KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — As she stands before crowds to perform her poems, Rhea Carmon uses her voice to create spaces for conversations on current issues of social change and justice. It’s through her own story and creative flow that she finds strength to speak for those who came before her and the many generations that will come after.
Rhea Carmon, the first African American poet laureate of Knoxville, is a mentor, a motivational speaker and a math teacher. However, she finds herself teaching valuable lessons through her poetry.
“It’s a feeling of knowing this is what finally needs to be heard,” Carmon said. “My message in all of my poems is humanity. So I use my story and the things I’ve gone through, as a woman of color, to help other people connect with me, as Rhea,” she said. “When you start to see my humanity, it tears down all the those walls that try to divide us.”
The story Carmon shares through her poetry is one with much history, dating back to her fourth great-grandmother.
“On my father’s side, it was a slave cook who came to Alabama with her slave owner and started our family. She never would have thought that all these years later, she’d have a granddaughter who was making black history,” Carmon said.
To reach the milestones she’s accomplished today, Carmon thanks her family for being proud of their roots and making Black history a priority in their household.
“My father made us read from the African American encyclopedias growing up. We had to do Saturday reports in the basement of our house and find something that resonated with us in Black history and write about it. We had to do that starting at 7 years old.”
What might’ve seemed crazy then, only now shows Carmon the full picture. What her family did to raise her was in hopes of providing her with a better life, and as she looks back at her achievements and what is still yet to come, she is grateful.
“All of the sacrifices,” Carmon said while thinking. “My grandmother, she cleaned houses. My mom worked jobs she didn’t want to go to. My father was in the military — all of them made me this Rhea Sunshine poet.”
“That… I never forget, and I don’t take it for granted,” Carmon added
As Black history continues to form Carmon, she said others can be inspired too. Not only by her poems, but Carmon’s husband started a non-profit called the Universal Black History Education Initiative. It was started to help continue the conversation around East Tennessee about black history.
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