This document provides a biography of actress and voice actress Cree Summer. It discusses her upbringing on a Native American reservation in Canada and in a socially conscious household. Summer began her career as a child voice actress, voicing the character of Penny on Inspector Gadget. As an adult, she was well-known for her role as Freddie Brooks on A Different World in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The document discusses how this role inspired many African American viewers to pursue college. It provides details about some of Summer's other notable voice acting roles in animation.

1. February | April 2007
PORT OF HARLEM 21February | April 2007
PORT OF HARLEM20
I knock on her door and my thoughts flash back
to my senior year in high school. “Don’t make me
laugh,” I recalled many of my friends blurting out after
I told them I would attend the predominantly Black
college in Atlanta (the one dubbed Hillman College
on the Cosby spin-off show A Different World). My
friends would then emphatically announce,“that’s not
the real world!”
After more than ten years and several degrees
later I am laughing as I enter a different world, the
one of Cree Summer. As she pulled open her door,
Summer greeted me with a smile and open arms. She
explains that a Port of Harlem article that I had written
about raising socially conscious children convinced
her to let me into her world.
We walk outside. Surrounded by trees, a pool
and humming birds, Summer begins speaking; her
voice is familiar. It is a voice I hear daily. It is the voice
of character Winifred ‘Freddie’ Brooks of the sit-com
A Different World. In addition it is the voice of PBS’s
Cleo, the dog on Clifford the Big Red Dog, a ghost
catching super hero on Nickelodean’s Danny Phantom
and Foxxy Love on Comedy Central’s Drawn Together.
The sounds of Summer seem to be everywhere. Even
Coca Cola’s bubbles burst with her refreshing voice
in their television ads. While her distinctive sound is
familiar, her journey as actress, singer, song-writer
and comedian are less so.
She grew up in a socially conscious household
on the Plains Cree Reservation, the Red Pheasant, in
Saskatchewan, Canada. Summers’ father is White.
Her mother is African-American. They lived on the
reservation, but her mother later moved to North
Richmond, California.
Summer explained, “I grew up not in a material
way. I grew up on an Indian reservation in a house that
I watched my father build by himself out of mud; no
running water, no electricity, no school. My father was
and still is a very powerful activist. [He] worked with
Leonard Pelter and the American Indian Movement
(A.I.M.). [My father] was on the very first Green
Peace boats with Cap John McCormick and I saw him
arrested several times. He had a sit down with the
Dali Lama [asking] to be the Dali Lama’s driver which
I thought was a lovely way to be of service.”
She added, “In the summers I would go to North
Richmond, California [to visit my mother] which is
probably the hardest core of the hood, about seven
blocks of chaos and pain.” Perhaps it was her unusual
upbringing that blessed her with a different view of
the world.
Her dancer mother and musician/actor father
jump started Summer’s creative curiosity at an early
age. She just happened to be at a studio with her
father when the producer needed a voice of a young,
female, crime-solver. Before Summer was old enough
to drive she was part of the morning and afternoon
television line-up as Penny on Inspector Gadget. That
cartoon ran for years.
Summer left high school before graduating.
However,being a cast member on NBC-TV’s A Different
World was her college experience as she learned the
art of crafting believable characters, comedic timing
and the stamina it takes to remain a player in the
world of television from heavy hitters like Phylicia
Rashad, Lisa Bonet, and Debbie Allen and new comers
Kadeem Hardison, Jasmine Guy and Marisa Tomei.
Her taste of college life via NBC also gave
many African America viewers, like me, the desire to
have their own “Hillman” experience. Her role also
solidified the idea that activism did not die with the
70’s. As Freddie, Summer was like her real-life father,
always standing up, sitting in or voicing her concerns
about women’s rights, race relations, the collective
Cover Story
IllustrationbyAnikeRobinson
CreeSummer
The Laugh,The Heart,
The Soul of By Anike Robinson
As I navigate the Los Angeles freeways I keep hearing
in my head, “make me laugh . . . make me laugh.” I
continuemydrivethroughthehillsoftheCityofAngels
until I end up in front of the home of the actress who
has kept me laughing for years.
February | April 2007
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