
Detroit girl goes viral for her impressions of Black icons
Clip: Season 8 Episode 35 | 5m 55sVideo has Closed Captions
Eight-year-old Rosie White gains national attention from her viral social media videos.
Robyn McKee, or Rosie White as she’s known online, has gained national attention online for her video impressions of Black icons, capturing the attention of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg and Michelle Obama. One Detroit’s Daijah Moss talks with Rosie, 8, of Detroit and her family about the inspiration, challenges and moments they’ve shared along the way.
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One Detroit is a local public television program presented by Detroit PBS

Detroit girl goes viral for her impressions of Black icons
Clip: Season 8 Episode 35 | 5m 55sVideo has Closed Captions
Robyn McKee, or Rosie White as she’s known online, has gained national attention online for her video impressions of Black icons, capturing the attention of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg and Michelle Obama. One Detroit’s Daijah Moss talks with Rosie, 8, of Detroit and her family about the inspiration, challenges and moments they’ve shared along the way.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(upbeat music) - I'm the minister for Muslim Temple number seven.
- Never heard of you.
Nobody here by that name.
- Wait a second.
What is your name?
- Don't worry about what my name is.
- We are content creators.
We call ourselves the big three, which is a nod on Detroit's automotive legacy.
We typically make videos about our culture.
This is our talent, Rosie, where we do movie portrayals that's really popular on our content.
Black History, anything funny that's culturally inclined with our community.
On Instagram, that's our biggest platform, it has always been where we got the most love and the most comments or the most interaction.
Black History specifically is how we started.
Our first viral video was the Rosa Parks video and it got about 580,000 views.
- And then, and then, and then I hop on the bus and then the driver tell me to sit on the back.
And then, and then, and then I said, "No, I'm not sitting in the back."
- It was an accident.
I was just reading her a paper from school, homework, she's three, read this package about Rosa Parks to your student.
To your child, ask her what she learned.
And I said, "All right Rosie, tell me what you learned."
And she said it back, every single word.
- So I was three of course, she didn't know.
She thought I wasn't listening.
So soon as she asked me, "Rosie, tell me what you learned," I said everything to the end on that paper, everything.
So then she ran around her house, tried to find everything that looked like Rosa Parks.
And then she got her phone out and again she told me, "Rosie, say it again."
And I said everything from the start.
And then everybody can ride a bus and Africans ride the bus now.
Me, Rosie Parks.
- We continued making the videos.
There were no worries because she absolutely loved to do it.
I absolutely love to dress her.
You know, Halloween, it's actually my favorite holiday and it's because I like to dress up, I like to create.
And then A'blesyn just so great with the camera just all came together.
- Our videos help because it's like, it is not only educational, but it's also fun.
So like when you're watching it, you're learning, but you don't really realize that you're learning something.
- Every time when my mom write the script, I'm just learning about history like every time.
Like he did this?
Oh wow.
She did this?
Oh wow.
- Now what's going on, Robin?
- Well my mom teach me about Black history and I teach others.
- My favorite history is Carter Woodson because he's the father of Black history.
Even my auntie, she gave me this book all about Black people.
And I was scrolling through it and I saw a lot of important people that changed the world.
Like Carter Woodson, I did not know he's the father of Black History.
So I told my mom, "Mom, we should talk about Carter Woodson."
And she said, "We're gonna add that in our rap," the Black History rap.
♪ Carter Woodson lead the fight ♪ ♪ To promote Black achievements ♪ ♪ And stop racist stereotypes black.
♪ ♪ Black, Black history ♪ Black, Black history My mom and sister inspire me because they helped me out.
- Some of the things we record, they're fun, lighthearted, it's just cool.
And then some are like, oh, we gonna be here a while.
- Like with the Harriet Tubman video, we were on Bellow in the midst of the winter time and ice on the river, shooting that video, we were tiptoeing on grass.
- I was a conductor for eight years of the Underground Railroad.
It was serious.
- We didn't have all the nice equipment.
I had a light, like a flashlight so she can get a good lighting because it was dark.
And Rosie had on like this costume and she was trying to get the best.
She is really, really particular about her shots.
So we were just towing together like.
- I am Harriet Tubman.
- It gave us the actual feel of what she did for our people because we were like complaining and she did that on a regular basis.
- My work as Moses was serious business.
- We're more focused on people like more popular.
So it's really like a reminder, a refresher.
- Rosie's videos are important because she's teaching more current state of people and not necessarily the horror that came with Black history, but the celebration that we are in now.
- Has two of the greatest business man in front of me.
All I can say is wow.
- We were doing this for family fun.
So the outpour of love and support we're getting is really astounding.
- Hi baby.
- You know Rosie?
- When people say, "Hey, I was having a bad day, thank you for your videos," my only response usually is mission accomplished, because that's all we wanted.
- I want them, the boys and girls to feel like they at school by teaching Black history like Carter Woodson, Rosa Parks, these people that changed the world.
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