Arts, Culture & Community | Jamaican American Connection | black history | women's history
Barnum Festival 2024 Ringmaster Dr. Camelia Lawrence at a screening of the Bob Marley biopic "One Love." Markeshia Ricks photos.
Bob Marley’s music is part of a global soundtrack of freedom that continues to influence modern movements and a group of people gathered in a sold out private screening to witness a new movie about his life, to pay homage to the legacy of the global icon and support a local Jamaican making history in her own right.
People with connection to Marley’s Jamaican heritage and admirers of his activism and musical message packed a theater at the Connecticut Post Mall to see “One Love,” a biopic that spans the impactful five-year period before the late singer died in 1981 at just 36.
The screening was hosted in support of the Barnum Festival, an annual celebration of the city of Bridgeport and its surrounding towns and cities and the festival’s ringmaster, Dr. Camilla Lawrence.
“It is indeed an honor and a privilege to fill this role,” Lawrence said. “I see it as an extension of my active engagement of the greater Bridgeport area and beyond.”
Members of the Jamaican American Connection.
Lawrence is a surgeon and president of the Fairfield County Medical Association. She’s the first Black woman to lead the medical association in its 200 year history and only the second woman to serve as the Barnum Festival’s ringmaster. Lawrence also is proudly Jamaican and an active member of the Jamaican American Connection, which was out in force to support Lawrence, the festival and the movie.
Dr. Lawrence and her daughter Ashley with Dr. Janice Hart.
Much like the movie’s title, Lawrence sees the Barnum Festival, and all its accompanying events, as an opportunity to bring people together during uncertain times.
“It is important because the festival aims to bring us together as a community, and it is about entertainment for young and old,” she wrote for the festival’s website. “It is all important for local area business, as the festival bolsters the local economy.”
This year’s Barnum Festival’s theme is “One Big Tent for All,” and it aims to unite much as Marley attempted to do for Jamaica in the mid-1970s, a turbulent time that people like Dr. Jackqueline McLean remembers well.
McLean, who is a dentist in Connecticut, happened to be classmates with one of Marley’s sons, Ziggy, during what she called “crazy times." Her practice, McLean Smiles, was the screening’s corporate sponsor.
“I saw the military men on the street,” McLean said. “I was hosing blood off the street.”
The screening was her second time seeing the film and she said it brought tears to her eyes to remember times that included the attempted assassination of Marley and his wife, Rita Marley.
McLean pointed out that while Marley is a celebrated figure today, he was considered an outcast in Jamaica because he practiced Rastafari.
“To see their family thrive after the death of Bob Marley is so meaningful because Rastafarians were not accepted,” she said. “They were not welcomed.”
She said the movie’s message of Marley’s commitment to unity is one that has value today.
“Let’s hope that this movie can help us transcend what’s going on in today’s world and help us feel like we’re all unified,” she said.