(gentle music) - [Narrator] She really is a star of stage, screen and television.

But Jenifer Lewis is not just proud of her work, she's proud of her roots.

- I just, I love St. Louis.

I love my home.

I love Kinloch.

- [Narrator] Jenifer Lewis comes home to St. Louis, to Webster University, and to the remnants of her once vibrant hometown, Kinloch, Missouri.

- A lot of great people came up from this rubble.

- [Narrator] Jenifer Lewis, next on Living St. Louis.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - I'm Ruth Ezell.

The St. Louis region has produced its share of creative, dynamic performers who have gone on to national and even international success.

Tonight's Living St. Louis episode is devoted to one of those people.

She's a woman who refused to let life in an underserved community hold her back from dreams of stardom.

She made it to the top through hard work, determination and enormous confidence, but never forgot where she came from.

And she shares fearlessly her ups and downs, bright days and dark ones, with her fans.

She is the force of nature that is Jenifer Lewis.

- Our Webster family truly feels more complete when she comes home.

And so, it is our honor to say, the doctor is in the house.

Welcome Dr. Jenifer Lewis.

(audience applauding) - [Ruth] From the moment she steps on stage or in front of a camera, actress, author and activist, Jenifer Lewis, raises the energy level exponentially.

In November of 2022, Louis returned to her alma mater, Webster University, as part of a book tour for her latest memoir, "Walking In My Joy In These Streets".

- They weren't watching- - [Ruth] At any live Lewis program breaking the traditional ground rules gets you called out.

For example, you arrive late.

- Now what time did your ticket say?

(audience laughing) - [Ruth] You head to the restroom before intermission.

- You come see Jenifer Lewis you don't go to the bathroom, you wear Depends!

- [Ruth] Or worse using your mobile phone.

- Unless I'm talking, and then, who is it?

Give me the phone, let me tell 'em where you at.

Come up there and better be important.

- [Ruth] Louis speaks her truth and gives her all in her career and her causes.

She's traveled the world, but her favorite destination is home.

(bright music) - I just, I love St. Louis.

I love my home.

I love Kinloch.

- [Ruth] Kinloch in North St. Louis County is where Jenifer Jeanette Lewis was born in 1957, the youngest of seven children.

Her mother was a nurse's aide and her father was a factory worker.

Despite modest beginnings, a good education for the Lewis children was always a family priority.

They all went on to earn both bachelor and advanced college degrees.

Prior to Louis's appearance at Webster we met on a windy day in her hometown.

Kinloch is the oldest community in Missouri incorporated by African Americans.

It wasn't long before Louis spotted someone from her youth, former classmate John Nunn.

- We graduated going through first grade, through high school graduating '74 Kenloch High School.

Glad she's doing well.

Blessing.

God has been truly good to both of us.

- I'm so happy to see John.

I just started crying.

I told him, get outta here before I mess up my makeup.

- [Ruth] Afterward we headed to Louis's old neighborhood in search of the site where her home once stood.

It required some help from a sibling.

- Hey everybody, this is my brother, Larry Lewis.

He taught in the St. Louis School District for 30 years.

He's retired and his students are in his life.

They give him birthday parties.

They love him, and that means you did a great job.

We used to fight all the time too.

(laughs) I'm proud of you.

- Thank you.

- He knows it.

- But this is where our house once stood.

- Oh my God, Larry.

I don't recognize it.

- Well, what's left of it.

- This is where my house was.

This is where I lived.

It's all gone.

- [Ruth] But among the nearby debris Lewis found a remnant of someone else's childhood.

Their trash to her treasure.

- A lot of great people came up from this rubble.

This was my high school.

It was all brick and it was beautiful back in the day.

I'm gonna take this home and put it on my mantle.

But great people came outta Kinloch, Maxine Waters.

Dick Gregory.

We knew there was something bigger and we went and got it.

- [Ruth] Lewis first knew there was something bigger for her early on, thanks to life in her church.

- We can't even get down the street to first Missionary Baptist Church because the road is blocked off.

But this is one of the churches still standing here.

I sang my first solo at five years old at First Missionary Baptist Church.

Five years old, and the song was, "Oh Lord, You Brought me a Mighty Long Way.

You know, what are you gonna do?

