Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012

Early start to Black History Month at museum

Free downtown Raleigh festival highlights state’s historically black colleges and universities

For its 11th anniversary this year, the African American Cultural Celebration at the N.C. Museum of History is highlighting the state’s 11 four-year historically black colleges and universities, the highest number in any state in the country.

Local colleges such as Shaw University – the oldest historically black school in the South – and St. Augustine’s College will be among those in the spotlight.

“It helps guests and visitors connect with each other and to our heritage as part of the North Carolina story,” said Michelle Lanier, acting director of the N.C. African American Heritage Commission. “It helps to illuminate stories and historic moments that haven’t really received the kinds of attention we need to give them.”

The free celebration will be held at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Presented in partnership with the N.C. African American Heritage Commission, the event will feature more than 75 presenters from around the state.

Youth programs coordinator Emily Grant helped found the event in 2001. The idea originally was to commemorate upcoming civil rights milestones, but then it blossomed into something more.

“By focusing on particular communities, it helps people make connections – we are all different, but we are all the same,” Grant said.

“North Carolina has an amazing, rich African American history that we’re all connected to. There are some great stories to tell.”

In keeping with its theme, this year’s event will include featured speakers from historically black institutions around the state, including St. Augustine’s President Dianne Boardley Suber.

The festival planners didn’t have to look far for representatives from each college, Grant said – nearly every presenter and performer had some tie to at least one institution.

“HBCUs historically have provided access to education, opportunities and programs for a widely diverse population of young people reaching out to both the disenfranchised and the entitled,” Boardley Suber said via email. “Our institutions are not only national treasures, we are financial assets to this global society.”

The rest of the festival will feature dozens of presenters and performers including men’s a capella quartet the Mighty Gospel Inspirations, children’s author Kelly Starling Lyons, basket maker Neal Thomas and blues and R&B singer, songwriter and piano player Ironing Board Sam.

“People unfortunately do not have a clear understanding of the long legacy of achievement, within education, within the arts, within business and entrepreneurship and within civil rights activism, that African-Americans have contributed to the state of North Carolina and in fact on an international level,” Lanier said.