Mom,writer, filmmaker, teacher, recovering New Yorker My writing, filmmaking and teaching are all knit together by my fascination with stories. Over the past 17 years I have created documentaries centered on oral history of historic African American schools, and on sharecropping. …

Poster for 12/1/22 screening of CF Pope documentary at CFCC’s Movie and a Message series Photo by Nixon Leaders Center, CFCC The Nixon Leaders Center of Cape Fear Community College (CFCC) will screen the documentary film CF Pope: Where Champions were Grown on Thursday, December 1, 2022 at 3pm in…

Kneeling by his gravestone at the cemetery of Canetuck Missionary Baptist Church in western Pender County, NC, Earnestine Keaton shared her research about her great-great-grandfather, Rev. Richard Keaton. A preacher to enslaved people, in 1865 Rev. Keaton also established some of the first literacy efforts for African Americans in the…

In December, 2021 the Southern Pines Land and Housing Trust won a two year battle to buy back the historic West Southern Pines school property. The property was originally the site of a Rosenwald school constructed on four acres donated by the African American community. The campus was later expanded…

Maggie closed the door of her room gratefully at the end of that long day on which Mr. Brown had returned home. She collapsed on her pallet without bothering to remove her black dress and starched white apron. I’ll hang them up in a moment, she thought. She closed her…

He was from a small town, or he was from a city. They had met only a few months before, or they had been married for years. There were children, or there were no children. They were together constantly, or he had just returned from deployment. He was successful, or…

Dr. Johnny Batts, Jr. is a retired physicist who was born in 1942 in Pender County’s historic Edgecombe community (click here for more information about Edgecombe from the Pender County African American Heritage Trail). Dr. Batts attended first through sixth grade at the Sloop Point Rosenwald School. He doesn’t know…

“Maggie, come upstairs! I need you to put the ribbons in my hair!” Sarah was in a state, with her father returning after two months in Europe. Mr. Brown’s ship had docked downtown, and Mack had been dispatched to fetch him in the yellow Pierce-Arrow town car. That morning, Maggie…

My family has traveled many times to western North Carolina, and we usually stay in Blowing Rock near Boone, NC. We wanted to do something a little different, however, for my husband’s birthday weekend. …