Macon Magazine

February/March 2026 | maconmagazine.com 61 I'm from Minnesota. The climate was really hard. But then, very quickly I got to a place where my scholarship, teaching, and public work could all be done here. And then I started thinking, okay, God is in control, let me just get into it. The work was so rewarding. What was your very first impression when you got here? When we first started doing our community meetings with our partners at the Tubman, I was meeting all these amazing people. People like [MM contributor] Clarence Thomas, councilmen, and so many other people that really cared. That was a surprise. I really didn't think anyone was going to come to these meetings. They aren't going to want to talk about reparations or any issues, but a lot of people showed up, regularly. The dedication and commitment were a bit of a shock because I'm used to coming from bigger cities where people just don't care. What was that defining moment when you realized Macon may be home? I was working with Rodney Mason from Restored Ancestral Roots (see page 42) for the last five years. I'm a West-African food historian and trying to get people interested in history through foodways with restored roots. That partnership and working with Jeff Bruce at the Tubman. We collaborated on a couple of different exhibits. The last exhibit we did more recently, called The Water Spirit Will Take Us Home. We had been researching for two or three years about Igbo landing, Sapelo Island, and looking at that connection between West African history and American history and those deep roots. We did a podcast together at the Wesleyan Leadership Lab on Cherry Street, and that's when I said "Oh!" There's connection, there's community, and we're doing a project that can help people understand their place in history and their role. That impact was when I knew this was it. What would you say surprised you the most? Another "A-ha" moment was when we got the opportunity to work with the Macon200 Bicentennial committee and Muriel Jackson at Washington Library. We worked together to cra those historical markers that we put up that I never thought would ever get approved. We were working on it for a year, you never know what might happen. We put them up, and that was a pivotal moment. That was a moment when I realized that there are people having conversations about this history. They are serious about it, and it is still with us. It's still all around us. It's in the land, it's in the institutions and they are ready to have those conversations. That just shocked me. How has living here changed you either personally, professionally, or both? I feel like this place has given me an opportunity to make my research accountable to the people of my community. It's nice to go and research about some other place and write about it. All that's nice, but to be able to make the local, global and the global, local, to see it in action and unfold right in front of you, has given me the gi of belief. I had a corporate job before this, and you just do what you're told. You just earn your paycheck, and you go home. Then, I taught K-12 — and that's not much different because there are standards and they micromanage you. But this place has an entrepreneurial spirit that I have never encountered. Everyone I meet has like three or four different irons in the fire and it's allowed me to put myself out there in partnership with other people and really live out my mission. When I became a K-12 teacher, I did it because I kind of had to, because I was a single mom out in Conyers. One of the standards is about West African History and so I started teaching it, because other people didn't teach it. It's not on the high school graduation test, which is something I would like to change someday. They were students from all over the planet, and they had never heard of this before, about West African history. We just had so much fun exploring that through art, and food, and different ways — and their own personal connections. To see that their lives have historical significance, that is a gi . It matters, and that's when I decided to get my Ph.D. in West African history. There's an intimate connection between the United States and West Africa that a lot of us don't want to talk about. We've been shamed into not talking about it. I picked West African food history because it gives me the ability to teach people to see themselves in narrative. The opportunity I get to do that here in public as a public historian, I might not be able to in another place. It wouldn't happen, not like this. That's how Macon has changed me. I think I found my purpose here. Is there a special place in Macon that has deeper meaning for you? Obviously downtown, from the music that's right down here on Poplar and Cherry, and then you go up the hill, and you get your Hay House and what they call the Cannonball House. You think about those places, and juxtapose them and those histories, and they are right next to each other. I love doing that walk. The river, Amerson River Park. You've got the Native American Ocmulgee Mounds, and then you think about the rivers and the trains and how people from West Africa were transported here — and MLK [Boulevard], which was the Federal Highway, which was an Indian trade route. This is how African people were brought in and housed, just down this street. Downtown is really an important hub for a regional network, an economic network. This is where the sausage is made. This is what built the foundation of the wealth of the United States of America, and I did not know that. Have you learned anything about resilience being in Macon? I have new respect for the South as a region and the people that make it up. When I travel out, and you realize you're surrounded by cotton fields, and we're still here. We're still influencing and impacting, and it's still unfolding. That is an amazing realization. When you stand on Poplar and you're reading markers and you're thinking — you're surviving. When you see that, people come together and think of ways to make it better. I have not seen that where I am from. It is empowering as a Black woman. What does 'home' mean to you now? I've got a community of like-minded people from all different places who are invested in our young people. That's a big part of home to me. I am from one of the most progressive places, Minneapolis and St. Paul, but this is a depth that I haven't even encountered there. It just feels more genuine. I have colleagues that I can trust, which I never thought would happen. I am grateful for the faculty at Wesleyan and that complicated history that they continue to let me explore, which is tied to Macon's history. I love the growth that's happening down here. Being able to go out any day and have something fun to do — that experience as a city girl is really helping make it connect for me. I've got the purpose and mission and community, and now I've got fun. I have everything I need.

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