Raising Hay and Planting Roots: Black Women, the Arts, and Farming
A Podcast Mini-Series in 4 episodes
In Syncopate’s Raising Hay and Planting Roots: Black Farmers in Kalamazoo, Cass and Van Buren Counties, each episode shows how family story frames Black environmental culture with the history of Black agricultural land ownership, art, oral history and current cultural movements. Raising Hay especially digs through layers of pride and the challenges of Black farmers and rural residents who owned or have agricultural enterprises.
In four episodes, we will explore the life and art of four black women artists, Linsay Kelly, Salina Johnson, Heather Mitchell and Remi Harrington as they reveal the links between creativity, identity, land, farming and legacy. These moments, pieced together before, during and since the massive pandemic and broad based Black activism in the US, seem even more relevant as we recall what is deemed essential and our narrator’s insight on environmental culture, ancestry, retention, loss and restoration.
