Urban African American

When the police kill her husband in the presence of their young son, Shy McGee becomes a single mother trying to raise boys to men. Her 17-year-old son, Prince, channels his anger into an effort to become king of the streets. Seeing her son try to step up and take his father’s place, Shy has his back. Cherise is Shy’s best friend, but she doesn’t like what she’s seeing lately. Cherise has taught her son, Raequan, only one life lesson: how to run hustles. Now Cherise and Raequan are tired of watching the McGee family prosper while they remain at a standstill.

Meet the Pierce family. Desmond Pierce, a hardworking man from the South, is determined to give his and wife and daughters a good life in Compton, California. Pearla Pierce is a sexy and seductive mother who plays wifey and devoted mother only when her husband is home. Then there’s Carmen, a promiscuous 17-year-old on a self-destructive path and jealous of her younger sister. Cashmere, a 13-year-old, struggles to hold her family together out of love for her father.

Despite a tumultuous past, Sugar Alise Clark is determined to be successful. When she meets Dyna, owner and proprietor of Dymes Exotic Escort Service, she takes off down a path of easy money and fast living. Their friendship quickly sours when Sugar decides to branch out on her own. Sugar opens a gentleman’s club called Sugar Walls and becomes involved with a new love - who happens to be the father of her sister’s child. Sugar thinks she’s leaving her past behind to forge a better future.

Amina “Mimi” Washington was born in poverty and raised on the south side of New Orleans to parents who were not capable of raising a child. From a very young age, she has had to fend for herself. Young Mimi wants more out of life, and she wants a way out of the ghetto. Fate intervenes on her behalf when she meets one of New Orleans’ biggest dope boys. When she falls in love with the mysterious stranger, everything in her life changes for the better and her future seems brighter. She will soon learn, however, that being a hustler’s wife comes with serious consequences.

Tired of being used, abused, and treated as an afterthought, Alexis decides to put aside her beliefs of how a lady should behave and to live life according to her pleasures. Becoming the “man” in all three of her relationships, she uses men the way she has been used.

Deceived into leaving Haiti and Cuba by Mr. and Mrs. Vega, Billie and Carmine are confronted with a harsh reality once on American soil. The teens realize they are sex workers for the Pricey Pussy Empire, and the couple who lured them to the US actually run their own division for the underground flesh-for-sale operation. Billie and Carmine will suffer through human indecency, cruel punishment, and sexual assault in hopes of breaking the chains of captivity. There is an expensive price tag attached to vengeance, and once it is theirs, they may just end up paying with their souls.

Fresh from his self-imposed exile in New York, Black makes his long-awaited return, reuniting with his brothers Junie and Dee to handle the family business-moving mad weight, expanding their drug empire, and eliminating any and everything that gets in their way. Unfortunately, such wheeling and dealing always comes with a price, and for Black, Junie, and Dee, it's no different.

Angela grew up in an all-black upper-class neighborhood in Virginia Beach. Being raised by conservative parents, street life was almost nonexistent. Her college years at Hampton University would truly educate her; not only in school, but also in life. She never imagined the attention her body and beauty would bring her. Angela finds herself torn between Mac, a successful real estate broker, and Damien, a young Jamaican hustler from Brooklyn. Both show Angela love in their own way, and her choice will be her destiny.

Ne'Vaeh Washington attends Howard University, where her burning desire to be with Aaron Whitehaven, her best friend's boyfriend, prevents her from living her life to the fullest. Unbeknownst to her, Aaron feels the same way. While Ne'Vaeh's best friend, Charlene Campbell, is out of town attending a funeral, Aaron confesses that he has been in love with Ne'Vaeh for nearly three years. He has kept it a secret until now because he believed that she was still in love with Jamie Green, her first love, who left her brokenhearted.

