“American Violet” is one of those films calculated to stir the emotions, to incite anger while building to a cathartic release.

Rousing an audience in that way is not particularly hard for even a minimally talented filmmaker. It’s not difficult to manipulate the viewer to indignation. The art comes in doing it without the audience noticing or, at a minimum, resenting it.

The subject matter of “American Violet” is inherently incendiary. True stories of injustice often are. But by focusing on the strength of the heroine and the courage of her fight, director Tim Disney lets the story unreel in what feels like a more organic way, rather than hammering at the melodrama of the piece.

That heroine, Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie), is a single mother of four living in a housing project in a small Texas town. In November 2000, shortly before the presidential election, her housing project is raided by an army of cops, who arrest people on warrants for drug trafficking. Dee, at her waitress job, is taken away in handcuffs, charged with dealing crack.

She is, of course, innocent – but she’s in jail, potentially for six months, awaiting trial. Her public defender comes to her with an offer from the local D.A.’s office: Accept a plea bargain agreement and you can go home. But to do so means pleading guilty and taking 10 years’ probation. She would be a convicted felon, ineligible for public housing or assistance. More to the point, Dee says, she’s not willing to plead guilty to something she didn’t do.

The film is based on a true story – one of several of that period and geographic locale, which would be George W. Bush’s Texas. As the ACLU attorney (Tim Blake Nelson) who takes her case explains, federal funds for local law enforcement are based on conviction rates. By creating drug task forces to sweep up poor black people and offer them plea bargains, the local law enforcement offices inflate their success rates, because most of those caught up are too poor or ignorant to fight back.

Even more frightening: Texas formerly had a law that allowed prosecutors to seek a grand-jury indictment on the basis of the word of a single informant. In this particular case, that informant had a history of mental illness and crack abuse - and was at the mercy of the district attorney.

“American Violet” is about injustice and racism, hot-button topics that can’t be dismissed, even with a post-racial presidency (whatever that means). The fact that this story is less than a decade old should send chills down any viewer’s back. So should the fact that 90 percent of those in prison in America are there on plea-bargained sentences, a statistic that appears onscreen before the closing credits.

“American Violet” works by not thumping its chest or waving a flag. Instead, it celebrates an individual’s strength in the face of seemingly impossible odds. That all comes from Beharie, a newcomer who conveys passion and strength without resorting to histrionics. Instead, she makes Dee a woman whose flaws don’t offset her ability to face this challenge – beyond the monumental challenges of everyday life as a single mother coping with poverty.

With his squinty smirk of self-satisfaction, Michael O’Keefe makes the perfect bully as the local D.A. O’Keefe is the guy who has the system in his back pocket; he makes him opaquely menacing – and even more intimidating when he’s feeling threatened and vulnerable.

The film is rounded out by well-etched supporting performances by Will Patton, as a local attorney who jeopardizes his career by helping Dee; Nelson as the quietly fearless but pragmatic ACLU lawyer; and Alfre Woodard as Dee’s nervous, nay-saying mother.

“American Violet” shows that speaking truth to power is always a dangerous proposition – but always a necessary, and sometimes fruitful, one as well.

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