North Carolina Humanities

Fall African American Walking Tours
2025-12-20 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-12-14 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-12-13 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-12-07 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-12-06 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-11-30 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-11-29 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-11-23 10:00 - 11:00 (America/New_York) and 3 more dates | Pope House Museum, 511 S Wilmington St, Raleigh, NC, NC, 27601, United States
Autumn is perfect for walking! Explore Raleigh’s historic, influential Black neighborhood, the Third Ward, near Shaw University—a hub of culture, business, and education.
Registration is required. $10 per adult and $5 per child (ages 5-17)

NOTE: Saturday tour times are 10 am, 1 pm, and 3 pm. Sunday time 2 pm

September: Saturday 20th, 27th and Sunday 21st, 28th
October: Saturday 4th, 11th, 18th, 25th, and Sunday 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th
November: Saturday 1st, 8th, 22nd and Sunday 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd,
December: Saturday 6th, 13th, 20th, and Sunday 7th, 14th, 21st

Stories that Connect Us: A Community Conversation on Telling the Full Story
2025-12-18 17:30 - 19:30, 2025-12-11 17:30 - 19:30, 2025-12-04 17:30 - 19:30, 2025-11-27 17:30 - 19:30, 2025-11-20 17:30 - 19:30, 2025-11-13 17:30 - 19:30 | Passmore Center, 103 Meadowlands Dr, Hillsborough, NC, 27278, United States
Discover the stories that shape our community in a special four-part conversation series! Hosted by the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough and the Telling the Full Story committee, each session dives into the history of local sites from our interactive map, with engaging video presentations and oral histories that bring these places to life. Join us for lively discussions and reflections on the impact of these spaces in Hillsborough.
Mark your calendar for Thursday evenings in February 2025, 5:30–7:00 PM at the Passmore Center in Hillsborough, NC. Come to learn, connect, and be inspired—see you there!
February 6th- Entrepreneurship in the 20th Century
February 13th- The Land Remembers
February 20th- Community Institutions
February 27th- Navigating Freedom
What is Telling the Full Story: The Alliance for Historic Hillsborough’s Telling the Full Story program seeks to uncover and share the diverse, often untold histories of Hillsborough. Through community conversations, interactive maps, and oral histories, this program invites everyone to explore the people, events, and places that have shaped our community, fostering a richer understanding of our shared heritage.
Funding for this program series is generously provided by North Carolina Humanities.

Lunchbox Lecture - Raleigh’s Dr. Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)
2025-12-18 12:00 - 13:00 | City of Raleigh Museum, 220 Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, NC, 27601, United States
Raleigh’s Dr. Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) – Scholar, Mathematician, and More!
Bring your lunch to the City of Raleigh Museum and listen to a captivating lecture every third Thursday of the month. This month come hear Dilip and Anuragini Barman discuss Dr. Cooper’s life and career.

The 9th Annual Chocolatada
2025-12-14 13:00 - 15:00 | City of Raleigh Museum, 220 Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, NC, 27601, United States
This is a free, bilingual holiday story time event for families. It includes free books, crafts, chocolates, songs, treats, hot chocolate, pastries and more. It’s part of the 11th Annual El Quixote Festival – Children’s Voices. This year’s agenda includes:

Children’s performances
Ana Jimena will delight us with holiday songs
David and Victoria Garrett will treat us to holiday favorites with their string instruments.
The Dominican Folkloric Dance Group will dance to get us in the spirit.
Local Children Authors will join us to sign their books.

We will also be giving Free Bilingual books to children 0-12 years of age

City of Raleigh Museum Family Fun Day
2025-12-13 11:00 - 14:00 | City of Raleigh Museum, 220 Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, NC, 27601, United States
Come and enjoy a festive Family Fun Day! We will decorate wrapping paper, make snowflakes and have coloring sheets made from real historical holiday cards.
Free and perfect for elementary ages!