But the church exploded, and I stood there at five years old with my thumb in my mouth., I went cross eyed.

And I said to my five year old self, "Oh, this is life."

Ah-huh I'll take it.

I never looked back.

- But the road to stardom for Jenifer Lewis took hard work along with taking some hard knocks before she graduated from high school.

- The high school is over there and right over there was my outhouse.

The kids used to tease me 'cause they could see us go to the bathroom from the school.

It was insult to injury.

- From Kinloch's earliest days, outhouses were a fact of life for many of its families.

Kinloch's earliest homes were built on dirt roads.

Over time, the people's hard work, resourcefulness and cooperation built infrastructure, institutions and community.

- I had a good relationship with the community.

And so I just hope people see the positive things from Kinloch.

- [Ruth] Kinloch's history has been documented by Educator and Historian, Dr. John Wright.

He became superintendent of the Kinloch School in 1975, when Jenifer Lewis was still attending the high school.

He's the author of "Kinloch, Missouri's First Black City."

- You have to look at Kinloch during different time periods, you know, during segregation, like many African American communities.

You had a mixture of residents, variety of incomes, because there was not too many options of where we could live.

And so many of the communities were self-contained, like Kinloch.

Had its movie theater, nightclub where everybody, some unknown artists came through.

You had a whole lot of things that were available to individuals in segregated times.

There was self-contained community.

So during that period, you had a lot of things going on.

And people remember, the older people, around my generation, remember Kinloch growing up, where everyone knew each other, where people supported each other where money circulated several times before it left, and you had a variety of kids from different backgrounds living there.

- Perhaps the single biggest factor in Kinloch's decline is its dropping population.

It all started in the 1940s when blacks who had funds and could afford to move and suddenly had more housing options, they left, a lot of businesses followed.

In the 1980s, St. Louis Lambert Airport bought up some 1,300 homes as part of a noise abatement program.

But still the community and family spirit Jenifer Lewis experienced growing up here is now baked into her DNA.

- I'm not sad.

Yes I am.

I am extremely sad.

But it's change.

Nothing stays the same.

But yeah, this is bad.

I have great memories and that's what I'm gonna think about today.

The wonderful memories.

(bright music) Everybody ask me, do I enjoy television, film, or theater?

Theater, darling, you're in the moment of life.

You can hear the audience breathing, and crying, and thinking and laughing.

It's magic to be up on that stage where you can see all of them.

- Jenifer Lewis graduated from Kinloch High and became a member of the freshman class at Webster College's Conservatory of Theater Arts.

The late Peter Sergeant was department chair at the time.

The conservatory is now named for him.

During an evening with Jenifer Lewis she recounted a pivotal moment in her academic career.

Alas, Peter Sergeant is no longer with us to corroborate her story, but as any of her friends will probably tell you, oh that's just like her.

- And let me tell y'all a story.

Okay, back then you did your freshman year and your sophomore year, and then before your junior year you had to go into Peter Sergeant's office and he would tell you if you could go on in the theater department, 'cause they didn't select no riffraff.

So he went out of his office when it was my turn.

I wish, oh yeah, I can show you.

Look at this.

(chuckles) He came back in the office.

I had my feet up on his desk.

(audience laughs) (Jenifer laughs) Oh god.

Oh, he walked in there.

He said, "Jenifer, are you that sure of yourself that you are gonna move on in the theater department?"

I said, "Absolutely."

(audience laughs) Oh yeah, the memories child, they taught me.

They trained me at this university.

It was a college then, they trained me.

They knew I was going somewhere - [Ruth] In her senior year, Jenifer Lewis staged a one woman show at the Winford Moore Auditorium that spotlighted her talents as a singer.

The concert included musical comedy numbers, jazz and blues and popular tunes.

It received rave reviews.

By this time, Louis already had professional credits under her belt, and possessed a coveted Actor's Equity Association card.

You cannot perform on Broadway, or with the top tier American theater companies without one.

Jenifer Lewis graduated and headed directly to New York where she was doing stage and cabaret work.

By the 1990s she was in Los Angeles and has been working steadily in films and television ever since.

Many of her roles have been as mothers.

She's come to be known as the Mother of Black Hollywood which also happens to be the name of her first memoir.

Her most recent projects have been sitcoms.

- Everybody Lies.

