Nirde’s talk, The Search For Freedom: Juneteenth in North Carolina, will tell the story of an enslaved people who, for generations, sought freedom in many diverse ways. North Carolina’s liberation story is complex, it took place over time and was shaped by the realities of the Civil War. We will work to remember, and through that remembrance, to come to a better understanding, of North Carolina’s “Juneteenth” story – or rather, how liberation and emancipation took shape across our state from 1861 through the early years of Reconstruction.

Nirdé (pronounced “Near-day”) was appointed as the Director of the NC African American Heritage Commission in June 2023. Prior to this role, she served as the Commission’s Associate Director, where her role focused on grant project management, heritage trails, and communications.

For more than ten years, Adrienne has worked in museums and cultural institutions, including the President James K. Polk State Historic Site in Pineville, NC, and the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, NC.

She holds a master’s degree in museum studies and bachelor’s degrees in history and anthropology, all from Indiana University. Adrienne is a graduate of the Jekyll Island Management Institute and the Smithsonian’s Ethical Interpretation Workshop.

Nirde has always had a primary interest in sharing diverse stories, particularly those that have not yet been told, and centering on the communities where the stories are set. She resides in Wendell, NC, with her husband and their daughter.

Nirde’s appearance marks the third time the Center has partnered with the N.C. African American Heritage Commission. The Commission was created by the NC General Assembly in 2008 and works across the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to achieve the mission of preserving, protecting and promoting North Carolina’s African American history, art and culture, for all people.

In June 2018, Jones last spoke in Fayetteville about Juneteenth. Several days later, Jones died of a sudden heart attack in Washington. The Center decided to honor his memory and his contribution to our understanding of the African American community during the Civil War and afterward, through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, by sponsoring the Hari Jones Memorial Lecture Series.

Invited speakers to the series have included civil rights activist and retired Guilford College history professor Dr. Adrienne Israel and Methodist University history professor Dr. Peter Murray, who spoke in 2019; Dr. Vernon Burton, professor of history at Clemson University, who spoke in 2021; Dr. Spencer Crew, who is a Clarence J. Robinson Professor at George Mason University, and emeritus director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, who spoke in 2022; Dr. Darin J. Waters, deputy secretary for the state’s Office of Archives and History and a well-known North Carolina historian, who spoke in 2023; Leesa Jones, leader of the Washington (N.C.) Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum, which is the only museum dedicated to telling the story of the Underground Railroad in N.C., who spoke in 2024; and Khadija McNair, a public historian who is manager of Freedom Park in downtown Raleigh, who spoke in 2025.