29 Apr Award-winning “Blurring the Color Line” Film Screening at the Laney Museum Laney Museum
The Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History and the Augusta Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association were pleased to present Blurring The Color Line, an award-winning documentary film about the Chinese in the Segregated South on Thursday, March 23, 2023 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm. The film by Crystal Kwok, was screened at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History. Blurring The Color Line follows director Crystal Kwok as she unpacks the history behind her grandmother’s family, who were neighborhood grocery store owners in the Black community of Augusta, Georgia during the Jim Crow era. The film was free to the public.
Crystal Kwok said, “This project has forced me to dig deep into the cracks of American history, of what is told, forgotten, or erased. It was important for me to weave in the significance of how the larger structure of segregation worked in the deep south and how that paved the way for the Chinese immigrants to enter. It begs us to ask where the Chinese, or any other minority for that matter, fit in on the color line and how it affected their sense of identity and attitudes towards Black people. Why were they able to go to white schools but had to live in the Black neighborhood? Why did certain Chinese families allow or not allow their children to play with their Black neighbor kids? How do these behaviors speak to today’s racial tensions?”
The film won the 2022 Harlem International Film Festival Mira Nair Rising Female Filmmaker Award and the 2022 DisOrient Film Festival Courage Award and was selected for screening in numerous film festivals across the country.