At the Summit, participants experienced a spoken word performance featuring poet, activist, mother, musician, and Flint-based Shea Phire Cobb, whose work reflects deep connections to community and justice. Drawing on her lived experiences in Flint, she shared poems that spoke to the deep bonds of family, layers of memory, sisterhood, the lasting impacts of the Flint Water Crisis, and the enduring power of resistance. Through poetry and storytelling, she invited the audience into a space of reflection, solidarity, and collective healing. This event offered an inspiring opportunity to witness art as a force for awareness, empowerment, and change.
Shea Phire Cobb lives and works in Flint, Michigan, where she was also born and raised. She is an artist, mother, author, activist, musician, and founder of The Sister Tour, a platform that promotes female artistry. She began her artistic career by performing poetry during children’s summer programs and organizing poetry showcases in her community. Her books of poetry include Travels in my Car: Dedicated to the Writers Freedom (2018), Honey Tea and Hibiscus: Reflective Heart Poetry (2018), and Ruby in The Rough: A Dedication to LaToya Ruby Frazier (2020), which she co-authored with Amber Hasan. She studied communications at the University of Michigan-Flint and Mott Community College. In 2014, she began an ongoing collaboration with LaToya Ruby Frazier focused on the Flint Water Crisis. With Frazier and The Sister Tour, Cobb has traveled across the country telling the story of her community and the Flint Water Crisis. She has led programs at, among others, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York, Stamps Gallery at U-M, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she also performed an original play, Surviving Womanhood.
The Spoken Word Performance by Shea Phire Cobb was part of the 2026 Inclusive History Project Summit.
Image: Photo of Shea Phire Cobb. Courtesy of Emily O. Photography, © 2021