The history of the Lumbee Indians is fascinating, so an event coming up at the Greensboro History Museum may be a little more intriguing than some history talks found at some other museums.
What’s more, the price is perfect for these highly inflationary times – all tickets are $0.
At 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, Malinda Maynor Lowery – a historian, filmmaker and author – will deliver the 2024 Wicker Endowment Lecture, “The Lumbees’ Long Fight to Reimagine Democracy.”
It will be at the Greensboro History Museum at 130 Summit Avenue in downtown Greensboro.
As a Lumbee Indian herself, she offers a unique perspective.
The free program is open to everyone.
The promotional material for the event states, “Lowery is a historian and documentary film producer who is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. In July 2021, she joined Emory University as the Cahoon Family Professor of American History after spending 12 years at UNC-Chapel Hill and four years at Harvard University.”
In the mid-1950s, the US Congress recognized the Lumbee tribe but denied the tribe the federal benefits usually associated with that type of recognition. That created a great deal of discontent among the tribe, which exists largely in Lumberton NC, Robeson County and surrounding counties.
Lowery’s book, titled “The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle,” was published by UNC Press in 2018. She has also published essays in the New York Times, Oxford American, and Daily Yonder.
She’s a producer as well. She produced the Award-winning “A Chef’s Life,” and “Somewhere South,” both of which aired on PBS. Her films “Real Indian” and “Sounds of Faith” were entries at the Sundance Film Festival.
Lowery’s latest short film project, “Lumbeeland,” is scheduled to be released later this year.
Also taking part in the program at the history museum that evening will be Jennifer Revels Baxter, the executive director of the Guilford Native American Association, the state’s first urban Indian organization; Greg O’Brien, chair of the Department of History at UNC-Greensboro and co-editor of The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies; Nora Dial-Stanley, Chair of the Guilford Native American Association Board of Directors; and Stephen Bell, American Indian Education coordinator for Guilford County Schools.
Scuppernong Books will have copies of “The Lumbee Indians” available for purchase and signing after the discussion.
The lecture is being made possible by the John Floy Wicker Endowment Fund, which was established by Ruth Perkins Wicker in 1995 in memory of her husband.
