THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 9, 1996 TAG: 9603090400
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Grandma Elna, Cousin Clifton, Aunt Lurlean (known as ``Ain't Dump''), and Cousin Beauty (that's short for ``Black Beauty'') up on the big screen. At Greenbrier and Lynnhaven malls, no less.
Keela Boose has seen it now four times. And she still can't believe it.
``The first time I was just enthralled with seeing these characters I knew come to life all over again,'' says Boose, clasping her hands like a child surprised.
The movie ``Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored'' is the story of the family of Boose's father. Based on the 1990 memoir of the same title, it covers life in Glen Allen, Miss., from the days of hardcore segregation in 1946, to 1962 and the beginnings of integration. Author Clifton Taulbert is Boose's cousin.
The book is elegant, a work of art itself with sepia-toned family snapshots on the cover.
Just as elegant is Boose, her long braids regal as Nefertiti's, reaching past her shoulders. On Thursday, she reclined in a spacious, wood-paneled Florida room that overlooks the Elizabeth River.
Publisher of ``Beautiful Brown Skinned Girls'' magazine, Boose returned from Chicago to live in the Campostella Heights home after the death of her parents, Norfolk State University professors Sidney and Beatrice Jordan Boose.
The movie takes her back to Glen Allen, a place she visited as a girl. There she made mudpies while cousin Clifton baby-sat and basked in the aura of Grandma Elna, a woman much revered by her community.
But the gritty scenes from the movie go back to the days before Boose was born. Clifton's mother births him in a cotton field as a foreman threatens to dock pay if folks don't get on back to work. Klansmen parade through town.
``It gives you a feeling for what people were confronted with,'' said Boose. ``It was such a dehumanizing experience, you wonder how they could maintain their dignity and humanity.
``I saw it as a story of struggle, uplifting, a historical lesson,'' said Boose, who has a cameo appearance in the movie. ``People who go see it can be empowered by the way the characters empower themselves. They take it upon themselves to change their situations.''
Just like Boose, I had some relatives who used to be colored: my Aunt Essie and all the other
Sullivans who came North from Aberdeen, Miss., during the Great Migration.
As a girl growing up in the 1970s, I'd clean Aunt Essie's apartment, polish her oak wardrobe, starch and iron her lace bureau scarves. All the while, Aunt Essie, packing a jowl full of snuff, waxed reminiscent about Mississippi. ``Oh honey, we had us a ball.''
I wondered. Wasn't Mississippi and mean white folks what Aunt Essie came North to get away from? Why did she seem almost sad to be living up North?
``Once Upon A Time'' helped me understand Aunt Essie's strange nostalgia.
She wasn't yearning for the hell of sharecropping, the fear in the night, the inequities.
Rather, she yearned for that time when black folks seemed closer, bolder.
That time when the whole village really did raise the child instead of reciting African proverbs about doing so.
That time when folks gathered regularly at the church to share community concerns.
That time when looking out for one another seemed as natural as breathing. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK
The Virginian-Pilot
Keela Boose of Campostella Heights has seen family members come to
life on the screen in the new movie "Once Upon A Time When We Were
Colored."
by CNB