American Roundtable: Along the Lumbee River, North Carolina

Editors Morgan Augillard, Noran Sanford, and Joey Swerdlin and report contributors present the report Along the Lumbee River and discuss key themes and findings.

March 12, 2021
1:00 p.m.

The winding Lumbee River. Credit: Andie Rea

American Roundtable is an Architectural League initiative bringing together on-the-ground perspectives on the condition of American communities and what they need to thrive going forward.

Along the Lumbee River shares the stories of residents in a racially diverse rural region of swamps and sandhills in south-central North Carolina. How has the history of the region’s African-American, white, and indigenous Lumbee peoples been inscribed on the land? What can communities do to confront histories and physical sites of incarceration, forced labor, and racial and environmental injustice? How do communities define their identities and sense of faith through the landscape? How are innovative agricultural practices creating a future of sustainable livelihoods, collective productivity, and support?

Join editors Morgan Augillard, Noran Sanford, and Joey Swerdlin and report contributors Tanner Capps, Deb Gunsallus, Ed Hunt, Christie Poteet, and Andie Rea, as they share findings and highlights from their American Roundtable report. Their informal presentation will be followed by discussion on some of the report’s key ideas and provocations with American Roundtable Project Director Nicholas Anderson and League Executive Director Rosalie Genevro

Explore the full Along the Lumbee River report. 

Learn more about the American Roundtable Initiative.

Morgan Augillard is a designer and urban planner working in educational real estate development. Joey Swerdlin is an architectural designer who currently works for Morpholio as their Community Director. Augillard and Swerdlin are members of Group Project, a collective of former and current MIT students, who have worked with the nonprofit, North Carolina-based youth organization GrowingChange for four year. Noran Sanford is the founder of GrowingChange and a native of Scotland County, NC. Sanford is trained as a clinical social worker. 

Tanner Capps serves as Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at St. Andrews University, Laurinburg, NC. Deb Gunsallus is an AmeriCorps VISTA for Hunger with the Office for Community and Civic Engagement at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNC Pembroke). Ed Hunt is the Director of Sustainability at The Thomas Entrepreneurship Hub, UNC Pembroke. Christie Poteet is the Director of the Office for Community and Civic Engagement at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Andie Rea is a North Carolina-based digital media creator.

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