The Praise House Project
Standing on Hallowed Ground
BY CHARMAINE MINNIEFIELD
-
Kimberly Binns - Digital Media and Visual Design
Santiago Páramo - Sound Installations
Salah Ananse and Mali Irene as We Are Djeli - original soundscore
Opal Moore - Griot
Julie B Johnson - Dance Collaborator
Kemi Bennings - Production and Programming
Dr Candy Tate - Oral History
Oșunkoya Chavon - Foodways
Cienna Minniefield - Community Programming
Grace Kim - Strategic Partnerships Director
Oluremi Sano - Development Consultant
Jerome Fletcher - Finance and Administration
Osunkoya Chavon Bryant - Administrative Support
Kemi Bennings - Production
Anna Greenfield Church - intern
-
• National Endowment for the Arts
• Emory University
• Center for Cultural Power
• DeKalb County
• City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs
• Imlay Foundation
• Wish Foundation
• Georgia Pacific Foundation
• The Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta
• Tull Foundation
• Atlanta Global Research and Education Collaborative
• Fulton County
• CD Moody Construction
• Perry Troutman Law Firm
• Harris + Smith Architectural Firm
City Schools of Decatur
City of Decatur
Decatur Tourism Bureau
-
• Atlanta Branch of Association for the Study of African American Life and History - ASALH
• Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American History and Culture
• Atlanta Regional Commission
• Culture Centers International
• Flux Projects
• Focus Community Strategies
• Georgia State University Creative Media Industries Innovation Lab
• Georgia Tech @Home Global Program
• Historic District Development Corp.
• Michael C. Carlos Museum
• Stuart A. Rose Library
The DeKalb History Center
Agnes Scott College
The Beacon Hill Black Alliance
Decatur Arts Alliance
Image: Praise House at Emory by William Feagan, Jr
The Praise House Project is a community-based initiative which places multimedia, site specific public art installations within communities in order to uphold the African American histories and narratives of the area in an effort to address issues of erasure and systemic inequities. Each Praise House is a small wooden structure with a fully immersive digital projection installation of a Ring Shout, created from archives and/or footage collected from the community in which it resides, with a sound installation emanating from within, inviting gatherings in safe spaces, like praise houses once before.
The Praise House Project Honors Beacon Hill
The Praise House will host a candlelight vigil for Sapelo on Sunday, November 17 @ 5-8pm.
Potluck dinner served at 5pm.
Vigil and Testimony Service starts at 6pm.
Image of Praise House at Beacon Hill by WiilliamFeagin Jr..
Sunday Dinner
Ancestral Feast of Gratitude
With Chef Osunkoya Chavon
December 15th
Join Chef Oșunkoya Chavon as she curates a special culinary Sankofa (looking back to see forward).
Her menu and experience will honor our food ways and ancestral traditions of gathering to break bread.
All proceeds support the move of the Praise House to South-View. Be a part of this important act of remembrance.
3-6pm
Venue disclosed at purchase
Recalling freedom, The Praise House Project invites communities to examine history honestly while encouraging historic and cultural preservation as acts of repair within the context of race, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Dr. R. Candy Tate with Culture Centers International records Oral History
The Praise House Project relocates from Emory University to Beacon Hill
The Praise House Project secures support from DeKalb County to relocate to Downtown Decatur to honor historic Beacon Hill, a once Freedman’s town. The work will remain until September 14th. See below, a full schedule of programming.
Video footage provided by Soren Chiristiansen of SkySee Videos and photography provided by William Feagin Jr. of WFJrFilms.
Remembering Freedom
Forging Freedom: About Beacon Hill, a Freedmen’s Town in Downtown Decatur
Known as “the Bottom” in its earliest days, when it was settled by freed slaves after the Civil War, this square mile of Decatur was the site of a thriving African-American community of homes, business, churches, and schools. In the early part of the 20th century, the area became known as “Beacon Hill” or just “Beacon.”
Like any small community, it had its own landmarks, characters, business and community leaders, and other common threads that formed a rich fabric of life.
But white Decatur largely considered the Beacon Community a blighted slum, and in the 1930s began to condemn sections of it to make way for public housing.
THE PRAISE HOUSE PROJECT AT EMORY
THE PRAISE HOUSE PROJECT
STANDING ON HALLOWED GROUNDS
My great-grandmother's name was Ora Lee Fuqua. She was born on a sharecropping plantation in Central City, Kentucky. We were owned by the Fuqua family, a prominent white family in the South and beyond. My work retraces her story by recalling the Ring Shout.
Praise houses were small wooden structures, initially on slave plantations, used for gathering and worship. It was in these secret safe spaces that the Ring Shout was performed, a traditional African-American movement practice taught to me by my great-grandmother. The Ring Shout was reborn in the Western hemisphere as resistance to laws intended to dismantle African identity and community. This full-body rhythmic prayer was performed as congregants would stomp or shout upon the wooden floors, creating a communal drum, secretly preserving their African cultural identity and traditions - all while remembering freedom.
This work recalls that prayer.
The Praise House Project at Emory
By CHARMAINE MINNIEFIELD
Located at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church
Preview during Elevate Atlanta: October 14-15, 12-5pm
Opening Event: October 19, 7-9pm
On View: October 20 - December 15 , 2023
Image of Praise House at Emory by Julie Yarbrough
Oral Histories of Oxford
PRESERVING BLACK NARRATIVES
Dr. Candy Tate, representing Culture Centers International, leads the oral histories component of the Praise House Project. The recorded histories compile an archive which will live both in the community and online. Partners include the Stuart A. Rose Library, the Auburn Avenue Research Library and the DeKalb History Center.
Interviews include descendants of those enslaved by Emory. including Rev. Dr. Avis Williams among others.
Image by Kimberly Binns, Provenance Media.
The Praise House Project
At Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery, presented by Flux Projects, 2021
Image: Praise House at Oakland Cemetery by William Feagan, Jr
REMEMBRANCE AS RESISTANCE
The Praise House Project at Oakland Cemetery was presented in 2021 by Flux Projects in partnership with Emory University. It honored the over 800 unmarked graves of ancestors displaced by the Atlanta City Council in 1866, into a flooded area, in what became the African American Burial Grounds of Oakland Cemetery. The work honors the memories of those ancestors once lost, now found.
The National Endowment for the Arts and Emory
The Praise House Project was awarded the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts "Our Town" grant, in order to place Praise Houses in multiple locations within the metro - Atlanta area over the next two years, uplifting the African American histories of each community. .
COMMUNITY PROGRAMMING - LOOKING BACK TO SEE FORWARD
Complementing programming will draw connections from the past to the present by offering community activations through public presentations in visual art, music, dance, literary arts, faith and social change, and the humanities. The project will offer access to such resources as the Slave Voyages database at Emory University along with a number of local, national and international archives.
The work invites conversations around place and belonging while engaging a global community of scholars, creatives, historians, activists, institutions and audiences to address issues of erasure past and present, to imagine a new freedom today.
Contact
Charmaine@PraiseHouseProject.org
404-549-7014
For sponsorship inquiries contact Grants@PraiseHouseProject.org
