Lessons from My African American Neighbors
Since 2003, I have done hundreds of interviews to learn about the experiences of my neighbors.
Since 2003, I have done hundreds of interviews in southeastern North Carolina in order to learn about the experiences of my neighbors.
Claudia interviewing Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk for the documentary “Carrie Mae: An American Life” (Stack Stories LLC 2015)
What drives me? I want to be a better neighbor, a better teacher, a better mother. There is a lot I don’t know. The more I learn from my neighbors, the more I realize that I can’t ever fully understand their experiences. But that realization is also progress. It means I create mental space. The acknowledgement that I don’t know helps me to be a better listener. I hope that viewers of my films will take a similar attitude of openness.
Although many North Carolina farmers and sharecroppers were African American, this handbook to help increase food production during World War II featured only a European American family on the cover. Through this and many, many, other examples I began to see how my African American neighbors have often been marginalized or rendered invisible. The same day I purchased this book at an antique store, I purchased the picture on the left. This portrait of an African American woman was somehow lost to her family and ended up in the antique store.
For that reason, there is no “expert voice” in my documentaries, no Ph.D. telling viewers what to think. The films are stories centered on a topic, such as sharecropping, or schools built by African American communities. They are told by people whose lives stretch back to the early 1900s. Ten of the people I interviewed have since passed away. I try to honor them by preserving and sharing their memories. My first two feature films were entirely focused on oral history from an African American perspective. My most recent film, Sharecrop, features sharecroppers of many backgrounds.
Cabin in southeastern NC picture by Claudia Stack do not use without permission
The things I have learned changed the way I see the landscape here in southeastern North Carolina. Old houses, barns, a slave/sharecropper cabin (some formerly enslaved people had nowhere else to go after Emancipation, and stayed on in the same cabins), the schools and churches that African Americans built, even rows of trees that once lined a drive to a plantation house that no longer exists — all of it speaks to me.
Plantation house in southeastern NC picture by Claudia Stack do not use without permission
This landscape tells of a stolen people working stolen land, creating a new identity while they contributed to the foundation of our country. I think about the resilience and graciousness of the people I have come to know. I think about the sacrifices their ancestors made to pursue education and create communities.
The African American families in Canetuck, NC asked the school board three times for a school in the early 1910s, but were denied. After they raised $1,226 (over and above the taxes they paid) they were able to obtain a Rosenwald school, which opened in 1922.
I think about how much of what we call American culture is really African American at its roots. And I am grateful for this journey.
Claudia Stack and Dr. Richard T. Newkirk doing their presentation “Lessons from the Rosenwald Schools” at UNC Wilmington, NC
Dr. Richard T. Newkirk, who is an alumnus of historic African American schools, and I work together to present a program of professional development for educators. That presentation is called “Lessons from the Rosenwald Schools: Appreciating African American School Heritage and Pedagogy.” Recently, we have also teamed up with filmmaker and counselor Frederick DeShon Murphy to offer a new presentation called “Bridging the Divide: Healing Historical Trauma by Building Community.”