Young black filmgoers see themselves in screening of ‘Panther’

“Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler surprised the Bay Area on Thursday night, flying to his hometown to greet stunned crowds before screenings of his hit movie.

Media: Peter Hartlaub, The Chronicle

Throughout the Bay Area, people haven’t been buying tickets just for themselves to see “Black Panther,” the box-office smash that’s become a cultural phenomenon.

For the past month, groups from around the Bay Area have worked to bring the movie to young African Americans. They have watched with anticipation as the donation numbers ticked up, from small amounts of $10 or $15 to $500 in Oakland and an eye-popping $1,078 in San Francisco to top it all off.

The money flowed in from friends, neighbors and strangers on the Internet, along with messages cheering the fundraisers who looked to connect kids with a movie that features a black superhero and an almost entirely African American cast.

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“Black nerds unite!” Danielle Williams wrote with her $15 donation. A cry of “Wakanda Forever!” came from Erin Gould, along with $150. Wakanda is the movie’s fictional African nation.

In the course of smashing records at the box office, “Black Panther” is also shattering old Hollywood myths about what stories succeed on the big screen. The movie brought in $192 million in its opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, making it the fifth-biggest opening weekend ever.

In the Bay Area, a number of organizers jumped onto the national #BlackPantherChallenge to bring kids to see the film. On Monday, the first group came out to the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland, clad in bold patterns and lush colors rooted in African tradition.

Seventeen-year-old Kyziah Shavers waited for popcorn while wearing a yellow-printed dashiki from Nigeria, a shirt frequently worn for special occasions. The screening qualified as a moment worth celebrating, Kyziah said.

“It’s a time to see that women and men like us have power,” she said. “We can use it to effect change.”

Cheers erupted in the crowd as the film opened with a shot of Oakland. For many, the film is the first time they will see a superhero or a technology genius or warrior who looks like them.

“Half the battle is getting that kind of imagery made,” said Oakland’s Rafe Chisolm, a 37-year-old product designer for Facebook who organized the Grand Lake screening. “Lots of kids never see anyone who looks like them in that kind of light.”

When he was 12 years old, Chisolm’s mother took him to see “The Meteor Man,” a 1993 film that featured a black superhero who fights off a gang terrorizing his neighborhood.

“We lived in Birmingham, Ala., and it was a key image for me to see, someone like me who had a technical mind,” Chisolm said. “It wasn’t a spiritual experience or anything like that, but I needed to see something like that.”

During a Thursday screening at the Grand Lake, Ryan Coogler, the film’s black, Oakland-born director, made an appearance and recounted how his father would bring him to the same theater as a kid. At Monday’s screening, his father, Ira Coogler, surprised the audience as a guest on the post-film panel that focused on diversity in media.

Monday’s screening connected the film’s high-tech world to questions of diversity in the Bay Area’s booming tech industry. Chisolm and other organizers brought in groups like the Hidden Genius Project and Black Girls Code, which mentor black youth interested in coding, to speak and recruit after the film.

Sasha Williams, a 15-year-old Black Girls Code member, said she found the film most powerful in its depiction of Shuri, the 16-year-old inventor and princess of Wakanda. The character defied stereotypes of scientists and engineers, Sasha said, especially with her age.

“I used to think I have to be an adult to do things,” Sasha said. “But why do I have to wait? I hope that inspires a lot of young black girls that they can do the same.”

Chisolm said he hoped to use the screening to connect young people interested in technology with organizations that could give them early exposure to coding and engineering opportunities. As a high school student, he had no access to technical courses, despite his strong interest in the sciences.

In his job at Facebook, Chisolm said he now works with people 10 or 15 years younger than he is who have thrived thanks to early exposure to science and technology education.

“In the Bay Area especially, so many kids are sitting in a sea of resources, but they’ll never see it without that connection,” Chisolm said.

In the next few weeks, the African American Art Culture Complex in San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood will take about 100 more children to see the film in a separate screening. Ciara Swan, who runs programming at the complex, said the staff kept checking the GoFundMe page in the days leading up to the release to see if they would meet their goals.

Swan said, “We just want our youth to see more depictions of themselves — too see themselves as well-rounded and capable of doing anything, capable of being represented in positive ways.”

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Trump endorses recent GOP foe Mitt Romney for Utah Senate

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Romney willing to work with Trump on areas of common ground

Republican candidate for U.S. Senate and former GOP president nominee was keynote speaker at Lincoln Day Dinner; senior correspondent Adam Housley reports from Los Angeles.

President Trump gave his full backing to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Monday, saying Romney’s bid for a Senate seat from Utah “has my full support and endorsement!”

The president’s tweet suggested he may have buried the hatchet, at least temporarily, with the GOP foe who called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud” in 2016. Trump wrote Monday evening that Romney “will make a great Senator and worthy successor” to the retiring Orrin Hatch.

In response, Romney tweeted, “Thank you Mr. President for the support. I hope that over the course of the campaign I also earn the support and endorsement of the people of Utah.”

Thank you Mr. President for the support. I hope that over the course of the campaign I also earn the support and endorsement of the people of Utah.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) February 20, 2018

Romney, who served as Massachusetts governor from 2003 to 2007, announced his Senate run on Friday. The 70-year-old is a heavy favorite to hold the seat for the Republicans.

Trump’s endorsement of Romney marked another twist in the complex relationship between the two men. Romney was a vocal critic of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, labeling the businessman “a phony [and] a fraud [whose] promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.”

In response, Trump tweeted reminders that Romney had sought his endorsement during Romney’s failed run for the presidency four years earlier. In June of that year, Trump tweeted that Romney had “choked like a dog” in losing to former President Barack Obama.

If Trump had said 4 years ago the things he says today about the KKK, Muslims, Mexicans, disabled, I would NOT have accepted his endorsement

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 3, 2016

Mitt Romney had his chance to beat a failed president but he choked like a dog. Now he calls me racist-but I am least racist person there is

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 11, 2016

After Trump’s victory, Romney was rumored to be a contender to be secretary of state. In an unusually public interview process, Romney was seen dining with Trump in New York City and visiting the president-elect at his golf club in suburban New Jersey. Ultimately, Trump tapped Rex Tillerson for the post of America’s top diplomat.

Since then, Romney has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration, particularly after Trump’s response to the actions of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., last summer. Among the president’s comments: “Especially in light of the advent of Antifa, if you look at what’s going on there, you know, you have some pretty bad dudes on the other side also.”

Romney also broke with the White House over Trump’s endorsement of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore amid accusations of sexual misconduct against him. In the run-up to the December special election, Romney stated that Moore’s election “would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation.”

Members of both political parties have suggested that Romney, if elected to the Senate, would continue to call out Trump if he believed the president warranted criticism. However, Romney did not mention Trump in his campaign announcement on Friday, focusing instead on how his adopted state of Utah could be a model for better government in Washington.

Asked Friday if he would seek or accept Trump’s endorsement, Romney demurred but said they had talked on the phone two or three times in recent months and had a cordial and respectful relationship.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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