Carolyn Crowder: Raised a Racist

As many of you know, I’m a film and TV reviewer and podcaster for Screen Thoughts, where I try to look at things on the screen from my gender’s perspective. Sometimes that role gives me opportunities that I consider great gifts. Last week, I enjoyed one such gift at the Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta, Maine, when I attended a screening of the documentary At the River. After the screening, I had the honor of interviewing director Carolyn Crowder. You can listen to that interview here.

Do watch the trailer below.

Some takeaways…

During our interview, I asked Carolyn about her upbringing and how she was raised to be prejudiced. She immediately corrected me, pointing out that it wasn’t mere prejudice, but that she “was raised to believe that [she] was better than every Black person.”

In the Q&A after the film, one of the Presbyterian ministers who had been featured in the film stood and said, “I was a small man, living in a small town, filled with small people. That is the way you make change. One small person at a time.” It was a moment.

Carolyn produced this film with her own money. Okay, it wasn’t her money—it was her racist father’s money that he left to her when he died. I asked her if he would roll over in his grave if he knew where his money had gone, and we both laughed knowing how true it was.

Carolyn told me about Ruby, their family’s housekeeper/childcare worker, who raised her and was the one stable person in her life. One day, Carolyn’s mother asked her to follow Ruby to the bus stop in order to report whether she sat at the front or the back of the bus. Pretending to play in the street, Carolyn did as she’d been told and watched her get on the bus. She was terrified. She knew that if she reported that Ruby had sat at the front of the bus, Ruby would have been fired; she was relieved when Ruby went to the back. I asked her if Ruby had sat at the front, would Carolyn have lied to her mother. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was raised to not lie.” Great answer.

At the same time, Carolyn said she sometimes got mixed messages from her parents. Once, her mother found out that Ruby had loan sharks after her. At the time, she was a Senior VP at the local bank. She told Ruby to bring her a list of all that she owed, and Carolyn’s mother would pay for it, allowing Ruby to pay her back without the crippling interest. She needed a loan, and Carolyn’s mother got her one from the bank. It was the first loan the bank had ever given to a Black person.

“Oh, so your mom wasn’t a racist?” I asked. “She was just following your dad?”

“No, she was a bigger racist than my father. That’s the mixed message part of it.”

This last exchange gives me hope for our future. It tells me that people can be more than one thing. That the divide in our country can be crossed, perhaps. Either way, these Americans, these “small” Americans, are heroes. Unsung heroes.

If you have the opportunity to see this documentary, don’t miss it.