Taking place in-person at Lucille Clifton House, join Hess Love and Juju Bae (author of The Book of Juju) in conversation about Conjure in the Chesapeake. A book signing will follow.

5TH ANNUAL SUNRISE SOIREE TO COMMEMORATE

JUNETEENTH

Wednesday, June 19. 2024

at Sunrise (5:30 am)

920 S Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21231

Bring Your Family Dress to Express

Offerings for the Ancestors Encouraged

Instruments Welcomed

Sponsored by:

More than a Fraction Foundation

Offerings Can Include: Liquor, Candy, Tobacco, Fruit, etc...

For More Information Text: Linnea Holt at 443-845-1709

Join organizers from "More Than a Fraction Foundation", "Fight Blight Bmore", and "CCS" etc for our 5th annual Sunrise Soiree honoring of our collective Ancestors Juneteenth morning. Bring your best intentions, offerings, prayers, your gifts, your stories, and your song to express your gratitude. We welcome offerings of opened fruit, cut flowers, and tobacco, but please no glass, plastic, or paper. Let's come together to show our love and respect for the earth and our Ancestors.

We’ve Always Banked on Survival: The History of Hoodoo and Climate Resilience

Hess Love will start with the origins of Hoodoo during the era of chattel slavery, highlighting its significance as a means of protection, empowerment, and survival for marginalized communities. Hoodoo practitioners integrated botanical medicine, weather observation, more-than-human mythos, and elemental forces into their practices to build livelihoods that honored place-based intangible heritage. Hoodoo was born as a cultural, social, material, and spiritual medicine to adapt to various forms of climate disaster that occurred as a result of colonialism and colonial human trafficking. This talk will center the importance of earth reverence and collective action within Hoodoo, showcasing how shared knowledge and traditions continue to foster resilience and uncover injustices in the face of environmental and social harms.

Sign Up HERE

33rd Annual Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival

Saturday, October 28TH | 10am - 7PM
Susan Campbell park @
Annapolis City Dock
RAIN OR SHINE!

About Kunta Kinte

Kunta Kinte was one of 98 enslaved people brought to Annapolis, Maryland aboard the ship Lord Ligonier in 1767, and despite many years in bondage, he never lost his connection to his African heritage. Kunta Kinte's experience symbolizes the struggle of all ethnic groups to preserve their cultural heritage. 

The Heritage Tale

According to the book Roots, on the day of the birth of Kunta Kinte in 1750, in Gambia, West Africa, his grandmother Yaisa, laughed with joy as she witnessed the birth and special blessings of the firstborn boy of her son Omoro and his wife, Binta. Eight days later, during the naming ceremonies, the Alimamo prayed over the infant, entreating Allah to grant him long life, success in bringing credit and pride and many children to his family, to his village, to his tribe -- and finally, the strength and the spirit to deserve and to bring honor to the name he was about to receive.

In his writings, author Alex Haley, depicts the scene so vividly that one can imagine being in the very spot on that eventful day. One seems a part of the history of an African family whose distinguished lineage is being recited as far back as two hundred years, as the Arafan (the village Griot) lists the names of the Maurentanian forefathers of whom Kunta's Grandfather and namesake Kairaba Kunta Kinte, had often told himself. The names were great and many for the Mandinka tribes's holy man. And this distinguished lineage and the oral history continue today through their descendants of the present, the author himself, his brother George, former state senator from Kansas and their youngest brother, Julius. 

Roots, the saga of an American Family, is a documentary dedicated to the Haley's family Griot, their grandmother, Cynthia Haley who told the stories of her ancestry to her grandchildren, among whom was Alex Haley. He listened intently and, after many years of research and journeys in search of the facts, was able to produce, in writing, substantiation of that oral history. His grandmothers's recountings of the family history perpetuated it in the minds of her children, who in turn passed it on to the minds of men all over the world, for all times. She created the symbol for all Africans of black American families, and thus she helped all of us to know, as the author pointed out "...who we are." 

