Join us for opening day of the special exhibition Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South featuring a panel discussion moderated by exhibition curator Dr. Sharbreon Plummer and featuring Worth Long and L’Merchie Frazier. Following the discussion, enjoy a guided tour, demonstrations by Mississippi quilters, and performances by New Orleans-based artist Shaka Zulu and Mississippi’s own Caldwell Singers. Presented in partnership with the National Folk Festival, the City of Jackson, the Mississippi Arts Commission, and Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument.

Coffee and refreshments available while supplies last. Food trucks will be available onsite. 

Schedule of Events:

• 11 AM | Panel discussion moderated by exhibition curator Dr. Sharbreon Plummer and featuring Worth Long and L’Merchie Frazier
• Noon |  Chief Shaka Zulu performance
• 12:30 PM | Quilt demonstrations (ongoing) and Guided Exhibition Tour
• 1:15 PM | Chief Shaka Zulu performance
• 2 PM |  Annie & the Caldwell Singers gospel performance
• 4 – 7:30 PM | National Folk Festival Kickoff

Before the exhibition opens at 11 AM, visitors are encouraged to visit the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument. Tours begin at 9 AM.

After the afternoon’s festivities have ended, head down to the “Welcome to Jackson” mural at the intersection of State and Pearl Streets for a special National Folk Festival kickoff event, featuring an exciting and eclectic evening of music and dance from 4 — 7:30 PM. More info at www.nationalfolkfestival.com/kickoff.

Panel Participants

Dr. Sharbreon Plummer, PhD, is an independent researcher, curator, and writer with fifteen years of experience in the arts and culture sector. Her research focuses on textile traditions, artistic production, and folkways connected to Black life, especially within the South. She has facilitated and presented work at institutions such as Project Row Houses, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Rhode Island School of Design, Americans for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Princeton University and several others.

A few of her creative projects include her internationally distributed zine Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles (2022) and The People’s Quilting Bee (2023-24), an international public humanities course and quilting circle co-founded with Dr. Jess Bailey. She has also been featured as an artist-in-residence at Rogers Art Loft and Arquetopia. Dr. Plummer has organized shows such as Stitching Abolition (2022) and Mirrored Migration (2017), and is the author of Black Quilts: Memory, Methods and Medicine (Chronicle Books, 2026). Dr. Plummer is also an active contributor to Quiltfolk Magazine and serves as the editor of Uncoverings, the flagship research journal of the American Quilt Study Group. She completed her Ph.D. in Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University.

Worth Long is a civil and human rights activist, cultural worker, folklorist, blues historian and political/cultural organizer. In the early 1970s, Worth met photographer Roland L. Freeman, who was brought in by the Smithsonian to document Worth’s fieldwork as he scoured Mississippi for local people to represent the state at the 1974 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. This partnership led to years of rich collaboration, including the Mississippi Folklife Project which was consolidated in 1977 in Folkroots: Images of Mississippi Black Folklife. According to Roland, “Our work in Mississippi . . . is characterized by our commitments to build sturdy bridges across race and class, and by our always approaching people as participants in creating our work and not as ‘subjects.’ We are committed to supporting participants’ developing their own voices.”

L’Merchie Frazier is a multimedia visual activist, historian, educator, and poet who uses innovative textiles to tell restorative narratives for Black and Indigenous communities. As Executive Director of Creative Strategies at SPOKE Art Inc. and former Director of Education at the Museum of African American History, she creates programs that expand America’s historical narrative, using art to reclaim and honor the legacies of marginalized people. Her work, which draws on archival materials and reimagines textile languages, is featured in prestigious collections, including the Smithsonian and the White House. A celebrated artist and public figure, she has received numerous residencies and civic leadership appointments and is a published poet and frequent public speaker.

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Credit Lines

• Emma Russell (1908–2004), Star Quilt, 1978.Cotton blend; quilted. 77 x 77 in. Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson. Gift of the Kohler Foundation, Inc., 2022.9.106.

• Geraldine Nash (born 1952), Strings in Diamond Quilt, 2000. Fabric; quilted. 28 x 27 1/2 in. Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson. Gift of the Kohler Foundation, Inc., 2022.9.4.

• Hystercine Rankin(1929–2010), Parchman Prison, 1992. Fabric; quilted.841/4x 931/4in. Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson. Museum purchase, with funds from the Searcy Fund, 2008.103.

• Mary Mayfair Matthews (1938–2011), Folk Scenes Quilt, 1992. Rayon, cotton polyester blend; hand appliquéd, quilted.86 1/4 x 72 1/4 in. Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson. Gift of the Kohler Foundation, Inc., 2022.9.78.

• Gustina Atlas (born 1937), Dave’s Tears, 1999. Fabric; quilted. 48 x 47 1/2 in. Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson.Museum purchase, with funds from the Searcy Fund,2008.080

• Roland Freeman (1936–2023), Maya Angelou, author, educator, and quilter (top left and bottom right); Dolly McPherson, Maya Angelou, and Beverly Guy-Sheft all (top right and bottom left), Winston-Salem, North Carolina, November 1992, 1992.Chromogenic print with quilted mat by Anita Knox (1953–2014), 1996.36 x 36 in. Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson. Gift of the Kohler Foundation, Inc., 2022.9.174.

• Geraldine Nash (born 1952), Blue Log Cabin, 2007. Cotton; quilted. 90 1/2 x 65 1/8 in. Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson. Museum purchase, with funds from the Searcy Fund,2008.129.

• Gustina Atlas(born 1937), Variation on Dresden Plate Quilt, 1998.Fabric; quilted.81 1/2 x 80 in.Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson. Gift of the Kohler Foundation, Inc., 2022.9.13.

• Mabel Williams, Improvisational Strip Quilt, 1968. Cotton, polyester, wool, twill; quilted.82 x 66in. Collection of Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson. Gift of the Kohler Foundation, Inc., 2022.9.31.