This post is sort of a sequel to my previous one which focuses on the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. I'm writing now about a screening for movie critics that I attended in 2006. At that time, I was reviewing films on WAKE UP WITH WHOOPI, the name of the live national weekday morning radio show out of New York City that was hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. She got me hired for the show.
In a midtown Manhattan deluxe screening room, there was an afternoon preview screening of BOBBY. The star-packed film, directed and written by Emilio Estevez, is a fictionalized story of the hours leading up to the shooting of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel. Senator Kennedy, a presidential hopeful, had just won the Democratic presidential primary in California. He was shot on June 5, 1968. I was a student then, attending a parochial high school in the Watts section of South Central Los Angeles. I awoke to the tragedy that had happened in the pre-dawn hours. I was shaken. So was my mother. That was one of the worst days of my life. When I got to school that morning, we were all stunned and zombie-like due to the news. All of us. Students and faculty alike. The principal dismissed classes before noon and after a campus mass was held so we could pray for Senator Kennedy. Ours was a school of predominantly Black Catholic young men. We had some Black and Black/Latino priests as teachers. We lost Senator Robert F. Kennedy to an assassin's bullet in June. We lost Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to an assassin's bullet in April. Our world had grown dark.
In the screening room with its plush seats, I -- as usual -- looked around to see if any other Black film reviewers were there. No. I was the only in the room which had a good number of folks in attendance. One of the folks was ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA film critic, Joel Siegel. Here's a trailer for 2006's BOBBY.
Nick Cannon is in the film. He played a Kennedy supporter from South Central L.A. In one scene, his characters talks about the sheer joy and hope he had running behind Senator Kennedy's convertible as the senator was driven with his wife into our neighborhood to campaign and greet the Black residents. That scene put tears in my eyes because I had been one of those enthusiastic, hopeful and happy kids running behind the senator's car. He spoke just a few blocks from my high school. I still vividly recall how robust and happy he looked. I vividly recall how he saw us. He touched us, talked to us, listened to us, saw our homes.
While seated, before the film started, and afterwards, on his way to the elevators, Joel Siegel was somewhat holding court telling fellow attendees that he was native Los Angeleno who had been a joke writer for some of Senator Kennedy's speeches.
I didn't tell anyone that I had been one of those kids in South Central L.A. happily running behind Senator Kennedy's convertible, showing our support for him. But, when I heard the late Senator's words end the film, I wondered what he would've thought at the sight of only one Black person in the room -- and no Black people seen on national TV doing the kind of work Joel Siegel did. They were available and ready, but they weren't seen because they were denied equal opportunities.
That's a reason why I support the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
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