Florida Woman Planning Screening of ‘The Little Mermaid’ For Black Girls Has Two Weeks To Reach Fundraising Goal

Black celebrities like Offset and their children attended the premiere of “The Little Mermaid” starring Halle Bailey. It’s a highly anticipated movie, and Tamia Iman Kennedy understands.

She was a teenager when she saw her first Black actress in the starring role as a princess.

“It felt right,” she said while reflecting on the character Tiana in Disney’s animated feature film The Princess and the Frog

Now almost 10 years later, Kennedy is the owner of a St. Petersburg, Florida, multi-media production company, Black On the Scene.

She wants to introduce other little girls to cinema and has raised over $6,000 for a private screening of Disney’s live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” starring actress Halle Bailey. She had hoped to double that amount.

“We have reached a little halt … we haven’t made too much progress. We’re almost halfway there,” Kennedy said.

The show will go on, but at this point, plans to offer vouchers for swimming lessons have changed because of the shortfall. And the amount on the gift cards for movie fare will also be reduced.

“It’s a blessing, and we’re grateful,” Kennedy explained. “And the best thing is we have the theater reserved. They may not have the most detailed gift bags, but they’ll be there, and it’s going to work out.”

Partnering to win

Lorielle Hollaway, who owns Cultured Books Foundation, said each girl will receive a copy of “The Little Mermaid: Make A Splash.” She is working with Kennedy to create an educational and fun outing.

“I’m super excited that the girls are going … this is a beautiful movie screening event,” Hollaway stated.

Hollaway’s daughters will be among the 140 or so girls and 60 adults who will attend the movie on May 28.

“I’m excited to go because I feel like the movie’s cool,” Ava Hardy said. “I’ll see a Disney princess that looks like me.”

An avid reader, the 11-year-old wants to see more Black girls represented on the big screen and in the pages of books.

Hardy said, “One book that I’m reading is Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur; it’s a Marvel Comic Book Series. The main character looks like me and is around my age. I think it’s cool and I feel like she’s the smartest girl in Marvel. And, then another book I’ve been reading is the Magical Girls Guide to Life by Jackie K.”

Real life

For Kennedy who organized the event, her profession and passion have joined forces. She wanted to study law, but after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 nudged her into the streets to protest, she changed her mind.

“I wanted to help, but I decided, ‘This is not like me. I’m really scared,’” she recalled.

That’s when entrepreneurship beckoned, and she knew intuitively she could help change the narrative for Black America.

“It [media] shapes how we feel about culture. I wanted to have a play in that,” she said.

Kennedy views the upcoming private screening as an avenue to “commemorate the moment” with the casting of a Black woman in the starring role of one of Disney’s classic movies.

She added, “I want them to be impacted and have a moment they’ll never forget. We get to see a Black woman in the water … we can do it all. We should know how to swim. We can become a scuba diver, a marine biologist.”

Kennedy hopes she can do the same for Black boys when the movie Spiderman arrives in theaters this summer.