
Blurring the Color Line | James Brown
Clip: Season 11 Episode 4 | 53sVideo has Closed Captions
Deanna Brown talks with filmmaker Crystal Kwok about her father, James Brown.
Deanna Brown talks with Blurring the Color Line filmmaker Crystal Kwok about her father, the music legend James Brown, who grew up in Augusta, Georgia. She tells of his young life living in the Southern city and having to work in one of the Chinese-owned grocery stores to survive through poverty - this was very much like the lives of other Black residents.
Major funding for America ReFramed provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding provided by Open Society Foundations,...

Blurring the Color Line | James Brown
Clip: Season 11 Episode 4 | 53sVideo has Closed Captions
Deanna Brown talks with Blurring the Color Line filmmaker Crystal Kwok about her father, the music legend James Brown, who grew up in Augusta, Georgia. She tells of his young life living in the Southern city and having to work in one of the Chinese-owned grocery stores to survive through poverty - this was very much like the lives of other Black residents.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(upbeat music) - We're talking about his relationship with the Chinese community because apparently, through my research, he was an errand boy at one of the stores.
- He did speak of being an errand boy and helping, you know, older ladies with their bags, just having to do what he had to do to survive.
- Right.
- It was survival.
- Yeah.
- It was a hard time.
- Yeah.
- He was young, he was Black, he was poor.
- Yeah.
- So the Chinese people with businesses in the hood, as we call it, is what it is.
- Yes, it still is, right.
- It gives young boys, like my father, who wouldn't have an opportunity to make a little money and to have a little job.
- Yeah.
- Have a little responsibility.
It takes a village to raise a child.
And in that village, everybody don't have to look alike.
Blurring the Color Line | A Black and Chinese Neighborhood
Video has Closed Captions
In Augusta, Georgia's Black neighborhood, Chinese grocery stores once lined the streets. (1m)
Blurring the Color Line | Acceptance?
Video has Closed Captions
Members of the First Baptist Church of Augusta talk about shared but separate histories. (1m 14s)
Blurring the Color Line | A Community Together
Video has Closed Captions
Residents relive the aftermath of the three days of the 1970 Augusta Riot. (1m 7s)
Blurring the Color Line | Jim Crow Laws
Video has Closed Captions
Why were Augusta's Chinese afforded certain privileges that Black residents did not have? (16s)
Blurring the Color Line | Mixed Race: Being Black & Chinese
Video has Closed Captions
A mother and daughter share memories of growing up mixed race within their Chinese family. (2m 56s)
Blurring the Color Line | Preview
Video has Closed Captions
How do Chinese grocers in the Jim Crow South complicate America’s binary paradigm of race? (30s)
Blurring the Color Line | The 1970 Augusta Riot
Video has Closed Captions
The death of a Black teenager led to the largest uprising of Black Americans in the South. (1m)
Blurring the Color Line | Trailer
Video has Closed Captions
How do Chinese grocers in the Jim Crow South complicate America’s binary paradigm of race? (1m 12s)
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipMajor funding for America ReFramed provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding provided by Open Society Foundations,...