People Worth Knowing

People Worth Knowing

Partnering with the Black Union of Kent County, Washington College Chesapeake Heartland project, and oral historian Lani Seikaly, RiverArts received grant funds from the Hedgelawn Foundation to design, print, mount and develop a traveling exhibition of fifty 20x30” posters of images and quotes from Black Kent Countians. 

Entitled “People Worth Knowing,” the collective posters give voice to the African American experience in Kent County and share their perspectives on what life was and is like for them here. The quoted stories are excerpts from the over fifty interviews Seikaly conducted in the past decade with African Americans growing up or currently living in Kent County, as well as another twenty interviews conducted by the Starr Center in their oral history projects. 

On their own, each narrator has an interesting perspective, but as a group of fifty, they make a statement that Black residents have and continue to be an important contributor to the history of our community and that it is well worth the viewer’s time to get to know them better. Using only the narrator’s words creates a local public history exhibition and research material for years to come.