Four Little Girls (and Condi, too)

Fifty years ago today at about 10:22am, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed by four active members of the Klu Klux Klan, an American terrorist organization. Their names were Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry. They belonged to a splinter group of the KKK of about a dozen members called The Cahaba Boys that met every Thursday night near the Cahaba river to drink beer and gripe about ridding the south of Catholics, Jews and black people.  Why did they create a splinter group? Because they didn't feel that the Klan was radical enough. This, at a time when the city of Birmingham was called Bombingham (by us, of course -- because it was happening to us) because since the mid 1940s, so many homes and churches in the African-American community were getting blown up on a regular basis with no federal government intervention whatsoever.  And of course, all of the bombings were officially unsolved cases.

Very few people know that Condoleezza Rice -- the first black woman to serve as the United States' national security adviser, as well as the first black woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State (2005 - 2009) -- could very easily have been one of those little girls.

A native of Birmingham, Condi was an only child to a teacher and a Presbyterian minister, both of whom were well-educated in historically black colleges, staunchly middle class and Southern natives, having survived the Great Depression and some of the worst racism this country had to offer.  They both knew the importance of a formal education and constantly stressed this to their child.  Initially home schooled (are you surprised by that one?) Condi's mother went so far as to enroll her in the first grade when she was 3 years old.  She could read music before she could read.

Here's a picture of the future Secretary of State with her mother Angelena, at home in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s.

She was 8 years old when her playmate Denise McNair -- 11 years old at the time -- was killed in the bombing.  Denise attended preschool at Condi's father's church, where he was a pastor.  When Condi was 11, her family relocated to another city in Alabama and shortly thereafter, to Denver, Colorado and then finally to Palo Alto, California.  And the rest is history.

I wonder: If those southern white terrorists knew that bombing that church would have caused the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, would they have done it anyway?



Here's a 1997 interview of filmmaker Spike Lee for 4 Little Girls -- his first feature length documentary.  Interestingly, it was an article he read in the New York Times Magazine in 1983 when he was a first year film student at NYU that prompted him to make this movie.  His thoughts about how the movie got made are also very telling.

Documentaries are so important.  These girls would be lost to history books if Mr. Lee hadn't made this one.

A few days ago, the Congressional Gold Medal was given to the families of the four girls -- the highest honor a civilian can receive.  Somehow all of that rings hollow, especially in light of the fact that Carolyn Bryant -- the woman who pointed out Emmett Till to her husband and brother-in-law from the backseat of a sedan  -- is still alive and well at 74 years of age and relaxing comfortably with her loving family in Greenville, Mississippi. She's an accessory to his murder. Why has she never been prosecuted? Why isn't she in jail?

As if on cue, Congressman John Boehner wept openly during that Congressional Gold Medal ceremony.  When they prosecute Carolyn Bryant and many others like her for their crimes against African-Americans during the civil rights movement, I'll believe the sincerity of his tears.

Covering the Basics, Part 3: Weight of the Nation

I watched the HBO documentary Weight of the Nation, Part 1: Consequences the other night with lurid interest.  It was so compelling, I've posted the entire series here.  I hope it's as much of a learning moment for you as it was for me.

My remarkably healthy Low Country childhood coupled with lots of quality time as an undergrad in the happy health-obsessed hippie enclave of Austin Texas made me more aware of good nutrition and healthy heart choices than most people I knew.  And I was always too body conscious to let myself go completely. But so what. What difference does any of that make if I am forever at the mercy of a bag of baked Cheetos.

I struggled through The Clean Program three times before things began to click.  This last go round has really solidified quite a few things. Thankfully, I've decided to drop some bad habits permanently. At this point, I'm beginning to get my body back -- but I have to fight for it, every day.  And that's really where the rubber hits the road.  It takes hard work and discipline to get healthy and stay that way, and most people aren't willing to make that sacrifice.  On the other hand, I shouldn't have to fight this hard to eat clean food.

It was easier when the food you ate wasn't genetically modified to compel you to keep eating it. It was easier when a snack meant an apple and not a bag of Doritos.  It was easier when everything wasn't loaded with salt and fat and sugar.  It was easier when so much of what you consumed wasn't an allergen.  It was easier when we weren't so sedentary, when work meant that you physically exhausted yourself everyday (like a cowboy or a logger or a steel mill worker or a fieldhand).

Here's my rule, plain and simple: real food doesn't need a nutrition label. From now on, I want to eat real food.

Part 1: Consequences



Part 2: Choices



Part 3: Children in Crisis



Part 4: Challenges

i could have danced all day...

we rehearsed for a few hours today for next week's broadway empire shoot. after we filled out some paperwork, we were coupled off and we danced in rounds and then in sequence, one after the other, all together, all around the room - laughing and chatting and carrying on as we acted out way through it. it was so much fun!

the thing that i love about these movements is that there are no rules, no "proper" way to do them, per se. you do what you feel. it's so perfect for me - someone who really loves to dance but who gets flummoxed by the "right" way to do these things. and really, this was the point in time in social dances when the formality was stripped away and people just made stuff up and did what they wanted to do. you didn't go to class to learn how to do a dance like the shim sham shimmy. you just did it. and when we do it, it's really funky and sexy and beautiful - everybody got all free with it and then it felt like a house party, out of time.

