Building belonging, through the labor of love, from land to liberation.
We Circulate.
We Curate.
We Change.
We Celebrate.
WHO WE ARE
Protect. Preserve.
Perservere.
At the Center for Black Southern Culture at the Corner of Charlotte & Pickens, we create spaces that amplify ancestral knowledge, build food and cultural sovereignty, and restore collective wellbeing. Through practice, we preserve and celebrate the voices, traditions, and creativity of Black communities in the deep South.
Through immersive cultural experiences, such as growing and sharing food, teaching land-based skills, curating Black Southern arts and traditions, and creating sacred spaces for learning, healing, and celebration, we transform our history into living practice that connects our people.
Unapologetically, we are black ascendants of the Deep South: farmers, stewards, rootworkers, cooks, artists, storytellers, organizers, musicians, visionaries, changemakers, memory keepers, and neighbors who believe culture is what we remember and what we live. We root our practices in the traditions of our grandparents, while cultivating the future through shared leadership, economic justice, and environmental stewardship.
We know that the land teaches. We know our culture heals. We know our people deserve systems build with love, care, creativity, and belonging.
Our North Star is Collective Care & Liberation. We are crafting a future where land, food, art, and spirit are first responders for joy, justice, and intergenerational rejuvenation.
WHAT WE DO
People.
Place.
Practice.
We steward land, culture, and community.
We design experiences that inspire connection, spark dialogue, share wisdom, and showcase the brilliance of our community. Each program blends tradition with innovation that honors the past while creating new spaces for expression, resistance, resilience, ritual, and joy.
Our model is intergenerational, cooperative, and spiritually grounded. It is designed to nourish minds, bodies, souls, and spirits while honoring our heritage, building skills, ownership, pride for future generations, and community power.
Our work is driven by the knowing that Black Southern culture is a complete way of life. A life where growing food is spiritual practice, stewarding natural resources is reverence, music carries stories and lessons, storytelling preserves survival wisdom, artisan crafts build economic power, community gathering creates resilience, and cultural preservation becomes the pathway to liberation through practice.
We design experiences that inspire connection, spark dialogue, share wisdom, and showcase the brilliance of our community. Each program blends tradition with innovation that honors the past while creating new spaces for expression, resistance, resilience, ritual, and joy.
AFFIRMATIONS
We affirm that land is sacred…
Black people have always had the wisdom to care for it and for one another.
We affirm that our culture is medicine; it is in the food we grow, the herbs we grow, the food we cook and set on our tables, the stories we tell, the art we make, and the traditions we preserve through practice.
We affirm that justice starts with access to nourishment, knowledge, belonging, and self determination.
And we affirm that by honoring the essence of who we’ve always been, magnifying who we are, and affirming who we will always be; we take the bricks of where we’ve been broken to build something beautiful together.
— The Center for Black Southern Culture at the corner of Charlotte & Pickens
CORE FOCUS AREAS
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CIRCULATE
We intentionally circulate resources of the land, food, skills, black dollars, and ancestral knowledge.
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CURATE
We carefully curate spaces, stories, and sounds that ground us in legacy and inspire what’s next.
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CHANGE
We boldy confront and combat harmful systems and narratives through storytelling, advocacy, spirit, land, food, art, and culture.
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CELEBRATE
Through it ALL, we celebrate our people, our culture, and our power with blackness, boldness, brilliance, and beauty. We culminate joy through our unapologetic expression and presence.
