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Cheyanne Tull

After the showing of “The Silent Cries of Unborn Ghetto Children,” four panelists answered questions related to the issues and concerns brought up in the documentary. The four panelists were senior animation major Nalah Stokes, Friends University graduate and licensed therapist, Gabrielle Jones, survivor, educator, and first Black woman to serve as vice mayor for the city of Wichita, Lavonta Williams, and survivor and long time Wichita resident Victor Daniels.

Not far from Wichita State University on Jan. 16, 1965, a U.S. Air Force Boeing KC-135 crashed into a primarily Black community in northeastern Wichita. 23 were killed on the ground along with the seven crew members on the plane. Kevin Harrison created a film documenting this tragedy on 20th and Piatt, titled “The Silent Cries of Unheard Ghetto Children.” 

Harrison, assistant teaching professor and director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Cohen Honors College, made the film in about seven months alongside Ricardo Harris, pastor and executive director of Wichita GEAR UP, and independent producer Kenneth Hawkins. The film focuses on racial tensions and trauma that prevents the impacted community from healing. 

“We thought maybe this film would give some voices an opportunity to be heard that were never heard for almost 60 years,” Harrison said. “Maybe there’s still some trauma and maybe creating a film like this may allow some of these individuals to address some of that trauma.”

The film “The Silent Cries of Unheard Ghetto Children” premiered at the memorial site of the plane crash at Piatt Park, close to where the tragedy happened. The film has been shown five times since, including the CAC theater on Aug. 31.

“I was interested in coming to this film because it shows the history of a Black neighborhood in Wichita,” freshman marketing major May Smith said. “Coming here to a campus where I was pulled for diversity and inclusion, interested me to learn more about the culture here, as far as the Black community.”

The film’s title, “The Silent Cries of Unborn Ghetto Children,” has a dual meaning, according to Harrison. 

He said the first meaning refers to the deaths of pregnant 25-year-old Laverne Warmsley, her unborn child, Warmsley’s husband, and their three children, who were all engulfed in flames during the plane crash. 

Another pregnant woman 53 yards away, Sandra Walls, survived along with her baby, Marsha Walls, on the day of the plane crash. 

The second meaning questions the use of the word “ghetto.” While it is often used to describe run-down, poverty-stricken, “crime-infested” areas inhabited mostly by minorities, the film argued that it has a deeper meaning of love, community and family. 

“The Silent Cries of Unheard Ghetto Children” also notes the phrase, “Where is the Love?” toward the end of the film, which portrays how Wichita deprived this Black community of love and care in their time of need. 

According to the film, issues during the 1960s ranged from racial segregation, environmental racism and not being treated as human, which the Black community and gentrified communities still experience. 

Before and after the 1965 plane crash, Wichita was as segregated as any city in the south. Each city included a predominantly Black community, usually poverty stricken and not being given the same opportunities as white people.

Segregation factored into the Black community not receiving proper care to recover from the plane crash. Boeing did not provide compensation to the families that suffered loss. In addition, the survivors without insurance were unable to get aid in rebuilding their homes, and some were worse off in poor financial situations. 

“It makes it easier to overcome the trauma if you are being supported in all kinds of ways, including monetarily,” Debbie Gordon, assistant professor in the Women’s Ethnicity and Intersectional Studies department, said. 

Regarding the environmental concern around the jet fuel pollution in the affected neighborhood’s water, Gordon said “someone should have come in and cleaned all that up.”

Redlining also occurred in 1965. Redlining is the discriminatory practice of minimizing resources in a certain area, such as health and wellness being more difficult to access. Wealthier white communities who lived outside of the area’s margins were able to get mortgages and pursue the American Dream: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The panelists open for discussion after the documentary were survivor Victor Daniels, Lavonta Williams, educator, survivor, and first Black woman elected as Vice Mayor for Wichita, senior animation student Nalah Monet Stokes, and licensed therapist and Friends University graduate Gabrielle Jones. 

In response to the community that has bottled up their feelings around this tragic day, Harrison said, “It’s okay to be in pain. What human wouldn’t be in pain from something that disastrous?”