my partner is brian, an alumna of the color purple national tour with a fairly serious dance background. he's a little taller than me, which worked perfectly with certain dances. he led so effortlessly, it was almost as though we'd been dancing together forever.

pat the choreographer and her two assistants were more than focused, drifting around the room and giving direction and suggestions and notes and encouragement as necessary. the next thing i knew, it was over.

here's a cool video that explains a few of the dances we're doing. i love the grizzly bear, as you know. the castle walk is a favorite, too. we're not doing any waltzes - too 19th century and way too white, especially for a black folk's juke joint/roadhouse scene.



wouldn't it be great if i could keep dancing like this?

another day, another (dance!) audition: boardwwalk empire

i got called in to be seen yesterday for the hbo series boardwalk empire. maybe you've heard about it: it's all about big time gangsters and city corruption on the jersey shore - based on actual people and events, no less - and set in the 1920s. martin scorsese is producing it. hbo has already committed to 12 episodes. mr. scorsese has already shot the first one.

what they wanted me to do was dance. i almost laughed out loud when i read the breakdown. me, dance? i'm the one that everyone would make fun of when i walked across the room, much less danced at parties or family gatherings or whatever. i'm the one that never knew how to properly execute the latest dance that was sweeping the black nation - i just moved with feeling, and that was never enough. i'm the one with the older brother who, when he was a dancer and hard at work in that world briefly, reassured me time and again that i couldn't dance. all of that criticism and ridicule made me feel awkward and stunted whatever natural grace i had. eventually, i didn't move at all. why bother, when i would only end up humiliating myself. the party would be on fire in the other room while i was the one in the kitchen, sitting at the table in relative darkness, chugging ice water and having long winding conversations into the night with fascinating people about books and ideas and life.

i danced when i had to and only when i had to, which is usually when someone paid me to do it, i.e. some grand musical theater production or a play that required movement. i wanted to take class formally - i even interned at broadway dance center - but i just couldn't afford the classes. actually, i didn't know of very many dancers who could afford the classes. what was especially annoying is when i would work hard and get lean and strong and people would look at me and assume that i was a dancer.

and then something clicked: swing music exploded all over creation and all of a sudden, dancing was fun, fun, fun. here's the kicker: i was good at it! as it turns out, i could dance all along. who knew?

i was going to call my agent and tell them to get me out of this one, but then i realized that they probably wouldn't choreograph anything because it was a scene in a jook/juke joint (i thought those were only in my part of the south!). yankees call them roadhouses, i guess. though those are something totally different in other parts of the south, too. i actually liked the tea dances of the 1920s, and had been going to see michael arenella and his dreamland orchestra long enough to practice them. as i dug out my character shoes and dusted them off, i thought that if there was no structured "...five, six, seven, eight!" situation, i would get through it with my dignity intact. heck. it might even be a good time.

the day before this particular dance call, they wanted me to lip-synch a mamie smith song called crazy blues - in full vintage regalia, no less. i know i nailed that one - i like all the smiths, not just bessie - but they wanted a medium sized black woman and i don't think that's me, because i'm a size 6. a few weeks before that, i read for an under 5 role of the babysitter, which was interesting. so here i was, in my long black gym shorts and a t-shirt, black socks and character shoes, back for a third try and ready to rip it up.

once we were all signed in, given numbers, photographed and led out of holding, the casting folk took us to a room and tried to make themselves as invisible as possible. we sort of paired ourselves up in this effortless way, the way you look over at someone and both of you point at each other at the same time. the choreographer, an older pixie-ish lady whose one syllabled name escapes me, was a real pip. she explained the dances, showed us how they should be executed with a few small deft moves, told us what she was looking for specifically and pretty much pushed play on the cd player across the room and left us to our own devices, watching all of us carefully. my partner was a tall lean beautiful lightskinned brother named kyle who looked like he just breezed in from classes at ailey. i smiled at him, relieved and grateful - how exciting, i thought. i get to move around the room with a real dancer! when i told him that, he smiled broadly and waved me off.

we did the black bottom, the shim sham shimmy, and a few others that i liked. we just danced and pretended like we were at a party and whatnot. at one point, kyle went into a six count swing out and i blurted, that's the lindy hop, that's the 30s! and he said, i'm sorry, i couldn't help it! and we just laughed and kept going.

my favorite one was the grizzly bear. here's a fairly good example of the way it looks:



it's so fun!

interestingly, there was strictly no charleston. she was really pointed about that. the year in this scene was 1920. the charleston - straight out of a small island off the coast of south carolina, no less! - hadn't been invented yet.

when we were done, the little lady made a small apologetic statement. something like, i'm sorry, you're all wonderful but we have to let a few of you go - and boy, haven't i heard that a million times! - and then she starts cutting people. by the time she gets to me, i'm mentally out the door and on with the rest of my day, but instead of dismissing me, she says, you can stay. and then she turns to my partner and thanks him for his time but no, he's not right for this part.

you could have knocked me over with a breath of fresh air.

after digging for white rhinestones in chinatown (don't ask), i skip over to the coffee pot in midtown to catch up with renee and stacy (who should have been at this audition, really) and before we separate, i get a call from the casting agent letting me know that i got the part. yeesh - they beat the talent agent to the punch?!

costume fitting tomorrow afternoon, deep in the heart of brooklyn. huzzah!