HW 30 A "Secret Daughter Documentary"

I attended the speaker on Tuesday night titled, "Secret Daughter" with June Cross. I found this documentary to be very interesting and it really intrigued me with facts that I didn’t know about what African Americans went through. Secret Daughter was about a girl who grew up where her mother was white and her father was black. They divorced when she was at a young age. She went through her life having a mother who was embarrassed to have a black daughter and it was considered shocking ad appalling to even be associated with them. Her mother would make up excuses for being around her; saying she was adopted or they were just watching her as a friend of their neighbors. One quote I found to be pretty appalling was about what people would say about her mother. “She says her society will drop her if they find out she’s her daughter”. I found this to be shocking because I thought to myself why would her mother ever marry a black man if she was going to be embarrassed of her own daughter in the future? June Cross also stated about her aunt and uncle that “their love helped her withstand the loss of my mother”. Since she lived with her aunt and uncle they treated her as if she was their own daughter. They helped fill the spot of not having a mother always there. One interesting topic that I listened to throughout this documentary was that her grandmother was completely ashamed of her being black. I don’t know how I would be able to go through life knowing that my own family was ashamed of me just because of the color of my skin. I really was fascinated by this film of June Cross’s own life and I find her to be a pretty brave person to be able to stand before us today and tell her story.