Guests: Jovelle Rennie and Mayowa Aina, team members of the Black in Alaska project. Sherry Patterson, profiled in the Black in Alaska Project.
Jovelle Rennie realized there was a need for a story telling project about what it means to be Black in Alaska, when he asked people to name fifty Blacks who live in Alaska. Most couldn’t do it. Yet when Rennie began to make up his own list of Black Alaskans with interesting stories, that list went well beyond fifty people. That’s when he and a team of other story tellers decided to collect those stories and share them in an ambitious multi-media project that includes an exhibit at the Anchorage Museum and also lives online at blackinalaska.org. The purpose of the project was to get a conversation going, a goal that Rennie believes has already been achieved.
Jovelle Rennie realized there was a need for a story telling project about what it means to be Black in Alaska, when he asked people to name fifty Blacks who live in Alaska. Most couldn’t do it. Yet when Rennie began to make up his own list of Black Alaskans with interesting stories, that list went well beyond fifty people. That’s when he and a team of other story tellers decided to collect those stories and share them in an ambitious multi-media project that includes an exhibit at the Anchorage Museum and also lives online at blackinalaska.org. The purpose of the project was to get a conversation going, a goal that Rennie believes has already been achieved.