The Kinte Distinguished Lineage

Gambia, West Africa, 1750 Birth of Kunta Kinte, grandson of Kairaba Kunta Kinte, the holy man of the Mandinkas of Juffure; son of Omoro; father of Kizzy; grandfather of Chicken George; great-grandfather of Tom Murray; great,great-grandfather of Cynthia Murray; great,great,great-grandfather of Bertha Haley; great,great,great,great-grandfather of Alex, George and Julius Haley.

Current Connection to The Gambia

The International Kunta Kinteh Festival is a 10-day festival held in early July annually in The Gambia. It features the International Kunta Kinteh Day celebration - a carnival and parade of cultural troupes and masquerades; Juffureh Roots Festival - a heritage and cultural bonanza of the Mandinka warrior Rites of Passage; Gala Dinner - a commemoration and Diaspora Return Home speeches, presentations, performances of masquerades, and cultural dances, along with dinner with the business and diaspora community; and an Investment Forum Hosted by the Gambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry and The Gambia Import and Export Agency.

Learn more HERE

Temporality, Time Jumping and the Space Time Continuum of Black Oral History

Black concepts of time have never been linear and this shows even more in our use and engagement of public history and oral history. In this talk, I will analyze the concept of sankofa, time jumping and time collapse through the use of oral history and archival research. Through the concept of time jumping and time collapse, I hope to illustrate how the design of oral history projects can support narrators, interviewers and listeners to experience history from an embodied perspective that engages the senses and creates a wrap around experience through voice, frequency, sound and memory.

Sign up HERE

An intimate conversation on hoodoo heritage between James Stewart and Hess Love.

Brought to you by Black Joy Reckon

In honor of Hoodoo Heritage Month, we’re linking up with conjuror and root worker James Stewart aka the Conjure Cleaner and Hess Love, co-founder of the Chesapeake Conjure Society, for an event that will deepen your connection to your ancestors – and your inner magic. Conversation moderated by Black Joy reporter Danielle Buckingham.

Sign up HERE

NOURISHING COMMUNION: AN AFROCHESAPEAKE FEAST IN THE CULINARY LINEAGE OF JAMES HEMINGS

Brought to you by Chesapeake Conjure Society

In collaboration with Our Time Kitchen and Chef+ Food Historian Maynard McMillan of Nafasi Catering we bring to you a one-of-a-kind Black culinary experience situated in Baltimore, Maryland supporting two Black owned businesses.

Chef Maynard will lead us in a discussion and hands-on culinary workshop on the history of Afro-Chesapeake cuisine, along with resident historians of the Chesapeake Conjure Society. 

We will be cooking and communing together in the culinary lineage of James Hemings (progenitor of American Macaroni & Cheese).

We will hold ceremony, fellowship, and space for learning before we sit-down to a family style meal in a heated outdoor space. 

Seasonal, locally sourced food + elevated food preparation.

13 spaces available at $140 per person.

Tickets are offered at cost (meaning that Chesapeake Conjure Society does not make a profit from this event, costs are split between venue, chef & staff, food, and beverages. Chesapeake Conjure Society members also pay the same price.) to support local Black owned businesses that hire community members.

No Spaces will be Held. First Come, First Served.

"Sit at my table, eat and you will know me" -African Proverb

"Fighting Old Nep

The Foodways of Enslaved Afro-Marylanders

1634-1864

Author: Michael Twitty"

Come sit at our table.

Sunday October 22nd 11 am - 3 pm, Our Time Kitchen; 117 W. 24th Street Baltimore, MD

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Community Preservation Day

Maryland State Archives Event

Please help us create a community Memory Bank of our shared heritage! The Maryland State Archives is excited to announce that we will be hosting our second Community Preservation Day on October 21st from 10:00am to 2:00pm in Windsor Mill, MD.

We invite members of the local community to preserve their documents, photos, and letters through digital imaging.
Archivists will work with community members to describe and scan their items, so that they may take home their original materials in free archival storage containers and receive the resulting digital copies as well. We ask that the participants also share digital copies of their items with the Archives in order to collaboratively create a permanent electronic collection that allows everyone to see themselves in the Archives.

The Archives will include these images in a publicly-accessible digital series within its Special Collections to document and share community history.

Pre-registration is required, so that staff and scanning equipment will be available for all our participants. Space is limited, so we request that guests sign up early and inform us if they need to cancel so that we can accommodate anyone on the waiting list.

