Roots Of My Heart

On October 27, between the hours of 6pm to 8pm, a famed Cuban director, Gloria Rolando graced the campus of Morgan State University. She came to show the faculty and student population a special film screening of her movie “Roots of My Heart.” This movie screening was held in the Murphy Recital Hall and an in-depth explanation of the movie at its conclusion. The movie “Roots of My Heart” was a movie created to highlight the massacre that occurred of the dark skinned Cubans in 1912. At the time of the massacre, Cuba was heavily divided mainly on the basis of skin color. Whites and mulattos held the good paying jobs while blacks were reduced to the menial jobs throughout the country. The activists who campaigned for a change in the early 20th …show more content…
She finds it very interesting that only light skinned Cubans are remembered by history books. She begins this quest after being denied high profile news coverage and being demoted to small articles at her newspaper. She wants to prove that darker skinned Cubans had a place in Cuban history. She began with the history of her own family, and comes to realized that her great-parents Jose Julian and Maria Victoria were around during that era. Her grandfather Jose Julian was an active member of the Independent Party of Color. This party was formed to fight against segregation, thereby gain equality for blacks in Cuba. Mercedes dream about their amazingly intense, but brief love for one another. He loves her, but leaves to go to the heart of the protests, as there is where he is needed most. The dream then takes a horrible turn with the visualization of her great-grandfather and other Independent Party of Color members. She then wakes up and tries to tell her mother her dream. The movie ends with her spending the day with her boyfriend Armando and her kids talking about her grandparents and their roles in Cuban