Join us on Day Two of African American Heritage Festival for an evening with Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina's first African-American Poet Laureate!
Jaki Shelton Green will facilitate a creativity salon focused on What We Keep Keeps Us: Exploring Our Human Museums. As we think of ourselves as our own curators or personal anthropologists, we will explore what's in our human museums and how primary sources shape our lives, our values, our creativity, and how we show up in community.
East Charlotte Residents
East Charlotte is an ever-growing and ever-changing region in our Queen City - and not to mention, incredibly diverse and full of important stories. For this first workshop with Dr. Shelton Green, we invite members of the East Charlotte community to think critically about the objects and materials they own as a means to preserving the lives, stories, and histories of East Charlotte residents. This workshop will be centered around the neighborhoods located in East Charlotte. Not from East Charlotte but want to explore your own human museum? Don't worry! Jaki Shelton Green will be hosting another workshop during African American Heritage Festival on Saturday, February 25. Pre-registration is required.
What To Bring
Workshop participants are invited to bring artifacts, photos, objects, heirlooms, documents, or stories that hold special meaning for them. This session will include writing exercises and discussions that examine the many narratives, memoirs, stories, poems, and legacies that are hidden in full sight... just waiting to be written.
Jaki Shelton Green
Jaki Shelton Green, ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina appointed in 2018, is the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate and reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Governor Roy Cooper. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointment, 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Jaki Shelton Green teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and the 2021 Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence at UNC Chapel Hill. Additionally, she received the George School Outstanding Alumni Award in 2021. Her publications include: Dead on Arrival, Masks, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, published by Blair Publishers. Feeding the Light, i want to undie you published by Jacar Press, i want to undie you English/Italian bilingual edition published by Lebeg Publishers. Juneteenth 2020, she released her first LP, poetry album, The River Speaks of Thirst, produced by Soul City Sounds and Clearly Records and released a CD, i want to undie you in 2021. Jaki Shelton Green is the owner of SistaWRITE providing writing retreats for women writers in Sedona Arizona, Martha’s Vineyard, Ocracoke North Carolina, Northern Morocco, and Tullamore Ireland. In 2021, The Arts Club of Chicago premiered a commissioned body of work in collaboration with Flutronix for the Black Is Series and was performed in April 2022 by Flutronix and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She serves as the poetry editor for WALTER Magazine and an appointment as the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Additionally, she has been recognized on the Forbes Magazine 50 Over 50 Lifestyle List for 2022.
The Charlotte Museum of History saves and shares the Charlotte region’s history, connecting the past to current issues and opportunities. We believe a shared understanding of the past can enrich the community’s future, and we work to tell the stories of all parts of our community and all those who have inhabited our area.
The museum sits on an eight-acre wooded campus in fast-changing East Charlotte. It’s the site of the oldest surviving house in Mecklenburg County, the Rock House built circa 1774 for the Hezekiah Alexander household. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a designated local landmark, the house is Charlotte’s only remaining structure from the days of the Revolutionary period. Nearby are a relocated barn dating to the era, a reproduction log kitchen, and a reconstructed two-story springhouse. Tours of the site and museum programs highlight how people lived during that era and tell of the many cultures that came together to build Charlotte, including the stories of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities.
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