The Long Walk Home

The film is set in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and features Whoopi Goldberg as Odessa Cotter, an African-American maid, employed by a well-to-do white woman, Miriam Thompson, played by Spacek. The story is told through the eyes of Miriam's young daughter Mary Catherine, for whom Odessa is a nanny. Odessa and her family are faced with all of the social problems typical of African Americans at the time: poverty, racism, violence, and discrimination based solely on the color of their skin. When a boycott of the city buses prevents Odessa from riding the bus to work, she is left with no other choice but to walk.