2025 One Maryland One Book Selection Announced
Marylanders throughout the State Will Read Kin: Rooted in Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford; book includes art by her son Jeffery Boston Weatherford
By SARAH WEISSMAN
Maryland Humanities
BALTIMORE (March 6, 2025)—Maryland Humanities is thrilled to announce “Kin: Rooted in Hope” by Carole Boston Weatherford as the 2025 One Maryland One Book Selection. The poetry collection from the Maryland author includes art by Jeffery Boston Weatherford.
A combination of history, art, and personal genealogy depicts the author’s search for her family tree, which leads her to ancestors who were some of Maryland’s founders. Through art and poetic voice, Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford impart their family’s lives and offer a view into Maryland’s African American history.
“’Kin: Rooted in Hope’ is a family affair, a mother-son collaboration on a family saga dating back to colonial Maryland,” says Carole Boston Weatherford. “Kin conjures the past, reclaims lost ancestral narratives and brings us to the realization that knowing your history is generational wealth,” Weatherford continues.
“As a Marylander, I am so proud that Kin's selection as the 2025 One Maryland One Book will further amplify our ancestors’ voices. Their story of bondage and freedom—a history shared by many African Americans—is the American story.”
The collection weaves the personas of the Weatherfords’ ancestors, from experiences on the Wye House Plantation in Talbot County through the Civil War and into the twentieth century. Maryland locations feature prominently in the book, many the subject of their own poems, including the Chesapeake Bay, the
port of Oxford, Fort McHenry, and the Wye River, where the Wye House plantation sits.
“Kin: Rooted in Hope” is a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Poetry Award Winner. A selection committee consisting of Maryland teachers, scholars, librarians, writers, booksellers, and community workers chose the book for One Maryland One Book under the theme of “What We Collect / What We Tell.”
Maryland Humanities looks forward to staging programming that invites readers to explore histories of African Americans, of Maryland, and their families. Maryland Humanities will announce our 2025 Author Tour details this summer. A calendar of free public events, including our annual Author Tour and VIP Reception, will be available online. To keep up with this year’s One Maryland One Book you can follow us on all social media platforms @mdhumanites, sign up for our Literature eNewsletter, or with a monthly donation you can become a Humanities Hero and receive special OMOB perks.
“I couldn’t be more excited about “Kin: Rooted in Hope” as our 2025 One Maryland One Book pick.” says Lindsey Baker, CEO of Maryland Humanities. “This book does exactly what our theme asks of us—it pieces together history, memory, and loss to reclaim stories that deserve to be told. Carole Boston Weatherford and Jeffery Boston Weatherford don’t just bring the past to life; they remind us why it matters today. With deep Maryland roots, Kin is a powerful, moving, and necessary read, and I can’t wait for people across the state to experience it.”
Carole Boston Weatherford recently received the 2025 Children’s Literature Legacy Award from the American Library Association. She holds a Newberry Honor and Nonfiction Award from the Children’s Book Guild.
One Maryland One Book is a program of Maryland Center for the Book at Maryland Humanities, presented in partnership with The National Endowment for the Humanities and Howard County Library System. One Maryland One Book 2024 is sponsored by The Institute of Museum and Library Services via the Maryland State Library Agency, and other funders that may be announced later.
Maryland Humanities creates and supports bold experiences that explore and elevate our shared stories to connect people, enhance lives, and enrich communities. For more information, visit www.mdhumanities.org. Maryland Humanities is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities; the State of Maryland; the Citizens of Baltimore County; private foundations; corporations; small businesses; and individual donors. Connect with Maryland Humanities on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Through our Maryland Center for the Book program, Maryland Humanities created One Maryland One Book (OMOB) to bring together diverse people in communities across the state through the shared experience of reading the same book. We invite readers to participate in book-centered discussions and related programs at public libraries, high schools, colleges, museums, bookstores, and community and senior centers throughout the state. Connect with Maryland Center for the Book on Facebook.
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While Movie Theaters Close Nationwide, Maryland’s Independent Theaters Survive
By ADAM HUDACEK
Capital News Service
Driving through Maryland, you might come across an iconic sight: a neon-lined, art deco facade standing out amongst mundane downtown storefronts. The posters flanking its double-wide doors aren’t showing the familiar blockbusters of the day—they’re advertising indie circuit flicks and 35mm prints dug out from basement boxes.
It’s an independent movie theater, part of a group of cinematic safe havens beating the national trends of declining theatrical profits.
Since a wave of pandemic-era theater closures that began five years ago, the United States has lost nearly 5,000 theater screens, about 12% of the pre-pandemic footprint. Over half went dark between 2022 and 2023, the worst single-year slump in at least 30 years. Simultaneously, streaming services soared in popularity while traditional film studios were forced to delay theatrical content on the release calendar, or abandon exclusive theatrical releases.
Even when theaters reopened as lockdown restrictions loosened, national ticket sales failed to recover. In 2024, cinemas only sold about two-thirds of the number of tickets they did in 2019. Average ticket prices have risen from $9.16 in 2019 to $11.31 last year, but that hasn’t been enough to offset shrinking attendance.
Despite this industry-wide decline, many of Maryland’s independent theaters have survived.
