When consultant Emiliano Void and poet Rajnii Eddins met in a Burlington coffee shop in 2021 to discuss how to create a flagship Black History Month celebration for Vermont, they dreamt big. “As in, we were dreaming of bringing Beyoncé and Jay-Z as headliners,” Void told Seven Days two years ago.
They got Angela Davis, an activist, writer and scholar. When they launched the Black Experience in 2022, it was part of Burlington’s Juneteenth celebration. It has since become a stand-alone annual event that happens in February. Davis returned as its featured speaker in 2023.
This Saturday, February 22, National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates and Grammy performers SistaStrings headline the Black Experience 2025. While still no Beyoncé, their appearance on the Flynn Main Stage in Burlington continues the homegrown event’s history of booking impressive guests and caps off a day of poetry classes and readings, student project presentations, film screenings, and cultural cuisine.
Shuttles stopping in Brattleboro, Bennington, Northfield, Middlebury and Winooski will transport attendees. Lunch at Winooski High School catered by Kismayo Kitchen kicks off the festivities at noon. Afternoon activities will be held at the high school, at Burlington’s Fletcher Free Library and at the Greater Burlington YMCA.
Among the many presenters is Jolivette Anderson-Douoning, a history professor at Saint Michael’s College who will lead a discussion connecting civil rights history and poetry from the time of Paul Laurence Dunbar to Kendrick Lamar. Poets Eddins and Toussaint St. Negritude will teach and read from their works, and Middlebury College associate professor of dance Christal Brown will lead a master class in moving and remembering.
Youth events will be held at the high school, and Fletcher Free Library will host screenings of Black films. A pizza dinner at Burlington City Hall Auditorium precedes the Flynn show, where local hip-hop DJ — and Burlington city councilor — Melo Grant will spin music during breaks.
Shuttle transport, meals and admission to all events, except the show at the Flynn, are free.
Asked what he’s most excited about this year, Void said it’s simply the fact that a cluster of non-event planners who are passionate about making the state “reflective and representative” of all its demographics — “most notably Black folks” — is able to pull off the event. Void is founder and CEO of nuwave Equity Corporation, a Burlington consulting and technology company. Poet Eddins is a teaching artist, actor and singer-songwriter.
Eddins recalled the pair’s first planning meeting at Kru Coffee. Void suggested bringing together Black Vermonters from all walks of life, and the two decided to pitch the idea to the Flynn because it’s a large venue and because Eddins knew some of its staff, having taught in Flynn education programs. They were bold but not entirely prepared for their pitch.
Eddins recounted the conversation he had with a Flynn staffer:
Eddins: “Hey, we got this idea.”
Flynn staffer: “When would you want to do it?”
“February.” (“This is, mind you, like October, November 2021,” Eddins told Seven Days.)
“We’re still in the midst of the pandemic. We’re not even setting things for ourselves for another year and some change … Do you have any money?”
“Nope, no money.”
“Have you confirmed the people you’re bringing?”
“No, not yet.”
Void emailed a representative for Davis and asked her to come. February proved to be too soon, but he and Eddins launched the event that June. The Flynn has been their partner ever since and now takes the lead in finding and booking headliners. “I can’t say enough about the work that those folks do to support making this happen,” Void said.
Funded by donations, the Black Experience has no recurring sponsors. Its annual budget runs between $70,000 and $120,000, Void said, and each year, the bank account “goes right back down to zero, and we build it back from the ground up.”
Its success is a testament to the desire of Vermonters to see their community reflected in multiple ways, Void said.
“We want to see representation that reflects inspiring stances in the world.” Rajnii Eddins
Every year, the event attracts nationally known presenters. Author Robert Livingston, a social psychologist at Harvard Kennedy School, spoke last year. Performers have included PHILADANCO!, aka the Philadelphia Dance Company; a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock; and Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli.
“We’ve just been kind of taking moon shots every year,” Void said.
Sisters Monique and Chauntee Ross form SistaStrings. With Monique on cello and Chauntee on violin, the Milwaukee natives have fused their classical training with their love of R&B, hip-hop and gospel. Winners of the 2023 Instrumentalist of the Year award from the Americana Music Association, the duo has backed Brandi Carlile since 2022 and played with Joni Mitchell at the Grammy Awards last February and again at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in October.
Journalist and author Coates won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction for his memoir Between the World and Me. He has written for the Atlantic and currently is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department at Howard University. His most recent book, The Message, comprises three intertwining essays that grapple with the way stories — both reported and mythical — expose and distort our realities.
He will appear in conversation with Traci Griffith, racial justice program director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and former chair of the media studies department at Saint Michael’s College. She said Coates is one of a handful of Black intellectuals “pushing forward the discussions about race.”
Attempts by the new Donald Trump administration to quash such discussions have elevated their importance, Griffith observed. “We’re not moving backwards. We’ll continue to move forward,” she said. “The entire Black experience is moving forward through adversity. This is nothing new.”
People in Vermont deserve to see the country’s leading Black figures, Eddins said. “We want to see representation that reflects inspiring stances in the world,” he said. “At a time in history, too, where folks really need examples of courageous integrity that stands for freedom for all people, we need to bring that energy and those representations to the fore in as many ways as possible.”
Eddins will open the evening event, as he has each year, by reading his poem “BEAUTIFUL SUN KISSED PEOPLE.” He writes the title in all caps because, he said, “I think that makes people say it more loudly.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “‘Moon Shots’ | How the Black Experience brings marquee names, including Ta-Nehisi Coates and SistaStrings, to the Flynn”
This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.
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