Preserve Culture.
Build Community.
Food Systems & Access
Strategic Consulting
Health Equity & Community Wellbeing
Community & Civic Engagement
Storytelling
About Charlotte & Pickens
Charlotte & Pickens is social enterprise building infrastructure by preserving Black Southern culture and centering nature — backed by lived experience — to strengthen food systems, advance health equity, grow local economies, and create places where people belong. We transform cultural knowledge into practical solutions through strategic consulting, research, storytelling, education, public experiences, environmental stewardship, and entrepreneurship.
Charlotte & Pickens currently stewards the Center for Black Southern Culture, which seeks to be one of the South’s leading institutions dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and advancing Black Southern life, and Black Farmers’ Market Memphis, which is Memphis’ only farmers market explicitly addressing hunger by way of food apartheid and bringing awareness to the disparities against black farmers, producers, and makers, to influence equity within the food system, shift local policies, and eradicate harmful national narratives around the city’s poverty and hunger.
BACK TO THE LAND.
BACK TO OURSELVES.
Charlotte & Pickens sows seeds of change rooted deep in the rich soil of black southern culture.
Imagine a place where the wisdom of our elders ways meets the social challenges with solutions and innovation of today, where the rhythms of blues, jazz, and gospel harmonize with the hum of beehives and the rustle of heirloom crops.
That's the world we’re growing, one seed, one meal, one gathering, one story at a time.
From the crackle of cornbread in cast-iron skillets to the quiet revolution of seed saving and quilting, to the alchemy of roots and herbs, we’re reclaiming our connection to the land and to one another.
We’re reviving forgotten flavors, nurturing healing traditions, and sewing a drapery of skills that turns all people and species into family vacant lots into vibrant food oases backyards into grocers, and scraps into sophistication.
We deeply believe in the power of shared meals to heal divisions, homegrown remedies to soothe bodies and spirits, and intergenerational learning to build lasting wealth in our wallets, in our hearts, our minds, our communities, and our "southern souls."
We’re rekindling the flames of communal-reliance and collective care that have long warmed the heart of black communities.
Charlotte & Pickens is an invitation and call to dig your hands into fertile ground, to stir a pot of history-laden flavors, and to weave blankets and stories that will outlast us all.
Charlotte & Pickens in the News
Black Farmers’ Market Memphis Returns To South Memphis for 5th Season
Black Farmers’ Market kicks off the 5th market season in South Memphis, a neighborhood deeply stricken by food apartheid, bringing food and nutrition access and fostering joy.
Charlotte & Pickens kicks off Echoing Green’s Leader Lens for Juneteeth
Brittney Shelby Sessoms, founded Charlotte & Pickens with a mission of preserving and revitalizing African American agricultural traditions and building community food sovereignty. In a recent conversation, she spoke about her ongoing Echoing Green Fellowship experience.
Center for Black Southern Culture Pilots KEEP
Center for Black Southern Culture, in partnership with Charlotte & Pickens, piloted place-making at “The Juke” as part of its KEEP program, serving as a living canvas of the Delta and Memphis’s early traditions and spaces of pure, un-policed joy and sanctuary.
Charlotte & Pickens advances Black Southern land, food, health, culture, and economic opportunity.
The comfort of a southern home became activated by the ancestors, blues, traditional foods, and collective energy as Center for Black Southern Culture and community members gathered Memphians for “The Juke”, the opening event of KEEP made possible by Charlotte & Pickens.
