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150 14. Arts Beat In May 1986, the Coopers’ youngest daughter, Jocelyn (Jo-An), graduated from Hampton University with a degree in mass communications arts. Formerly Hampton Institute, the college had recently upgraded to university status. After graduating from Thomas Dewey High School in 1982, Jo-An’s other top college choices were Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Vassar College in upstate New York. Tony Brown, founding dean of Howard ’s School of Communications, urged the Coopers to send their daughter to Hampton. Jo-An loved her stay in Virginia.“Hampton was the best ever, the most amazing experience of my whole life,” she said in an interview, projecting enthusiasm.Why? “I’m a Southern Belle at heart. I love the food, the formality, the warmth, the music, everything about it.”She did not know what the South was like, despite knowing that her paternal grandmother, Irma Robinson, was from Charleston, South Carolina. How could Jo-An know? Robinson had moved north as a child and lost her southern accent. “Wow, I love this,” she recalled. “This is so amazing. People would speak in the morning. People were polite. There was a curfew for two weeks because McGrew Towers was being built. There was strong bonding with the young women. There were cliques of New Yorkers, southerners, and midwesterners, but we gravitated to a lot of the same things. There were cheerleader types and girlie-girls.Many of them were very happy.Fraternity and sorority culture was something I never saw before Hampton. My parents were very political and about solving problems, so socializing was like think tanks with food involved. At Hampton, socializing was light, about having fun with no agendas.” And at a historically black college or university, there was a layer of stuff she did not have to deal with, for example, constantly defining and defending her black identity, which could be a debilitating distraction on predominantly white campuses. By choosing to major in mass communication arts, Jo-An thought she was going to become a journalist like her dad. ArnaAlexander Bontemps,son of the legendary Harlem Renaissance writer, was a memorable journalism and creative writing professor. Another professor taught nonverbal communications, one of the most amazing classes Jo-An took.1 Arts Beat 151 After graduation, Jo-An moved to Nashville. Instead of journalism, she wanted to work in the music business. Her choice was not impulsive. She had interned at WLIB-AM while in high school, and the experience was pivotal in her life. She had internships in Los Angeles and then Washington, D.C., with U.S. representative Major R. Owens, Shirley Chisholm’s successor and Andy’s activist ally from the 1960s. Her boyfriend was from Los Angeles , and he graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, then enrolled at Meharry Medical School in Nashville. Jo-An decided to start in the music business.She worked at Zemwalt,Alman,and Hayes,a law firm that specialized in country and gospel music.To appease her parents,she applied to law schools. Nevertheless her career path was cast; Jo-An Cooper would make her media mark in the 1990s as a pioneering music publisher. On August 6–12, 1986, an image of a young, stoic-faced black man wearing large eyeglasses appeared in the left-hand front-page tease box of the City Sun. “Do you know this man?” read the label under the picture. “Find out why he’ll soon be a household name, why the movie business will never be the same.” On page 10, Armond White explained. The man in the photograph was Spike Lee, a resident of Brooklyn’s Fort Greene. He was a filmmaker , an NYU film school graduate, who produced Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barber Shop: We Cut Heads, a short film that aired on PBS in 1983. His first feature-length work,She’s Gotta Have It,opened on August 8 in art house theaters. Instead of a headline, mug shots and labels invited readers to White’s review:“Jamie . . . & Greer . . . & Mars . . . & Nola.” Nola (Tracy Camilla Johns) was a graphic artist who lived in a loft in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. She was in relationships with black men—working-class Jamie (Tommie Redmond Hooks), macho pretty boy Greer (John Canada Terrell) and impish Mars (Spike Lee). Nola dated three men who had components that combined into one ideal man. The gender-bending nature of the low-budget film surprised viewers. Wrote White,“All the characteristic qualities of She...

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