She desperately wishes to avoid the fate of her two sisters Norma Faye and Ruth Ann, neither of whom finished high school and are now stuck being single mothers.

Earl and Mama Rosie visit a nearby neighborhood park, where they remember their days of youth and discuss their bittersweet past.

While she managed to get them to hire Peggy Pettit, rather than "a light-bright-damned-near-white actress",[3] to play Billie Jean, against her wishes they cast Claudia McNeil, who had been in the 1961 film A Raisin in the Sun, as Mu'Dear.

[4] Franklin tried to have a scene where the young female character of Billie Jean disrobes in front of the camera removed; it stayed in the film, albeit without nudity.

The poster for the film "showed a blow-up of Norma Faye's face, teeth snarling in mad-dog fashion, threatening Billie Jean with a knife.

"[4] After Franklin threatened to register her disapproval at every newspaper or television interview and speaking engagement, "In the next few days the illustration appeared without the knife.

It had its world premiere at the Strand Theatre (Manhattan), then known as the Penthouse Theater on Broadway,[5] to benefit sickle cell anemia.

"Davis gave notice that working-class black women—who were not prostitutes, drug users, or gun-toting heroines—had stories to tell that were provocative and relevant.

The genre promoted popular images of black men and women using traits of extraordinary cool, sexuality, and violence.

"[2] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated it three out of four stars and wrote, "Black Girl is a movie so filled with things it wants to say that sometimes the messages are lost in a confusion of storylines.

"[12] Variety quoted their review, which called it "the best study of Negro family life since Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun".