Separate But Equal

Based on the ground-breaking Brown vs. the Board of Education case, the made-for-television Separate But Equal follows a young Thurgood Marshall (Sidney Poitier) as a lawyer who argues the racially-charged lawsuit before the Supreme Court. When the black students of Clarendon County, South Carolina ...more

Documenting a landmark Supreme Court decision sounds like risky business for a dramatist, but writer/director George Stevens Jr. does an admirable job with this miniseries about the 1954 school desegregation case that went on to win an Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries. Sidney Poitier dominates the first three quarters of the film in what is an old-fashioned star performance. There are no concessions to disguising Poitier to look like Thurgood Marshall; one would think that Marshall, who retired ...more