Culture Keepers Collection
.png)
"The Negro Digs Up His Past"
In “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” Schomburg argues that Black people must reclaim, research, and celebrate their history — a history that has been systematically erased or distorted by white historians.
"The Negro has been throughout the centuries of controversy an active collaborator, and often a pioneer, in the struggle for his own freedom and advancement. This is true to a degree which makes it the more surprising that it has not been recognized earlier." ~ Arturo Schomburg, “The Negro Digs Up His Past”
.png)
A Gullah Geechee native is fighting to keep her culture alive
When Jackie Mikel (pronounced as “Michael”, a.k.a. Geechee Gal), stands in front of one of the slave houses at Boone Hall plantation, she must be standing where her great-great-grandmothers once stood. They must give Jackie enough strength, inspiration and conviction to tell a compelling story of the Gullah People. Like her great-great-grandmothers, who were brought from west Africa as slaves to the Gullah Geechee Corridor of North and South Carolina and Georgia.
Alice Eley Jones
Historian Alice Eley Jones and I recently got into her Jeep and went in search of herring -- or at least the history of herring fishing. We were in Murfreesboro, her hometown. Herring have been an important part of life in that northeast corner of the state for centuries. As early as the 1740s, large commercial herring fisheries flourished there. They often employed mile-long nets, sometimes caught half a million fish in a single haul, and exported tons of salted herring up the Eastern Seaboard and to the West Indies.
.jpg)
In Pursuit of Flavor
In Pursuit of Flavor: The Beloved Classic Cookbook from the Acclaimed Author of The Taste of Country Cooking
by Edna Lewis and Mashama Bailey
Mar 26, 2019
The classic cookbook from “the first lady of Southern cooking” (NPR), featuring a new foreword by Mashama Bailey, star of Netflix documentary series Chef’s Table.
JonKonnu
John Kuners was considered a time when enslaved Black people in the American south would "mock" their white slavers. It is also known as John Kooners, John Canoes, Junkanoes, John OConners, or Jonkonnu. In this area of America it is spelled JonKonnu and is pronounced as if saying, John Canoe.
Mary Jackson
Mary Jackson Is Continuing a Weaving Tradition Brought to the South by Enslaved People
BASKET WEAVER, 76, CHARLESTON, SC
Mary Jackson Shares Her Greatest Lessons
By Danielle Harling, / Veranda dotcom
Photographs credit: GAVIN MCINTYRE
“I wanted to do something different from what I had learned growing up. I decided to do something which came from my own ideas.” That’s how Mary Jackson, 76, developed her unique take on a sweetgrass basket weaving technique that dates back to her ancestors in Africa.
Melba's American Comfort: 100 Recipes from My Heart to Your Kitchen
Melba's American Comfort: 100 Recipes from My Heart to Your Kitchen
by Melba Wilson (Author)
– April 12, 2016
Fresh from the kitchen of her legendary Harlem restaurant, Melba’s, the reigning queen of American comfort food serves up one hundred delectable recipes that put her own special touch on favorite dishes—and taste just like home.
.png)
Michelle Duster
Photo collage: Left Image-Ida B. Wells stands prominently, near Booker T. Washington, at the 1902 gathering of the National Afro-American Council.
--Middle Image-Alfreda M. Duster (née Barnett; September 3, 1904 – April 2, 1983)-Ida B. Wells youngest child.
Also the grandmother of Michelle Duster.
--Right Top & Bottom images- Michelle Duster, the great granddaughter of Ida B. Wells and granddaughter of Alfreda Duster.*
Mr. John William Mitchell
John William Mitchell (1885 – 1955) was a 1909 graduate of the Agricultural and Mechanical College for The Colored Race (now North Carolina A&T) who became a pioneering leader in the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, and later for the United States Department of Agriculture.
New Bern's African American Heritage Trail
New Bern's new African American Heritage Trail has no equal in Eastern North Carolina and adapts visual arts needed for a modern audience. That's an assessment by David Dennard, retired East Carolina history professor and founder of ECU's African American Studies program.
Our Founder and Culture Keeper
From The G.C. and France Hawley's founder, a short article for Black History Month 2019.
Black History Month to many African Americans is a time to remember and honor the lives of our enslaved ancestors who lived and died in bondage, to celebrate our freedom from chattel slavery, to uplift our advancements in spite of America's White supremacist foundations, and to encourage our youth to continue to strive to be the best they can be.
Sweet Honey In the Rock
Photograph: Members of the musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock perform a cappella at the 1976 Festival.
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives.
(Original members Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Carol Maillard, Louise Robinson, and Mie drew their name from the first song they learned, “Sweet Honey in the Rock,” based on a Biblical psalm.)
The Black Church Food Security Network
Fourtee Acres is a 45-acre family owned forestry, farming, natural gardening and rental property operation established in 1994 that is engaged in sustainability for the future. Fourtee Acres is part of the 195 acre century old Williams Family Farm (established 1916).
The Gullah Geechee Corridor
The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor was created to call attention to the historic and cultural contributions of the Gullah Geechee people. The Gullah Geechee people are the descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and bought to the lower Atlantic states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia to work on the coastal rice, Sea Island cotton and indigo plantations. Because their enslavement was on isolated coastal plantations, sea and barrier islands, they were able to retain many of their indigenous African traditions. These traditions are reflected in their foodways, arts and crafts, and spiritual traditions. They also created a new language, Gullah, a creole language spoken nowhere else in the world.
The Origins of Black History Month
As we draw closer to Black History Month 2019, we would like to provide background about Mr Carter G. Woodson, the fire behind the push in Black committees to become culture keepers which would preserve, celebrate and remember our history, culture and our stories. Let us continue to speak the name Carter G. Woodson.
