What stories are tied to your life, family, and community? Have you thought about sharing them? Join us and be inspired! Author Michelle Lanier will offer a reading of the book My N.C. from A to Z and introduce Omisade Burney-Scott, a local African American cultural curator. Both will share stories related to their lives and experiences in Durham. Participants will then be invited to digitally share their own stories. This program will be presented live on the NC African American Heritage Commission's YouTube page.
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Special Guests
Michelle Lanier, the author, is a scholar, oral historian, filmmaker, museum professional, and folklorist. Her deep roots, in what she calls Afro-Carolina, inspired Lanier to successfully advocate for legislation creating the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission, which she led as its founding executive director. In 2018 Lanier became the first African American director of North Carolina's Division of State Historic Sites in the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Lanier also has a passion for teaching, particularly at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, where she has served as a faculty member for two decades.
Omisade Burney-Scott is a Black southern 7th generation native North Carolinian feminist, mother and healer. Omisade has spent the better part of the past 25 years of her life focused on the liberation of marginalized people, beginning with her own community through advocacy work, philanthropy,community organizing and culture work. She is the creator/curator of The Black Girls’ Guide to Surviving Menopause, a multimedia project seeking to curate and share the stories and realities of Black women and femmes over 50. This project is a direct result of Omisade finding herself and her peers living at the intersection of social justice movement work, creative healer identities and aging. She has chosen to use the medium of storytelling to disrupt the erasure of Black women's voices as they age.
Omisade is a member of the 1999-2001 class of the William C. Friday Fellows for Human Relations, a 2003 Southeastern Council on Foundation’s Hull Fellow and founding member NGAAP, Next Generation of African American Philanthropy. She has served on various nonprofit boards including stone circles, Fund for Southern Communities, Spirithouse, Village of Wisdom, Working Films and The Beautiful Project. She is a 1989 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, the proud mom of two sons, Che and Taj and resides in North Carolina.
This program is presented in partnership with Stanford L. Warren Branch Library, the State Library of North Carolina, and North Carolina Historical Publications.