Written and Directed by Channing Godfrey Peoples 
Starring Nicole Beharie, Kendrick Sampson and Alexis Chikaeze
Running time: 1 hour and 43 minutes

Betting on a Promise

by Jessie Landivar Prescott 

Miss Juneteenth is the story of a thousand micro aggressions, a hundred missed opportunities, a dozen serious regrets. It's the story of Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie), a former Miss Juneteenth pageant winner, who we are introduced to as she preps her teenage daughter (Alexis Chikazee) to enter the pageant. You see, in their community, to win the pageant is to be seen, to be acknowledged, and it comes with a full scholarship to a historic university. 

It becomes obvious to the viewer that Turquoise not only has faith that her daughter can win, but also she believes wholeheartedly in the promise of Miss Juneteenth. A promise that she lost out on in the period following her own win. We are not told exactly what it was that led Turquoise astray but we are clued in to fragments of her past through scenes involving her daughter’s father and erstwhile husband and her own mother. Both exert a destructive (her husband bails on his promise to pay for their daughter’s dress at a critical moment in the pageant) and abusive (mother slaps her across the face in front of her daughter) presence in her life. 

Through the various scenes where Turquoise has to eat crow in order to forge ahead- be it from having to constantly lower her head to the various women organizers of the pageant to dodging drunken customers at the bar she works at- we can surmise that Turquoise never had much of a shot to reach the next level of Miss Juneteenthdom. And we can see how badly she wants that promise to be fulfilled in her daughter.

For this movie to be released right now is a blessing. While we, as a country, are rightly focused on the deadly plight of being a black male in our society, it is also right that we extend our gaze to the often invisible women whose jobs it is to raise their children and make something of themselves along the way. These invisible women that we blame for their children’s fates, even though, like this movie clearly shows us, opportunities are,at best, few and far between.

I would be remiss if I didn’t raise a glass to Nicole Beharie’s performance as Turquoise Jones. She turns in an Oscar worthy interpretation of a young mother battling and adapting to every situation that presents itself, expected and unexpected. Turquoise fights to change her destiny and to ensure that her daughter will be a winner. If the role wasn’t so sensitively acted then a melodramatic note could easily be plucked out, but Ms. Beharie respects Turquoise and the script too much. We see her bob and weave like a boxer in her performance, making sure that we understand all the roles a mother must play, the thousand or so decisions she must make every day, the regrets she lives with, the joys that surprise her. Crack open your bottle of whiskey and raise a glass to Miss Juneteenth.

Miss Juneteenth is available digital and on demand June 19th.