SYNOPSIS:

As a teacher in inner city schools I taught many polished young African Americans who desperately wanted to learn. Their quest was hampered by others who did not. It was clear from the outset that, for all these children, learning was not a matter of brain power but simply a matter of attitude. I found no greater example of that than a kid called “Dumbo”. I never dared call him that but his peers ridiculed him to no end because he had big ears and was small in stature. He was a troubled young man who, when he wanted to, could show flashes of brilliance. Sadly, he chose to be a constant disruption in my classes. One day when I was at the end of my patience I pulled him aside and asked him why he didn’t pay more attention in class and try to get an education? He looked up me with two bright eyes and said;“Education ain’t no black thing!” I heard that same statement from other African Americans in my classes. I also saw bright young Blacks struggle to keep their academic successes quiet. They were much more animated while loudly rapping with loser gangbangers than touting an “A” in math. It made me wonder how pervasive Dumbo’s attitude was, and if it was wide spread, how chilling that would be. DOCK and DUMBO is my attempt to exam this attitude in a semi-fiction and entertaining way. Is education REALLY “no black thing?” Marcus “Dumbo” Washington, 16, is a bright-eyed, polished, African-American who dresses in a tuxedo, sits at a concert piano and plays show tunes for a mostly disinterested audience of pre-occupied shoppers by day and is a get down and rap hard gangbanger by night. He has no idea in which world he really belongs. He worships his Uncle Jo Jo Washington, 31, a would-be major drug dealer who lives a flashy lifestyle and puts Marcus’ life in constant danger. Marcus’ father is dead and his white mother, Maggie Washington , 37, is struggling to make ends meet and live in two worlds herself. Her brother Robert Edward “Dock” Lee, 35, is a white Southerner, who is a reclusive, author of Home Remedy Books, and concocts elixirs that are sold around the world. He has to deal with his mother Grace Lee, 78, who sleeps on a pillow case made out of a confederate flag - and who hates the fact her daughter married - to put it kindly - a colored fellow. These and other disparate characters meet in South Central Los Angeles at a troubled time for the country, and for themselves. They experience an explosive collision of cultures that makes for riveting cinema. 121 pages.