2025 Holiday Sip 'n' Shop
2025-12-05 17:30 - 21:00 | City of Raleigh Museum, 220 Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, NC, 27601, United States
You don’t want to miss the Sip n Shop at the City of Raleigh Museum during Raleigh’s First Friday – December 5 from 5:30-9:00pm. Come shop local vendors while sipping on some amazing holiday cocktails. So fun! Admission is free.

Rooted in Community: Preserving Local Histories and Creating Partnerships
2025-12-03 08:30 - 15:00 | NC
Join a one-day convening in Pembroke, North Carolina, bringing the Smithsonian to you. By working with local leaders to identify the specific needs of their region, the Smithsonian’s Rural Initiative builds trusted collaborations between the Institution and local partners. This work is informed by the results of a year-long Rural Needs Sensing research project reflecting the perspectives of more than 4,000 rural community members and stakeholders.
Together, we’ll explore how these insights can inform new opportunities for collaboration across North Carolina—strengthening rural and tribal communities and tourism efforts through storytelling, curation, and creative exchange. Through sessions led by Smithsonian and North Carolina partners, participants will engage in dialogue on preserving community histories, expanding access to cultural resources, and uplifting local voices across the region.

2025-11-21 - 2025-11-22 | North Carolina Museum of Art, 2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC
The AIHC—with support from its community partners, the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs and the North Carolina American Indian Commission—has been the culminating event in honor of American Indian Heritage Month in North Carolina for more 30 years.

The AIHC consists of a virtual education day on Friday and an in-person festival on Saturday. The celebration highlights traditional and contemporary artistic, historical, and cultural contributions of American Indian communities in North Carolina. The consistent theme and message of AIHC, as expressed by its advisory board, is visibility: Indigenous people are still here!

While the North Carolina Museum of History is closed for renovation, the 2025 festival will take place at the NC Museum of Art, 2110 Blue Ridge Road in Raleigh.

Lunchbox Lecture - NC MOH's American Indian Heritage Celebration
2025-11-20 12:00 - 13:00 | City of Raleigh Museum, 220 Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, NC, 27601, United States
Join us for a free lecture at the City of Raleigh museum with Kaya Littleturtle, who will speak about the upcoming American Indian Heritage Celebration! Coming from a long line of cultural leaders that guided him on his walk as a traditionalist, Kaya Littleturtle is currently employed at the North Carolina Museum of History as the Community Programs Coordinator. He is the lead singer of the championship drum group WarPaint, who travels all over Indian country. Littleturtle is an active member of his community’s traditional longhouse and belongs to the Snipe Clan, one of the seven traditional longhouse clans. He is an enrolled member of the Tuscarora Indians of Kahtehnuaka Territories.

Cultivating Learning: Celebrating America at 250
2025-11-19 16:00 - 17:00 | NC
Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology, Cultivating Learning: Celebrating America at 250. The series celebrates well-known people, events, and accomplishments of our nation and also provides opportunities to discuss lesser-told histories. Explore strategies for using digital museum resources to support student learning at this milestone moment in American history.

Cucalorus Film Festival
2025-11-19 - 2025-11-23 | NC
The Cucalorus Film Foundation is a multi-disciplinary media arts organization supporting emerging and innovative artists through festivals, grants, residencies, and a community cinema with screenings and youth education programs throughout the year. Cucalorus brings people together to celebrate, discover, and create. The annual Cucalorus Film Festival provides a non-competitive environment to support independent filmmakers, performance artists, and community organizers who use storytelling to transform our world.

The Cucalorus Conversations program brings fresh new voices to the stage for post-screening discussions that focus on community issues like racial history, Indigenous culture, access to healthcare, and community-building. Humanities experts join filmmakers after these five special screenings for extended dialogue. Conversations are supported in part by North Carolina Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
https://cucalorus.eventive.org/films/remaining-native-68d72cbc13b2249056fd78bf
https://cucalorus.eventive.org/films/post-conviction-68d55fe5074b563376e5861d
https://cucalorus.eventive.org/films/the-last-partera-68bb0c2ad6b9e3bbba9005d4
https://cucalorus.eventive.org/films/street-smart-lessons-from-a-tv-icon-68d4a4dd815fd4ba25d12fae
https://cucalorus.eventive.org/films/love-chaos-kin-68d5396b2bd186f8f6602dcf

