Nailah Porter

Nailah will be sharing music from her new ancestral veneration and remembrance project, Ritual of Mapping, at St. Phillips Moravian Church to commemorate the 160th anniversary of Freedom Day in Salem, North Carolina. On May 21, 1865, a Union Army cavalry chaplain announced to the congregation of St. Philips, and the residents of the surrounding area, that slavery had been legally abolished and they were now an emancipated and free people.

St. Philips is a sacred touchstone of the African-American experience. Organized in 1822, from the beginning, the brick church in Salem was called the slave church because of the mostly enslaved population. The church was consecrated in 1861. It is one of the oldest Black congregations in the United States, the only historic African-American Moravian congregation in the country, and the oldest African-American church standing in North Carolina. After Freedom Day, the Freedmen’s community became the foundation of economic prosperity in Winston Salem.