Juneteenth is celebration with ironic origins. The Miss Juneteenth movie is a version of the stage-mother theme with a gritty, straightforward socio-cultural framework.
You may or may not be aware that Juneteenth grew from a grossly delayed delivery of the announcement that slavery in the United States was officially no longer legal. Though the Emancipation Proclamation ended the practice of slavery in America on January 1, 1863, that news was not delivered to the enslaved African Americans of Texas until June 19, 1865! History records that more than 250,000 people were still being held in bondage and enforced labor, without human rights for nearly two and a half years longer than the nation legally allowed.
But we accentuate the positive. Slavery was now done; well, at least by the 13th Amendment that December. In the late twentieth century, the June 19th date gradually began to work its way to national holiday status and, five years ago, it became Juneteenth National Independence Day – a federal holiday celebrating heritage, freedom, and the promotion of human rights.
The movie Miss Juneteenth (2020) stars Nicole Beharie in the role of a former pageant/scholarship winner, now struggling financially as a menial task worker. Nevertheless, she is determined to have her daughter compete for the same prize. The indie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and while critically acclaimed and award-winning (Beharie won the Gotham Award for Best Actress), as with most independent films, its star is not a household name.
Beharie’s breakthrough was the film American Violet in 2008. She had the female lead in the TV series Sleepy Hollow (2013-2016) until she left the show due to her battle with an autoimmune condition. In a 2016 interview with The Los Angeles Times, she revealed that she felt the Sleepy Hollow producers refused to accommodate the difficulty by working around her malady. She was forced to continue filming, and her condition worsened while her white costar, Tom Mison, was allowed to take a month to recover from his own illness before returning to work. “I feel like it’s taken me the last few years to really see clearly that it wasn’t personal, it’s about the way that these structures are set up,” she told the newspaper. “But I was labeled as problematic and blacklisted by some people.”
(Who can be certain whether there were racially oriented motivations at play? It does remind AutS of Robert Wagner’s story in his memoir Pieces of My Heart of how he went blind as a result of an astringent detergent in that bubble bath scene in The Pink Panther, and the studio wanted to fire him because his blindness – which THEY caused – was messing up their work schedule! He said it was David Niven, Peter Sellers, and Blake Edwards who came to his rescue by refusing to continue with the film unless the producers worked around Wagner during the three weeks it took for his eyes to recover.) But, I digress.
Nicole continued to work in small guest appearances and recently had a run as a supporting regular on the series Morning Show (2023-2025). In between came Miss Juneteenth. The script is the creation of writer/director Channing Godfrey Peoples for her first feature length film. Peoples was born in Texas which was not only the last enclave of slavery in America but was also the birthplace of both Juneteenth – long before it became a federal holiday – and of the real-life Miss Juneteenth pageant. The modern, national version is headquartered in Alabama. The Miss Juneteenth America Scholarship Pageantry Program® holds forth that, “Young leaders deserve an experience that shows
them they are not outside the American story, but central to it,” and that the pageant, “was created to answer that call.” Kai Jones in the movie, portrayed by Alexis Chikaeze, is a conflicted but apt fictionalized embodiment of those young leaders.
Nicole Beharie’s latest postproduction work is the female lead in By Any Means along with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg. It’s an action/crime thriller which, according to Movie Insider, is set for national release in September.
Miss Juneteenth was never released as a movie house feature; the indie producers decided to release it straight to video on demand. You can visit Reelgood streaming guide to find the where-to-watch info and celebrate Juneteenth National Independence Day anytime.
~FW
The Miss Juneteenth America Scholarship Pageantry Program® is presented by The Maynard 4 Foundation®, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.