Race remains America’s most vexing dilemma. Government can pass civil rights acts until there isn’t enough paper to print any more, but the best way to make meaningful progress in fording the chasm between black and white is on a personal, one-to-one basis. This is the underlying theme of The Color of Love: Jacey’s Story.
The CBS movie resorts to a wildly exaggerated scenario as a springboard to its conflict. However, race can be such a divisive issue it’s not really so implausible. Gena Rowlands offers a sensitive, sympathetic performance as Georgia Porter, a contemporary widow locked in a time warp of the antebellum South. Viewers will have a lot of Georgias on their mind. Rowland’s character has lived her entire life in Sweet Creek, Ga., the character is named Georgia, and her social circle, a group of flighty old biddies (most of them closet bigots), is known as the Georgia Peaches.
Georgia’s world of social teas and garden parties is jarringly interrupted by an emergency phone call. Her daughter Lily-Jo has been in a serious car accident on the West Coast. Although the two have been estranged for almost a decade, Georgia rushes to Lily-Jo’s bedside. Alas, by the time Georgia reaches California, it is too late.
One shock piles upon another when a nurse tries to ease the blow by telling Georgia that although both Lily-Jo and her husband, Marcus, perished in the accident, their 6-year-old daughter Jacey survived. The hospital would prefer that a family member break the news to the little girl that her parents are gone.
Granddaughter? Georgia is floored. She didn’t know her daughter married, let alone had a child. This is a mild surprise compared to what confronts Georgia when she enters the little girl’s room.
Jacey is black.
Georgia knew Lily-Jo was involved in an interracial romance. It triggered the family breach. Georgia’s late husband was an overt racist, who once attempted to kill Lily-Jo’s boyfriend. This is when Lily-Jo stopped associating with her parents.
As upset as Georgia is, the situation is compounded for the terrified Jacey, who suddenly faces being relocated across country with a stranger she knows only as someone occasionally mentioned by her mother. To make matters worse, the milieu into which Jacey is transported is filled with people who barely make an effort to hide their disdain for her. Every time she and her grandmother appear in public, even in church where Christian love is supposed to be the guideline, heads turn and tongues wag. Georgia’s rotten Peaches regard Jacey as a problem that must be alleviated. Georgia, to her credit, embraces the child and tries to shelter her from hurt as much as possible.
Just as they are making progress, there is another intrusion. Jacey’s paternal grandfather, Lou, with whom the little girl has a loving relationship, arrives in town. He was away on a trip when the accident occurred and it has taken some time for him to catch up with developments. Armed with the late parents’ wishes that he assume control in the event something happened to them, Lou wants to take Jacey home. Now.
Louis Gossett Jr., whose every performance crackles with edge, is in characteristic top form as Lou, who grew up in Sweet Creek during an era when it was permissible to openly flaunt racial hatred. He, too, nearly became a victim on the night Lily-Jo’s father tried to gun down Marcus. Thus, tension between him and Georgia is thick.
Circumstances prevent an immediate exit for Lou and Jacey. This forces the grandparents to confront their feelings about each other, past and present, as well as the future of the child who links them.
The only thing missing is Della Reese and Roma Downey to help guide them toward reconciliation and mutual understanding. Nonetheless, Touched by An Angel viewers will go to bed pleased that they stuck with CBS for an additional couple of hours.
Tom Jicha can be reached at
