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Carrol Layfield manages a quilting group of older women from Ritchie County, West Virginia, who used to work in the area’s garment industry. Using techniques handed down over generations, the women piece together quilts from remnants of fabric from shuttered factories. Kayla Turk is a young mother of two children who returned home to Ritchie County to live with her parents when her husband was laid off. At a communal baby shower, Kayla receives a quilt from the older women, and discovers a network of support.

“Padam and Purna were forced from their homeland in Bhutan and trapped in camps in Nepal for decades before being resettled in an alien land: Clarkston, Georgia. The refugees have found some stability, but still feel frustrated and uprooted, which leads to domestic violence and suicide in the refugee community. Padam and Purna realized that familiar food is the first step to feeling at home. They have opened a food store and other refugee-run businesses, which offer safe spaces and sources of mutual support for all the Asian refugees in Clarkston, who are united by their experience of trauma.”

“Many residents of Compton, California, live in a food desert, which means they lack access to healthy foods and young people have never acquired the habit of eating fresh fruits and vegetables. Retired neurosurgeon Sherridan Ross may have a solution: Teach them to grow their own food. Drawing on the legacy of farming in Compton by African Americans, Sherridan develops community gardens that transform the attitude of neighborhood youth to food, and benefits them in other ways, too.”

Mia can’t understand why the new kid, Amena, seems sad, but she learns that a little empathy can go a long way.

Juni teaches her friend Michael all she knows about the first Memorial Day—the day when thousands of black people marched to remember their loved ones who had died in the Civil War.

Mae Mallory sues the New York Board of Education for desegregation in public schools.

This spoken word poem points out the irony of the government’s insistence on lavishing money on the space race while failing to fund struggling Black communities.

Playwright August Wilson delivered this speech on June 26, 1996, at the 11th biennial Theatre Communications Group national conference at Princeton University.