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The Resonance Of 'Bees': Movie's Issues Still Relevant

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By SARAH HOYE

shoye@tampatrib.com

Published: November 1, 2008

TAMPA - When movie producers approached Gina Prince-Bythewood seven years ago to write the screenplay for "The Secret Life of Bees," she didn't have time to read the 300-page novel.

By the time she read the book five years later, movie producers had moved on.

"I got to the line where Lily says she is unlovable, and it just wrecked me," writer-director Prince-Bythewood said. "It all starts with this story the novel and it was important for me to make it the film."

The movie, which opened Oct. 17, is adapted from the best-selling novel by Sue Monk Kidd and tells the story of the unlikely bond forged between three beekeeping sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo) and 14-year-old runaway Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning), who arrives at their doorstep with her black caretaker, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson).

Set in 1964, the film has connections to the present.

"This election is historic, and to be a tiny part of it is incredible," Prince-Bythewood said about the timing of the film's release to an election involving a black presidential candidate. "I love the fact that these two things are happening at the same time and being tied together. Your work can have some resonance."

At The Dawn Of A New Day

The film includes tense scenes of racial inequalities such as voter registration violations and lunch counter segregation, issues from Tampa's not-so-distant past.

With Election Day just days away, some Tampa residents reflected on race relations during that time.

"I can record this as the single most important time I have cast a ballot because it represents the dawn of a new day in this country," state Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, said of this year's vote. "People fought for what they believed in, but for that period in history we wouldn't be where we are today. ... I don't think paradigm shift is equal enough to describe it."

Growing up, Joyner, 65, attended Middleton High, one of only two schools open to black students in Tampa. The Hillsborough County School Board didn't approve plans to desegregate until May 1969, more than a decade after separate public schools for black and white students were ruled unconstitutional.

Joyner recalled instances of injustice and her public defiance. Joyner was among a group of students from Middleton and Blake high schools who participated in a sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter downtown in March 1960. She was made to order food from the rear of a roadside eatery on the way to Florida A&M University, where she enrolled after graduating from Middleton in 1961.

"It was a way of life because you were colored. We didn't like it, but you did it," she said. "And then we decided not to do it, so our families would fix us a lunch we'd take on the bus in a shoebox."

While attending Florida A&M, she was arrested twice in Tallahassee for demonstrating and was put in jail for the second offense, she said.

"The university sent us our books so we could study, and the shadow from the jail bars would lay across the pages. I will never forget that," said Joyner, who graduated from Florida A&M in 1964 and earned a law degree there. "I was in college when the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. I just remember how welcome it was that things would change and how we were on the threshold of getting rights like everybody else."

Tampa native Cheryl Collins grew up in Central Park and graduated from Middleton in 1967. She, too, recalled the difficult days of segregation.

"It wasn't so normal that we didn't notice, but with our parents we were always taught that we were just as good as the next person," said Collins, 59. "It was definitely a part of my life and I am thankful that I am still around to be able to share those stories. Now I can go anywhere I want to and not feel like a second-class citizen."

Personal Redemption

Although the nation has progressed since the Civil Rights Era, racial unease still exists, said Stephen Craig, professor and chairman of the political science department at the University of Florida. Craig graduated from St. Petersburg High School in 1966.

"I was part of the segregated South. I grew up at schools where blacks did not attend," he said. "It's an emotional thing. It's truly remarkable. That doesn't mean it's solved, but something has changed."

Hope for a better tomorrow, whether it's the strengthening of relationships, self-awareness or cultural understanding, is what "Bees" author Monk Kidd wanted to convey.

"It touches that place in us, our place of belonging and that deep desire to find connection," said Kidd, 60, who was pleased with the film. "What I was drawing on was not only the great racial divides and the reality of segregation, it was the whole small-town life in the '60s."

Kidd, 15 at the time the book takes place, said she was affected by growing up in racially polarized rural Georgia.

"I remember realizing that there is enormous cruelty and injustice," Kidd said. "I wanted to address it in the book, and it personally became redemption to these memories I had."

Researcher Michael Messano contributed to this report. Reporter Sarah Hoye can be reached at (813) 259-7832. Keyword: Black History, for slideshows and interviews about black history in the Bay area.

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