A Black gay married couple is exploring Harriet Tubman’s connections to Maryland and cultivating the land she used to help liberate her people, for a new digital shorts series set to debut during Black History Month.
The Aunties, an award-winning short film featuring two Black married women dedicated to preserving Harriet Tubman’s legacy through agriculture, education, and heritage preservation, will premiere on Black Public Media’s AfroPoP Digital Shorts on Feb. 17 in honor of Black History Month.
Created by Charlyn Griffith-Oro and Jeannine Kayembe-Oro,
the film follows Donna Dear and Paulette Greene, a married couple who met in 1974 and are dedicated to teaching sustainability and conservation while tending their land. Dear, a former military officer, and Greene, an educator, identify as Black gay women and life partners. forwp-incontent-custom-banner ampforwp-incontent-ad2">Together, the couple purchased the Maryland-based farm, which borders land developed by Paulette’s great-grandparents. The documentary film offers a glimpse into their work at Mt. Pleasant Acres Farms, a 111-acre property on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and believed to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad.
The award-winning film The Ubuntu Climate Initiative follows a couple as they help cultivate land on a former plantation where enslaved people once developed agriculture along Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Dear and Greene represent a new wave of Black climate activists, using the ancestral site as a space for radical healing and environmental restoration.
“I first saw this film at BlackStar Film Festival in 2023 and it has continued to sit with me ever since,” said BPM Director of
Programs Denise A. Greene. “The themes of land stewardship, cultural preservation, uplifting legacies, and climate justice woven together in a beautiful love story is inspiring and revolutionary.”The film has even deeper ties of love with Griffith-Oro and Kayembe-Oro being a real-life married couple who worked together to help introduce The Aunties to new audiences. After spending time and working closely with Dear and Greene, they now proudly consider themselves among the couple’s many “nieces” and “nephews.”
The Oro’s also share Dear and Greene’s passion for land cultivation with them being deeply committed to climate initiatives. The Philadelphia-based filmmakers have led numerous tours to Mt. Pleasant Acres Farms since meeting the seniors in 2016, helping connect Black urban residents with rural land and food production. They also run a produce market that provides free food to neighbors in their Southwest Philadelphia community.
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