Appearing on the It Happened in Hollywood podcast to retell the making of 1997s Jackie Brown, screen icon Pam Grier revisited her breakout roles in a series of low-budget action films in the early-1970s electrifying audience-pleasers like 1973s Coffy and 1974s Foxy Brown.

Those movies, which still draw sold-out revival house crowds 50 years later, are now commonly referred to as blaxploitation pictures a term Grier says was introduced by marketers at American International Pictures, the studio that produced the films. They coined it just to let the exhibitors know, Its for the Black market. Youll have the food, the culture, the dialogue, the deuce and a quarter [a nickname for the Buick Electra 225, named for its length of 225 inches], everything. They would know how to book that project, that film, and what region to book it in, Grier explains.

It was political, actually. It was a term meant to be negative so that the Black audience wouldnt support the movies and theaters, and there would be room for mainstream movies to take over that space. It was basically a political marketing ploy, she continues.

While the studios and industry did embrace the term particularly as the genre proved to be a box-office hit that crossed into the mainstream in fact it was Junius Griffen, president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch of the NAACP, who is credited with creating the portmanteau of Black and exploitation.

He meant it disparagingly, to criticize the sex and violence of the genre as being Hollywoods latest attempt at perpetuating racist stereotypes against the African-African community.

But because the films featured Black protagonists, and because they came to prominence alongside the civil rights and Black Power movements, the films came to be embraced by some as being empowering and allowing African-Americans to reclaim their identities in Hollywood. And so did the term blaxploitation.

Grier says the action films were a product of their time and were not only limited to Black themes.

There was white exploitation, Black exploitation. Its all exploitation everybodys shooting and killing, and its funded by white filmmakers. Then we had Shaft, we had Superfly, we had heroes in the hood that were Black. They were Robin Hoods. Robbing from the rich, protecting the community from the powerful and the rich and giving it to the less fortunate, she says.

The proliferation of exploitation to describe Hollywood product may have been related to a decades-old habit in the industry trades including The Hollywood Reporter to use that term to describe how much money could be made from a given feature or format.

An example: A 1953 THR review, like many at the time, used the term exploitation to refer to how much money theater owners could expect to make from a given title. Grier says there is even an element of feminism to the term blaxploitation because it wasnt in use until she became a movie star with Coffy.

It wasnt called exploitation until I walked in a mans shoes, Grier says. I used martial arts and I held guns. I come from a country environment, went hunting with a 30-06 [rifle]. I understand rifles and guns and hunting and throwing people over my shoulder.

So maybe they meant it was exploiting the woman, the little woman whos not supposed to fight for herself, supposed to let the man come in and save her. Well, sometimes theyre not there, she continues. And you have to be a little bit exploitative to save your ass, OK?

There are lots of Griers early screen hits and others that are close to her heart available to view on Pam Griers Soul Fix channel an adrenaline-fueled journey through the era of Black empowerment available on the Roku Channel and Plex.tv.

For more from Pam Grier and the making of Quentin Tarantinos Jackie Brown, listen to the full episode of It Happened in Hollywood.