INDY Week June 14, 2023

As the African American Quilt Circle of Durham marks 25 years, a national quilting conference gathers in the Bull City for a Juneteenth celebration of the art form.

By Thomasi McDonald, p.22

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill

June 14, 2023

Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill

VOL. 40 NO. 22

CONTENTS

NEWS

4 On the eve of Juneteenth, a reflection on the miseducation of America.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD

6 Raleigh will bolster spending on police once again. Activists say that's at the expense of funding for housing and community services. BY

JASMINE GALLUP

10 As a vote on rezoning Shaw University's downtown Raleigh campus looms, growth of the South's oldest HBCU hangs in the balance. BY

REN LARSON

14 Orange County leaders are making good on promises to move forward with mental health care services and criminal justice reform. BY

HANNAH KAUFMAN

ARTS & CULTURE

16 As RDU looks to add local purveyors, chefs like Oscar Diaz must decide how to translate their brands to a decidedly different space. BY LENA

GELLER

18 A guide to the best of this year's American Dance Festival. Plus: must-see productions at Burning Coal's Second Stage series BY

BYRON WOODS

20 In a new documentary about Yogi Berra, the baseball star's athletic feats shine alongside his famous quips. BY

GLENN MCDONALD

22 This Juneteenth, quilters from around the nation gather in Durham to celebrate the art form. BY

THOMASI MCDONALD

23 “Fabric is so forgiving,” says Mya Castillo-Marte. And at her new Creative Repair pop-up, mending matters. BY

LENA GELLER

THE REGULARS

3 Voices | 15 Minutes 25 Culture calendar

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Jane Porter

Culture Editor

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Lena Geller

Thomasi McDonald

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Copy Editor

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Graphic Designer

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Staff Photographer

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ADVERTISING

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Sales Digital Director & Classifieds

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CIRCULATION

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MEMBERSHIP/ SUBSCRIPTIONS

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Shamarr Allen performs at the Cat's Cradle Back Room on Tuesday, June 20. (See calendar, page 25.)

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PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT'S CRADLE

COVER Kimberley Pierce Cartwright displays one of her quilts at Freeman's Creative in Durham.

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

CORRECTION In our story about the closure of the Village Lanes bowling alley, published in the May 31 issue, the name of the new operations manager at Bowlero Durham was misstated. It is Roger Bryson, not Eddie Barnes. The aquatics center at Splay & Play is also slated to open in 2027, not 2025.

Figuring It Out

For Pride Month, a primer on pronouns

BY SARA PEQUEÑO backtalk@indyweek.com

It’s never really the right time to come out, but I’ve always been someone people listen to.

“Queer” is the word I use to describe my sexual preferences and gender. It’s an umbrella term for me. I try not to think about it too much when it comes to dating: I like who I like, and that’s that.

Gender is a little different. Some days I feel like a girl; seldom do I feel like a “woman.”

I tried using “they/them” pronouns (in addition to “she/her”) during the gray area between my 2019 college graduation and the start of COVID-19. I was writing my name on a whiteboard at my old job and needed to include my pronouns. I kept writing “she/they,” only to erase the second word.

I weighed whether a pronoun switch would confuse too many people. I wondered whether I truly felt this way or if I was making all of it up. I talked to my therapist about it. I talked to my trans friends and my queer friends. I decided it wasn’t time to come out yet; I had some stuff to figure out.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, I have had time to think about my gender and sexuality, and I have realized that I have always known who I was. It’s other people who didn’t understand.

A friend from back home once described our hometown in rural North Carolina as a place where everyone knew he was gay but no one really gave him a hard time about it. I don’t think anyone gave me a hard time about it either, but I remember what the people around me were saying.

The first time I heard “gay” as an insult was in the carpool line at my elementary school. I think it was described to me as “boys who kiss boys and girls who kiss girls” in a tone that suggested the very idea was absurd. From then on, I knew I had to associate “gay” and “bad” to blend in, because that’s how everyone else was acting.

There are lots of memories like this. A classmate once told me her parents never let her watch Teletubbies because they were “gay.” There was a teacher who told two of

my male classmates, “Don’t do that or people will think you’re gay.” I was always worried that my eyes would linger too long in the locker room and someone would call me out.

It took a long time for me to realize that these weren’t things other people worried about. I thought everyone else was also living in their head.

Growing up, a lot of people around me were going through things that seemed much more important at the time. It felt out of the question that I could be anything other than an ally, but my “rational approach” didn’t make the thoughts go away. I wasn’t really thinking about anyone in particular; I was just thinking about it.

There are a lot of people who will see my photo and tell me I’m still a woman and deny me the agency of making my own decisions about my gender. They do it because that’s all they can see me as. They do it to put me in my place—to put me back in a box I never really fit into.

I don’t really care; I know who I am. Now you do, too. W

Chapel Hill

15 MINUTES

BY HANNAH KAUFMAN backtalk@indyweek.com

How’d you first discover your love for trivia?

Growing up, at 7:30 every evening, my mom and I would put Jeopardy! on and watch it in the background, and over time, I would pay more attention to it. I’d compete with my mom to see who could answer first or see if either of us actually knew the answer. I also played Trivial Pursuit a few times—never actually how the game is supposed to be played with the board and everything, but just asking questions. And then getting older, going here to UNC, going to trivias up and down Franklin Street, I always had a great time. I feel like I have a random assortment of general knowledge that serves absolutely no purpose besides, you know, trivia.

Tell me about your preparation process.

It takes about three hours every week to write all the questions and pick out the music for the music round. Two rounds do not change: The first round is news. I write those questions later in the week, closer to trivia, so I have a full week of news to choose from and pick out six questions. [For the] music round, I just peruse Spotify, random searches of genres, decades, and grab a bag of songs. The other categories and rounds change week to week just depending on how I’m feeling—I might get some inspiration from something that goes on in my daily life or an idea I’ve had in the back of my mind.

What are some other categories you do?

I do Before and After, where every question has a two-part clue and the answer to the first part leads directly into the answer to the second

part. For instance, one I came up with was “A Florida man wakes up in a blended family.” And that would be “Tom Brady Bunch.”

One category that I do every so often is Movie Title Math. So I’ll give you two movies that have a number in them, but I’m not going to tell you the number. For example: “Cheaper by the __ + __ Samurai.” So Cheaper by the Dozen plus Seven Samurai: the answer is 19. Sometimes I do a random knowledge one or a science round, or a couple of rounds every so often about local stuff, like UNC history or Chapel Hill history or fun facts around our area.

What’s your favorite moment from trivia?

Last summer. My mom knows I do trivia and she had been wanting to come, but she lives in Winston-Salem, so it’s an hour and a half drive … not the most convenient for her. But she really wanted to come to my trivia, so she came out one Wednesday. It was a really busy crowd, so she was able to see everybody there and how popular my trivia was. I knew she was coming, so I did this round about famous moms as a little nod to her. I said, “My mom’s here, let’s celebrate her this round.” Overall, the night was nothing too special—there wasn’t a record-breaking number of teams or a tight final score, but it was just fun, my mom seeing what I do. W

Catch trivia at Linda’s Downbar every Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Visit our website to read the full version of this article.

Sara Pequeño is a former INDY staff writer and current freelance writer based in Durham.

Sara Pequeño

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

Patrick Wiginton

Linda’s Bar and Grill trivia host

The Miseducation of The Negro America

On the eve of Juneteenth, as legislation seeks to sanitize the nation’s past, we would all do well to acknowledge that the Black experience in this country is American history too.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

It’s been decades, but Durham County school board member Jovonia Lewis well remembers sitting in her grade school class when she was made to believe that enslaved people toiling on Southern plantations wanted to be slaves.

“I remember feeling ashamed,” Lewis says.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of Carter G. Woodson’s classic work, The Mis-education of the Negro, and as proposed legislation to prohibit teaching “certain concepts” courses through the North Carolina General Assembly, the great scholar’s volume is still relevant.

Woodson died in 1950. Were he alive today and working on his slim albeit powerful manifesto, the Harvard-educated historian might scratch out the word “Negro” and instead title the work The Mis-education of America.

As a high schooler growing up in Richmond County, I had the opportunity to study African American History I and II. They were easily the most segregated classes on campus. Now, as an adult, I think white students would have also benefited from studying and appreciating the Black experience in America and the race’s contributions to civilization.

Turns out, so did one of Woodson’s admirers. Burnis R. Morris is the nation’s foremost Woodson scholars. In his 2021 essay Carter G. Woodson: A Century of Making Black Lives Matter Burnis points to Martin Luther King, Jr., who in May 1967 said, “The white majority has been equally harmed and reinforced in its prejudices by its ignorance of Negro history. In the operation of a system of segregation, whites had little communication with Negroes, and without a literature that bridges the barriers, two peoples of the same nationality were substantially strangers to each other.”

The general assembly’s GOP-fueled House Bill 187, described by its critics as “anti–critical race theory” legislation, is akin to a noxious weed that purports to “ensure dignity and nondiscrimination” in the classrooms of the state’s public and charter schools.

Critical race theory (CRT) begins with the premise that systemic racism is at the foundation of America’s legal system and policies. One of the academic discipline’s pioneers, the late legal scholar Derrick Bell, argued that civil rights gained by African Americans are, at best, ephemeral and destined to fail unless a majority of white people understand their own interests are also targeted.

In addition to bills whitewashing the nation’s history, evidence of Bell’s assertion about the impermanence of civil rights is apparent in ongoing attacks on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the threat to Affirmative Action, book bans, and pervasive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

As the INDY previously reported, the current anti-CRT bill was originally introduced in 2021. It passed along party lines in the state house and senate before Democratic governor Roy Cooper vetoed the measure in early fall of that year.

The resurrected bill passed in the house in March and is now in the senate’s Rules and Operations Committee. It may well pass now that former Democratic Party state senator Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County crossed the aisle in April and joined the Republicans, months after she was reelected, giving the GOP a supermajority able to override a gubernatorial veto

“It’s political, poll-based, ‘anti-woke’ legislation, and many of its supporters don’t even know what ‘woke’ means,” says state senator Natalie Murdock of Durham.

In a saner political environment, the prohibitions the bill would engender could address the white supremacist

values that lay dormant until the nation elected its first Black president, and then bloomed while Donald Trump was in the Oval Office.

For instance, the bill would prohibit public schools from promoting that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.” The bill would also censure promoting that “an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex.”

The bill would prohibit teaching that “the United States was created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex,” the genocide of Native Americans and enslavement of Africans notwithstanding.

And finally, in the aftermath of the GOP-led January 6 insurrection, the bill ironically prohibits teaching that “the United States should be violently overthrown.”

“No one is teaching that one race is inherently superior,” Lewis says. “That’s not [currently] being taught. It’s about telling the whole truth so that all of our kids can appreciate it and do better in the future.”

Other critics of HB 187 say its real aim is to foment

Carter G. Woodson PHOTO VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

fear and division while denying students the opportunity to learn the full, unvarnished truth about this nation’s history.

Ronda Taylor Bullock is the lead curator and executive director of we are (working to extend anti-racist education). The nonprofit based in Durham’s Hayti District “provides anti-racism training for children, families, and educators,” according to its website.

Bullock says the nonprofit, housed at Student U, formerly the W. G. Pearson School, sponsors a summer camp that enrolls about 145 children from all racial backgrounds and provides workshops for thousands of parents, families, and educators throughout the year.

Bullock says the bill is about “erasure” and removing race as a factor in past instances of systemic discrimination.

“It’s trying to make sure we can’t teach that this country was built on racist laws and on the backs of enslaved people,” Bullock says. “It makes it easier for white people to believe the lies they tell themselves.”

Lewis says the legislation is “an attempt to handcuff and scare educators about

what they can and cannot teach.”

“We have educators who are determined to teach the truth by addressing inequality and making the connection to current social conditions to past laws,” she says.

“It’s about the spirit of Sankofa, studying the past to determine our steps in the future. When history is being taught from the perspective of the oppressor, it serves their interest to hold minds hostage. To see this bill takes us back. Woodson’s work speaks to this.”

Morris noted that Woodson “used a racist education system as a metaphor for violence against Blacks.” Woodson asserted that his work was “much more important than the anti-lynching movement because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.”

“Why not exploit, enslave, and exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?” Woodson famously questioned.

Woodson was born at the end of Reconstruction in 1875. The son of formerly enslaved parents, he is unquestionably the father of Black history in America and in

1926 created Negro History Week, the forerunner to Black History Month.

Decades before the emergence of CRT as an academic discipline, Woodson’s Mis-education of the Negro, at the height of Jim Crow, noted that Blacks in America were systemically indoctrinated with an education that taught them they were inferior to their fellow white Americans.

