Not Your Momma’s History
Cheyney McKnight is changing the landscape of historical interpretation.
Cheyney McKnight is the founder and owner of Not Your Momma’s History. She acts as an interpreter advocate for interpreters of color at historical sites up and down the east Coast, providing them with much needed support. She uses her clothing and primary sources to make connections between past and present events through performance art pieces.
Living historian Cheyney McKnight brings history to life in fun and interesting ways.
Sankofa is a word used in the Twi language of the Akan people of modern day Ghana that means “to go back and fetch it.” Essentially, to look to the past to inform the future. McKnight lives her life in the future, and believes that the key to an even brighter future is in fully understanding and the past, especially the culture and experiences of the ancestors.
In 2021 McKnight was chosen to be an African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund Fellow for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Her project, titled “The Ancestor’s Future: An Afrofuturist Journey Through History,” was both performance art and a conversation inspired by Afrofuturism. Focused on the future of historic preservation on former sites of enslavement, her project tells the full story of American slavery.
The project centered on the important point that the story does not stop just because slavery ended on that site. In 200 years who will be in these spaces, what will be their purpose, and what will historic preservation look like? Using the plantation as a site of truth, reparation, and reconciliation, McKnight provides us with the stories of our ancestors, and addresses our future as descendants of enslaved peoples.
Let’s Talk About Slavery
The Let’s Talk About Slavery table was created to allow space for people to interact with an interpreter about slavery. The table is set-up in a public space and includes reproductions, copies of paintings, and documents such as ads about runaways, bill of sales, narratives, proclamations, correspondence, and writings from enslaved individuals in the 18th and 19th centuries. Creating this space allows McKnight to tell the stories of our ancestors from the African diaspora.
On July 4, 2017 McKnight collaborated with two fashion-focused creative agencies, Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom (Jonathan Square) and The Common Thread Project (Mikaila Brown), to ponder the question, “What to a slave is the 4th of July?”
Frederick Douglass famously asked the question in an untitled speech delivered July 5, 1852. Though slavery as a formal institution ended well over a century ago, Douglass’s question is just as relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century.
We as citizens of the United States grapple with the legacy of slavery on a daily basis as forms of coerced labor still exist and the consequences of enslavement are still palpable through continued racial inequality.
McKnight took to the streets of lower Manhattan on July 4, 2017, dressed as an enslaved woman, holding a placard reading Douglass’s famous quote. Passersby were invited to contemplate the enduring legacy of slavery, using Frederick Douglass’s famous inquiry as a point of departure.
For insight into how Black folks who are descended from enslaved Africans can engage with the past on their terms, visit www.notyourmommashistory.com. To watch more videos, go to www.youtube.com.
