Kelly “Lola” Wilcox Moore is a griot (sacred storyteller), ethnographer, writer, and 5th generation Freedmen Settlement descendant, as well as the principal of the Wilcox & Moore Legacy Restoration Project, an ancestor-inspired work focused on her paternal lineage. Lola is charged with being a “repairer of the breach” as is written in the book of Isaiah, and as she restores her paternal ancestors’ legacy, she simultaneously creates her own distinguished and powerful stories. Through her Legacy Restoration Project, Lola, with input from her brother and cousin, is amending the fragmented and faulty American history most of us were taught. Her stories illuminate painful and disturbing truths that have been “whited out” of prevalent historical accounts. Truths that have adversely impacted the Black community at large.
Works from the Wilcox & Moore Legacy Restoration Project (WMLRP) have been exhibited at the San Antonio International Airport in collaboration with the San Antonio African American Community Archive and Museum, as well as the Witte Museum’s Black Cowboy: An American Story Exhibition. In the entrepreneurial spirit of her ancestors, Lola created a line of ancestral greeting cards and notebooks. She has shared her stories with schools, universities, libraries, museums, and community organizations and fully encourages and supports others to begin writing their own stories. Lola often says, “we overstand that there is power in the pen! Each of us has stories, but most will never write or share them.”