Woodson surmised this in one of his most widely quoted observations:

“When you determine what a man shall think, you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”

“His education,” Woodson concluded, “makes it necessary.”

Meanwhile, Murdock says she thinks the strategy behind HB 187 is to deflect from the GOP majority’s failure to adequately fund rural schools across the state, particularly in classrooms where children of color are present.

This is evident, Murdock explains, in the Opportunity Scholarships that provide funds to parents to enroll their children in largely Christian-based direct payment schools, while taking needed funding away from the public school system.

Murdock notes that Republicans’ proposed $2.5 billion tax cut over the next two years will hurt public education and other needed services.

“So how will we fund schools, or pave roads?” she asks. “We can see the writing on the wall. It’s the children who will suffer. The red areas will feel it, too.”

Days before the onset of this nation’s Juneteenth celebrations, we would all do well to acknowledge that the Black experience in this country is American history.

To not collectively appreciate that immutable fact is at our own peril.

Kingdoms crumble from within. W

A well-worn copy of Carter G. Woodson’s seminal work PHOTO BY SARAH EDWARDS

“We have educators who are determined to teach the truth by addressing inequality and making the connection to current social conditions to past laws.”

The Give and Take

Raleigh is bolstering its spending on law enforcement once again this year. Activists wanted to see the council spend more on housing and have tough conversations around police reform.

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

Raleigh’s City Council will spend $130 million on its police force, and some taxpayers are asking why their money isn’t instead going to low-income housing, public transportation, or social services.

The question is one that’s at the heart of budget debates in cities across America. In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, calls to “defund the police” rang out nationally. Activists argued that money given to police officers—who today respond to social crises including poverty, substance use, and homelessness—should be reallocated to community services.

Last week, at Raleigh’s public hearing on the budget for fiscal year 2024, local activists continued their years-long campaign to get the city to divest from police and invest in other departments, which they say will ultimately make the community safer.

“There are countless studies talking about how to prevent crime … and they talk about how jobs and living wages, how education and housing, all serve to prevent crime in urban areas,” said Angaza Laughinghouse, an activist with the nonprofit Refund Raleigh, in a relentless, rhythmic three-minute speech.

“I want to believe you’re trying to do your best. But when I look at this city budget, and I see over the past three years you’ve increased the Housing and Neighborhoods budget by just $2 million, but the police budget has gone up $21 million, it makes me question whether you’re really trying or just talking.”

The activists’ pleas had no impact on the city council, which approved the proposed budget unanimously Monday with only a few minor changes. City officials defended their decision, saying the money spent

on affordable housing and homelessness is more than is reflected in the budget.

“[Affordable housing] is our number one council priority,” said city manager Marchell Adams-David. “This budget lifts up $32.9 million to address that.”

The nearly $33 million Adams-David quoted includes federal money, local money earmarked for housing, the city’s penny tax for housing, and “partnerships with our nonprofit builders and developers,” the city manager said. But with each type of funding—federal, local, and private—there are still major gaps between how much is allocated to the police and how much to housing.

At a local level, in the city’s individual departments, the Raleigh Police Department (RPD) is slated to receive about $130.9 million, a roughly $19.3 million increase over its 2020 budget of $111.7 million. Meanwhile, the Housing and Neighborhoods Department, which is tasked with increasing the supply of affordable housing (among other initiatives), is set to receive about $7 million, an increase of about $1.3 million over the fiscal year 2020–21.

The additional expenditure on RPD this year won’t expand the police force, explained Raleigh budget director Sadia Sattar. Instead, it will go mainly toward a 5 percent pay raise for police officers, as well as to purchasing laptops for recruits in the police academy. The money will also cover increasing rental costs for some police buildings.

Matthew Cooper, president of the Raleigh Police Protective Association, said the 5 percent pay raise is a good step forward, but RPD is still dealing with severe staffing shortages. In October of last year,

RPD had 150 vacancies. Cooper, along with other advocates for police officers and firefighters, has continually lobbied for higher pay for public safety workers.

On the Housing and Neighborhoods side, the money will help fund new employee training and the increasing costs of managing the housing bond voters passed in 2020. In addition, Sattar says, the city is investing nearly $25 million in affordable housing this year from its capital fund, a pot of money that is usually used for longterm projects such as the construction of new buildings.

In this case, the money will fund the city’s ongoing affordable housing programs, including down payment assistance, preserving existing affordable rental housing, and home repairs and rehabilitation.

“I don’t want people to think we didn’t hear them, because we did,” Sattar says.

Refund Raleigh activists, however, remain unsatisfied. Despite investments from the city, the amount of money dedicated to affordable housing remains small in comparison to the amount of money dedicated to public safety.

Overall, funding for public safety— including money for the police, fire, and emergency communications departments, as well as the construction of new police and fire stations—makes up about 25 percent of this year’s total budget of $1.26

billion. Dollars for housing, on the other hand—including the Housing and Neighborhoods Department and the city’s affordable housing initiatives—make up only 3.5 percent of the total budget.

“Just think about if you had invested $21 million in affordable housing, where would we be right now after three years? If you invested $21 million into mental health, where would be right now?” said Laughinghouse. “This imbalance continues every single year. You cautiously sprinkle money into programs for the people, but you’ll dump money into the police budget.”

Raleigh residents seem to agree that affordable housing and transportation should be the top budget priorities for city council members.

In an online survey the city conducted, residents also ranked “providing affordable housing,” “reducing traffic accidents,” and “providing a connected, safe, and reliable bus and transit system” as budget priorities. Respondents said they were highly important, but they were dissatisfied with the city’s existing services.

Nearly all respondents said that “responding to community needs (fire, police, 911)” was either extremely or somewhat important (96 percent), but they were also mostly satisfied with the city’s existing services (66 percent were completely or somewhat satisfied).

Raleigh police in May 2020 PHOTO BY ANTHONY CRIDER VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

About 3,100 people responded to the survey, a 275 percent increase over the number of participants last year. Still, the survey results are only a small snapshot of how Raleigh’s nearly 500,000 residents feel.

Despite pressure from the community over the past few years, Raleigh council members have yet to hold a serious discussion about divesting from policing. When asked about residents’ concerns that the RPD doesn’t keep people safe, Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin stood firm in her assessment that an investment in the police force is an investment in public safety.

“We have to invest in public safety. Safety is the number one concern. So we want to make sure that our police officers are fairly compensated and shown appreciation and respect,” Baldwin says. “At this time, we can’t take money away from our police department. When you look at the market, our officers are paid less. So we’re trying to increase their salary and invest more in our police department.”

Across the country, major fund shifts from local police budgets to community services are still rare. A few cities, like Seattle, have taken steps to divest from policing, but the approach is cautious. In 2021, the city took $12 million from the Seattle Police Department (an 18 percent cut) and $18 million from a community initiative fund (for a total of $30 million), and let the people decide how to spend it. The participatory budget process is ongoing, so the results are not yet known.

In another example, the Los Angeles school board cut $25 million from its school police budget to help fund a $36.5 million initiative dubbed the Black Student Achievement Plan. The plan included hiring additional social workers and counselors to fight high suspension rates, chronic absenteeism, and low academic achievement.

A 2022 report showed that the initiative hadn’t increased graduation rates, but it had increased literacy levels and the number of students earning better grades. Likewise, it hadn’t decreased chronic absenteeism but had increased access to mental health resources and decreased out-of-school suspension rates.

Durham’s HEART vs. Raleigh’s ACORNS

This year, Raleigh activists persisted with their demands that the city make major reforms to its ACORNS unit, a team of social workers and police officers that

PROPOSED RALEIGH BUDGET BY DEPARTMENT FY 2023-24

17.24%

Source: City of Raleigh

respond to mental health crises and connect residents with public services. Activists argue the unit should be independent of the police force. Last week, many cited Durham’s HEART program, created in 2022, as an example of what Raleigh should do.

HEART is composed solely of social workers and mental health clinicians who respond to “non-violent behavioral health ... calls for service” and follow up with people to connect them to resources or programs. Recently, Durham also created a “co-response” section, where clinicians respond to higher-risk calls alongside police officers.

“I come to the meeting today frustrated because we are behind,” said activist Ajamu Dillahunt at last week’s hearing. “[The Durham City Council] is not just talking about the success of the HEART program, they’re expanding it. What are we doing?”

Baldwin says the city council is considering changes to ACORNS. Recently, council members met with the creators of Denver’s STAR program—a unit activists say is a good model—to examine how it worked. The inde-

ability options for residents,” Ayala said, adding that the cost of housing will continue to rise in 2024 as Duke Energy rates increase, property taxes increase, and construction costs remain high.

Baldwin says the city will consider options to increase affordable housing funding in the next few years. As the $80 million housing bond runs out (funds are expected to be spent by 2025), the city will look at putting another bond before voters and how much it should cost. Another option could be to dedicate 2¢ of the property tax to affordable housing, as Durham does, an increase from the 1¢ Raleigh currently dedicates. On Monday, council member Jane Harrison said she supports doubling the roughly $7.8 million raised annually through that tax in 2025.

“We were very intentional not to raise property taxes except for the voter-approved tax, which was for the parks bond,” Baldwin says. “We’ve got Wake County raising their tax rate and we wanted to make sure there was a balance.”

Fair housing advocate Octavia Rainey, a

pendently funded program started out as a five-year pilot, according to Baldwin.

”It’s a very different model with a different funding stream,” Baldwin says. “The city manager is looking at how we can incorporate something that is uniquely Raleigh and serves our needs.”

Low-income housing instead of “affordable housing”

Residents at last week’s meeting were also frustrated with what they consider only small or moderate investments in affordable housing. Jackie Ayala, the director of advocacy for Habitat for Humanity of Wake County, said the organization is pleased that the city continues to earmark local funding for affordable housing, but this year’s budget “doesn’t go far enough to meet the need in our community.”

“Additional local funding is critically needed to develop more subsidized affordable housing and to create more home afford-

frequent public commenter, raised an additional concern: existing funds for affordable housing should go to help the people most in need, she said—specifically, those making 30 percent or less of the annual median income (AMI), which is $113,300 currently for a family of four, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (a family of four making 30 percent of the AMI would only earn about $34,000 per year).

Many of the affordable housing projects Raleigh funds are open to people making 60 or 80 percent of the AMI. There’s certainly a need for this kind of housing, but activists argue the city should prioritize housing for its poorest residents, including people experiencing homelessness.

“You say you are for affordable housing. How do you define affordable? We should be talking about 40 or 30 percent below AMI,” said Leon Cook, a Raleigh resident who spoke during the public hearing. “Developers may throw in a few units at 60 percent and feel good about it. We don’t.” W

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“This imbalance continues every single year. You cautiously sprinkle money into programs for the people, but you’ll dump money into the police budget.”

Forward Toward Growth

Shaw University is seeking to rezone its downtown Raleigh campus, the cash-poor school’s biggest asset. The city council chambers have become a court of public opinion on how the school should move forward.

BY REN LARSON backtalk@indyweek.com

Like many alumni and students at Shaw University, Mecca Dixon has mixed emotions about the university’s request to rezone much of its 26-acre campus to allow buildings up to 30 stories and make way for dramatic redevelopment.

Dixon, who is pursuing a Master of Divinity degree, worries it would compromise the university’s historic downtown campus and accelerate gentrification in the neighborhoods around the South’s oldest historically Black university.

But like many students and alumni, she understands Shaw is facing financial hardship and hasn’t received the same philanthropic and government investments as many predominantly white institutions. A decline in student enrollment has furthered the financial hardship; the campus reported that it had 1,067 students in 2021, less than half its historic enrollment.

Rezoning would give the school a path for new revenue, which would come from leasing land to developers to build towering new offices and apartments. School leaders say it could help fulfill campus needs—like new residence halls, a student center, athletic facilities, a life sciences building, and stadium—that it couldn’t otherwise afford.

The 157-year-old campus has a prime location at Raleigh’s rapidly redeveloping southern edge, and other than the state and city governments, the university is the largest landholder downtown. There is already $5.7 billion in the pipeline for development downtown, including two hotels, nearly 900 apartments, and office and

retail developments to the immediate north and west of campus. The city is accepting inquiries to develop another two city blocks near the school.

The land Shaw is seeking to rezone was valued between $160 and $270 million as of 2019—12 times the amount in Shaw’s $13 million endowment and four times its annual $41 million budget. The university did not provide an estimate of expected revenue from leasing the land to developers.

In May 2022, the university first alerted nearby property owners of the intent to rezone. Ahead of a city council meeting where the plan would be discussed, the university released webinars on the proposal for “The ShawU District,” the newest of downtown’s destination districts, in February and March. Campus leadership and professional partners touted it as a way to move the university forward economically and academically.

