Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Please join us at the Sixth Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Community Celebration at the ECHO Center tomorrow (Monday January 15, 2018). This free event is part of a nationwide initiative to make MLK Day a “day on, not a day off,” in which communities engage their citizenry in meaningful service and reflection. Each year, an average of 1,500 adults and children gather at the ECHO Center to explore issues of diversity and inclusion through story, celebrate MLK’s social justice work through song, and share their dreams for our community through conversation. This year's theme is “Immigration,” and the Clemmons Family Farm has been invited to offer a special focus on the Great Migration.
Stop by our Walk-Up Station, which will introduce visitors to the new "A Sense of Place" project funded by ArtPlace America and launch the Clemmons Family Farm's Great Migration Bookmark Storytelling Series. Visitors will learn some of the history of how six million African Americans traveled from the rural southern United States to urban areas in the northeast, Midwest and west between the 1920's and 1970's. Ninety-four-year-old Jack and Lydia Clemmons were true pioneers because, in 1962, their own Great Migration path led them to the unusual destination of a farm in rural Charlotte, Vermont. Each of the 11 bookmarks in the series has a short written summary with a QR to link users to the wonderful online storytelling by Jack and Lydia about their families' lives during the Great Migration. The first edition prints of the bookmarks will be distributed for free at ECHO and at the Charlotte Library.
Activities at the Clemmons Family Farm (CFF) Walk-Up Station will also include a storytelling booth where visitors can record their own families' immigration/migration stories, interactive maps where visitors can trace their families’ travels from their homes of origin to Vermont, a CFF/A Sense of Place video loop, pop-up banners, and a display of arts and craft souvenirs collected by Jack and Lydia Clemmons during their travels in Africa.
Come meet some of the Clemmons Family Farm team and partners, including representatives of Champlain College and The Charlotte Library, and learn more about the "A Sense of Place" project funded by ArtPlaceAmerica!
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