Maya McClain
Maya McClain is a Junior at South Mecklenburg High School where she is a straight A student who is actively involved in many extracurricular activities. She participates in the National Honor Society and the National BETA Club for community service. Alongside this she holds leadership positions in South Mecklenburg’s chapter of the United Nations Children’s Fund as treasurer and OurBridge4Kids as Volunteer Coordinator. Maya is also a 3 season athlete who competes in Cross Country, Indoor and Outdoor Track.
Outside of school Maya’s commitment to personal growth is evident in her involvement in organizations such as HEROES Health Careers Connection club which provides hands-on medical experience to high school students. Along with The Academy of Goal Achievers which focuses on college prep and fostering leadership skills. Additionally, Maya is deeply devoted to Girl Scouting. Through her dedicated service as a Girl Scout Maya has achieved the prestigious Bronze and Silver Awards, alongside her partner Morgan Winston. These projects have reached both local and national scales for their impact-fulness.
Looking ahead, she dreams of studying medicine at Howard or Duke University. Her goal is to become a Pediatrician committed to closing the gap of healthcare disparities within the African American community.
Morgan Winston
Morgan Winston is a junior in the IB Diploma program at East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte, NC, with a 4.3 weighted GPA. She is active in many extracurricular activities, including being a member of the National Honor Society and Student Congress, and serving as the social media manager for the Diversity Club.
Morgan is co-captain of the girls’ varsity basketball team and enjoys playing tennis. Outside of school, she represents students in the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity’s Student Voices Program, advocating for educational equity. She interned with TurnUp Activism in summer 2024 to promote youth civic engagement.
An ambassador-level Girl Scout, Morgan and a fellow Girl Scout organized a bench dedication for Civil Rights pioneer Dorothy Counts-Scoggins in 2019, and in 2022 co-created a documentary on Charlotte’s Black history, in partnership with The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture. They presented the documentary at the Color of Education Summit at North Carolina State University in October 2023 and Western Carolina University’s Equity Summit in February 2024. These projects earned Morgan and Maya their Bronze and Silver awards, respectively. They spoke in March 2024 at the #DefendBlackHistory Summit, where they received the Defending Black History Award from the Color of Change and National Education Association.
After high school, Morgan plans to study political science, attend law school and pursue a career in politics, with the goal of becoming a U.S. senator. She is passionate about social justice and African-American history and has led initiatives to highlight Black excellence at her middle school.
In addition to her academic and extracurricular work, Morgan enjoys playing the piano, thrifting, and is a member of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, where she was recently baptized.
“Our Story”
As high school freshmen, we earned our Girl Scout Silver Award by creating a documentary about Charlotte’s Black history called “Telling Our Story.” Creating a documentary, however, wasn’t the first idea for our project. But once we decided on our goal – educating Charlotteans and others about the history and success of African-Americans in the Queen City, we concluded that a documentary would be the best format for this. We believe this is important because too often our history isn’t taught and is left unknown. There’s so much that the average person doesn’t know about Black history. With this documentary, we aim to change that. We acknowledge that, while many documentaries have been made about Charlotte and its rich history, we believe our project is unique because it’s created by two Black girls from Charlotte.
Our documentary is meant to educate, inspire and empower, especially young people. We intentionally not only focus on the hardships Blacks have faced – and continue to face, but we address the successes in Black-built communities, as well as the progression we’ve made despite the odds being against us. We interview several heroes who shaped Charlotte into the city it is today.
We hosted a premiere event for our documentary in downtown Charlotte on Nov. 5, 2022, in partnership with the Harvey B. Gantt Center. More than 100 friends, family and community members attended. In the two years since, we have showcased our work by speaking or presenting at the 2023 Color of Education Summit, Western Carolina University Equity Summitt and the #DefendBlackHistory Summit, where we received the Defending Black History Award from the Color of Change and National Education Association. We hope that our documentary will continue to educate and inspire future generations by being incorporated into Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ history curriculum.
History Counts
One way racism continues to spread and stay relevant is by taking on new forms. It might not look like a church bombing killing four little Black girls. Instead, it might appear in the form of an innocent Black woman being killed in her home by the very police officers she called for assistance (Rest in Peace, Sonya Massey). In many ways, history is repeating itself all around us.
In addition, history is being untruthfully taught – if it’s being taught at all. In schools across the country, efforts are being undertaken – some successfully – to remove African-American history from the curricula or rewrite certain aspects of our journey. With Florida’s state board of education writing that “enslaved people developed skills which in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” These actions misrepresent – or omit altogether – what students are being taught, creating false and incomplete narratives. The attempt to rewrite history is insensitive at the least and denies the hardships our ancestors faced during and following slavery. As a result, educating others abo