“The idea is Shaw maintains its uniqueness and builds on that, and becomes a district that is a part of downtown but celebrates unique Black culture, entrepreneurship, all of the things that an area that celebrates us would do in Raleigh, and it does not currently exist,” said Paulette Dillard, the university’s president, in the webinar.

But others have wondered what the cost is—particularly for the two campus buildings on the National Register of Historic Places and others that add to a historic district. Among them: Estey Hall, constructed in the early 1870s with bricks that Shaw students—many of whom were recently eman-

cipated—dug from clay soil themselves. The hall was the first higher-education building for Black women in the country and remains the oldest standing building on campus.

Estey would not be redeveloped, but many of the buildings directly around it could be demolished and rebuilt. And written into the rezoning application is a provision that if a historic building is sufficiently damaged by natural or unintended causes, it can be razed. Historic preservationists and alumni note that there’s surely a possibility of a structure cracking or bricks falling if much of the campus is under construction.

“Many people have wanted to purchase that land,” Dixon said. “There’s just a lot of questions of whether the intentions and wants are true and pure for what the university needs, what students need.”

Another concern for some is trust that the university is making sound decisions and being transparent about where redevelopment will happen and how money will be spent.

Kasonia Smith, a 2023 Shaw graduate, wishes the redevelopment, and its impact on current and future students, was better communicated to students. The university’s first community meeting on the plan, in May 2022, took place after students had already left for the summer. Otherwise, she said she understands the financial needs.

“If we don’t take this initiative to get help to do this rezoning, then Shaw is going to become nonexistent by 2035,” Smith said.

The Raleigh City Council will decide whether to rezone the land. The Planning

Commission, which advises the council, recommended that the city approve Shaw’s proposal in a 7-1 vote in February.

But when it went before the city council on May 2, the council members punted until June 20, asking the university to return with provisions that provide certainty to the many stakeholders, including a written commitment to hold public meetings about what redevelopment could look like once rezoning is approved.

“We Do So Much with So Little”

As a nonprofit university, any revenue the school makes from development is supposed to be used to serve the mission of the university.

University leadership discusses the potential for additional housing not exclusive to students, or academic buildings as a way to build things the school couldn’t afford on its own. (A life sciences building is something Dillard often touts; she’s a three-time HBCU graduate who has a Ph.D. in cell biology from Clark Atlanta University as well as an MBA, and previously worked for Quest Diagnostics and GlaxoSmithKline.)

Rezoning is a way for the land-rich university to bring in new revenue, but how much the university plans to earn from future tenants remains unclear. Nearby Saint Augustine’s University recently announced a deal to lease land for a $75 million housing development. Shaw’s landholdings are significantly greater.

The historic Leonard Medical School located on land proposed for a 30-story rezoning.

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

As a small HBCU, Shaw has not benefited from affluent alums and intergenerational wealth as many historically white universities have.

“HBCUs from the very beginning were funded at much lower rates than most majority institutions, and part of that has to do with the value put on the education of African Americans by whites,” said Marybeth Gasman, a professor at Rutgers University who studies HBCUs. “Shaw has never been an institution that was fully funded in a way that would make it prosper in the way that it should.”

HBCUs like Shaw also typically serve families who can’t afford high tuition, let alone donations. Over the past decade, five in six of Shaw’s students received Pell Grants for those with exceptional financial need— roughly 2.5 times the national average.

Dillard sat down with The Assembly in a historic home across the street from the main campus. If the rezoning gets approved, the university would relocate the home. Its windows look out on Estey Hall, which sits empty as the building gets a new HVAC system, a new roof, and new floors. Dillard’s normal office is on Estey’s fourth floor.

“Our single largest asset is the real estate, because we have a very small endowment,” Dillard said. The $13 million endowment is a small fraction of what universities with similar enrollment have; Raleigh’s all-women Meredith College, for example, had a $125 million endowment as of June 2022.

Dillard, who became interim president in 2017 before her position was made perma-

nent in 2018, said that across the country, liberal arts colleges are facing a demographic cliff. Shaw is under pressure to upgrade its facilities to compete with other universities for a shrinking pool of students.

And Shaw is more dependent on student revenue than most. Over the past decade, two-thirds of Shaw’s revenue came from tuition, room, and board, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. The nationwide average across all universities is 40 percent.

It’s a problem Shaw’s other leaders have highlighted as they pitch rezoning.

“We have no desire for Shaw University to be anything but a university of higher learning, but we do want to modernize so we can attract students, so that we can retain students, so that we can attract the best faculty and staff,” trustee Jermaine Simmons said in the March webinar. “To be quite honest, Shaw University is such a blessing because we do so much with so little.”

Preserving a Place in Time

Tod Hamlin answered his phone on a Monday afternoon and was surprised to hear the caller mention the name of his grandmother Ernestine Pegues Hamlin.

Ernestine was the daughter of Rev. Dr. Albert Pegues, who moved to Raleigh in 1886 to become chair of Shaw’s philosophy and languages program. The university was just 21 years old—six years younger than Pegues himself, who was born into slavery in

McFarlan, North Carolina.

Ernestine was born in 1890, attended high school at Shaw because there was no secondary school for Black children in Raleigh at the time, and later worked at the university.

In 1919, Pegues was promoted to dean of the Theological School and purchased a stately Greek Revival home on the north side of campus. A century later, the school is considering relocating the home and its pastel yellow 1920s neighbor to make way for development.

“Can I get my siblings on the line?” Hamlin asked after hearing about the proposal for the first time.

Built around 1855, the house had been home to a number of politically connected, wealthy, white Raleighites, including Josephus Daniels, the former News & Observer editor and a leading instigator of the 1898 Wilmington Massacre. Ernestine inherited the home from her parents after her father’s death in 1929.

The Assembly’s call was the first that Hamlin, his sister Peri, and his older brother Alan—Ernestine’s only known living relatives—heard that their grandparents’ home could be relocated. Their father had sold the property to Shaw in 1996, the year after Ernestine died at 104 years old.

“Our legacy is tied up in the school just as much as it is in the home,” said Peri Hamlin. “I think about our great-grandfather who was born into slavery and he got a Ph.D. and he went back to school and he wrote a book about HBCUs across the country.”

Daniels—and not Pegues—is the former resident of the home Shaw named in its reasoning to move the home from its current location.

“We have a house built by a Confederate general, occupied by another Confederate officer, lived in primarily by Josephus Daniels—and we all know his history—and occupied by, for about 10 years, the dean of the divinity school of Shaw University,” Dillard said in the March webinar.

Both Raleigh’s Historic Development Commission and local historian Carmen Cauthen, author of the book Historic Black Neighborhoods of Raleigh, feel the university is cherry-picking from history.

“It’s ironic that that’s the argument, when the school was built on a plantation,” said Cauthen, who added that the former owner of Shaw’s property was an enslaver, a congressman, a white supremacist. “If you want to get rid of that house, you have to get rid of the campus. It’s an inconsistency.”

Relocating historic homes is allowed and not without precedent in Raleigh. Some residents have suggested that the homes be placed near Estey Hall to serve as a welcome center, a proposition Dillard opposes.

“I cannot and will not turn the campus into a museum or a historic site. Because first and foremost, it is a university, a dynamic place,” Dillard said.

The university has not specified where the Hamlin family’s former home would be moved, a fact that makes some alumni and preservationists nervous. The university has said most historic buildings like Estey will be

“Shaw has never been an institution that was fully funded in a way that would make it prosper in the way that it should.”

Author and historian Carmen Cauthen PHOTO BY REN LARSON

preserved even if zoning is approved.

The Hamlins concurred that education afforded their great-grandfather’s success, and access to education should be Shaw’s top priority. Tod Hamlin said that while he wants to see the property kept intact, “I’m much more attached to this HBCU lasting for generations than the home staying where it was originally built.”

“Will No Longer Host a Public Mosque”

What isn’t protected under local historic preservation requirements is the longest-standing masjid, or mosque, in Raleigh. In 1982, Saudi Arabia gave $1 million to Shaw University to establish an international and Islamic studies center and masjid. For over a decade, the Saudi royal family sent children to Shaw University for an American education. A masjid served the needs of their children and other Muslim students, as well as the “community at large.” Raleigh sold the school the land it now sits on.

It’s now the oldest mosque in the city, but because it’s still not yet 50—the age the field generally considers structures deserving of preservation—it has not been considered for historic preservation status.

The nearly three-acre parcel that the masjid sits on is included in the university’s rezoning plan, and has an estimated value of up to $16 million.

Many people who worship there worry about its fate if rezoning is approved, and came to the May 2 city council meeting carrying “Muslims Matter,” “Mosque Matters,” and “Respect Religion” signs.

The masjid has been closed to the public since the pandemic began in 2020. Its leadership has repeatedly requested it be reopened. Services and events have been held in the university’s chapel, which, like most other buildings, has long since reopened.

Nigel Edwards, an attorney who works with the mosque’s board, has accused the school of “discrimination” for keeping it closed.

In an April 2022 letter, the university told Edwards that it was OK for the chapel to have services, because those were university led and sponsored, and that the university only denied use to outside organizations. It wasn’t until March 2023 that Masjid King Khalid’s board learned via an email from Shaw that it “will no longer host a public mosque.”

The university and the mosque’s lawyers are working out an agreement, but conditions like not allowing a Sunday school, or terminating the MOU if the rezoning decision is denied or delayed beyond August, are nonstarters for Edwards.

Masjid King Khalid’s supporters assume the building itself isn’t likely to survive redevelopment.

“We’ve taken them on their word that they want to lease out the land: knock the buildings down and lease out the land,” Edwards said, adding that some in the community want to see the masjid remain, while others are OK with being in a new building.

Taking Advantage of a Boom

Shaw’s rezoning wasn’t on the agenda for the June 6 city council meeting, but

Raleigh’s booming development was certainly on people’s minds.

“My neighbors and my children are losing their homes because the taxes are increasing so much,” said Cynthia Vinston, who has owned her home in southeast Raleigh for 21 years.

Vinston lives roughly a mile from Shaw’s campus, and while she hasn’t been following the school’s rezoning effort, she says she gets regular mailers and texts asking if she’s interested in selling the home Habitat for Humanity helped her to purchase. She says if she were to sell her home, it would be back to Habitat.

Two years ago, a 1,050-square-foot home in her neighborhood sold to an LLC for $155,000. After a few updates, it sold for $335,000 10 months later.

“We feel like we built our neighborhood and we feel like the city is forcing us out with the high taxes, with the gentrification,” Vinston said. “Do you have to make six figures in order to live in Raleigh?”

Four years ago, The New York Times highlighted the historic neighborhood south and east of Shaw in a story about predominantly Black, Hispanic, and Asian downtown neighborhoods growing whiter and wealthier nationwide. The trend has accelerated since then.

“Families that got pushed out of the area will never have any hopes of being there,” Dixon, the Shaw divinity student, said. “It’s really challenging for me that this has happened.”

Prior to enrolling in divinity school, Dixon studied psychology and worked in housing. She’s currently researching the psychological impact of people who are displaced from

their community because of gentrification.

She’s intrigued by statements the university has made about how it could bring in more grocery stores or Black- and Latino-owned businesses, but worries that making the area “more attractive” could result in the displacement she’s seen elsewhere.

“All money isn’t good money,” Dixon said. “How do we look at and protect the interest of Shaw University with it still being sustainable and viable?”

Dillard acknowledged that gentrification is a real concern in Raleigh. “But I’m not perpetuating it,” she said. “I’m trying to find a way to revitalize what is here and have the ShawU District.”

Trusting in the Future

Some alumni who understand the financial impetus to rezone still struggle to feel comfortable with the people leading the charge.

Shaw’s 19 elected members on its board of trustees include just two women, and a handful of members have served for more than two decades, including the chair, the vice chair, and the former chair.

About a decade ago, the university’s highest-paid employee was sentenced to jail for scamming the Environmental Protection Agency and employing his wife and children on the federal grant.

Around that time, the university reported on five separate IRS forms required by tax-exempt organizations that an insurance company owned by the brother of then chair Willie E. Gary was paid at least $5.5 million for insurance, a precedent that makes some

Longstanding homes in the historic South Park neighborhood have been razed and redeveloped. Right, Kesha Monk and Eugene Myrick. PHOTOS BY JADE WILSON

in the community bristle wondering who will be offered development opportunities.

While the university’s leadership changed in the wake of these scandals, the board remained intact and accusations of nepotism and corruption have lingered. Some recall a recently settled whistleblower suit alleging a vice president awarded a contract without the competitive bidding process a decade ago.

A 2019 report the university commissioned from the Urban Land Institute recommended adding “generational diversity” to the board and moving away from vendors with “longstanding relationships” to the school. Nonprofit best practices usually advise rotating members off a board after two three-year terms.

