Celebrate Black History and Black Futures at NC State

February is Black History and Futures Month at NC State. It’s a time for our Wolfpack to reflect on the historic accomplishments and contributions of Black people. It’s a time to look forward to a future transformed by Black lives, Black leadership and Black love. And it’s a time to honor and uplift Black experiences here and now.

The African American Cultural Center (AACC) is collaborating with partners across campus and beyond to lead a series of events celebrating the tapestry of Black experiences all February long. A unifying theme, “Stories of Us: Past, Present and Possible,” will thread these events together to emphasize the dynamic legacies of Black communities and envision their vibrant futures.

We sat down with Andaiye Qaasim, assistant director of the AACC, to learn what you should know to navigate this eventful month at NC State.

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Andaiye Qaasim Helps You Navigate Black History and Futures Month:

Hi, Andaiye, and thanks for being with us. Could you introduce yourself and tell us about your role here at NC State?

My name is Andaiye Qaasim, I go by she/her/hers pronouns, and I’m the assistant director here at the African American Cultural Center. I work on the center’s signature events, which include Black History and Futures Month, our Research Symposium and Ebony Harlem, our annual awards ceremony.

I also work closely with our student employees to support smaller community-building activities at the center. We collaborate a lot with other communities on campus, like the LGBTQ Pride Center, Multicultural Student Affairs and the Women’s Center.

What resources and experiences are available to students and other members of the Wolfpack when they engage with the African American Cultural Center?

We’re a space for students, faculty and staff. We’re housed on two floors in the Witherspoon Student Center on Cates Ave. On the second floor, we have our library and gallery. And on the third floor, we have several study rooms, and students get a lot of use out of those for individual and group study. We also have a classroom and conference room, and we encourage faculty and staff to come use that space.

We have a kitchen in the back, and an open area that we call our living room with a long table, couches and a TV. We really try to create a vibe like you’re entering your grandmother’s living room. We want students to feel like they’re coming to hang out. You can watch TV, you can listen to music, you can eat your lunch, you can take a nap.

Our programming includes weekly topical conversation groups, and these and many other programs are led by our AYA Ambassadors under the guidance of our associate director, Quashon Bunch. We have art exhibits in our gallery, also led by Quashon Bunch, and our library coordinator, Wynter Douglas, leads our library programming in collaboration with the NC State University Libraries.

We’ve just got a robust space, and we’re a great resource for connecting students and others to new opportunities at NC State. We’ve also got an embedded counselor, Kierra Carter, LPCA, LCMHCA, NCC, and she’s an invaluable resource for our students.

How can the NC State community take part in the kickoff event for Black History and Futures Month at Talley Student Union on Feb. 4?

The kickoff is really a way for our center to connect with campus as we head into February. We’ll have a hot cocoa bar and some tables set up in Talley, and we’ll have marketing material with information about all the events coming up.

Being located in Witherspoon, a little away from the center of campus, having this event in Talley helps us engage with students, faculty and staff who might just be walking through to remind them that, “Hey, if you haven’t been over to the center to see us, we hope to see you this year.”

Let’s talk about the Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship, a centerpiece of the month’s celebrations that will take place at the Hunt Library on Feb. 12. What’s happening at that event and what kinds of creative works will be on display?

It’s going to be an amazing event. We have about 20 researchers who will be presenting in a variety of formats, including traditional poster presentations, digital presentations and workshops. We even have some folks from off campus who will be presenting.

The symposium is open to everyone on campus and anyone from the area. At the African American Cultural Center, we center Afrodiasporic experiences — but we’re also a space for learning, and you don’t have to be of African descent to learn from those experiences.

We center Afrodiasporic experiences — but we’re also a space for learning, and you don’t have to be of African descent to learn from those experiences.

We’ll conclude the main symposium with line dancing and a mini-lecture by two speakers on Black social dance. Black dance is powerful, and its influences are felt all over the world — in salsa, in swing, in the Lindy Hop. Our speakers will explore the history and context surrounding these dances and how people use them in their communities. Then folks will get to learn a few fun line dances.

We’ll then host a networking reception to help students connect with Black alumni, with community members and with staff and faculty. The symposium is such a beautiful event because we have so many campus partners that support it: Multicultural Student Affairs, Interdisciplinary Studies, the University Libraries, TRIO, McNair Scholars and NC State LIVE, to name a few of our partners.

It sounds like it’ll be a day filled with fun, learning and connection. What motivated the symposium’s theme, “Storytelling From the Familiar?”

We really wanted to uplift the idea that everyone can be a researcher. If we’re not careful, research can sometimes separate us from the communities we work with or objectify those communities. So we started with the question of what it looks like to do research that’s grounded in Afrodiasporic practices and lived experiences, and that anyone can participate in and learn from.

Our guiding values at the African American Cultural Center involve ideas like “each one teach one” — the idea that everyone has expertise to share, which is an idea rooted in Black culture. And that echoes our sense of Harambee, a Swahili word of welcome that’s about bringing people together to share community resources.

The same idea is behind the symposium. It’s about a community of scholars talking about research in a way that uplifts people and truly solves problems.

By telling stories about our lived experiences, we reinforce that Black people do exist in the future — that we will exist in the future.

The event also incorporates Afrofuturism. Emphasizing the word “futures” in this month’s celebrations reminds us that Black history is not a static past, but a living, evolving tradition. By telling stories about our lived experiences, we reinforce that Black people do exist in the future — that we will exist in the future. And that relates to the concept of being emergent, the idea that everything is a process, and even research can be a work in progress.

That’s what’s so beautiful about this symposium, it’s a chance to see those stories uplifted. Knowledge doesn’t always have to come from data or cited sources, it can come from your ancestors, it can come from your elders, it can come from a spiritual message, it can come from the Earth itself.

That’s a great way to put it, and it sounds like there will be some wonderful stories shared at the symposium. Dasan Ahanu, the keynote speaker, is a poet and artist with a gift for teaching and inspiring in his own storytelling. What can attendees expect from his address?

He’s an amazing storyteller and he’s beautifully captured the stories of communities here in the Triangle — particularly in Durham — throughout North Carolina, and even more broadly than that. He’s definitely going to engage the audience. It will be interactive, it will be conversational and folks are going to leave really thinking about their own stories and how important and powerful those stories are.

What other events and opportunities should our campus community know about to celebrate and support Black History and Futures Month?

We’ll have four Diaspora Dinners every Friday at the center. For each dinner, an AYA Ambassador will choose a cuisine from the African diaspora. It might be soul food from the South, it might be jollof rice from West Africa. Then our ambassadors provide a presentation, a discussion or something fun and interactive where people can learn. Our Diaspora Dinners provide a great space for students, but also for faculty and staff, to come and connect.

Our Diaspora Dinners provide a great space for students, but also for faculty and staff, to come and connect.

Our library coordinator, Wynter Douglas, is working to expand book-centered programming at the center, and those programs are heightened in February. The Black Literary Arts and Culture Creatives (BLACC) Introvert Gathering will take place every Tuesday in our library all semester long. That’s a great space for people who enjoy a quieter atmosphere. Wynter is also doing Black Book Talks every other Thursday to teach people about different authors, and those are great events for faculty and staff as well.

We’ll also be collaborating with the LGBTQ Pride Center to host a book club event on Feb. 20 around George M. Johnson’s book, “Flamboyants.” It’s about queer Black artists in the Harlem Renaissance, a major artistic revolution which involved a huge influence from queer artists that often does not get told.

We’ll conclude Black History and Futures Month with an open mic event on Feb. 27. Our student employees will lead that event, and it’s a great space for students to sign up, perform and just hang out.

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