35. ‘These Bones Gonna Rise Again’

Michelle Lanier is an AfroCarolina folklorist, museum professional, filmmaker and educator, passionate about memory and land. Raised in South Carolina, with deep roots in North Carolina, Michelle's ancestral geographies guide her work on Blackness, diaspora, and the American South. A faculty member at the Center for Documentary Studies (Duke University), Michelle has lectured at Spelman, Harvard, UCLA, and in Beijing and Cape Town. As a "Documentary Doula", Michelle supports the birth of films, most notably the award-winning Mossville, a story of resistance to environmental racism. Mossville has been translated into five languages, screened on six continents, and chosen by the United Nations to raise awareness of climate justice and people of African descent. In 2008, Michelle advocated for legislation creating the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission, which she led as founding executive director. In 2018, Michelle became the first African American director of North Carolina's twenty-five state-owned historic sites.