The most recent bylaws for Shaw’s board that The Assembly was able to obtain require a one-year absence after the third consecutive three-year term, but don’t include lifetime limits, meaning a trustee could serve decades.

According to Dillard, the university’s bylaws allow trustees to extend their terms beyond a third term, without time off, by majority vote. She mentioned she was the third president in the past decade and said having institutional memory on the board can have its benefits.

“If you have a great deal of leadership turnover in the presidency, and turnover among executives, and then you have that same kind of turnover in terms of your board, that may or may not be an ideal scenario either.”

The four longest-serving trustees did not respond to a request for comment.

Dillard wonders when the past can remain in the past. She was hired as a professor over a decade ago and has been in the presidency for nearly six years. She sees Shaw as having stable leadership, but knows there will never be an answer that satisfies the questions of what happened over a decade ago.

Eugene Myrick, a 1994 Shaw graduate who cofounded a coalition of alums and community stakeholders called Save Our Shaw, wants to see the university succeed, but is among those who question its current leadership.

Myrick sees the school’s declining enrollment and closure of a dorm, the mosque, and some services as “dismemberment” and “constructive eviction.”

“Shaw’s saying, ‘You can’t get money off of tuition alone’—you can’t get money off of no tuition: there’s currently an empty dorm,” Myrick said at the April 4 city council meeting.

“Shaw has been operating in crisis mode,” he said. “It’s been kind of frustrating, there’s no other way to explain it, because we have bad management at the school.”

Myrick said that he’s gotten a lot of pushback for his criticism, but also support from fellow alumni. “Enough is enough. We’re at the danger of not having a university,” Myrick said.

The May city council meeting was standing room only, with a vast majority of attendees there in opposition of the rezoning request.

Michael Hall, a 1980 graduate, sat at the back of the room dressed in a seersucker suit and yellow tie. Despite the packed room, the council heard just four minutes of public testimony from each side.

“Things just aren’t being transparent, and that makes us question the integrity of everything and that makes us question the intent,” Hall, who drove from Charlotte to attend, told The Assembly

Hall recalled the first time he went into Estey Hall, in the mid-sixties when he was around five years old. He remembered learning about students who formed an arm-inarm ring around the building to keep bulldozers from tearing it down in the 1970s. He knew the history of recently emancipated people digging clay to make the bricks.

“Nobody is against development. We just want to see it done right, and these are not the people we trust to do it, these are not the people,” Hall said of the university’s trustees.

Hall also wants to see the university preserve public spaces like the mosque—something Raleigh City Council member Megan Patton highlighted as well. The council can’t regulate future tenants of a building, but it could condition that a certain amount of space be used for similar purposes, in this case something to serve the Muslim community.

“I think everyone is on the same page that we want Shaw to be wildly successful, and we want this to be and feel good for the community members who are affected,” Patton said.

The council members voted unanimously to reschedule the zoning hearing to June 20, asking the university to continue communicating with stakeholders. Their request was three-part: to see a written commitment for public meetings during the campus planning process; have an outside party monitor vibrations in historic buildings; and find a way to show how Shaw, or the community, will benefit if any property is sold.

Last Saturday, Myrick stood in front of a gathering of 40 outside Shaw for a rally ahead of the meeting, including representatives from Save Our Shaw, Muslims for Social Justice, and Friends of Shaw U.

Myrick said he does not feel like Shaw’s leadership has had the community conversations the council directed them to before next week’s meeting.

“We want to modernize, but we don’t want to commercialize our university; we have not seen any plans,” Myrick said. W

Accountability Assembly

At a community meeting last month, more than 300 residents heard updates on mental health care initiatives and criminal justice reform in Orange County.

BY HANNAH KAUFMAN backtalk@indyweek.com

At an Orange County community meeting last month, Diana Huerta was one of dozens of Latino residents in attendance whose grito de auxilio, or cry for help, has been answered—at least in part.

A Mexican woman who has lived in the United States for more than half her life, Huerta lost a loved one to suicide eight years ago. Far from home, she said she experiences panic attacks and depression. When she reached out to the area’s bilingual therapy clinic, El Futuro, she was met with a long waiting list. She couldn’t pay for private treatment and was dealing with her struggles alone.

“Can you imagine … a person in crisis, they come knocking on your door, only to be told there’s a huge waiting list,” Huerta said in Spanish. “The crisis shouldn’t exist in the first place …. It was caused by the people in power …. They created a crisis.”

At the May 11 assembly at Chapel Hill’s St. Thomas More Catholic Church, of which Huerta is a member, more than 300 residents in attendance in person and via Zoom learned the good news: Alliance Health—a private man-

aged care organization (MCO) that serves uninsured residents and those who receive Medicaid in six counties, including Orange, Durham, and Wake—pledged $500,000 to support mental health services in the Latino community in Orange County.

The pledge comes a year after the people in power Huerta references—another MCO, Cardinal Innovations, Alliance Health’s predecessor—dissolved after overpaying its CEO and board members and denying Medicaid reimbursements to undocumented immigrants, effectively ignoring a mental health crisis it had a hand in creating.

The Latino community in attendance wanted to be sure Alliance Health wouldn’t do the same thing, and the pledge was received as a good first step. As people of all ages filled rows of chairs and huddled against the far wall of the church room, shoulder to shoulder, Sean Schreiber, Alliance Health’s chief operating officer, reaffirmed that the new organization responsible for their health care was taking steps to be accountable to the people it serves.

The money, Schreiber explained, would be used to imple-

ment an initiative called the Strong Minds program, which trains community members in mental health first aid, providing support while hiring and retaining bilingual therapists. It also plans a multiphase return of El Futuro, which saw its Carrboro location close in 2015.

In the meantime, Schreiber said, the MCO is working to strengthen its relationships with the community.

“What we’re doing now is really developing strong partnerships with the county leadership, with stakeholder groups in the community and advocates, and working with them to understand what the needs are and hearing what the community wants,” Schreiber says.

Orange County Justice United (OCJU), a nonprofit that works to address local issues between residents and those in power, and the North Carolina Congress of Latino Organizations organized the public accountability assembly. In addition to the announcement from Alliance Health, residents heard updates from Orange and Chatham County district attorney Jeff Nieman at the meeting, a follow-up to another assembly held last year when Nieman was running for the seat and made campaign commitments to the very same residents.

Last year’s DA race marked the first time in a generation that there was a competitive election for the position in Orange County, which gave OCJU the opportunity to highlight community issues at the candidate assembly, says Rev. Dr. George Crews III, a pastor and OCJU leader.

“We knew we had a great opportunity that we could get in and really get our foot in the door, so that we can have some sort of influence to those candidates to say, ‘Hey, these are some things that we’re needing in the community and this is what the people are saying,’” Crews continues.

Last April, Nieman committed to several proposals (see box) from OCJU to reform Orange County’s criminal justice system.

Now, five months into his term, Nieman reaffirmed his commitment to the proposals.

“The commitments that I was asked to make, I assure you, align with what my commitments were to myself and the community I grew up in when I ran for district attorney,” Nieman said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t still need a push—so I appreciate it.”

The push paid off.

Nieman’s office has made progress in fulfilling the commitments, especially around enhanced diversion practices that direct people with mental health struggles and substance use issues into treatment and other alternatives to incarceration.

Nieman emphasized his work with Orange County’s

A full house at the accountability assembly at St. Thomas More Catholic Church on May 11 in Chapel Hill

PHOTO BY IVAN PARRA

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM PROPOSALS

Make diversion the rule—emphasize treatment over incarceration for mental health and substance use issues

Choose diversion over prosecution for drug possession for personal use/paraphernalia

Provide mass relief for driver’s license suspensions due to failure to pay fees and fines

Create a sentencing review process to determine if sentencing relief is appropriate for previously tried cases that led to incarceration

Recommend no bail/bond unless a person presents a risk to themselves or others

Create a publicly available resource guide, including information on diversion options and DA office principles

Implement data tracking for racial disparities

Continue the diversion program for safe drivers without a license

Hold follow-up meetings in six months and one year of taking office

Outreach Court, a therapeutic court for people experiencing homelessness that he helped launch a decade ago and the first of its kind in North Carolina. Another initiative is the county’s Community Resource Court, which assists defendants with mental health diagnoses by offering them a treatment plan that, upon completion, rewards participants with legal benefits like dismissal of charges.

These courts often refer justice-involved people to programs such as the Formerly Incarcerated Transition (FIT) Program, which helps formerly incarcerated residents with chronic illnesses connect with healthcare services and readjust to life outside of prison.

Tommy Green, who was formerly incarcerated and now works as the Orange County FIT program manager, says he sees growth in clients after their participation in the program.

“When I first met them through the FIT program, one client had a history of multiple incarcerations, they hadn’t been more than 90 days sober in the last probably three or four years, and they [were] homeless,” Green says. “Now, this guy has his own place, he’s been sober for over a year, and hasn’t had a charge since he’s been in the program.”

Nieman also reported progress on bail and bond reform. While North Carolina doesn’t ban cash bail at the state level, Nieman says his office is moving in that direction by making pretrial release the rule. Orange County only detains people who pose a risk to themselves or others.

“It’s fundamentally undemocratic for the decision over

whether someone is in jail or out of jail awaiting trial to depend on how much money they have,” Nieman says.

Nieman promises to continue the program he formed seven years ago for safe drivers without a license, oftentimes due to immigration status.

Crews says the most important part of these meetings is ensuring that everyone has a voice.

“We had white brothers and sisters, Black brothers and sisters, Latino brothers and sisters—everybody was coming together, because this is an issue,” Crews says. “Everybody, regardless of race, color, creed, or religion, has to deal with the court system in Orange County, whether it’s just a ticket, driving without a license, or whether it is drug charges. We all sometimes have to deal with it, and we want to make sure that when we stand before the DA or the judge, that we’re getting a fair shake.”

The meeting was over, but the work wasn’t. OCJU always knew that would be the case, Crews says.

“We don’t go in thinking that it is going to be a slam dunk,” Crews says. “We know that this is going to be work and we’re all committed to continuing to work hard.”

And for OCJU, much of that work means following up with leaders and organizations to ensure that their words turn into actions. There’s already another assembly on the calendar with Nieman, scheduled for one year into his term.

“They keep us firm to our commitments,” Schreiber, from Alliance Health, told the crowd. “And we know darn well that if we don’t live up to our commitments, we’re going to hear about it.” W

UNA RESPUESTA PARA EL GRITO DE AUXILIO DE LA COMUNIDAD LATINA

En mayo, una compañía privada que controla los dólares públicos para la salud mental en Orange County, Alliance Health, ha prometido $500,000 para apoyar la crisis de salud mental en la comunidad Latina. Este dinero ayudará a implementar un programa que se llama Strong Minds, para formar a los miembros de la comunidad en primeros auxilios de salud mental mientras la compañía está trabajando en contratar terapeutas bilingües. El dinero también apoyará el regreso multifásico de la clínica de terapia El Futuro.

Por otro lado, el fiscal de distrito de Orange y Chatham County, Jeff Nieman, ha prometido continuar su progreso en la reforma de la justicia penal, especialmente con su priorización del desvío y el tratamiento sobre el encarcelamiento por problemas de salud mental y uso de sustancias.

Deacon Luis Royo, the director of Hispanic Ministries and Orange County Justice United leader, addresses the crowd at St. Thomas More Catholic church on May 11 in Chapel Hill PHOTO BY IVAN PARRA

Transit Fare

As airports bring on more local purveyors, local chefs like Oscar Diaz must

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

At Oscar Diaz’s new Durham restaurant, Little Bull, the high-ceilinged dining room has something of a Dark Academia vibe, with ornate wallpaper, velvet bar stools, burnished chandeliers, and emerald banker’s lamps, but the space is drenched in natural light and the door to the patio is propped open, ushering in floral spring winds.

Such an atmosphere could not be accomplished in an airport terminal. Yet in April, Diaz announced that’s where he’s headed next, with Adios! scheduled to open in the Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) by the end of 2024.

For a chef who views his restaurants as blank slates for self-expression, it’s bound to be a challenge—even if the owner of Jose and Sons and Cortez Seafood, both in Raleigh, worked at an O’Hare International Airport restaurant in college.

As Diaz knows, airport restaurants come with rigid

confines. Dishes must be produced at breakneck speed. Kitchens are tiny and bound in red tape: butcher knives, for instance, must be tethered to work stations, per TSA guidelines. Customer traffic is almost always high; staffing is almost always low. Hours of operation are set in stone. Airport executives have the final say on menu items, aesthetics, and prices.

And in most cases, independent chefs don’t actually own or operate the airport restaurants that bear their names. They help craft the concepts, but concessionaires—branches of food service and hospitality companies, typically—are the ones who execute them.

