Though the Trump administration has tried to censor museum displays and curtail funding for programs that highlight diverse experiences, it is still Black History Month. In fact, 2026 marks 100 years since scholar Carter G. Woodson announced what was then called Negro History Week in February 1926, with the goal of teaching young people about Black history as a source of inspiration for the future.
Channeling that spirit, local poet Rajnii Eddins and photographer René Renteria present the Black Artist Showcase on Sunday, February 8, at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington. The free event includes six young and adult poets and spoken-word performers, along with videos from the Vibrant Lives project, an oral history initiative also spearheaded by Eddins and Renteria.
The project connects teen interviewers with members of Burlington’s Black community. “When you tell your story,” Eddins said, “a lot of how you tell it is who you’re telling it to.” In trying to foster those connections, he started close to home, with interviewers Amina Eddins, 14, and Nadia Frazier, 16 — Eddins’ daughter and niece, respectively. Both are also poets and will perform as part of the showcase with Anna Capelle, a University of Vermont sophomore who is the current Connecticut youth poet laureate. They will be joined onstage by Rajnii Eddins, spoken-word artist Omega Jade, and Dr. Jolivette Anderson-Douoning, who teaches about history and the Black experience at Saint Michael’s College.
The Vibrant Lives project will also be on view as an exhibition in the main reading room at Burlington’s Fletcher Free Library, starting February 28. It’s important to Eddins and Renteria that the project’s narratives — many of which highlight the ways Black Vermonters have built community bonds — be locally accessible and visible. The Fletcher Free exhibition will accomplish that through a display of 15 portraits of Black Burlingtonians, each printed on large fabric banners and accompanied by QR codes that lead viewers to the participants’ video interviews.
Watching the videos, viewers of any age may feel like young listeners — and that’s not a bad thing, since we could all use a little wisdom. Denise Dunbar, for instance, apologizes for the legacy that baby boomers are leaving young people. “This is your time, your world,” she says. “Run with it.”
The exhibition’s opening will kick off the fifth annual Black Experience, a suite of Burlington events also organized by Eddins and culminating with a keynote speech by Howard University historian Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, at the Flynn on February 28. The full lineup of activities will be announced soon.
All the events, Eddins said, highlight Black history and storytelling as fundamental aspects of American history. The Vibrant Lives project, he said, can help everyone — not just young people — learn “what our elders’ stories are, what they experienced before us, and how that speaks to and relates to today,” he said. The work can impact “even our understanding of who we are as human beings and what we’re capable of.”
Renteria added that he sees the Black Artist Showcase as an opportunity for people to meet their neighbors and learn about what we all have in common. “For a moment,” he said, “allow yourself a little space to feel a little joy in our community — in the Queen City — because we’re all trying to make it together here.” ➆
This article appears in Love & Marriage Issue • 2026.
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