The Human Brain and Its Future with Heather Berlin
2025-11-18 18:30 - 20:30 | Mint Museum Uptown, 500 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC, 28202, United States
Participate in the important questions of our time. The Forum is a conversation and speaker series that brings people together to explore challenges and opportunities that affect human flourishing through the lens of the humanities and civic imagination.
You’re invited to the November 18, 2025 gathering of The Forum featuring Heather Berlin
Heather Berlin unlocks the secrets of attention, perception, and human wellbeing, and shows how these human traits are key to the future digital economy. Her fascinating talk explores the brain basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity – and how we can make better decisions and get the most out of our brains.
Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and associate clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She explores the neural basis of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric and neurological conditions with the goal of developing novel treatments. Berlin hosts the new Nova series “Your Brain.” She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford, and Master of Public
Health from Harvard University, and trained in clinical neuropsychology at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Department of Neurological Surgery.

Asheville Poetry Book Event for Ronald Rand's "The Marsh in May and 30 Poems with 29 Paintings by Ronald Rand"
2025-11-16 14:00 - 14:30 | Center for Spiritual Living Asheville, 2 Science of Mind Way, 2 Science of Mind Way, Asheville, NC, 28806, United States
Is it possible to see the miracles of life happening right before our eyes?
Following Ronald Rand’s award-winning performance in his celebrated solo play, “LET ITY BE ART!” as Harold Clurman, the “Elder Statesman of the American Theatre” at 12:45 p.m. visit: https://cslasheville.org/event/let-it-be-art/
2 p.m. Free Book Event: The Marsh in May – 2:00 PM – Center for Spiritual Living Asheville
Following the performance, Ronald Rand will host a book signing and read from his newest book: The Marsh in May and 30 Poems with 29 Paintings by Ronald Rand, 80 pages, $19.95, the first book of a new imprint Lucky Shoe Press published by Sunbury Press. Visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/poetry-book-event-for-ronald-rands-the-marsh-in-may-and-30-poems-tickets-1864126876669?aff=oddtdtcreator
“The MARSH in MAY & 30 Poems with 29 Paintings by Ronald Rand” brings the reader into an unforgettable journey of soaring poetry on nature and the joys and mysteries of life. Within the pages, you’ll discover myriads of worlds within words – a harmonious dance between each poem and painting with some written as shape poems; others as odes to Thomas Wolfe, Edwin Booth, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and to the poet’s mother; and transforming experiences around the world to fantastical places including Kathmandu, Mostar, Olympia, and Fez.
Travel back in time to when art appeared in caves thousands of years ago, float along the Tennessee River, experience when Helen Keller first recognized water, and sit in a field with a chimney alone.
“…Ronald Rand’s verse expresses wonderment and appreciation of the natural world, as seen in his paintings, honoring the powerful evidence of creation all around him…. reminding us that if we open our eyes, breathe the air and bask in the sun’s rays, we experience the joys of life from which we are often distracted…beckoning us to live in the moment and experience these joys with him.” from an introduction by author, publisher, Lawrence Knorr.
For everyone who loves poetry, nature, and the gift of life, you’ll be transformed by the miracles revealed in “The Marsh in May & 30 Poems with 29 Paintings by Ronald Rand”.

Celebrate Our Reopening with the Doctor Is In!
2025-11-15 10:00 - 15:00 | Pope House Museum, 511 S Wilmington St, Raleigh, NC, NC, 27601, United States
After months of renovations, the Dr. M.T. Pope House Museum will reopen to the public! Join us for a special program and learn about medicine in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This free program will focus on the lives of Black medical practitioners and patients as they seek to heal and be healed despite glaring inequality. This program is in partnership with the Shaw University Archives.

NC Humanities Board Meeting
2025-11-14 09:00 - 14:00 | NC