Historically, it’s been rare for airport concessionaires to solicit local chefs, but in recent years, airports have begun making a concerted effort to prioritize local purveyors over corporate ones. At RDU, Raleigh’s Black & White Coffee Roasters recently replaced a Starbucks, and at least 10

more local food and drink spots are in the works, including a second location of Durham’s Beyú Caffé and a new concept from Raleigh chef and restaurateur Scott Crawford. Since 2020, Cary’s La Farm Bakery has had an outpost at RDU as well.

The draw of the airport, of course, is exposure. When Adios! opens next year, it’s possible that as many people will eat there each day as at Diaz’s other three restaurants combined. But for Diaz, a two-time James Beard Award semifinalist known for his intentional, hands-on approach to upscale dining, should the restaurant that most shapes the traveling public’s perception of his brand be one that he doesn’t operate? Should it be one with a compact menu, sterile airport surroundings, and a perpetually grouchy customer base?

Diaz was approached about developing an RDU concept in 2019. For a while afterward, he thought the offer might have been some bizarre hoax: the concessionaire, a Miami-based hospitality executive named Francesco Balli, had shown up unannounced at Cortez and pitched the sort of opportunity that, in Diaz’s mind, only ever happened to celebrity chefs like Rick Bayless. They had a nice chat, and then years passed with no word from Balli.

The pandemic was behind the silence, but Diaz didn’t know that for sure at the time. He started wondering if Balli was legit. Then he started wondering if he cared. He had some apprehensions about going fast-casual.

“I know what art I want to present,” he says. “I know what hip-hop I want to make. I’m not making bangers for the club all the time, but I want quality to be associated with my name.”

In 2022, though, when Diaz finally got a text from Balli, he decided to go for it. He’d been experiencing a creeping sense of ennui.

“For the first time in a long time, I was feeling comfortable,” Diaz says. “I don’t know if I just don’t know how to accept comfort in my life, or if comfort is a sign of complacency, but I feel like I have to keep revving my engine. With the airport, obviously, I don’t want to dilute my brand. But that’s the challenge I needed: How do I make this work within these parameters?”

Louis Armstrong International Airport (MSY), in New Orleans, is a few years ahead of RDU.

Groundwork for MSY’s shift to predominantly local dining concepts began in 2015, right after officials approved plans to build a new main terminal building. That year, three competing concessionaires approached Michael Gulotta, a New Orleans chef who had opened his first restaurant, a Vietnamese Creole joint called MoPho, 12 months prior. They wanted him to open a second MoPho location at MSY.

“These people started showing up and were like,

decide how to translate their brands to busy transitional spaces.

‘Hey, we’re bidding to get a space at the airport, we want you on our bid,’” Gulotta says. “I was like, ‘OK, I don’t know what that means.’”

They gave him the rundown and told him he was the “hot new thing.” He went with Delaware North, a concessionaire who also had the acclaimed chef John Folse on its bid.

It was a “gut call,” Gulotta says, and a good one: if it weren’t for Folse, who owns a massive food manufacturing plant near New Orleans, Gulotta would not have been able to adapt MoPho’s menu for the airport. The sauces that anchor many of MoPho’s dishes—vindaloo curry, spicy mayonnaise, and nuoc mam caramel, among others— couldn’t be produced in a “little airport kitchen,” he says, but Folse allowed him to use his plant.

“The caramel is a really big pain in the ass. It’s very technical,” Gulotta says. “They figured out how to do it in these giant machines at the plant. It was a year of me driving to Gonzales, Louisiana, and tinkering with their staff to get all the sauces right, and the broths.”

MoPho’s MSY location launched when the new terminal did, in November 2019.

“As soon as we opened it, the fucking world ended,” Gulotta says.

If Gulotta sounds gruff, it’s partially because—as he told me repeatedly—I was asking him questions that he couldn’t answer.

He doesn’t know how to gauge the success of MoPho’s airport location, financially or critically, because its launch coincided with the onset of the pandemic, he says. And he doesn’t have thoughts on the ways in which customers make food and drink selections differently at the airport—other than something a colleague told him, once, about Michelob Ultra being the top seller at every American airport—because he doesn’t spend any time at MSY.

“When I actually sit down and think about the fact that probably 250 people eat there a day, I might have a small panic attack,” Gulotta says. “But what can I really do about it? I’ve tried to be involved, and it’s just not a system that I can thrive in.”

The main issue, he says, is staffing. Airport concession jobs have always been tricky to fill, as hirers and applicants are required to jump through a number of security and union-related hoops. Pandemic-era staff shortages haven’t helped.

Gulotta used to train MSY’s MoPho employees once a month, but as the pandemic worsened, it gave him too much anxiety to see how few workers the restaurant was able to recruit and retain, he says,

and training didn’t feel productive. Gulotta doesn’t control staffing—Delaware North and MSY do—so he’s able to put it out of his mind, for better or for worse.

“Eventually I was just like, I don’t have time to go and fight bureaucracy to make sure that my restaurant is running well,” he says.

If MSY’s numbers are any indication, revenue-wise, at least, things seem to be going OK. In 2022, the airport’s $50 million in restaurant-and-bar gross sales “surpassed 2019 gross sales even though passenger activity at MSY has yet to reach pre-pandemic totals,” according to a spokesperson.

Gulotta says relinquishing operational control to Delaware North has allowed him to focus on other things. He’s planning to open a third restaurant, Tana, later this year.

But has the airport diluted his brand?

that, he says.

Oh, and the sauces that Folse’s plant produces for the airport MoPho—Gulotta uses those at the flagship location, too, which has helped to streamline kitchen operations.

“Really,” Gulotta says, “it kind of revolutionized MoPho.”

When Diaz worked at O’Hare in Chicago, parking and going through security every day was a hassle, as was staffing, he says, so he’s happy to stay out of the day-to-day operations at RDU. He trusts Balli’s company to execute his vision for Adios!, which is rooted in the idea that a vacation should start at the airport.

“When I was a kid and I would travel with my parents to Mexico, it was a big deal—people were wearing suits,” Diaz says. “Now, people are in sweats, you have to take your shoes off; it’s more about comfort. The general energy has changed. I had that in mind for the restaurant—that it should be an easygoing, fun spot.”

“It’s a captive audience,” Diaz says of fliers. “Actually, that might be the wrong word; it’s more like a hostage situation. Most people are stressed and they don’t have a real ‘choice choice’ for where to eat, right? So we want to make it as relaxing for them as we can.”

In terms of cuisine, Diaz says the dishes at Adios! will be biographical and boundary-blurring, as per usual. His current menu draft includes chilaquiles served in Chinese takeout boxes with chopsticks; chicken wings with a dip that falls somewhere between Southern white sauce and Mexican crema; and jibaritos, fried plantain sandwiches that originated at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Chicago in the ’90s, when Diaz was a teen.

The challenge Diaz desired has come in the form of food cost caps. It’s been tricky to design dishes with a budget that’s out of his control, he says.

Gulotta doesn’t think so. The MSY location is what made people start seeing MoPho as a brand, he says. It’s shown prospective partners and investors that he’s versatile.

And it’s given him a good design template. When Delaware North was adapting the flagship MoPho, which has a wood-paneled tavern feel, for the airport, it bumped up the brightness of the restaurant’s orange-and-blue color scheme and took a minimalist approach toward structural and seating components—which, according to Gulotta, makes the space feel airy even in a claustrophobic airport terminal. If he ends up opening more MoPhos, they’ll look like

“The mechanics in my brain keep telling me to put swordfish and tuna on the menu. There’s always a temptation as a chef—you forget, right? Maybe as an artist, you forget. Maybe as a constructor or as an architect. We love this stuff. We want it to be quality. And it can be quality—that’s where creativity comes in. But it’s also business, so at some point, the bottom line is a thing. That’s kind of the ruthlessness of making money off an art.”

Once Diaz finalizes the menu, checks a few other boxes, and helps with the launch next year, he will exit the cockpit, so to speak.

When Adios! opens, Diaz will be the one saying goodbye to something. W

“With the airport, obviously, I don’t want to dilute my brand. But that’s the challenge I needed: How do I make this work within these parameters?”

ALSO IN THE ADF SPOTLIGHT

CURRICULUM

II

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company | July 29-30

Otherness is centered—and mentioned by name—in Bill T. Jones’s latest work, when dancer Shane Larson intones the words of cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter: “The other must be understood as not just that which is oppressed or marginalized or rendered inhuman, subhuman, or animal; it also must be understood ‘as that which is to come.’”

The putative course of study in Jones’s piece is a frequently sardonic codicil to a “planetary curriculum” proposed by historian Achille Mbembe—one that is capable of “salvaging whatever remains of reason as a shared human faculty.”

The addendum includes fraught and often forgotten chapters in racial history, set to a soundtrack including Jonathan King, the Georgia Sea Island Singers, and Nina Simone.

MADE IN NC

Renay Aumiller, Caroline Calouche, Kristin Taylor Duncan, Michelle Pearson, Nicole Vaughan-Diaz | June 17

It’ll be easy to spot Aumiller’s work: It’s the one with six dancers inside an actual tiny house placed center stage. In The Dwelling Place, Aumiller explores feminist and Afrofuturist Adrienne Maree Brown’s thoughts on emergent strategy, a transformational justice model based on nature.

In Thirst, Pearson, an ADF alum who went on to work with community dance titan Liz Lerman before starting Black Box Dance Theatre, centers resiliency in the work of grief in a work based on children’s experiences mourning losses and her own experiences with the deaths of several family members in a matter of weeks.

We’ll also see work by cirque choreographer Calouche from Charlotte; edgy, angular Durham dancemaker Duncan; and the Asheville-based psychological film and stage dance creator Vaughan-Diaz.

Moving On

BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com

It’s the day before the 2023 season opens, and the numbers are looking good at the American Dance Festival. Ticket sales are up 80 percent compared to this time last year, and enrollment is clearly on the rebound at its three summer intensives for professional and pre-professional students, following a 45 percent drop in 2022, the first season the festival returned to live classes and performances after the start of the pandemic.

Executive Director Jodee Nimerichter is optimistic and excited about the broadened artistic bandwidth among the 20 shows she’s curated for the season and the 13 new works the festival has commissioned for it.

This week alone, swing dance to live jumping jazz returns when SW!NG OUT takes Page Auditorium (June 15-16), after flashy movers on a serpentine catwalk execute a slow pan across a landscape of mindless consumerism in Mark Haim’s roast, This Land Is Your Land, at the Nasher Museum (June 14). After both of those, a quintet of modern North Carolina choreographers share new ADF-commissioned works Saturday night in Reynolds Industries Theater.

During the season, modern dance evergreens like Pilobolus (June 23-24) and the Paul Taylor Dance Company (July 14-15) will make predictable dates, alongside ava-

tars including Bill T. Jones (June 29-30) and Rennie Harris, who received this year’s ADF/Scripps lifetime achievement award and a $50,000 honorarium before his company’s performance last Friday night.

Still, all told, one-third of the companies and choreographers on the ADF’s main stages will mark their first appearances at this year’s festival.

And that is a significant—and not entirely calculable—risk for a live arts producer in an industry still seeking a sure footing after COVID-19 curtailed almost all live events for two years across the globe.

Though dance and theater companies including Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and Paul Taylor offshoot Taylor 2 folded during the lockdown, regional and national performing arts companies of all sizes have stumbled since it has lifted. In December, New York’s Metropolitan Opera unexpectedly announced sizable reductions in its season and its endowment. This spring, Greensboro’s Triad Stage canceled productions and paused operations before a warehouse sale and giveaway of props, set pieces, and costumes in April. Last week, after asking for $2.5 million in January to save its season, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced it needed an additional $7.3 mil-

lion to finish the year.

Still, robust preseason ticket sales and other cultural markers give Nimerichter confidence. “Clearly people are feeling more comfortable coming back into the theater,” she observes. “People want to dance; they want to be a part of that community. And they’re coming back.”

But how many of them ultimately do, and what their impact is on last-minute ticket sales and season revenues, can’t be quantified at this point.

“Most of our income and expenses happen in the next two months,” Nimerichter says. “We don’t know how we’re doing until we get through the season.”

“Will this summer, whatever it is, be the new normal?” she asks. “Will we need another year to tell?”

At this point no one knows, but Nimerichter says she’s keeping a weather eye on world economics.

With that said, a number of the festival’s artists are taking on conspicuously high-profile, and potentially high-risk, targets this year, literally embodying in their creations plangent commitments to social justice. Last week, BODYTRAFFIC opened the festival’s first night with The One to Stay With, a work about the Sack-

SW!NG OUT PHOTO BY GRACE KATHRYN LANDEFELD

The American Dance Festival returns to Durham with an ambitious slate of new companies and choreographers.

