Embracing History
Marsha Graham-Ali works on local Juneteenth and Civil Rights Act commemoration events
MARSHA GRAHAM-ALI was ten years old when she began fifth grade at Lincoln High School in Leland. She loved it. But that may not have been the case if it was not for her father.
When the school opened in 1951, Rosa Parks had not yet made her historical stance on an Alabama bus. Segregation was still common in Southern schools. At the time, the school was called Lincoln Colored School, and only black students attended first through twelfth grade.
James Graham and other parents went to the school board and fought for them to change the school’s name. They won at a time when a request of that nature rarely happened.
“You really had to fight for things to get anything for the black person,” Graham-Ali says.
Her father was a humble man and never told Graham-Ali about his fight for equality.
“Knowing that type of history gives you a sense of pride, it really does,” she reflects. “It just makes me feel so proud, you know, to know that he was apart of that.”
Graham-Ali found out about her family history while researching for the Wilmington area’s fifty-year commemoration of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Graham-Ali is working with a team to coordinate Celebrating the Dream. The series of events this summer includes an exhibit of schools that used to be segregated called School Pride: The Eastern North Carolina Story at the Cameron Art Museum.
“A lot of the artifacts of those schools were destroyed. We have tried to recover pictures and trophies that were destroyed in the garbage, from what we understand,” Graham-Ali says.
For the past decade, Graham-Ali has also coordinated Wilmington’s Juneteenth celebration, commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. When slaves in Texas learned they were free about two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Graham-Ali says, they reunited with their families and celebrated with food and parties. Graham-Ali wants families to carry on that tradition at this year’s Juneteenth festivities by enjoying and celebrating each other at the family reunion-themed event.
“It makes me feel that, first of all, Juneteenth is not forgotten – that people still remember it,” says Graham-Ali, who is chairwoman of the event. “They’re not hanging onto the past; we’re trying to move forward and become united in what we have now. So it gives me a really good feeling.”
Each event Graham-Ali coordinates takes a lot of time and energy, but she enjoys learning new things during the process about people who made a difference like her father and the other parents who sought change and equality.
“The little that I’m doing now is nothing compared to what they did,” Graham-Ali says.
For her, there’s nothing better than seeing an event come together because she’s carrying on her ancestors’ stories to future generations.
“It’s like we’re leaving a legacy with our history,” Graham-Ali says. “If we don’t tell our history, than others won’t.”
Upcoming events
Juneteenth Celebration
June 21, 12-6 p.m.
MLK Center, 401 South Eighth Street
Celebrating the Dream
A series of local events marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act
Festivities begin in June
To view more of photographer Katherine Clark's work, go to www.katherineclarkphotography.com.
