Welcome to Simple Grits!
I’m Lydia Charles…
Combining an academic background in cultural studies with program planning, organizational development, and project implementation experience, I’ve carved-out a little niche consulting gig over the last twenty years. Simple Grits formed to better structure my work with friends, neighbors, and former colleagues on public and private cultural projects across the United States.
After leadership positions, including roles with the Washington D.C. Main Street program, Cultural Tourism DC, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Save Our African American Treasures initiative, I moved to New Orleans to serve in the rebuilding of the city after Katrina. Since then, I’ve committed to living in the South, calling the region home for more than a decade.
Charlotte Hawkins Brown seated in the Salisbury, North Carolina section in the America on the Move exhibit. Transportation Hall, National Museum of American History. Below is the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute, the school founded by Dr. Brown for Black children in Sedalia, North Carolina in 1902.