STAG E

ler family and corporate corruption in the opioid crisis. Since choreographer and trans rights activist Sean Dorsey received his commission last year to create The Lost Art of Dreaming, which a quintet of trans, queer, and gender-nonconforming dancers will perform (July 13, Reynolds Theater), 20 conservative-led states have passed laws aimed at restricting transgender rights; 10 such laws are currently pending in our state legislature.

In a new 10-minute dance documentary that won an Emmy award last week, Dorsey counters that dreaming is a political act and a vehicle for resistance and cultural change. “Trans and gender-nonconforming folks and queer people have a glorious place in the future …. We cannot forge the change we want to see in the world without dreaming of it first.”

In an intriguing expression of zeitgeist, emigration across borders—and the disorientation and violence that can ensue there—figure into three separate works. In Zvi Gotheiner’s Migrations (July 18 & 20, von der Heyden Studio Theater) the transit patterns of birds mirror increasingly large-scale human movements due to wars and deprivation. The world premiere of Cara Hagan’s were we birds? (August 22, Nasher Museum) reflects on the dislocating experience of such travel as it asks, “When we manage to pull ourselves back together, what remains out of place? What was never in place to begin with?” And in staibdance’s autobiographical fence (July 1 & 2, von der Heyden Studio Theater), Atlanta-based choreographer George Staib recalls being the only native Iranian studying at the Tehran American School at the time two American students were murdered there in 1976. Staib found himself ostracized after his family fled to rural Pennsylvania, bullied in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution and the Iranian hostage crisis. In a chamber where shadow, smoke, and uncertain light curl around barricades of iron and chain link fence, dancers and audience look across the ever-shifting dividing lines between the protected and the Other, whose increasing contortions attempt to evade aversion and neglect. W

BURNING COAL SECOND STAGE

This summer, Burning Coal Theatre hosts two independent company productions and a recently arrived solo artist in rotating rep for its Second Stage series.

THE FACE OF EMMETT TILL

Pure Life Theatre | June 14, 15, 17

Mamie Till-Mobley was a woman of uncommon nerve and courage. After her son, Emmett, was lynched outside Money, Mississippi, in August 1955, she insisted upon an open-casket funeral so the world could witness how white supremacists had desecrated his body. Still, she never felt that others had told the whole story of Emmett’s life, death, and legacy. Collaborating with playwright David Barr III, Till-Mobley also detailed her behind-the-scenes struggles with civil rights organizations that were quick to capitalize upon Emmett’s death and quick to move on once the spotlight had turned. Tina Morris-Anderson, Verlene Oates, and John Ivey lead Pure Life Theatre’s production with indelible portrayals of grief and outrage at a historic tragedy.

OR, Switchyard Theatre | June 16-17, 23-25

The lively comic thriller behind the odd title (don’t forget the comma) whisks us off to England’s Restoration period, where Aphra Behn, the brilliant poet, autodidact, and spy for King Charles II, stands to make history as England’s first known female playwright—if, that is, she can get out of debtor’s prison. And if she can finish the script so the Duke’s Company has it in the morning to fill the disastrous gap in its season. Ryan and Kelly McDaniel keep the door slamming as interrupting lovers and others; stage veteran Laurel Ullman anchors proceedings as Behn.

RUBY Susan Gross | June 17-18

Our culture has never known what to do with the grief that women go through after a miscarriage. In her one-person show, stage and screen actor and playwright Susan Gross, a recent transplant from New York, plays a woman navigating treacherous emotional currents after losing a daughter (for whom the play is named). As she tries to find her bearings, her character finds herself ambushed by memories, desires, and encounters with moms and kids in parks and restaurants. Gross’s brave drama asks how a woman lives through that trauma, and what lies beyond.

Yogic Wisdom

A new documentary delves into the athletic feats and wisecracks of baseball legend Yogi Berra.

BY GLENN MCDONALD arts@indyweek.com

Yankees great and baseball legend Yogi Berra holds a strange and specific place in American sports culture. Unlike his contemporaries in the game’s Hall of Fame pantheon, Berra isn’t celebrated for being a conquering hero or elite athlete. Instead, he’s remembered as a lovable little guy, a TV ad man, and the inventor of puzzling and occasionally profound sayings known as Yogi-isms.

The new documentary It Ain’t Over, dedicated to Berra’s overall legacy, has a bone to pick with this assessment. Because according to the numbers (baseball loves numbers), Berra was indeed an elite athlete. And according to pretty much everyone who ever knew him, he was a genuine hero, too.

Hardcore baseball fans will enjoy all the statistical details presented in the first part of this film, which make a persuasive case for Berra’s on-field greatness. But it’s the hero business that makes this movie worthwhile for anyone interested in American history and popular culture.

By all accounts, Berra really was one of the good guys. A working-class kid from St. Louis, he declined his initial baseball contract to enlist in the Navy during World War II. He earned a Purple Heart during the invasion of Normandy but never filed the paperwork because he didn’t want to worry his mother.

In 1947, Berra was one of the few white ballplayers who went out of their way to welcome Jackie Robinson to the major leagues. Late in his career, he signed on to support LGBT equality in sports. Berra stayed happily married to his high school sweetheart Carmen for 65 years, mentored young players, and treated everyone with respect.

“He was just a gentle, kind soul,” Yankees lifer Don Mattingly says. “That’s why he was so loved.”

With hagiographic salutes like this film, it’s typical to pack the frame with people saying nice things about the subject. But you can’t fake the genuine affection shown here by dozens of baseball insiders and celebrity fans: Derek Jeter, Billy Crystal, Vin Scully, Mariano Rivera, Willie Randolph, and Suzyn Waldman. Even President Obama makes an appearance in a bit of archival footage.

It’s heartwarming all right, but the most intriguing parts of this documentary explore the weird and wonderful phenomenon of Yogi-isms. The film’s title is based on Berra’s most famous saying—“It ain’t over till it’s over”—which, according to the film, he may not have actually said. It seems that many of the folksy malapropisms now ascribed to Berra were misattributed or penned by

copywriters during Berra’s post-baseball career in TV commercials.

That’s a little depressing, but plenty of the more famous Yogi-isms have been fully vetted, and they’re the best ones, anyway. For example, there’s Yogi’s famous counsel about dining out: “Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, it’s too crowded.”

This is an ideal Yogi-ism. It doesn’t make sense and it makes perfect sense at the same time. Poets spend years chasing a maneuver like this. Baseball guru Bob Costas, holding forth in his usual slightly aggravating way, busts out another classic: “Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise, they won’t go to yours.” My personal favorite: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” You can’t argue with genius like this. It’s American Zen.

On the structural level, director Sean Mullin doesn’t break any new ground. The doc has the usual mix of archival footage with talking head interviews and makes no attempt to illuminate any darkness around its exalted subject. (We learn that Berra had a slight temper, maybe.)

But that’s fine: this film is a celebration, not an investigation. It does what it sets out to do, providing context and insight into one of the great characters in American sports history. “You should never meet your heroes,” the saying goes. But with Yogi Berra, you’re perfectly safe. W

Yogi Berra IMAGE COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES

Blanket Statements

As the African American Quilt Circle of Durham marks 25 years, a national quilting conference gathers in the Bull City for a Juneteenth celebration of the art form.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

Some of the nation’s finest practitioners of the African American quilting tradition will gather in Durham during the Juneteenth holiday to lead a series of workshops, networking events, and a pop-up quilt show. The conference, titled Kindred Spirits: A Convergence of African American Quilters, is sponsored by the Durham-based Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South. In addition to marking Juneteenth, the conference also coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Bull City’s quilt circle.

Candace Thomas, who cofounded the African American Quilt Circle of Durham in 1998, has been sewing virtually her whole life. Her work has been widely exhibited, including at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, and graces the conference’s marketing and media kits. In the early days, the quilting circle first met at Stanford L. Warren Library, before finding a home two blocks away at the Hayti Heritage Center. The group of about 75 members now meets once a month at the center.

“We had our first quilting show in 1999,” Thomas says. “Now we have one every 18 months.”

For Thomas, the art form helps to build community.

“It brings together people with a common bond,” she told the INDY in 2005. “There are members who know the history of quilting, those with incredible quilt memories for old and new patterns. It doesn’t matter what type of quilt you like to sew, anyone [interested] in quilting can join the circle even if they don’t sew.”

A slate of quilting stars will lead workshops at the June 15-17 conference, including Kena Tangi Dorsey, a self-taught artist, teacher, and owner of a quilt studio in Los Angeles. Dorsey began quilting more than 20 years ago while living in Harlem, with a style influenced by a wide range of inter-

disciplinary Harlem Renaissance artists like Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes. Then there’s Aisha Lumumba, an Atlanta-based quilt artist whose lushly colored work celebrates “the greatness of both our African and American experiences,” according to her website, and South Florida resident Kianga Jinaki, who creates dolls, quilts, and mixed-media work that celebrates Black life.

Kindred Spirits conference director Kimberley Pierce Cartwright will also be sharing her skills and experience at the Juneteenth event. A native of Hallsboro, Cartwright has been living in Durham since 2002 and says she joined the African American Quilt Circle of Durham a few years later, at the behest of Thomas.

“A mutual friend told me Candace and I would be a good match because we both liked to sew,” Cartwright tells the INDY.

They weren’t. Well—not at first.

“Candace blew me off,” Cartwright says, laughing at the memory. But she says Thomas apologized the second time they saw each other, and asked her, “You sew, but have you ever made a quilt? If you make one, we’ll put it in the African American Quilt Circle show.”

Cartwright hadn’t ever made a quilt, but she nonetheless visited the Scrap Exchange and bought a bag of fabric. Serendipitously enough, some of the fabric was already sewn together—likely the remnants of another quilter’s project.

Cartwright says she made a small quilt with tiny, intricate geometric shapes and took it to the quilt circle. When its members saw her work they all stood and applauded.

“I thought, ‘These are my people!’”

The African American quilting tradition has historically embodied the adage of “making something precious out of nothing.”

In her essay “The Story behind African American Quilts,” writer Deanna Parenti points to the story of Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly, an enslaved woman in the mid-19th century who provided “food for herself, seventeen other people, and her master for over two years, all from selling her intricate quilts.”

Parenti wrote that Keckly was able to save enough money to free herself and her son and move to Washington, D.C., where she “became a professional seamstress and quilter for the first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, and the Congressional wives.” While working in D.C., Keckly created the famous Liberty Medallion Quilt from strips of the First Lady’s dresses.

Consider, too, the observations of scholar Floris Barnett Cash in 1995.

“Quilts can be used as a resource in reconstructing the experience of African American women,” Cash wrote in a paper. “They provide a record of their cultural and political past.”

Cash asserts that, through quilting, Black women, with their voices “largely unknown,” have often created their own lives and become the voices of authority on their own experiences.

“The voices of Black women are stitched in their quilts,” Cash wrote.

In downtown Durham, the small but influential group of quilting professionals will celebrate the legacy of Juneteenth by stepping into this rich tradition. The event is beyond special for the Bull City.

“This is the first-ever national African American quilting conference ever held in Durham,” Thomas says.

In addition to the workshops, Reneé Ander-

son, collections manager at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, is scheduled for a panel in conversation with Marshall Price, chief curator at the Nasher Museum of Art. And then there’s the conference’s popup exhibit, titled Deconstructing the Mammy Archetype through African American Art Quiltwork, which the public will have a chance to view on June 16 from six to nine p.m. as part of Durham’s monthly Third Friday celebration.

After that fateful visit to the Scrap Exchange and joining the quilter’s circle, Cartwright’s work was featured at that year’s quilt show.

“I thought, ‘This must be what I’m meant to do,’” she says.

Since then, her work has gone on to find widespread acclaim: One of her pieces graced the cover of Quiltfolk Magazine last year, and another is currently on exhibit at the Nasher as part of its Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now exhibition.

Cartwright began dreaming up the idea of hosting the national conference when she attended the National African American Quilt Convention in Lawrence, Kansas, in 2018.

“It was one of the joys of my life,” she says. “I met so many beautiful quilters who are my friends to this day. It’s not often that Black women get to go to conferences. I want that same spirit here. A place where African American women can get together to talk about our quilt work as art rather than as something that’s viewed not as art but as something used for warmth or a place to rest. I don’t make quilts for the bed. I make quilts for the wall.” W

Kimberley Pierce Cartwright displays one of her quilts.

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

A Stitch in Time

With her local pop-up repair shop, Mya Castillo-Marte is dedicated to keeping fabrics fresh.

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

The clues are everywhere. There’s a wicker basket full of cloth; books about leather and fabric stacked and bound with a dark green belt; and a woman with a measuring tape around her neck who, to pass the time, is threading a needle through the holes of button-shaped sugar cookies. Still, the people who approach the newest tent at the Durham Craft Market at the end of May seem to have tunnel vision for the clothing rack. They peruse its small collection of shirts, vests, and jackets before realizing that all of the items are in disrepair.

