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Cotton Field of Dreams, a lesson
in southern and women’s history, paints a vivid picture
of roles played out by the women, children and family in the
Arkansas delta. It is about the hard lessons children of cotton
sharecroppers learned from under-educated but wise parents
whose greatest gift was their children’s permission
to dream. This story memorializes James and Ethel Kearney
who taught their 17 children that nothing was too far out
of reach if they put their minds and hearts into it. Their
story is about the miracle of the south, and the limitless
vision, the unflinching faith, and daring dreams of a poor,
black family on Varner Road, Arkansas.
Cotton Field of Dreams speaks of
a black and white community in awe of the dirt poor sharecroppers
with their “air of people with something;” and,
how these parents—with hardly a “pot to piss in,”—kept
their children out of school months during harvest season,
yet inspired in them a deep love of learning, and unwavering
faith in a brighter tomorrow. It was such inspiration that
resulted in 16 Kearney children entering and graduating from
such colleges as—Harvard law school, Stanford law school,
Yale law school, Brown University and other fine schools around
the country. Finally, Cotton Field of Dreams is about
the miracles hidden just beyond what one could see in America’s
pre-civil rights south; miracles awaiting dreamers like James
and Ethel Kearney to make the impossible, reality.
Janis F. Kerney was born in Gould,
Arkansas 72 miles south of Little Rock, Arkansas. She graduated
from Gould High School in 1971; and from the University of
Arkansas, in Fayetteville, with a BA in Journalism, in 1976.
In 1980, she began work on a Masters of Public Administration
at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.
From 1978-1987, She worked for Arkansas
State Government - three years as a Program Manager for the
Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) Program;
and, six years as Director of Information for the national
headquarters of the Migrant Student Records Transfer System
(MSRTS) in Little Rock.
In 1987, she purchased the Arkansas State
Press Newspaper from the renown civil rights activist Daisy
Bates, and published the statewide weekly newspaper for five
years. During that time, she also served as a board director
for National Newspaper Publishers Association. She served
as Director of Minority Media Outreach for the Clinton-Gore
Presidential Campaign headquarters in 1992, and in 1993 joined
the Clinton Administration in Washington, D.C.
Kearney served briefly in the White House
Media Affairs Office, before being appointed by President
Clinton as Director of Public Affairs and Communications for
the U.S. Small Business Administration. She served in that
role from 1993-1995.
From 1995-2001, she served as President
Clinton’s Personal Diarist, a job that entailed chronicling
the Clinton presidency on a day to day basis—the first
time in history a President had made such an appointment.
She continued in that role, in former President Clinton’s
transition office through June, 2001. In July, she moved to
Chicago to join her husband, Bob Nash—President Clinton’s
former Director of Presidential Personnel, and now Vice Chair
for ShoreBank Corporation.
Janis began a fellowship at Harvard’s
W.E.B. DuBois Institute in September, 2001. The DuBois Fellowship
includes researching and writing Conversations: William Jefferson
Clinton from Hope to Harlem, an oral history of former President
Clinton’s race legacy.
In 2003, she was appointed Chancellor’s
Lecturer at Chicago City Colleges, and was awarded the PUSH
for Excellence Award for outstanding contributions in the
area of communications.
William Jefferson Clinton is the
former President of the United States. |
