Sixty years ago this weekend, young activists marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, demanding their right to vote and changing history in the process. Today, another group of young people is using art to make their voices heard in Georgia.

A Boston-based arts group, beheard.world, has teamed up with Selma-area teens for "Selma Again," a production that blends dance, spoken word and music to shed light on the struggles the city still faces today.

Director and choreographer Anna Myer said the performance is about pushing forward, as well as looking back.

"The piece talks about real things that are happening and things that go to the heart," she said, "and it also talks about love and the only way forward is love and the only way to keep moving forward is if we do this together."

Myer said she first visited Selma years ago and was struck by how poverty and crime persist despite its historic significance. She and her husband, filmmaker Jay Paris, along with Selma natives, helped create a nonprofit initiative to blend nonviolence education, performing arts and storytelling for local youth.

It's part of the Selma Cross-Cultural Nonviolence and Performing Arts Academy, which was co-founded by Dallas County natives and civil rights veterans Charles Bonner and Viola Douglas, along with the Rev. Gary Crum of Elwood Christian Church. Through poetry and dance, teens confront modern challenges and honor past civil rights leaders.

Myer said this year's production highlights how today's youth can step into the legacy of activism left by the "foot soldiers" of the 1960s.

"In the performance in Atlanta, we're honoring civil rights veterans who are still alive - Andrew Young, and Charles Steele, and Faya Rose Sanders, and Lynda Blackmon Lowery," she added. "We're honoring them and we'll be also speaking their names in the piece."

"Selma Again" will be performed today (Fri., March 7) at Morehouse College's Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, and Sat., March 8, at Ellwood Christian Academy in Selma, as part of the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

Myer emphasized the show's ultimate goal is to spark meaningful conversations, promote understanding and inspire action for lasting change.

By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Greater Dakota News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

For nearly two decades, Rachel Olivia Berg has created large-scale artworks for companies. Think hotel lobbies or resort hallways. 

Though undoubtedly aesthetic, the works felt impersonal, branded, commercial. 

“You’re telling other people’s stories,” the artist says. In 2023, she moved away from projects like those and focused on stories and communities important to her. So when Berg, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, heard of a Rapid City, South Dakota, tribal health center looking for art, she dove in. 

Oyate Health Center 

The project’s arts selection committee received maybe half a dozen proposals from Berg—as well as submissions from dozens of creatives across the region. 

What’s now a clinic-wide, permanent collection with over 100 pieces was two years in the making, from the open call to installation process. 

All the selected (and compensated) art pieces focus on culture-specific healing, made by 50-some enrolled tribal citizens from the Great Plains area, from professional artists to community creatives. 

“[We] really focused on those visuals of healing and how we as Native people dissect that word—healing spiritual health as well as physical and mental health,” says committee member Ashley Pourier, a museum curator and a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. 

‘Our Own Visual Vocabulary’ 

The Great Plains Tribal Health Board spearheaded the project. 

Taking over management and reconstruction, the former Indian Health Services Center-turned-Oyate Health Center became a brand-new building—with a brand new need for art. But not just any art. 

Since the healthcare center is for Native American patients and staff, the art inside needed to be, too. Having Indigenous symbolism about has transformed the space, and what it means to heal inside it. 

“It’s important for us, for Indigenous people, to have our own visual vocabulary, to have our own understanding. You can walk into hospitals across the country and there’s frequently flowers or things that are very universal,” Berg says of the more generic art. 

“But what’s really nice about Oyate [Health Center] is that we were able to create art from our perspective, things we understand, things we relate to. It helps you feel like it’s your space; it helps you feel that you’re meant to be there.” 

The art collection, from photography to paintings to 3D work, touches on spiritual and cultural understanding.

Berg’s piece, Eagle Buffalo Star, is an expansive wall relief artwork. Made of diamond-shaped resin tiles, it’s a lively, almost moving image of a buffalo and eagle connected by a star. 

She started with the idea of traditional beadwork and star quilting: Little pieces come together, creating meaning. Its oranges, yellows, browns and blues—colors of the sky and earth in the Black Hills—shine in the center’s new pediatric area. 

“The stars … are hopeful and help us to think of the healing aspect of our connection, of how we’re not alone,” Berg says. 