“Is this a new young person thing?” one person asks, eyeing a brown leather jacket with a hole in the sleeve.

Technically, yes: Mya Castillo-Marte, who soft launched the Creative Repair pop-up several hours earlier, is 35. The service she is offering, though, is an ancient one. Castillo-Marte specializes in mending wearables and home furnishings. If a customer brings in an item that’s an easy fix—a blouse with a missing button, say, or pants with a broken belt loop—Castillo-Marte can do it on the spot at Creative Repair, a weekly gig she launched on May 20 at the Durham Craft Market, which takes place next to the Durham Farmers’ Market downtown.

For more intensive repairs, she’ll take an item home and bring it back to the market in a week or two or drop it off at a designated location. She can also do house calls for larger projects, like armchairs or ottomans.

Other items are welcome too: Castillo-Marte loves a good challenge, she says, and if she doesn’t know how to fix something, she probably knows someone who does.

Pricing varies by item, but Castillo-Marte says on-site fixes typically range from $5 to $15 and take-home repairs average between $30 and $50. She also offers multiple price options for a given item: if a customer just wants an item to be functional again, they can opt for a lower price; if they want a more comprehensive restoration, they can pay more.

The pop-up grew out of Castillo-Marte’s disillusionment with the retail industry. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York in 2010, she worked several jobs centered around the mass production of private label products, which are manufactured by third-parties for brands like Charlotte Russe and H&M.

“I was part of the process of bringing hundreds of thou-

sands of units worth of crap into the United States,” she says. “A lot of bubbles were bursted for me. There’s that saying: If a tree falls down in the middle of the woods, does it make a sound? It’s kind of like that when it comes to clothes—there have been scandals, internationally, about factories that have completely collapsed and killed 1,000 people, but brands continue exploiting people to keep their costs low.”

Castillo-Marte was also appalled by the level of overproduction and waste she witnessed.

She’d always wanted a Burberry trench coat, for instance, but when she realized that the brand does things like burn surplus stock to prevent its luxury goods from being sold at a discounted rate, that fantasy also died.

After several years in the industry, Castillo-Marte moved to Durham and ended up taking a job at local shop Wyatt & Dad Cobbler Company. Nearly every time she fixed something at the shop—shoes, a baby stroller, an umpire’s chest protector—customers would light up.

“Seeing how much these objects meant to people kind of changed my direction—or, my redemption, if you will,” Castillo-Marte says. “Getting things repaired takes time and money, and fast fashion, especially, has made it easier to throw something out than to put a few stitches in it. But after seeing people [react to my repairs at the shop] I realized the key is tying objects to memories.”

Several months ago, she left her job at the shop to pursue Creative Repair. Beyond providing a repair service and educating customers on troublesome retail industry customs, Castillo-Marte says that the pop-up aims to

encourage people to “tell the stories of the silent heroes that live in our closets.”

“We cannot simply discard everything and replace it with something brand new, that’s likely of lesser quality, when so many of these things have value to us beyond their use,” she says. “Ultimately, I want to create a repair revolution.”

On her first market day, a handful of Castillo-Marte’s friends drop off clothing at the Creative Repair tent. Most items get hung on the rack, but when one friend delivers a pair of platform wedges with a broken strap and a peeling sole, Castillo-Marte jumps into action.

She talks her friend through a few different repair variations, then whips out her emergency mending kit: a small plastic case full of needles, seam rippers, bread clips (which she repurposes as spools), and other tools that she often uses to help strangers with wardrobe malfunctions on the fly.

With a tiny pair of Japanese scissors, she then cuts down the elastic on the broken strap and quickly torches it with a lighter to prevent any fraying. She didn’t bring her full tool kit along for the soft launch, she says, but once home, she’ll patch the strap with leather and cement the sole down with shoe glue.

After that, she goes to examine the other items her friends have dropped off: a burgundy vest with frayed arm holes; a red blazer with torn lining; and a pair of jeans with a hole in the pocket.

“Fabric is so forgiving,” Castillo-Marte says. “I think that’s why they call it ‘the fabric of life’—when you make mistakes, there’s always a way to always fix it.” W

Mya Castillo-Marte’s Pop-Up Repair Shop set up at the Durham Farmer’s Market.

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.

WED 6/14 THURS 6/15

MUSIC

black midi SOLD OUT. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Live Music Lounge 7 p.m. Whitaker & Atlantic, Raleigh.

Music in the Gardens: Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience 7 p.m. Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Durham.

Noah Kahan: The Stick Season Tour $178+. 7:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

NRBQ $26. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro. Styx $50+. 7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

¡TUMBAO! and Ancestor

Piratas: A Benefit Concert for Witness For Peace $12. 6 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

STAGE

ADF—Mark Haim $27. Jun. 13-14, various times. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham.

Menopause the Musical $37+. Jun. 13-14, 7:30 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

OR by Liz Duffy Adams $25. Jun. 10-25, various times. Burning Coal Theatre Company, Raleigh.

Ride the Cyclone $30. Jun. 8-25, various times. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

[title of show] $20. Jun. 8-18, various times. KennedyMcIlwee Studio Theatre, Raleigh.

Duck performs at Lincoln Theatre on Thursday, June 15.

MUSIC

Al Strong Presents: Jazz on the Roof 7 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.

AZUL / Maxne Eloi $10. 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Duck / LORE $17. 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Greene Street $8. 8:30 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Live Jazz with Marc Puricelli and Friends Thursdays at 7 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill.

JUNETEENTH EVENTS

6/14 - 6/16

STAGE

#IMOMSOHARD: Ladies’ Night $20+. 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Larry the Cable Guy $50+. 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

ADF—SW!NG OUT $38+. Jun. 15-16, 7:30 p.m. Page Auditorium, Durham.

SCREEN

Dogs in Space 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

PAGE

Book Launch—Alexis De Veaux: Jesus Devil 6:30 p.m. Rofhiwa Book Café, Durham.

The Significance of Juneteenth with Dr. Spencer R. Crew Wed, Jun. 14, 7 p.m. North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh.

Kindred Spirits: Quilt Show— Deconstructing the Mammy Archetype Fri, Jun. 16, 6 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Rhythm & Rhyme: A Celebration of Liberty $6. Thurs, Jun. 15, 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Untangling Our Roots: Experiences with African American Genealogy Thurs, Jun. 15, 12 p.m. State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh.

Honoring Juneteenth Fri, Jun. 16, 12 p.m. North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh.

Rest! & Release! In Blackness Fri, Jun. 16, 3 p.m. Hayti Heritage Center, Durham.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LINCOLN THEATRE

“Fanny Lou Hamer.” Quilt by Kimberley Pierce Cartwright

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RESOURCE CENTER FOR WOMEN AND MINISTRY IN THE SOUTH

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R

Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.

MUSIC

All Time Low $70+. 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Atliens: Space Cathedral Tour $25. 9:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Cleansing of the Temple $10. 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Dierks Bentley: Gravel & Gold Tour $31+. 7 p.m. Coastal Credit Union Music Park, Raleigh.

FETISH $15+. 10 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

North Carolina Symphony Summerfest: A Little Night Music $35+. 8 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

Pixies / Franz Ferdinand / Bully $37+. 7 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

Real Life Quartet $25. 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Sacred Soul and Bluegrass Revue $41+. 7:30 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Wednesday $15. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

STAGE

Banter Podcast Live $40+. 7 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Comedy Night with Karen Morgan and Nancy Witter $15. 8 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

The House of Coxx: It’s Funny, Girl! $26+. 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Hush Hush: Comedy Based on Secrets $8. 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

PAGE

Book Signing and Recipe Tasting—Ed and Ryan Mitchell: Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque 5:30 p.m. Lantern Restaurant’s Garden Spot, Chapel Hill.

MUSIC

Abbey Road LIVE! / Radio Free Athens $17. 8:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Cage Bird Fancier $10. 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Corey Smith $23. 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Crocs Ball featuring Tanajah, NunAfterHours, and DJ Kidfromthehill $15. 6 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Dan Davis Group 4 p.m. Durty Bull Brewing Company, Durham.

Neptune $12. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

North Carolina Symphony Summerfest: Classics under the Stars $35+. 8 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

Ole Skool Throwback: A Queer Hip Hop and R&B Party $20. 10 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Party Y2K! $10. 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Rebelution: Good Vibes Summer Tour $39+. 5:30. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

Weston Estate $28. 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

STAGE

ADF—Made in NC $27. 7:30. Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham.

The ComedyWorx Show

Matinee $9. Saturdays at 4 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh. House Party 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Pride Drag Show 8:30 p.m. The Glass Jug Beer Lab Downtown, Durham.

QuickSCRIPTS $5. 8 p.m. Titmus Theatre, Raleigh.

SCREEN

Field of Dreams 6 p.m. Trophy Brewing on Maywood, Raleigh.

Go On, Be Brave $13+. 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

MUSIC

The Acacia Strain / Integrity $25. 7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

The NuBeing Collective: Bite the Apple Tour $15. 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

STAGE

ADF—Celebration of Tony Johnson 7:30 p.m. Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham.

No Shame Theatre 3 p.m. Carrboro Century Center, Carrboro.

RuPaul’s Drag Race: Werq

The World Tour $50+. 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

MUSIC

Tiefling / nakoshi / Treee City $10+. 8 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

PAGE

Book Reading—Lisa See: Lady Tan’s Circle of Women 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

North Carolina Symphony performs at Koka Booth Amphitheatre on June 16, 17, and 24.

PHOTO COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA SYMPHONY

Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.

TUES 6/20

MUSIC

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Jazz Trio $8. Tuesdays at 9 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

Letdown $15. 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Shamarr Allen $16. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

STAGE

ADF—Joanna Kotze $27. Jun. 20-22, 7:30 p.m. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham.

SIX $35+. Jun. 20–Jul. 2, various times. DPAC, Durham.

SCREEN

Good Queer Movie Night 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

PAGE

Book Reading—Victoria Benton Frank: My Magnolia Summer 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Pilobolus performs at Page Auditorium on June 23 and 24.

MUSIC

Antonio Scales: Evolution Theory Tour $15. 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Califone $12. 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

L’Rain $16. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Music in the Gardens: XOXOK 7 p.m. Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Durham.

Protomartyr $20. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

THURS 6/22

PAGE

Book Reading—Libby Hubscher: Play for Me 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Storytime on the Roof 10:30 a.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.

MUSIC

Canine Heart Sounds $10. 8:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Catbite / Dollar Signs / Plastic Flamingos $12. 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Every Avenue $22. 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Glare / Alien Boy $15. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

In the Still of the Night: An Evening of Cole Porter $25. 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Kip Moore: Damn Love Tour $49+. 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Live Jazz with Marc Puricelli and Friends Thursdays at 7 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill.

RedBird Theater Company’s Birthday Bash with Brother Kent, Sugaree String Society, and John Rodney $50. Durham Bottling Company, Durham.

Rodrigo y Gabriela: In between Thoughts … A New World Tour $20+. 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Sesame $10. 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

SCREEN

Grateful Dead Meet-Up at the Movies 2023 $15. 7:10 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

PAGE

Book Signing and Recipe Tasting—Susan Gravely: Italy on a Plate 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

PHOTO COURTESY OF AMERICAN DANCE FESTIVAL

U

U R E

L

MUSIC

Bonny Doon $12. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Grupo Frontera: El Comienzo Tour $91+. 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Jo Dee Messina $30. 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Living in Fear $10. 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Perfect Kiss: All Vinyl New Wave and ’80s Dance Party $5. 9 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

STAGE

ADF—Pilobolus $38+. Jun. 23-24, various times. Page Auditorium, Durham.

Crowns: A Gospel Musical $23. Jun. 23-25, various times. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

My Brother, My Brother and Me $40+. 7 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

OCNS: Sound Ritual $8. 7 p.m. Yours Durham, Durham.

Open Mind Improv: The Novelty 7:30 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

SCREEN

RetroNoir Film Series $10+. Jun. 23-25, various times. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

PAGE

A Reading and Conversation with Jai Chakrabarti and Jill McCorkle 7 p.m. So & So Books, Raleigh.

MUSIC

Bayonne $15. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Bullhorn Durham Tour: Odaymar Cuesta and Space Challenger $10. 7:30 p.m. People’s Solidarity Hub, Durham.

