Racine Nago
2024-10-30 19:30 (America/New_York) | Hayti Heritage Center
For this spirited concert, Haitian music group Racine Nago comes to Durham to share traditional Haitian Vodou through song and dance. The group's powerfully expressive music features call-and-response vocals and intricate percussion to create crosscurrents of rhythm that move the body and nourish the soul.

Founded in 2016 in the Jacmel temple of Haitian-American Sosyete (Vodou house), Racine Nago is dedicated to uplifting Haitian Vodou through song and dance.

The Ethics of Now with Rev. Dr. William Barber II
2024-11-08 19:00
On the heels of the general election, join host Adriane Lentz-Smith for a conversation with the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II about countering the politics of rage with a moral policy that prioritizes love, truth, and strategically reaching for higher ground.

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is among the nation's most significant moral and political leaders. Rooted in North Carolina, his advocacy has mobilized a fusion movement that calls upon a moral and faith-based ethics to unite people. Reverend Barber contends that it is multi-issue and multi-identity movements, based on shared values, that have most successfully furthered justice in the past - and can do so again.

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II organized the Forward Together Moral Movement in North Carolina, which began in 2013 as a series of Moral Monday rallies at the statehouse in Raleigh to fight against immoral policies on labor rights, voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights, healthcare, criminal justice, and other laws that negatively impacted poor and marginalized communities in the state. In 2015, he founded Repairers of the Breach to support and extend the movement as it grew nationally. In 2018, he and colleagues launched a revival of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign that was originally led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with others.

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II served as President of the North Carolina NAACP from 2006 - 2017 and on the National NAACP Board of Directors from 2008 - 2020. In 2018, he was named a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow. He was one of the 2019 recipients of the North Carolina Award, the state's highest civilian honor. He has been Senior Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Goldsboro for the past thirty years. He is Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.

This event takes place at the Hayti Heritage Center. Copies of "White Poverty" will be available for purchase, courtesy of the Regulator Bookshop. A book signing and reception will follow the event.

Parking is available on the premises, at Phoenix Square, Heritage Square Shopping Center, and on adjacent streets. An accessible entrance to the premises is available from the parking lot. Please write to event coordinator, Jac Arnade-Colwill, at jac.arnade-colwill@duke.edu if you require accessible parking and entrance. This event is first come, first seated.

The Ethics of Now with Damon Tweedy and Jeffrey Baker
2025-03-04 19:00
Join the Kenan Institute for Ethics and host Adriane Lentz-Smith for a conversation with Jeffrey Baker and Damon Tweedy on race, memory, and what local history can teach us - as embodied in a story from Duke Hospital that still reverberates today.

In a new podcast, "UNHEALED: A Story of Race, Memory, and a Teaching Hospital," Damon Tweedy and Jeffrey Baker revisit the largely forgotten story of a 24-year-old Army veteran named Maltheus Avery, who died following a car accident on December 1,1950 - after he was turned away from Duke Hospital because of his race. Reported around the country, Avery's tragedy provoked national outrage and inspired a medical civil rights campaign.

In conversation with host Adriane Lentz-Smith, Tweedy and Baker will explore the challenging lessons we can learn from Avery's story and why those lessons still matter today.

Damon Tweedy, MD is a professor of Psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and staff physician at the Durham VA Health Care System. His first book, "Black Man in a White Coat," was a New York Times best-seller and was selected by Time as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2015. He has also published articles about race, medicine, and mental health in medical journals and print publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. His most recent book is "Facing the Unseen: The Struggle to Center Mental Health in Medicine."

Jeffrey Baker, MD, PhD is a professor of Pediatrics and of the Practice of History, and directs the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. He has spoken to many audiences on the history of racism in academic health centers and their communities, focusing on the example of Duke Hospital and Durham. He serves on the board of the Museum of Durham History, and in 2024-25 served as chair of the President's Advisory Committee on Institutional History at Duke.

This event is part of the The Ethics of Now, a series of conversations between Duke historian Adriane Lentz-Smith and a range of artists, advocates, and authors whose works explore the moral challenges of our time.

This event takes place at the Hayti Heritage Center. A reception will follow the event.

Ashon Crawley: Agnosticostal
2025-04-02 19:30
AGNOSTICOSTAL is a performance lecture in which Ashon Crawley practices the breath, the gestures, the spiritual seriousness of Black folks, of Blackpentestalism, of Black social life. "Shouting," a choreography of praise and worship in the Blackpentecostal tradition, will be immortalized on canvas as Crawley paints with pigment powder, acrylic paint, and ink using hand clapping, foot stomping, a tambourine, and movement of the body to visualize the intensity and fervor of spiritual practices. With a live soundtrack provided by the sounds of the Hammond B-3 organ, played by Charles "Chuddy" Smith, vocals by Ashley Howard and the downbeat by drummer Rodney "Rod" Jones, Crawley will engage a devotional practice of praise and worship live for, and with, an audience.

This is the third and final public event of the 2024-25 Keohane Professorship with interdisciplinary artist and scholar Ashon Crawley.
