"Keene State College's 2007 Citizenship Symposium offers unique ways to consider enduring, vital, and necessary questions on voting integrity, how to define a citizen, U.S. Constitutional rights, and citizen responsibilities. The Citizenship Symposium is a four-day opportunity to come together to learn about and discuss contemporary problems involving immigration, race, the environment, campaign politics, and the media's role in informing citizens" (Symposium Pamphlet)
The first Citizenship Symposium session I went to was called Secret Daughter. Secret Daughter is a documentary about a woman named June Cross. June Cross also made the film. June Cross is a professor at Colombia University and won an Emmy for her documentary. June is a reporter, storyteller, journalist, and an editor. She has worked for CBS and PBS. She also wrote a book based on her documentary called Secret Daughter. June Cross's documentary was about her life growing up as black woman with a white mother and a black father. It aired on November 26, 1996.
June's mother was white and when she was born until she was around 5 June lived with her. When she was about 5 or 6 her mother sent her to live with her "Aunt" Peggy, who was a black woman, that lived in New Jersey. She grew up with mostly all black people except when she was with her mom, who told everyone she was adopted, she was with some white people. Her father was a black man named Jimmy. He was an entertainer from the Stump and Stumpy Show. Something I never realized is "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" (Jimmy Cross) I now see how this can be. Her granny, June, could not get past her black skin and didn't care for her. "I don't want to be a secret anymore because my race is inconvenient," says June. Everything was fine with her father Jimmy and her mother for a while, until her mother didn't want to do it anymore, and her father's show was not doing as well as before. Jimmy became an alcoholic and abusive. One night June's mother called Jimmy the N-Word and he beat her and yelled at her. June's mother snuck out of a movie theater when her and Jimmy were there and left forever. She reconciled with her mother and her mother was interview throughout her film. Her mother passed away 7 years after the documentary aired. Her father passed away in 1963 from cancer.
Lindsay
1 comment:
Well done.
Post a Comment