House Interior

Programming

Homecoming: 

Our signature event is the Wallace Black and white descendant homecoming.  To date we have held four (2018, 2019, 2022, 2023).  This year we had a fantastic homecoming committee and descendants from around the state and country joined with those from Harpersville to enjoy fellowship and reflect on their shared past.  We always begin in the Wallace cemetery, reading the names, laying a wreath, and singing.  Then we adjourn to the house for facilitated discussion.  This year we enjoyed dinner on the grounds and a blues concert. Descendants signed their names to one of the columns for Elizabeth Webb’s site-specific sculpture to be completed by early 2024. 

This year, Wideman-Davis Dance has returned to the House as part of their Mellon Foundation-funded Monument Project.  Harpersville is the second in three years of residency, following their year in Montgomery.  They performed Migratuse Ataraxia again at the house (the first time being in January 2020 as the Showcase for the Alabama Dance Festival).  As a culmination of their research and support of local artists, they will choreograph and perform a site-specific work in a locale in the town.  The Alabama Public Television Monograph Series 9 minute film about their 2020 performance may be viewed here. 

All of our programs address our mission of racial reconciliation through the arts and education.  Each spring, our board shares a portion of the history of the house with a focus on the people who lived this history at the Vincent Middle School through the Land as Person: Many Paths to the Present curriculum that is part of the Writing Our Stories program of the Alabama Writers’ Forum.  Each May, the students read their persona poems in the house to their families and friends.  Every spring, we also host Joe McGill of the Slave Dwelling Project who leads discussions about slavery and its impact today, including the experience of a fireside chat and sleeping in the bare rooms of the house.  Other programs this year included Designing with Dignity: Convening Conversations on the Art of Racial Healing with our poet in residence Salaam Green and artist Elizabeth Webb; a joint reception with the Shelby County Historical Society to honor Peter Datcher for having the digital record of the enslaved in Shelby County named for him; Tony Bingham’s speaking about Bearing Witness: Praise House and his exhibit in the house Vessels for Aunt Daisy; and Peter Datcher’s exhibit of local history in the house.