Unlike major theater chains, like Cinemark, Regal or AMC, independent theaters have the freedom to mix up their programming slate and show older, limited release or rare films. Those showings, which are labeled as repertory films, are powering the independent theater industry, said Todd Hitchcock, executive director of the AFI Silver Theatre and Culture Center.
“We saw much quicker, stronger return for our repertory programming,” Hitchcock said. “That just speaks to the unique value proposition of those [films] and the dedicated cinephile showing up.”
Hitchcock runs one of many iconic film venues across the state, a list that includes Baltimore’s Senator Theater, Charles Theater and the 110-year-old Parkway Theatre, as well as the Frostburg Palace Cinema, Greenbelt Cinema and Bengies Drive-In Theater, which boasts America’s largest theater screen.
Each theater features programming that differs from the traditional first-run exhibition model. The AFI Silver Theater is well known for its various festivals, like the AFI European Union Film Showcase and AFI Latin American Film Festival, which reached record high attendance last year.
This diversification is out of necessity. Outside of exclusive 70mm presentations, like those of The Brutalist and Oppenheimer, Hitchcock said that many first-run releases have faltered.
“A film that 10 years ago might have played eight weeks here is only playing four weeks,” Hitchcock said. “For the right film, people are clearly both getting the awareness and the motivation to see it while we have it on screen, but it’s not applied consistently across the board with everything that’s coming out.”
It doesn’t help that the pandemic accelerated the gradual decline of major studio releases. In 2024, major studios released a little over half the number of films they did at their 30-year peak in 2006. Minor studios’ outputs have boomed, but those films typically release fewer theaters and collect lower grosses. To make matters worse, prolonged Writer’s Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes in 2023 halted an already disrupted film production schedule.
At Greenbelt Cinema, admissions at the theater have fallen about 50% since the pandemic, executive director Caitlin McGrath said.
“It’s not a great time to be running a movie theater,” McGrath said. “It means that we have to shift the pieces of the pie so we are just working more on our contributed streams of revenue versus earned.”
For the non-profit Greenbelt Cinema, that means relying less on concessions and ticket sales and relying more on donations and grants. It also means diversified programing, to a further extent than many other independent theaters across the state. Greenbelt Cinema has shown special events like the U.S. presidential debate
and added engagement-focused screenings, like a dance documentary paired with a Q&A and workshop with the film’s subject and director.
McGrath wants to offer moviegoers an experience that’s different from what they can find on streaming services or at larger theater chains. Although Greenbelt Cinema’s recovery is far from complete, the theater remains open, a better fate than other exhibitors have faced, most notably Washington’s famed E Street Cinema earlier this month.
In fiscal year 2024, the AFI Silver Theater reported attendance comparable to pre-pandemic levels, but Hitchcock stressed that without a significant amount of films in the release pipeline, the theater’s recovery—and the recovery of other independent theaters in the region—could be short-lived.
“It’s not like we get all the way back and then everything is permanently fixed,” Hitchcock said. “There’s still ups and downs.”
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Local Non-Profit SAFEO Partners with Truist Bank to Deliver Financial Literacy Training to Landover’s Underserved Youth
By PRESS OFFICER
SAFEO
In partnership with Truist Bank’s Beyond the Field Financial Literacy Training Program, Student Athletes for Education Opportunities (SAFEO), Inc., a longstanding non-profit in the Washington, D.C, area, has developed an initiative to train Washington area middle through high school student athletes in how to navigate the sports money management arena, from early branding and name, image, likeness (NIL) sponsorships to semi-professional and professional careers and sponsorships, to career transitions. Starting with the Kenmoor Middle School in Landover, Prince George’s County, SAFEO and Truist will launch the effort on Friday, March 14, 2025 in the school gym from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Initially, sixty student athletes from among a cross section of its enrollees have been hand-picked by the school for participation.
The event will comprise an afternoon of learning and fun-filled activities for the students, including a special learning session on financial literacy, money management, and generational wealth, by Truist Bank’s Latoya Gurley, who heads up the Bank’s Beyond the Field community outreach literacy program; interactive games; a pizza party; and giveaways. SAFEO’s president and CEO, J. Laffeyette
“Coach” Carter will speak with the kids about NIL opportunities, bullying, the influence of hip hop and how to position themselves to take advantage of opportunities in life. With the support of the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, both of which have donated an array of technology devices to support this effort, “Coach” Carter will engage the kids in a variety of related-interactive activities in which these devices will be awarded to the winner. Commenting on the initiative, Coach Carter explains, “We are committed to enhancing not only the academic success of these kids, but also helping them learn some of the critical details about sports careers, early on, including the pressures and challenges they will face –.”
Founded in 1990 by former UDC All-American linebacker J. Laffeyette “Coach” Carter, Student Athletes for Educational Opportunities, Inc. (SAFEO) began as a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization, and over the past 34 years, has since expanded its programs and services into Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties and Brooklyn New York. Carter began his journey in the early 1990s as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) began to implement rules that virtually restricted access to college for a large segment of the African American community whose only route to college was through athletics. Dedicated to enhancing the daily lives and boosting the educational and career opportunities of student athletes,
The organization was recently recognized and awarded a check for $2,000 by the DMV’s Eastern Automotive Group and WJLA-TV news for its work with Washington area youth.
You can learn more about SAFEO and its programs by visiting our website at www.safeo.org.
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