Bill Clinton, Zach Efron, and don't get me started on Oprah.

- [Ruth] Lewis played Ruby Johnson, matriarch of the Johnson Family on ABC's "Blackish."

It ran for eight seasons from 2014 to 2022.

- Emotionally, I kind of wanted to talk to you.

- Your numbers for the Vera Nash line were excellent.

You even sold out of the ugly one.

People are really connecting with your cancer story.

- And in May of 2022, Louis debuted as Patricia, the billionaire CEO of a popular home shopping network on the Showtime series, "I Love That For You."

Jenifer Lewis's career has made her financially secure, to say the least.

And now she's giving back to the institution of higher learning that literally set the stage for her success.

Webster University Chancellor, Elizabeth Beth Stroble, explained the establishment of the Jenifer Lewis Conservatory Fund.

- She wants to support students just like her.

When she was here as an undergraduate, she says she struggled financially and she needed the supportive scholarships and and other kinds of resources to actually stay the course and graduate.

She wants to do the same for students who look like her.

So this fund was created to provide funding for incidental expenses outside of tuition scholarships.

The kinds of things that come up for students that they just need some cash, whether it's rent or food or car breaks down, or you know, some medical expenses, whatever it might be that is a surprise or an emergency, this fund can be tapped for that.

- We're in- - Jenifer's relationship with Webster is deep and long.

You know, she's a two-time grad, bachelor's degree from the Conservatory when we were Webster College.

And then she spoke at commencement in 2015 and received an honorary degree.

So that relationship anchors her as someone we're very proud of as our graduate.

But it's really her relationship as a donor and her personal generosity to Webster, that means so much.

(bright music) - Webster was good to me.

I knew everybody from the president, leisure dean to the janitor.

I ran this campus, baby, (laughs) I did.

'Cause you know, I was bipolar and I had all that mania and I was unstoppable.

(laughs) Yeah, I didn't know I had a mental illness at that time.

I'm a hot mess, aint I?

(audience laughs) - [Ruth] It wasn't until 1990 that Jenifer Lewis was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Initially she felt ashamed and concealed the diagnosis from everyone she knew.

But the help she's received through therapy and medication has not only made Louis more candid about her condition, she encourages people who need it to seek treatment.

- [Ruth] Is bipolar the same as manic depression?

- Yes.

Manic depressive was the old term before my time as well that was often used.

But it kind of fell out of favor because people kept using it wrong.

- [Ruth] Dr. Maurice Redden is a Geriatric Psychiatrist at St. Louis University's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience.

He's never treated or met Lewis, but has worked extensively with bipolar patients.

- I see patients of all ages and a lot of times people think when you have bipolar disorder that means their mood fluctuates just throughout the day or they get irritable or agitated.

True bipolar disorder's a mental illness that has some intense and dramatic mood swings, so people can have high highs on that manic stage, or low lows in the depressive state.

And then during those periods they have a lot of energy, always on the go, but never getting things done.

Irrational thoughts, impulsive behaviors lack of need for sleep.

That could happen.

It has to last for at least one week and then if it's not treated, it can go longer.

It goes on for one week.

And then they have the diagnosis of of bipolar 'cause they have had a manic episode.

Can imagine someone like Jenifer who's having a productive career going and she gets this diagnosis.

Most people don't know what it is, they're gonna think it's going to hinder you from performing your role.

So you may not wanna seek out help with that.

Fortunately and unfortunately things have gotten a little better with mental health illness and mental health awareness, is usually when when bad things happen, like mass shootings, or people do reckless things and end up hurting themselves, hurting a bunch of people, that the mental health issue's brought more to the forefront, and we can address it now.

But now I think people are getting comfortable talking about mental health and mental wellbeing, so I'm very happy about that as well.

- Hey, listen, I'm gonna say this in case I forget.

Take care of yourselves.

Human beings have one job, one, self care.

You take care of yourself so when the ones you love fall your arms will be strong.

(audience applauds) Listen to me, my diva days are over.

I am an activist now!

(audience cheers) I've always really been an activist.

I started in high school.

I led a walk out on Angela Davis's birthday.

(laughs) I didn't even know who she was, but she had an Afro.

So I said, we're walking out.

At the height of the AIDS epidemic.

I started a fundraising called "Divas for Dollars."

