[PAM GRIER PLAYED FOXY BROWN IN THE 70's]

Say what you will about the roughly 150 black action, horror and comedy films that came out between 1971 and 1976, the height of the blaxploitation era: that they were cheaply made, poorly acted, hyper-violent and glorified pimps, prostitutes, criminals and con men -- all those things are true, to a certain extent. But they were also utterly empowering, gobbled up by African American audiences desperate for strong, and recognizable, working-class heroes.

"These films made me feel proud in a way Sidney Poitier didn't; he was detached from the inner-city experience," says Josiah Howard, author of "Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide."

"These people spoke to me because they spoke like me, they looked like me, they had simple dreams like me," Howard says. "I came to these films as a young teen, and I could not believe I was seeing people like me, with big Afros, living in the ghetto. I thought, 'That's my life,' so it was uplifting for me."

Read the rest of story HERE in the Los Angeles Times...