About Krak Teet
Krak Teet is a nonprofit organization based in Savannah, Georgia. Inspired by Zora Neale Hurston, Dr. Charles Hoskins, and the Federal Writer’s Project, we asked ourselves: Who’s collecting our elders’ stories today? With no answer, we began interviewing elders over the age of 80 about life in the Low Country between 1920-1970. The struggles, the celebrations, the ordinary day-to-day, we ask about everything.
Then we began sharing those stories online and during in-person workshops, panels, and speaking engagements. Folk would share their own experiences and how they could relate. So we began traveling to see just how many more dots we could connect throughout the African diaspora. The foods, the music, the dance, the healing modalities, and spiritual practices, they were all so very similar. With this knowledge, we identified the foundation of work as #WeAllCousins.
Our proudest moments include people telling us that we inspired them to record their grandparents, children learning that their pronouncing “street” as “skreet” ain’t stupid but Geechee, and elders saying they read/heard something of ours that unlocked a memory they thought they’d long forgotten.
Our Values
Unity: Our shared experiences bring us closer together, and that togetherness helps us get freer faster.
Kujichagulia: As the Kwanzaa principle suggests, we have a responsibility to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
Pleasure: It’s how we “reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations of oppression and/or supremacy” (Pleasure Activism).
Truth: Honesty is the basis for trust, and trust is non-negotiable when it comes to connecting and learning.
Respect: That goes for all forms of life—humans, animals, and the environment.
Passion: It makes the work sustainable.
Excellence: It’s the only way.
Our Vision
We envision black communities restoring the level of togetherness that existed before and during the Civil Rights Movement, public schools offering Gullah Geechee classes, more intergenerational learning spaces, black children traveling internationally before adulthood, elders feeling valued and supported, art being seen as a viable career option within the black community, and people having the necessary village of support to best care for themselves and each other.
Our Founder
Trelani Michelle is an award-winning writer, oral historian, and teaching artist based in Savannah, Georgia and New Orleans, Louisiana.
“I started Krak Teet to make history interesting by telling it the way I talk instead of how textbooks share it so that people could see themselves in it and seeing how connected we are to each other. I’m Geechee, Creole, and plain ole’ country. Grew up on two kinds of gumbo: from Louisiana and the Low Country. And you can taste all of that in my content.”
Trelani graduated from the OG of HBCUs in Georgia, Savannah State University, with a Bachelor’s in Political Science. Changed her mind from practicing law to telling stories then graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design with an MFA in Writing. The storyteller also became a solid storygatherer after an internship at the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center.
Crowned Savannah’s Best Local Author in 2021, Trelani published a catalog of Black Savannah’s biographies called Krak Teet. She also co-authored the New York Times bestselling cookbook, Gullah Geechee Home Cooking. She refers to her work as “Zora Neale Hurstoning” and teaches the history that textbooks overlook using words that your English teacher would’ve drawn red lines through.
Also in 2021, Trelani was named Editor for Black Art in America, a multifaceted arts company based in Atlanta with a mission to document, preserve and promote the contributions of the African-American arts community. This allows her to combine storytelling with visual art to make history and culture more engaging and accessible.
Trelani has presented her work as a speaker or panelist at UNC’s Black Communities Conference, SCAD, Savannah State, Georgia Council for the Arts, The Highlander Research and Education Center, and more. She’s also served as a Teaching Artist for the Deep Center, Frederica Academy, Susie King Taylor Community School, Baltimore’s A Revolutionary Summer, Loop it Up, etc.