentary about the history of race in America told and how longstanding tensions between white and black Americans resulted in O.J. Simpson being declared not guilty of murder in his infamous 1995 trial.

Long before Disney made movies extolling other cultures – "Mulan," "Moana," and most recently, "Coco" – the animation studio made "Song of the South." The 1946 animated/live-action movie takes a very rosy look at antebellum America and all but downplays how horrible the post-Reconstruction Era had been for black Americans, who are portrayed stereotypically in the film.

Considered to be the first blaxploitation movie ever, this 1971 movie made by Melvin Van Peebles – who not only starred in it, but also wrote, directed, produced, and scored it – tells the story of a black hero that becomes a fugitive after rescuing another black man from police brutality. The film, which showed a strong, militant black man, became required viewing for the Black Panthers.

John Cassavetes is considered to be one of the godfathers of American independent cinema. His first film, 1959's "Shadows," was unlike nothing anyone else had seen before. For starters, huge portions of the film were largely improvised. It also centered on three beatnik siblings who happened to be black (two of the characters were played by non-black actors).

This 1967 film starring as Sidney Poitier as a Philadelphia detective who helps a southern police chief in a murder investigation and cures him of his racism in the process. The movie was released during the height of the civil rights era, and it might be the first movie in the history of cinema to show a black man fighting back after being slapped by a white man as a means of subjugation.

The 2014 indie darling – it gained visibility thanks to Netflix, which in turn made a show as a follow-up – follows the lives of four black students at an Ivy League-like college. The movie became popular because it showed that even privileged people of color are not immune to racism, casual or not.

The movie the FBI didn't want you to see – seriously, they played a key part in getting it banned – 1973's "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" tells the story of a black man hired by the Central Intelligence Agency as their token minority who later uses the guerrilla tactics to empower his community in Chicago. The movie came out in a time when a lot of prominent black leaders were being murdered.

This 2004 mockumentary about California's Mexican immigrant population disappearing and thus forcing white people to fend for themselves was more successful in Mexico than in the United States, it still deserves mention because it was released in the United States right around the time that massive pro-immigration rallies were being held nationwide. It wasn't a good movie per se, but it was still very much part of the zeitgeist.

2013's "12 Years a Slave" is an Oscar-winning film (it won "Best Picture") that tells the story of Solomon Northrup (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man that was kidnapped, taken to the South, and sold as a slave. It's a movie that's hard to watch, but it's an important one because it reminds us of the brutality and violence America seems to be too willing to forget.

This 1967 dramedy was the last time Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn were in a movie together. They played Matt and Christina Drayton, an older white couple that doesn't know how to deal with the fact that their daughter Joanna (Katharine Houghton) is engaged to John Prentice, a black doctor. This classic film was remade in 2004 with the roles reversed. Don't bother watching it. Watch this movie instead.