Sign up HERE

Hoodoo is Black Culture: Ancestor Veneration in the Everyday

Priestess and conjurewoman Toya Smith will trace the everyday cultural aspects of African Americans, exploring how those aspects are influenced by traditional African cultures brought over by ancestors. She will discuss how those aspects of culture are, in fact, ancestor veneration and a maintained belief in and participation in an African-based spirituality. Her talk will cover the Black church, Black music, tradition, and superstition.

Sign Up HERE

Catching The God Body: Finding Belonging By Excavating Hoodoo Saints

A generative conversation that will explore divinity, belonging, and perfectionism in the current iteration of the Hoodoo tradition. This Wednesday Night Study explores what Zora Neale Hurston called “god-making” and what that has meant for the last 100 years of Hoodoo. The Wednesday Night Study will center Zora Neale Hurston’s elevation into Hoodoo Sainthood, while offering encouragement for the audience to see their imperfections as pathways to understanding their own divinity and sense of rootedness.

About Our Guest Wisdom Teacher, Hess Love:

Hess Love is a hoodoo-mother-poet based in the Chesapeake Bay Area. Their work centers ancestral reverence, memory, place making, love, rage, and ethnoecology. Hess is a heritage preservationist and environmental researcher by trade. They are also the co-founder of the Chesapeake Conjure Society, and a social writer whose work has been featured in books, online publications, newspapers and print magazines.

Get tickets HERE

Black Food, Black Futures Festival

Friday, 06 October 2023 to Saturday, 07 October 2023 at 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM

Celebrate Black food culture and participate in free activities in this two-day festival. Eat, learn, share!

Join us for the upcoming free Black Food, Black Futures Festival celebrating Black food culture, raising awareness about food insecurity in Prince George's County, and highlighting solutions! This two-day festival is hosted by the African American Studies Institute (AASI) with OurSpace World Inc. and funded by the Prince George's Community Partnership Grant.

Black Food, Black Futures Festival will have a variety of activities, including:

• Food trucks.

• Panel discussions.

• Workshops.

• Cooking demos.

• Live music.

• Food giveaways.

Also featured will be an array of Black farmers and gardeners as vendors, instructors, and herbalists. Attendees are encouraged to bring a non-perishable food donation that will be distributed to Capital Area Food Bank partners and the PGCC Cares Owl Market.

Sign up HERE

Black Food, Black Futures Festival

Friday, 06 October 2023 to Saturday, 07 October 2023 at 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM

Celebrate Black food culture and participate in free activities in this two-day festival. Eat, learn, share!

Join us for the upcoming free Black Food, Black Futures Festival celebrating Black food culture, raising awareness about food insecurity in Prince George's County, and highlighting solutions! This two-day festival is hosted by the African American Studies Institute (AASI) with OurSpace World Inc. and funded by the Prince George's Community Partnership Grant.

Black Food, Black Futures Festival will have a variety of activities, including:

• Food trucks.

• Panel discussions.

• Workshops.

• Cooking demos.

• Live music.

• Food giveaways.

Also featured will be an array of Black farmers and gardeners as vendors, instructors, and herbalists. Attendees are encouraged to bring a non-perishable food donation that will be distributed to Capital Area Food Bank partners and the PGCC Cares Owl Market.

Sign up HERE

Every June 19th at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, we support Linnea Holt, and a local Orisha community, for a sunrise soiree and Ringshout to celebrate Juneteenth.

This year’s Junteenth Event will take place Monday, June 19th at 5:30 am

901 S Broadway

Baltimore, MD 21231

Black Queer Canopy Therapeutic Nature Walk

This event is in person.

This event is hosted by a local community organization: Rooted Collective.

“Over the course of 2 hours, we’ll do some embodiment practice, a walking meditation and community building
Logistics:
November 12th 1pm
Lake Roland 1000 Lakeside Drive

2 hour walk
Rain or shine
To walk into the trail
Mostly flat, city trail, partial canopy cover

Stuff to bring: Shoes that might get a little muddy, water, snacks you might need, weather-based protection (rain, sun, etc.) (Rain or Shine - dress appropriately), a stone or personal item for a short healing ritual”

SAVE THE DATE

Chesapeake Conjure Society and Masala Soul Project will be hosting a virtual Ring Shout Workshop.

