My grandmother had two movie cabinets. They were made with red stained wood and sliding glass doors. Whenever I went into the living room and I sat down she’d turn her head to me and tell me about a movie she wanted to show me.
I’ve always loved movies and I think it comes from her. Every movie that was ever influential to me that I can reference to this day I promise you, I watched it with her. I’d call my older brother Taylor in and ask him to set up while I popped two big bags of popcorn, I’d come back, and kneel while we picked out the movie we wanted to watch.
There were four movies in total that we watched every chance we could get. Barbershop, Beauty Shop (our most watched), Deliver Us From Eve, and our absolute favorite Holiday Heart. We’d spend hours just talking and watching movies. It was in those moments I knew that although I couldn't tell her everything I could still confide in her and she would hear me.
Holiday Heart is a movie about a drag queen Holiday. After his husband dies he plans to travel to Paris. His plans are changed however when after a show a 12-year-old girl named Nikki, begs him to help her mother Wanda who's being assaulted by her then-boyfriend. In the movie, he takes them into his home and plays a pivotal role in raising Wanda's daughter Nikki, as she relapses into her drug habit and abandons her daughter. Throughout the movie, you learn that Nikki, like her mother and surprisingly much like me, is a writer.
I’m the second oldest of 6 children. My mother is a single mother and although she herself isn't battling a drug addiction, I found myself drawing comparisons between Nikki and me as well as Wanda and my mother. The first time my grandmother showed me this movie it was the weekend, meaning my mother wasn't home and was instead somewhere unknown. Taylor and I took care of the two youngest -Michael and Jordan-, my grandmother as well as other family members pitching in. It wasn't until recently, that she started to see the real problem and the effect it had on my siblings and me.
As we watched this movie together, we cried. We talked and our bond strengthened. We talked about the movie itself but we also talked about the comparisons. It was the first time I talked to her about my mother and truly felt that she understood me. Before, it was always “Madisson, you and Taylor are the oldest you have to step up” and she always looked at me as their maternal guidance. I felt that she never understood I was a kid too. Hell, I was probably the same age as Nikki if not a year or so older, but I was still a child. I always felt more like Holiday even though I was Nikki, taking care of everyone and being responsible for children. I was used to being their sibling, not their mother.
Watching this together finally made me feel like things were going to start looking up, and they did it just took time. That was an important moment in making me who I am because establishing a support system and having that bond I felt was weak suddenly become so strong was amazing. So we kept it going.
My grandmother had two movie cabinets. They were made with red stained wood and sliding glass doors. Whenever I went into the living room and I sat down she’d turn her head to me and tell me about a movie she wanted to show me. She didn't just entertain me with that movie cabinet she also taught me.
From that movie cabinet, we watched Mighty Times: The Children's March, Selma, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, and many more. Most if not all the movies I watched with her had fully black casts or were about Black people. She showed me the first black Cinderella movie, she showed me Double Platinum, and we watched Hidden Figures together. I was so lucky growing up as a young black girl that I had her because while Disney and all the things on cable were lacking in diversity and representation my grandmother made sure I had mine in every way she could.
Now the first documentary I mentioned -Mighty Times: The Children's March- is about children in Birmingham Alabama who persevered through high-pressure fire hoses, police dogs, and the police themselves in 1963 to end segregation. The first time I ever saw it was with my grandmother. She told me about it and she was also the first person to really teach me the history of my people.
In school, we learned history but never enough to really tell me what happened, and how deadly it was and still is to be black. We learned the same stuff, MLK, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and even then it wasn't enough. I knew the bare bones of my history until my grandmother told me everything she had lived through, and encouraged me to do my own research with the books she had. Boy did she have plenty.
She was 9/10 years old when Emmet Till died, she marched with King, when he came to Chicago and spoke at the Stone Temple Missionary Baptist Church. She was there. She taught me about Bloody Sunday, she taught me about the Little Rock Nine, she taught me about Rodney King, she taught me about Latasha Harlins, and the first time I ever heard of the Black Panther Party was because I asked her about this book she had on her shelf about them.
I wouldn't be the person I am today without her. My views would definitely still be the same but I wouldn't be nearly as educated as I am. She single-handedly did what none of my teachers could do competently enough and truthfully enough. Without her, I wouldn't be the social justice warrior I am and I wouldn't be so unapologetically black.
She raised me to be proud and see the power in my skin, she taught me to love my hair, and she taught me to further my mind. Every time I learn something new I share it with her. We watch the news together and we can have real discussions together.
In 8th grade, one of my teachers was talking about the Little Rock Nine, which was a group of 9 black students who were chosen to integrate a white high school. She was teaching it to the class. I had learned about it the first time from my grandmother and then I had read and reread the memoir “Warriors Don't Cry" written by Melba Patillo Beals from 5th grade to that moment. I even had the book in my bookbag.
As she was teaching she said something incorrect. I don't normally correct my teachers but it was Black History Month. The part she was incorrect about would change the entire perspective and put false ideas into the heads of the students so I raised my hand. She had stated that the Little Rock Nine were protected and guided to school by the National Guard, which couldn't have been more wrong.
The truth was that Orval Fabus, the governor of Arkansas, had enlisted the National Guard to keep them from going inside the school. It took 16 days for a federal judge to have them removed so the children could be allowed inside, and I told her as much. Then she backpedaled and tried to say that's what she had said but everyone had heard her. To this day I’m not sure if she genuinely thought that and was ill-informed on the matter, or if she tried to teach us that incorrectly because a simple Google search could have told her that, but hey.
That wasn't the first time I knew something regarding the history of my people or otherwise that my teachers and fellow classmates didn't. In my senior year, I was the only person in one of my classes aside from 2 others and the teacher to know that January 6th was the insurrection on the Capitol. I was the only one to know in depth about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and it was all thanks to my Grandmother.
Every day I’m thankful that I have her and I’m grateful for every lesson she ever taught me and I’m thankful that I have her as the true representation of a Black Woman, what Black women can do. She's the strongest, most motivated woman I know and honestly, I don't think that I would be as aware if she hadn't called me into the living room one day and asked me if I wanted to watch one of her most beloved movies on the DVD-VCR player.
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