Fourteen students from historically black colleges and universities in the Triangle region will take part in the White House South by South Lawn (SXSL) event on Monday thanks to support from Black Wall Street and the American Underground.
SXSL is being touted as an entertainment and tech festival similar to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
And Talib Graves-Manns, co-founder of Black Wall Street, sees the trip as an opportunity to support the mission of the group which focuses on helping minority entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
“After attending SXSW for the first time five years ago, I came back to the office better equipped to tackle increasingly complex business challenges with a new tool set. This tool set was centered around my approach to technology-driven solutions that I learned during panel discussions, break-out sessions, and shared intellectual capital that I experienced during SXSW,” Graves-Manns says. “Outside of increasing my knowledge base, I was able to expand my personal network of intelligent, connected peers from around the world. And every year that I attend SXSW, it has morphed into a reunion of friends.”
Graves-Mann applied to attend the White House event, seeing it as an extension to the campaign launched earlier in the year, Black Wall Street: Spring Break. It includes a “charge to area HBCUs to send more students to the annual South By Southwest Interactive Festival.” More than 20,000 applications were received to attend the festival.
SXSL is described as a festival of “ideas, art and action.”
The 14 local students are from Hampton University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University and Shaw University.
The American Film Festival, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. the National Park Foundation and SXSW.
President Obama is scheduled to participate during the afternoon.
“Two factors made the SXSL sponsorship a slam dunk for the American Underground,” said AU Chief Strategist Adam Klein. “It’s another opportunity to facilitate relationships between innovators from North Carolina and those making a difference elsewhere. And partnering with Black Wall Street and HBCUs advances our goal of being the most diverse and successful startup hub in the United States.”
SXSL coverage:
Live-streaming on whitehouse.gov and facebook.com/whitehouse.
Event hashtag is #SXSL.
Follow event hosts on social:
Black Wall Street – @BlackWall_St (Twitter) and @TheBlackWallStreet (Facebook); American Underground – @AmerUnderground (Twitter) and @AmericanUnderground (Facebook) .
