Jurnee Smollett
Jurnee Diana Smollett (born October 1, 1986 is an American actress from New York City, New York).
The fourth of six performing siblings, she received critical acclaim for her title role in the independent film Eve's Bayou in 1997 and earned her a Young Star Award nomination.
Jurnee Smollett has four brothers and one sister, all of whom have professionally acted before: Jazz Smollett , Jocqui Smollett , Jake Smollett , Jojo Smollett and Jussie Smollett .
The Great Debaters
History books often leave a lot to be desired, especially for pointing out the less popular but still significant parts of the past. Few people may have heard of the Wiley College debate team, but a film like The Great Debaters can tell their story. Jurnee Smollett plays the team's Samantha Booke.
Smollett on The Great Debaters
"A lot of people have never even heard of Wiley College and it's giving voice to the voiceless," she said. "That's one thing that makes you so proud to be part of a film like this, because you're giving a salute to everyone who has come before you, the people who have worked so tirelessly to make it where we can sit up here and talk with all of you. So I'm very, very proud."
The students at Wiley strove to excel at their craft, because they were stuck in a racist south during the Great Depression. "Through the extensive research that we all had to do, as you dig deeper and deeper and just hear all the first-hand account stories of what it was like to live in the Jim Crow South and what it was like to live through the Great Depression and what is was like to know the fact that your cousin was lynched not too long ago, and yet the government has declared a war on crime and left out lynching. It’s this crazy feeling to know how society wants to dictate to you what place you should stand. Yet, you have all these emotions going on inside, all this frustration feeling like, ‘Well, shouldn’t I be entitled to be free?’ So they knew that education was their ticket and that’s what everyone told us. That’s the thing a lot of the first-hand account stories were saying, that education was their ticket. You were either a sharecropper or you were an educated person. There was no in between."
The Great Debaters
There were some dark days doing the research for the film. "It was heavy, doing the research on the lynchings. There is this book called Without Sanctuary that talks about how the lynchings were photographed oftentimes by the lynch mobs because they would take these pictures and put them on the back of these post cards and send them off to family members saying, ‘Look what we did on a Saturday night.’ They had their children there and they had food there and they had the bands there. It was hundreds of people who would kidnap people from jails before they were given a fair trial. There was no such thing as a fair trial and so, when you digest all of this stuff, it sometimes hits you heavy on the heart and it’s hard. At the same time, it makes me very, very proud because I know I’m standing on the shoulders of great people. I’m standing on the shoulders of the Ida B. Wells and the people who really, really fought and I’m so humbled by it."
Since the movie shows how education and excellence can help you escape from such a terrible situation, The Great Debaters can hopefully inspire today's youth. "We, as young people, don't have to be voiceless bystanders. We can be pro-active. We have to get out there. Whatever your passion is, whatever your cause is, we are all taking up space on this planet, and there's something about us not just absorbing everything and inhaling all the air. We have got to take care of each other, we have got to give back, we've got to be pro-active."
CanMag.com
http://www.canmag.com/nw/10028-great-debaters-jurnee-smollett