Come learn the history of the Ring Shout along with traditional movement. We will be led by Tamara LaDonna Williams of Moving Spirits Inc.

http://www.movingspirits.org/tamara-s-story.html

Then, if you are in the Baltimore area please join us on Juneteenth to perform this ancestral ritual and practice.

Because this is a Black sacred and spiritual tradition this is a Black only event. It is important we reclaim our ancestral practices and hold them sacred

Sign up here to learn more information

Chief Organizer of this event: Alexis

Graphics and playlist: Mango

This event is hosted by our dear friends at The Conjure Creative

Ring the alarm! We been through this too long! But I’ll be damned if I see the state take another of our own!

Spiritual warfare has been running rampant against our people through state violence, neoliberalism, celebrity activism, imperialism, and so many things. Niggas are righteously tired, numb, and rage-filled, and yet still holdin on. The beautiful thing is we have so much history and memory in our blood from our revolutionary ancestors and Mojo Twerkin will be a space to awaken and align our shared power. Come through next Saturday, May 8th, from 5-8PM EST to learn, conspire, create, divine, pray, twerk, and everything in between…..to freedom!

Mojo Twerkin was birthed in 2019 as an activation space for political education and healing work through the exploration of our ancestor’s usage of Hoodoo to fight the fuck back and free our people. I’m reviving this space with the hopes to continue mobilizing Black queer and trans organizers into spiritual revolution, healing, transformation, and collective liberation. So I’m callin all da Hoodoo hawties and spiritual goons forth to join me next wkd - ya’ll been knowing it’s time to work! It’s time to combine our forces for our collective good! Strap on that machete and high john and let’s get to it

Space is limited and Black only obviously RSVP at: bit.ly/mojotwerkin

this is an online event

Writing in the Hoodoo Tradition: Poetry and Petitions, Manifestation through Poetry and Short Stories.

About this Event

Writing in the Hoodoo Tradition: Poetry and Petitions, Manifestation through Poetry and Short Stories.

In this workshop we explore the relationship between poetry and petitions. Manifestation and world building takes form in both written and spoke language, as well as visualization. We will be utilizing our senses to write out the world and stories that we want to see. And learning the power of the pen through microstories. There will be ritual and writing prompts.

Learn more: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-in-the-hoodoo-tradition-poetry-and-petitions-tickets-122237336163

this is an online event

this event is facilitated by dear friend Juju Bae, on the Catland Books platform

“An intro course breaking down the very basics of Hoodoo as a historical, developed religious tradition of the Black American South.

About this Event

In this 101- level course, Juju (hoodoo practitioner and conjure woman) will break down the very basics in understanding Hoodoo as a historical and developed religion and tradition that bloomed in the Black American South. We will uncover some common misconceptions about Hoodoo, discuss its fundamental beginnings, and asses the impacts that Africa, slavery, the bible, and marketeers have had on modern day Hoodoo.”

learn more: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hoodoo-101-w-juju-bae-tickets-124687376299?aff=erellivmlt

this is an online event

Writing in the Hoodoo Tradition: Magic in the Mundane, Lay Down if You Tired But Don't Quit

In this workshop we tap into the fire of written language, how to be passionate and dedicated to writing through exhaustion, imposter syndrome, stress and obstacles, and how to call on great ancestors of Black literature for guidance and support. There will be a guide to finding magic in the mundane. There will be ritual and writing prompts.

learn more: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-in-the-hoodoo-tradition-magic-in-the-mundane-tickets-122850375781

this is an online event

Writing In the Hoodoo Tradition Workshop

Your Divine Self As a Writer: Maintaining the Integrity of Your Inherited Voice.

During this workshop we will tap into how to receive the messages of our head (sometimes also known as our "higher self"). We'll be talking about purpose, ancestral calling, spiritual direction, and how to write well in a culturally authentic voice. There will be ritual as well as a writing prompt.

learn more: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-in-the-hoodoo-tradition-your-divine-self-as-a-writer-tickets-122432981343