Page 38 - Spelman50thReunionBook

The Assignment
by Maureen Akua Daniel

Second semester during my first year at Spelman, I took an English course from Mrs. Patricia Lowery, a young

white instructor from Long Beach, California. I liked her because she usually gave me positive feedback on
writing assignments and even when I hadn’t done my best work, she was always encouraging. Around

midterm, we were studying some of Shakespeare’s works and Mrs. Lowery thought it would be a great idea for
us to see the film version of Othello starring Lawrence Olivier which was playing at the Fox Theater. I can’t
remember if this was a class assignment or extra credit work, but I was one of a small group of students who

ventured downtown to see the movie.

When we arrived at the theater, we paid our money at the box office but instead of entering the theater through
the lobby, we were instructed to return to the street, make a right turn at the corner and climb the fire escape

stairs to the second floor balcony. In other words, we had been sent the segregated “colored” section of the
theater; the crow’s nest! As a child, I remember going to black owned movie theaters in Charleston, W.V.
where I grew up, but we never went to the white theaters until they became fully integrated in the late 1950s.

As the house lights at the Fox went down and the music for the film began to swell, I peered over the balcony
railing to witness the sea of white patrons seated beneath us. But my eyes quickly returned to the screen

when Olivier appeared looking very strange and unlike any black person I had ever seen. His skin was an odd
shade of bluish black with a purple cast and the thin white lines encircling his very white eyes belied his African
ancestry. At the time, I knew nothing of minstrelsy but it was disturbingly clear to me that this was a white man
in blackface wearing a short Afro wig pretending to be a Moor. Throughout the movie there were auditable

whispers and hissing noises coming from the audience on the main floor but when Othello kissed his wife,
Desdemona, a collective gasp and loud sounds of disgust rose from the spectators below. When the film

ended my friends and I quickly left the theater and headed back to campus bewildered by what we had seen.

I have no memory of the assignment or the discussion that followed. I can only recall a sense of betrayal and a
newly minted dislike for Mrs. Lowery.