North Carolina Humanities will hold its North Carolina Stories Luncheon in Charlotte, NC on May 17, 2024, at 12:00 noon. Learn more and purchase tickets, visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/north-carolina-stories-luncheon-tickets-881397011187.
Guests are invited to join North Carolina Humanities for a charming three-course lunch while listening to captivating stories that celebrate North Carolina and North Carolina Humanities’ work across the state. This in-person only event promises an intimate gathering where you can connect with fellow humanities enthusiasts, make new friends, and be inspired.
You’ll enjoy conversation, musical performances, book giveaways, and more as we celebrate the rich cultural heritage of our state over a shared meal together.
The afternoon’s program will culminate with a very special oral history showcase from and conversation with North Carolina Humanities 2024 John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities recipients Dr. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and Dr. Robert Korstad. As lifelong historians dedicated to amplifying voices and stories, Hall and Korstad will share stories of North Carolina and the modern South.
When asked about their impending receipt of the Caldwell Award, Dr. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and Dr. Robert Korstad stated,
“We were beyond surprised and honored to receive the Caldwell Award. Bob was born, raised, and mostly educated in North Carolina. Jacquelyn has been at UNC-Chapel Hill for more than fifty years. Separately and together, we have spent most of our adult lives trying to write and teach history in public facing ways. Our aspiration has always been to amplify voices and stories that encourage citizens to see themselves as historical actors who can draw on the past to imagine a better future. We are especially grateful to North Carolina Humanities for recognizing how much we have leaned on each other—and by extension on our students, colleagues, and friends—in this life-defining endeavor.”
This year all luncheon proceeds will go towards supporting North Carolina Humanities’ prize-winning, virtual, statewide book club program, North Carolina Reads, which annually features five books that explore issues of racial, social, and gender equity and the history and culture of North Carolina. Purchase of a ticket will help supply free book copies and reading resources to underserved communities across the state.
Tickets are $45/per person with student and nonprofit rates available. Table sponsorships for eight are also available at $500/per table. Tickets come with a unique tote bag filled with NC Humanities swag, and other sponsor-related goodies.
Thank you to our premier sponsors: the Charlotte Museum of History, the North Carolina Literary Review, and North Carolina Writers’ Network.
Learn more and purchase tickets at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/north-carolina-stories-luncheon-tickets-881397011187.
About Dr. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall– Jacquelyn Dowd Hall is Julia Cherry Spruill Professor Emeritus at UNC-Chapel Hill and founding director of UNC’s Southern Oral History Program. She is past president of the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association and founding president of the Labor and Working Class History Association. Her prize-winning books and articles include Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women’s Campaign Against Lynching; Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (co-author); “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History; and Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America. In 1999, she was awarded a National Humanities Medal for her efforts to deepen the nation’s engagement with the humanities by “recording history through the lives of ordinary people, and, in so doing, for making history.” She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and in 2022 received the Christopher Crittenden Memorial Award from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for her contributions to the preservation of North Carolina history.
About Dr. Robert Korstad– Robert Korstad is Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and History at Duke University. He is a native North Carolinian and received his BA and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also has an MA from the New School for Social Research. He is the author of the award-winning book Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth Century South. That book has become a primer for labor and community activists and is the subject of the jazz opera, “Love Songs from the Liberation Wars: The 1940s Tobacco Workers Struggles” and a comic book about the African American women involved in the union. His most recent books use history to address contemporary policy issues. He coauthored with James Leloudis Fragile Democracy: The Struggle Over Race and Voting Rights in North Carolina and To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America. Korstad has a long engagement with oral history, first with the Southern Oral History Program at Chapel Hill where was a coauthor of Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. He initiated and co-directed the oral history project, “Behind the Veil: African American Life in the Jim Crow South,” and coedited Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Talk About Life in the Segregated South.
About North Carolina Humanities: Through public humanities programs and grantmaking, North Carolina Humanities connects North Carolinians with cultural experiences that spur dialogue, deepen human connections, and inspire community. North Carolina Humanities is a statewide nonprofit and the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Learn more at www.nchumanities.org.
Press Contact: Melanie Moore Richeson mmoore@nchumanities.org