Wanted to raise money.

My friends were dying.

- Louis raised her voice in song during her Webster appearance She performed a song she wrote in 2018 following the Parkland Florida School shooting that killed 17 people.

♪ Our children shouldn't have to run ♪ ♪ from bullets (gentle piano music) ♪ Our children shouldn't have to run ♪ ♪ from bullets - [Ruth] In 2014 when Michael Brown was shot to death in Ferguson, a city located right next door to Kinloch, Lewis came home from California and joined the protests.

It was during that time she first met Beth Stroble.

- I remember sitting with her at the round table in this office and getting to know each other on a very deep level, just in a first conversation.

Why had she come to the Ferguson Protests?

What did it mean to her, because she's from Kinloch?

What did it mean to Webster that she was our graduate and how important it is to stand up for the rights of the underserved?

So it was a conversation about personal values and institutional values that has just grown over the time that I've known her.

- [Ruth] The following year, the Kinloch Native Conservatory graduate, and successful performer, received an honorary doctorate from Webster University and gave the commencement address.

- When she spoke in 2015.

There are really two memorable moments from that commencement.

The advice she gave to graduates, which is when the elevator to success is broken, take the stairs one by one.

And that is exactly what her example shows our students.

Secondly, just as the address was coming to a close, she broke out into song, sang "Happy."

And the whole audience rose instantly on their feet started to clap and sang "Happy" with her.

That is what we know about Jenifer, walking in her joy, happy, giving all of us inspiration to do what we need to do.

- [Ruth] Just before an evening with Jenifer Lewis got underway, she was surprised by a delegation of elected officials in the First Congressional District, led by U.S. Representative Cori Bush, and Ferguson Mayor, Ella Jones.

- We have proclamations up here on this stage from all across St. Louis and Missouri.

(people applauding) And those proclamations are here to declare to you, and to all of us, and forevermore, that today is Jenifer Lewis Day.

(people cheering) - [Ruth] This visit home for Jenifer Lewis came on the heels of a horror win of campaigning for female Democrats across the country.

Little did you know, growing up in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, that women would become so prominent in the political arenas of the 21st century.

- It's time for women to rule this world and they won't even rule it.

They will nurture the planet, they will nurture the children.

It's the time of the woman.

And I wanna say this right into the camera, to everyone.

These are not dark times.

These are awakening times.

You put that uncompromising foot forward.

It's okay to be scared, there's a lot of stuff going on, but you must be unafraid.

(bright music) Hold this for me, and baby, don't nobody lose this.

This was the brightest light in Kinloch yesterday.

This was in the rubble of my high school.

- As to the future of Jenifer Lewis' hometown, there are efforts underway to revitalize it.

This is Kinloch Park.

It was once the centerpiece for the community.

St. Louis County officials announced in 2022 that a private foundation supporting county parks will donate $900,000 to this one.

But of all the planned improvements on the drawing board for Kinloch, the former Smith Elementary School on Jones Street is most dear to Lewis.

The intention is to renovate the facility and rededicate it as the Jenifer Lewis Youth Center.

- Get on outta here.

No, it's okay.

Good to see you, good to see you.

I didn't know there was traffic in Kinloch.

(laughs) - Davie were with Lewis in Kinloch, there were moments she was essentially holding court in the middle of the road.

- No, the jukebox at Uncle Dicks.

The hamburger.

- All that.

- The hometown girl with the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the mother of black Hollywood, could one day find herself with another moniker, the Godmother of Kinloch.

(bright music) We first met Jenifer Lewis on November 4th, 2022.

It was less than two weeks after the mass shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in South St. Louis.

Three people, including the perpetrator, were killed.

Seven people were injured.

Ms. Lewis asked that Nine PBS dedicate this special episode of Living St. Louis to the victims of the central VPA shooting.

We were moved by her request and are honored to comply.

That's all for now.

We wanna hear from you.

Connect with us at ninePBS.org/LSL.

I'm Ruth Ezell.

Thanks for joining us, goodnight.

(gentle piano music) ♪ We're gonna be all right ♪ if we trust we're the people ♪ We're gonna be all right if we rise ♪ ♪ As one people ♪ One people (gentle piano music) - [Narrator] Living St. Louis is funded in part by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.