There’s a new and meaningful feeling of community in the space. Berg calls the health center a “hub,” thanks to its art from people across her community. 

“It’s literally a museum. It’s a collection,” Berg says. “It’s not just a building. It’s our building.”


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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The Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston is one of many historic and cultural institutions across the nation to lose access to federal funding.

The Trump administration put the staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the agency that provides funding to libraries and museums, on leave. The museum had submitted a grant proposal for $500,000 for the institute's African American History and Culture program.

Desmond Bertrand-Pitts, CEO of the museum, said although the funds are not available, they will still be there to serve the community.

"Organizations like ours have to work harder to prove our value and our worth but we have good partners like the Kinder Foundation to keep us going," Bertrand-Pitts explained. "They're in support of a Juneteenth Initiative that we have coming up. The federal funding announcement can affect programming, but the museum is still going to live on."

He added federal funding is not used for day-to-day operations but cuts could affect some of its outreach programming with kids and veterans.

In 2023, the museum added more than $2.5 million to the Houston economy. Bertrand-Pitts pointed out although the museum highlights the stories of African Americans in the military, everyone can learn from the exhibits. He argued recent Trump administration attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion make their work even more important.

"We are American history," Bertrand-Pitts asserted. "There are so many freedoms that we now enjoy that would have not been possible had it not been for the United States Colored Troops, and for the Buffalo Soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen, all of the men and women that came after."

The museum has raised $10 million as part of a $13 million capital campaign for its "Ready and Forward" program. Funds will be used to repair and renovate the facility and expand exhibits and programs.


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By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Mighty sword and not-so-mighty rubber chicken in tow, Jenny Graham prepares for her upcoming show: The Three Musketeers & The Very Pretty Diamonds. 

She’s playing a servant to the queen herself—full of eye rolls and comical disgruntlement, not unlike her real-life persona. 

“I’m a sassafras,” the actress says playfully. 

Graham is part of Expanding Stage. It’s a partnership between theatre company Black Hills Playhouse and a program for people with disabilities, DakotAbilities. It all started in 2013 as a residency program trial. It stuck, and it’s now one of just a couple companies in the state with similar offerings.

“I love doing [theatre]. I’ve been doing it for the last eight years, and I wouldn’t change it for anything,” Graham says.

Magical and Adaptable 

Debra Kern Workman is the education artistic director at Black Hills Playhouse (which is home to a range of objectively outstanding programs) in South Dakota. She coordinates with teaching artists to educate actors in theatre concepts, who put on shows several times a year across the state. 

“What does it look like to support professional artists for who they are?” Kern Workman asks. “It is magical.” 

DakotAbilities actors—typically a dozen or so per show—rehearse twice a week. The stage is entirely adaptable: Need help holding something? Let’s tie it to your wheelchair.

Want to communicate in other ways? Insert picture boards or voice actors to help you shine. Maybe a costume’s fabric texture isn’t it (who wants scratchy, irritating zippers anyway?) so actors can modify those choices. 

“What’s really cool is the fact that the Black Hills Playhouse is able to adapt to the people that we serve,” says Kelly Breen, a direct support professional at DakotAbilities.

“We have a lot of individuals with a lot of different needs … body movements, body types, and we’re just able to make it happen,” she says. 

Graham, who admits she sometimes gets nervous on stage or forgets her lines, says having a stage partner helps her do what she does best: Perform. 

An Open Stage 

“I think the most cool thing is when we perform … and the audience seeing us perform,” she says.

Graham will direct her electric wheelchair across the stage, lyrically driving it during sword fights or other scenes. She hopes people will leave her shows with more compassion. 

“I wish that people would understand the disabilities of different people more, that it’s not scary,” Graham says. 

And after eight years of Expanding Stage and dozens of performances, that’s happening. 

“When people work with us on these shows, I’m like, you will never see theater in the same way,” Kern Workman says. “[This] program has informed us on what it means to be inclusive, and what it means to support people no matter what theatre you’re doing.”

DakotAbilities has doubled performances due to popularity; folks will fly in from across the country to catch a show. 

Kern Workman recalls a mother seeing her son, who uses a wheelchair, dance for the first time during a performance. She was in awe. 

“Yes, he can dance,” Kern Workman says. 

“And it was beautiful.”


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.