What do you do when your work is used against you? This is a question that Auto, leader of the Eraserheads, faces when an unforeseen and dangerous situation wreaks havoc on everything he's built. It's up to him and his right hand, Code, along with their team of expert car thieves to figure out who's behind the attacks on their livelihood. When a crafty con woman named Smiley and a mysterious businessman named Boots step onto the scene, every player becomes a pawn in a war that is taking over the Trap.

Simone knows if she plays with fire, she runs the risk of getting burned, but she just can't help herself. Living large off the paternity scam of a lifetime, she has two baby daddies cashing her out for her infant son. Even her own best friends are getting tired of her low-down, manipulative ways. Unfortunately, the streets begin to talk, and the out-for-self mother's luck taps out.

The Ladies of MHB are all together again and ready to take their newfound success to the next level, but with success comes more haters and rivals who are shooting at the team on top. After living through the largest shootout in downtown Charlotte's history, the women have decided to take the group all the way legit. MHB owns enough real estate to secure the future of all the original members and new recruits alike. There's only one problem: nobody believes these country girls can leave the streets alone and maybe, just maybe, they really can't.

For best friends Mike, Max, and Ahmad, the bonds of friendship, love, and respect are put to the ultimate test as each one of them is forced to take a long, hard look at themselves and the women they love. They all said their "I do"s, but did they really understand what it meant?

Kenny "Ken-Ken" Greene left his days as a hustler behind him when his wife was killed during a scam gone bad, leaving him with a baby daughter. Now he's a cab driver, doing what he can to put food on the table and give his daughter, Destiny, everything she needs. In spite of his past, or because of it, he's willing to do whatever it takes to keep Destiny off the streets. But when he is shot and paralyzed during a robbery while on the job, Destiny knows that she has to step up to the plate to take care of her father.

Zaria Taylor weathers the storms, accepting the bad times as temporary whenever Renard cheats. Deep down inside, Zaria prays the years invested into their relationship will be enough to keep their foundation sturdy. "Do or die" and "till death do us part" are her mottos, though her wedding ring finger is still bare. She makes the mistake of believing him every time he says he will do better, he is sorry, and his heart only belongs to her.

The first rule when trying to survive prison is to find people who are going to watch your back. Sometimes alliances like this are made in the weirdest situations. For Mo, Royal, Emil, and Ascada, the last place they wanted to be was in prison together, but as fate would have it, they all became inmates of the Walsh Facility for Women. As different as they all are, they do have one thing in common - Spencer. Known on the streets as a hustler with nothing to lose, he doesn’t care about anyone but himself, including the children that he’s fathered with three of the locked up women.

Black, a small-time thug with big dreams, discovers the demand for crack cocaine in the Virginia housing projects where he lives and sees the drug as a meal ticket for his family. His younger cousin, Lo, who idolizes Black, joins him in his business endeavors. But as they work side by side with hustlers and killers, the pair is soon thrown into situations beyond their control, and the bonds of their family are thoroughly tested.

Brooklyn Johnson had it all - money, jewels, designer clothes, a successful modeling career, and men falling at her feet. Now she's struggling to keep up the facade. When life was good, she wasn't always good to those around her. Even as she developed a drug addiction and struggled to maintain her sanity, she never felt she needed anyone. Now that an illness has turned her life upside down, she finds herself having to make amends with all the people she's wronged.

After tragedy strikes her home, Heavenly Jacobs must rely on her beauty and street smarts to survive on her own. Her choice to ride for the wrong man ultimately lands her in prison, where she decides to re-strategize her game plan for when she is released. Eartha Davis was exposed to much more than she should have been from a very young age. Between her mother, a bonafide gangster with a sexual preference for women, and the influence of the streets, it was just about impossible for Eartha not to embrace all that was going on around her.

Baltimore is the setting for (and typifies) one of the most penetrating examinations of bigotry and residential segregation ever published in the United States. Antero Pietila shows how continued discrimination practices toward African Americans and Jews have shaped the cities in which we now live. Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing in the 20th century, dooming American cities to ghettoization.