Chatham County Line $20. 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

The Conjure Pride Party $10+. 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

The Kingsbury Manx $12. 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

GAG, Queen: A Drag Dance Party $17+. 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Live Skull $12. 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Luttrell (Extended Set) $20+. 9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

North Carolina Symphony Summerfest: Harry Potter vs. Star Wars $42. 8 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

Peter Frampton: Never Say Never Tour $21+. 8 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

Zachary Bartholomew Trio $25. 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

STAGE

Golden Age: Comedy Based on Special Guests 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

MUSIC

Band Jammers $39. 6:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Jesse Fox (of Love and Valor) $8. 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Joe Pug $25. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Joseph $28. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Leah Magner $12. 7 p.m. North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh.

Vocal Arts Ensemble of Durham: Songs for a Summer Evening 4 p.m. Duke Chapel, Durham.

Well Wisher $12. 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

STAGE

ADF—Faculty and Musicians Concert $20. 5 p.m. Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham.

MUSIC

Joyce Manor $25. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Sloan $25. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

STAGE

Celtic Throne: The Royal Journey of Irish Dance $72+. 7:30 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

MUSIC

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Jazz Trio $8. Tuesdays at 9 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham. Luh Tyler $25. 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra $25. 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Mike Block / Joe Troop $15+. 7:30 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Teeyum Smith Album Release Show $15. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

SCREEN

Backchannel Cinema 7:30 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

Luh Tyler performs at Motorco Music Hall on Tuesday, June 27.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MOTORCO

U Z Z L E S

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages” at the bottom of our webpage.

su | do | ku

© Puzzles by Pappocom

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key and previous puzzles at indyweek.com/puzzles-page

Best of luck, and have fun!

this week’s puzzle level: 06.14.23

Senior Data Scientist

Senior Data Scientist @ Genworth Mortgage Insurance Corporation d/b/a Enact Mortgage Insurance (Raleigh, NC) F/T Collaborte w/ prtnrs in oprtns (underwriting, claims), marktng, prdcts & customer exp, pricing, risk, & other functns to define prblms, idntfy data, build rprts & dashboards, estblsh predictive & prescriptive models, & delivr optimal solutns across the entire range of line of busnss & customers. Reqr Bachlr’s degr, or frgn eqvlnt, in Comptr Sci, Statstcs, or rltd quant field, & 4 yrs of exp in the job offrd, as Data Scntst, Sr Assoc, or rltd. Full trm of exp must incld each of the fllwng: Predictv modeling tchnqs, incldng logistic regrssn, time series, forecstng, & optmztn; Use of machine learning (ML) pltfrms, libraries, & prgrmmng; Dvlpng & applyng ML algrthms into wrkflws & to supprt executive-lvl decision-making; Applyng & integrtng statstcl, mathmtcl, & predictive modelng, & busnss analysis cncpts, to manage & manipult cmplx high- volm data frm a variety of sources; Use of BI tools to gather, procss, analyz, & visualz lrge volms of data; Statstcl/analytcl langgs, incldng Python, Apache Spark or PySpark, Hive, & Scala in a cloud cmputng envirnmnt; Database query & mngmnt tools (SQL, Spark, Presto, &/ or Athena); Cloud cmputng; Dvlpng & maintaining infrstrctr systms that connect internal data sets; Creatng new data collctn frmwrks for structured & unstructured data; &, Creatng linkages btwn databases & bldng database systms. Emplyr will accpt any suitble combo of eductn, traing, or exp. Amazon Web Srvs (AWS) Certified Solutns Archtect reqr’d. Rmte wrk prmtted w/in commtng distnce. Email resume to ImmigrationServices@ genworth.com. Refrnce: GMIC-SS.

Application Architect

Application Architect, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh, NC)

Provide application, systems, or process dsgn recommendations based on short- & long- term Technology organization strategy. Dvlp enterprise level application & custom integration solutions incl major enhancements & interfaces, functions & features. Use a variety of platforms to provide automated systems applications. Provide expertise regarding the integration of applications across the business. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, CIS, or related tech’l deg + 7 yrs of progressive exp in IT positions performing the following: serving in a tech’l ownership role for the dvlpmt & delivery of product(s), incl dvlpg enterprise data mgmt product(s); participating in technology investigations & rapid feature dvlpmt needed for new product introduction; SaaS product dvlpmt; Cloud dvlpmt for AWS & Azure; API dsgn & dvlpmt at an advanced level; coaching &/or mentoring less expd teammates; & utilizing exp w/: Kubernetes; Big data technologies incl MapReduce, Hadoop, Spark, & Hive; dsgn & dvlpmt of best practices in Java & related technologies, incl Spring, Hibernate, ActiveMQ, RDBMS, & Maven; UI dvlpmt & testing technologies incl Angular, PrimeNG, Protractor; Test & DevOps automation w/ Ansible & Jenkins; & Agile & collaborative dvlpmt practices & tools. In the alternative, employer will accept a Master’s deg in Comp Sci, CIS, or related tech’l deg + 5 yrs of exp in IT positions performing the aforementioned. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Apply online (https://careers.truist.com/) or email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige.Whitesell@Truist. com (Ref. Job No. R0076768)

Lead Data Systems Engineer

Lead Data Systems Engineer, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh, NC) Provide consultation & tech’l direction on translating business reqmts & functional specs into logical prgm dsgns. Facilitate the implmtn & maintenance of complex business & enterprise s/ware solutions to ensure successful deployment of released applications. Serve as a tech’l expert for project teams throughout the implmtn & maintenance of business & enterprise s/ware solutions. Support systems integration testing (SIT) & user acceptance testing (UAT) for large, complex, cross-functional application initiatives by providing insight to testing teams in order to ensure the appropriate depth of test coverage. Must have a Bachelor’s deg in Comp Sci, CIS, or related tech’l field. Must have 5 yrs of progressive exp in s/ware dvlpmt or IT Consulting positions demonstrating proficiency w/ following: MuleSoft Platform support; API Dvlpmt & Support; working on project(s) involving the implmtn of solutions applying dvlpmt life cycles (SLDC); dsgg & automating regular maintenance activities using Python & other scripting languages; writing tech’l documentation in a s/ware dvlpmt environment; working w/ Continuous Integration/ Continuous Deployment tools; working w/ source code control systems; ensuring infrastructure changes adhered to Information Technology Infrastructure library (ITIL), & Change Mgmt, security access procedures & policies; & assessing & testing infrastructure changes (service requests, automated incidents, & change management) to evaluate business risk from a server, storage, n/work, & API perspective using Service Now. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/ in 24-hrs’ notice. Apply online (https://careers.truist. com/) or email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige.Whitesell@ Truist.com (Ref. Job No. R0076758).

(Raleigh, NC)

recomTechnology application enhancea variety applications.

applicadeg in Comp progressive exp in in a tech’l product(s), participatfeature dvlpmt product dsgn & mentoring

Kubernetes; Big Spark, & & related ActiveMQ, RDBMS, incl Angular, automation w/ dvlpmt pracaccept tech’l deg + aforemenremotely but is Raleigh, NC. regularly for teams w/in (https://careers.truist.com/) Paige.Whitesell@Truist.

Bank direction specs

implmtn & enterprise s/ware released project teams business & integra(UAT) for initiatives to ensure have a tech’l field. dvlpmt or proficiency w/ Dvlpmt & implmtn (SLDC); dsgg & using Python documenworking w/ Deployment tools; ensuring infraTechnology security testing automated incibusiness risk perspective using remotely in Raleigh, NC regularly teams w/ (https://careers.truist. Paige.Whitesell@

C L A S S I F I E D S

EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYMENT

Cybersecurity Data Analytics Consultant

Cybersecurity Data Analytics Consultant, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh, NC) Gather, analyze, doc & maintain all security data reqmts related to the business applications, interfaces & reporting environments. Apply standards & best practices to ensure enterprise data is protected, accurate, complete, current, understandable & accessible. Gather, review, analyze, profile, validate & map system data into the data warehouse to meet cyber security reporting & analytical needs. Perform data analytics & troubleshooting on security data ingestion issues reported by production support & other teams. Dvlp solutions & recommendations for improving data integrity issues. Must have a Master’s deg in Comp Sci, Cybersecurity, MIS or related tech’l field. Work or educational background must incl demonstrated knowl of following: Application Prgmg Interfaces (APIs); Data Integration; Business Intelligence Reporting; KPI Dashboard Solutioning; Predictive Modelling; ETL Coding & Implmtn; Data Stewardship; Data Mining Techniques; & use of the following: SSIS; C/C++/C#; Java; Python; HTML; MSSQL; Snowflake; Tableau; Power BI; & QlikView. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Apply online (https:// careers.truist.com/) or email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job No. R0076773)

Lead Scientist

Lead Scientist - Catalent Pharma Solutions (Morrisville, NC) - Must have proof of legal authorization to work in U.S. Apply online at https://www. catalent.com (under Posting Number 0076776). To view full information about the job opportunities including the full job description, related occupation, education and experience requirements please refer to the internet posting at https://www.catalent.com under Posting Number above.

Software Engineering Lead

Software Engineering Lead sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to serve as initial point of escalation for software development issues within specific areas of responsibility. Minimum of Bachelor’s degree or foreign equiv in Computer Science, Engineering, or rltd + 7 yrs exp in job offered or rltd occupations required. EE reports to LexisNexis USA office Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates apply by mail to T. Hayward, RELX Inc; 1000 Alderman Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30005. Ref job code: 01163

Senior Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to resolve scalability issues of data ingestion pipelines for search backend of LexisNexis, with goal of dramatically improving velocity & consistency of ETLs from data lake to Solr. Minimum of Master’s or foreign equiv degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems or rltd + 2 yrs exp in job offered or rltd occupations required. EE reports to LexisNexis USA office Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates apply by mail to T. Hayward, RELX Inc; 1000 Alderman Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30005. Ref job code: 01031.

Associate Director, Quality Management

Associate Director, Quality Management, IQVIA RDS Inc., Durham, NC. Must telecommute frm anywhre in EST time zone. Contribute to devel of & support implementation of Quality Mgmt Plan for assigned key cust accts in pharma & clinical rsrch ind. Supervise 2-3 subs. Reqs at least bach in life sci, pharma sci, rel / equiv & 5 yrs progressive Good Clinical Practice exp in clinical rsrch / clinical ops environ to incl 3 yrs exp w/ following: quality mgmt; directly support GCP audits / inspectns in quality / sr ops role / mng audits, incl CAPA creation & resolution; & write & maintain SOPs / sim quality governance docs in GCP & Code of Fed Regs environ. Reqs 2 yrs: devel sys-based assmnts; & perform root cause analys. Reqs 1 yr: lead global cust acct / regional lvl cust-facing role; & lead teams. Reqs 30-40% US & int’l trvl. M-F, 8a - 5p, w/ early AM, PM, & wknd hrs as reqd. Apply: resume to: grace.gibson@iqvia.com, ref #111530.

Software Engineer III

Software Engineer III sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to write & review portions of detailed specifications for development of software system components of moderate complexity. Minimum of Master’s degree or foreign equiv in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or rltd + 1 yr exp in job offered or rltd occupations required. EE reports to LexisNexis USA office in Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates apply by mail to T. Hayward, RELX Inc; 1000 Alderman Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30005. Ref job code: 00937

Business Intelligence Data Engineer

ntuitive Surgical Operations, Inc. seeks a Business Intelligence Data Engineer in Raleigh, NC: Design data pipelines & data models. Build Data Integrations for many data sources, including SAP, Agile, Salesforce, QMS/Trackiwise etc. Telecommuting permitted. BS+5 yrs prog rltd exp req’d or MS+3. $138,486 - $176,100/year. Email resumes to Hien.Nguyen@intusurg.com. Must ref job title & code BIDE-MSN in subject line.

Field Service Technician

Field Service Technician (FST-SJEVN). Provide fieldservice repairs, training & installations as scheduled. Domestic travel reqd 90% of the time. Telecommuting permitted. Reqs BS+2 yrs rltd exp. Mail resumes: Syntegon Technology Services, Attn: HR Manager, 2440 Sumner Blvd., Raleigh, NC 27616. Must ref job title & code.

Software Engineer in System Test

Intuitive Surgical Operations, Inc seeks a Software Engineer in System Test (SE-MG) in Raleigh, NC to design, develop, & implement automated tests for functional SW & UI verification for intricate robotic surgical systems. Reqs MS+2 yrs rltd exp. $89,731 - $117,300/ year. Email resumes to Hien.Nguyen@intusurg.com. Must ref job title & code.

Scientist II, Analytical R&D

Tergus Pharma seeks a Scientist II, Analytical R&D in Durham, NC to develop & validate analytical methods to support formulation drug development under supervision. Reqs: BS in Pharma Sci, Analyt Chem, or related + 3 yrs exp. or MS in Pharma Sci, Analyt Chem, or related + 1 yr exp. For full reqs & to apply visit https://www. terguspharma.com/current-job-openings/ and search for Scientist II, Analytical R&D Req #2023-0011.

LAST WEEK’S PRINT PUZZLE