Shaping Change, Crafting Liberation

We cannot express how much gratitude we feel having your support as we launched our fundraising campaign a couple of months ago. Although we are just beginning this incredible journey we would like to give you some updates.

— Both Jada and Ashby have been making regular trips to Tuskegee building community and working and learning on the land. Most of our time has been spent at the Shady Grove Road Blueberry Patch with Josie Gbadamosi. Read more about her incredible work here.

— Recently a short write up on Olamina was featured in the American Craft Council. You can access the article written by Robert Alan Grand here.

— This fall Jada will be participating in the Salmon Creek Arts’ School of Salmon Creek. Jada is excited to be surrounded by redwood trees, apart of a phenomenal cohort of artists and to learn from school and bring back that knowledge to Olamina. You can learn more about Salmon Creek and view the farm’s gorgeous buildings and land here.

— Want an opportunity to connect with other BIPOC craftsfolk, artists and arts educators? Join a monthly meet up hosted by Ashby and the African American Craft Alliance. We skip the month of July so the next gathering will be August 25th @ 5pm EST. You can register here.

— Lastly, we are still working to reach our fundraising goal and with your support we hope to get there soon. Please continue to give, share and spread the good word!

Remember you can always keep up with us here and at @tuskegeelandproject on Instagram where we will continue to post our research, updates and all things Olamina.

With Gratitude,

In Robell Awake’s Book A Short History of Black Craft in 10 Objects, he cites that in 1865, Black skilled artisans outnumbered white artisans five to one in the south. Today it is estimated that Black “craftworkers” make up about 10.52% of the field today in the United States.

This is a known reality when visiting any craft or folk school across the country today. It is clear who is not occupying these spaces as both instructors and students, despite an extensive history with all of the crafts existing within these spaces. This is not to say that craft and folk schools are the only places where artisans gather, but they are proven spaces that foster craft knowledge, skill and community.

Labor today can seem much more complex than it was in the early to mid 1900s, with the invent of computers and now AI, but sentiment towards it remains almost the same. We don’t want to be forced to work and we want fair wages. But what about dignity in what we do with our hands and our minds?

In Booker T. Washington’s Essay Industrial Education for the Negro he says “It has been necessary for the Negro to learn the difference between being worked and working–to learn that being worked meant degradation, while working means civilization; that all forms of labor are honorable” He goes on to say some not so savory things, but the root of his intentions in this essay is to get Black folk back on the land and in their respective crafts with dignity, joy and honor in their work. If there was a space where we were able to reconnect to the history and work of our ancestors, could we find joy in our labor again?

Broom Making, circa 1915, Tuskegee University Archives

Student In Tapestry Class, circa 1920, Tuskegee University Archives

Tuskegee and the greater south is rich in craft and agricultural history. Above you can see a young Black Tuskegee University students working on brooms and weaving on a floor loom. The young weaver works with a finished overshot weaving hanging on the wall behind her— a pattern often credited to colonial America, more specifically Appalachia.

In 1902 Dr. W.E.B Du Bois states,

One only needs to go down South and examine hundreds of old Southern mansions, and splendid old church edifices, still intact, to be convinced of the fact of the cleverness of the Negro artisan, who constructed nine-tenths of them, and many of them still provoke the admiration of all who see them, and are not to be despised by the men of our day.

The Negro Artisan (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1902), pp. 15–16

The time to build the school to find our roots, to fill our spirits, and skill up is now! We've raised nearly $2,000 since we launched the campaign last week. Help support us in the founding and building of the Olamina Folk School for Land, Memory & Craft.

The Olamina Folk School is a new educational project and arts center developed in the tradition of the Danish folk high schools, the Black Arts Movement community art schools, and the 1964 Freedom Summer Schools. Based in Tuskegee, Alabama, the Olamina Folk School will be a place where people across the global majority can come and work with their bodies, their minds and their spirits to develop skills and community on the land.

Many names, but the concept is the same at its roots. It's the everyday folks learning what they need to know - together - with or without school walls.

Communiversities were defined as "non-hierarchical, inclusive, public centers of education for the enrichment and advancement of community life" in a 2024 article. Spaces for adults to deepen their understanding of the world around them is so necessary. A group of Black southern labor organizers in North Carolina built the Communiversity South - a space for everyday working folks to learn their history and be able to shift who we think about our world (aka community consciousness) through storytelling and popular education. Other dope political organizations are building communiversities to develop political education such as Interrupting Criminalization and The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond.

One article about communiversities opens with a photograph of the Highlander Center, which was originally founded as the "Highlander Folk School" 94 years ago. Highlander is one of the older folk schools in the U.S., model in part from the Danish folk high schools. These folks across the world were/are focused on the collective learning of poor folks in the region, most of whom historically were farmers and agrarians. Many folk schools developed during shifts in political systems, such as nation sovereignty or the end to oppressive rule. Today's folk schools after focus on the necessary skills for living and surviving in today's political/environment/economic conditions. As folk school scholar Dr. Devon Lee puts it: folk schools are "slow schools for fast times".

And then there are freedom schools. Nothing brings to mind more clearly an image of learning as resistance. The Freedom Summer of 1964 was powerful weeks-long campaign to get Black folks in the South to win back their rights. Organized by the Council of Federated Organizations, which included SNCC and CORE, 41 freedom schools were launched. "In addition to math, reading, and other traditional courses, students were also taught black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement, and leadership skills that provided them with the intellectual and practical tools to carry on the struggle after the summer volunteers departed." Freedom schools are well known - they're also the only schools that focused primarily on children.