Building Community Traditions

Two of Arkansas’s most respected community-rooted cultural workers come together to discuss the practice of building community traditions through care, story, and time.

Pat Johnson is the founder and director of the Eddie Mae Herron Center and Museum in Pocahontas, a community hub and museum dedicated to preserving the history and culture of African Americans in Randolph County and across Arkansas. In 2024, Johnson received the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Meredith Martin-Moats is a researcher, cultural worker, writer, radio producer, oral historian, gardener, and caregiver from Yell County, Arkansas. She holds an M.A. in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University and is the cofounder of the McElroy House: Organization for Cultural Resources in Dardanelle.

Their conversation traces the slow, generational practice of cultural stewardship across very different Arkansas places, and what it takes to build something that lasts.