Weeksville Heritage Center’s The Legacy Project presents Sensing History Curated by Archival Alchemy Begins Saturday, 10/24

[Image Description: A photograph of a man facing sideways, he is busy making art on a table in front of him. Text over the image says “SENSING” in orange letters, and “History” in light orange against an orange background.]

Weeksville Heritage Center’s Legacy Project invites you to Sensing History, a virtual experience exploring how Black practitioners have been using history and archival practices as road maps for navigating our present-day realities. As Black communities continue to be impacted by the current pandemic and national political uprisings, October 24th and 25th Weeksville will employ active and innovative alternatives in looking to the past as a source for sustaining communities.

Sensing History articulates feeling, hearing, digesting, and embodying the past as a living source. Weeksville Heritage Center is extending their personal contexts into something that not only evokes the living past and ancestors but also replenishes bodies and spirits, and stimulates imaginations. Join them for a virtual experience intended to share resources, offer support, and provide inspiration as the community collectively envisions ways through this unprecedented time.

Program Schedule

Saturday, October 24, 2020 from 11:00am to 5:00pm

Weeksville: Backwards and Forward Through Time, from 11:00 to 11:30am

Weeksville commence their programming by grounding themselves in their own history - its legacy in WHC’s work today, and its contemporary relevance throughout the world. Together, former WHC educators, Alphonse Fabien and Nia I’man Smith, will take the audience on a multimedia tour bridging Weeksville backwards and forward through time.

Black Archives in the Academy, from 11:30am to 1:30pm (includes 15 minute break)

There is power in telling your story, even against powerful entities who try to silence your voice. During this time, Weeksville will engage Tamara Lanier, a retired probation officer, who is in an ongoing fight against Harvard University over photos of her enslaved ancestors. Ms. Lanier and her daughter, Shonrael Lanier, will share stories and details from their genealogical journey that has fueled the case. Jarrett M. Drake, a PhD student in Social Anthropology at Harvard, joins the discussion to contextualize the significance of Lanier’s reclamation of her legacy and facilitate a discussion about it.

Lunch Break from 1:30pm to 2:00pm 

The Future of Black Archives, from 2:00pm to 3:30pm

What are Black Archives, and what is the future of them? Where do they exist? Who stewards these archives? How will people reimagine and redefine Black Archives for the future? Join presenters, Joyce LeeAnn Joseph of “Archival Alchemy®,” Rasheedah Phillips of “Black Quantum Futurism,” Steven G. Fullwood of “Nomadic Archivists Project,” and Zakiya Collier as they welcome the audience into a discussion of their work as archivists and memory workers and how they labor to (re)define the when, where, how, and why it is important to preserve Black archival materials now and what people collectively imagine their use will be in the future. The future of Black archives involves and requires everyone. In this session, Weeksville aim to collectively answer these questions for ourselves. 

Short Break from 3:30pm to 3:45pm

Building on a Legacy, from 3:45pm to 5:00pm 

Our youth have much to teach us, especially when we give them the space to share their perspectives on their own terms. In collaboration with the Public Training component of TLP, this will be the culminating session for a workshop series presented by Weeksville, created to engage and empower Black children to define legacy for themselves, develop skills to trace and preserve their roots, and explore creative ways to share their own stories. The young participants from Brooklyn’s Launch Expeditionary Learning Charter School and EMBER Charter School for Mindful Education, Innovation and Transformation will be given an opportunity to present those narratives during this program.

Sunday, October 25, 2020, from 2:30pm to 8:00pm

Attending to the Self and Other Modes of Care in Archival Praxis, from 2:30pm to 4:00pm

How do Black archival practitioners, center modes of care when doing archival work under its various contexts they continually navigate, in the larger world? What evidence of care have practitioners come across in the archives? How do we center healing and transformation while engaging our histories? To engage in these questions, three Black women archivists, Skyla S. Hearn, Tracy Drake and Raquel Flores-Clemons, will build on their “No Ordinary Pain: Invisible Labor and Trauma, Radical Empathy, and Self-Care in Archival Work” education session presented last year at the Society of American Archivists conference.

Sonic Escape Routes: “Shall We Fly or Shall we Resist?”, from 4:00pm to 4:45pm

Akeema-Zane and Rena Anakwe come together to map a fictive sonic architecture of the ongoing debates among Weeksville residents during the height of the community’s cultivation and ultimately, it’s demise. As many of us are grappling with the prospect of freedom under our current contexts, the community of Weeksville also pondered some of the same questions. Of those concerns, themes of refuge, resistance, liberation, expatriation and overall citizenship were included. Sonic Escape Routes seeks to explore the following: what is the spiritual core and where is the liminal space, for a people whose freedom to thrive remains in question? And what are the varying routes that anchor us toward flight or resistance? Through a collaborative sound and visual performance, the artists aim to assert and embed their own personal narratives and histories, in order to traverse the archives of Weeksville and in doing so, answer these questions.

Break and Cooking from 4:45pm to 6:00pm (time to warm up and/or prepare your meals)

Black Foodways, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Across time zones, borders, and distance, people can still break bread... even if it’s through our screens. Chef Omar Tate of Honeysuckle Projects has created a historical and culturally relevant menu, and will lead a cooking demo online, for participants to prepare at home. As COVID-19 has further exacerbated food insecurity within the Weeksville community, Meals As Collective Memory has organized an initiative offering neighbors gift cards to a local grocery store, and the opportunity to share familial stories around food as a part of WHC’s MACM oral history collection. Our virtual dinner table hosted by Chef Tate, Obden Mondésir and Stephanye Watts of MACM, and Chef Therese Nelson, the founder of Black Culinary History, will serve as our closing gathering while we enjoy our meals together.
Note: The recipes, cooking demo, and familial stories prompt will be shared online in advance, please register for this virtual program to receive updates once this information is available.

You can register for these events here.

You can find out more about Weeksville Heritage Center here.