Name: National Trust For Historic Preservation’s African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund Telling A Fuller Story Of U.S. History
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National Trust For Historic Preservation’s African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund Telling A Fuller Story Of U.S. History

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BETAThis is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by&nbsp;Aug 17, 2020,When a between white nationalists and supporters of racial equality turned violent during the spring and summer of 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, the National Trust for Historic Preservation took action. Those events prepared the 70-year-old organization dedicated to saving America’s historic places for the nation’s latest round of racial upheaval experienced this year following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police and the of Ahmaud Arbery.Creating the , the Trust aspires to save the places where remarkable stories of African-American activism and achievement were written and to tell our nation’s full history.“This was a moment where cultural heritage and public spaces collided in a negative and violent way and internally we started to ask ourselves questions like, ‘what is the role of history in public space and in preservation to respond to a cultural crisis,’ but also demonstrate that preservation was a solution to mitigate some of these issues,” Brent Leggs, Executive Director at the African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, told Forbes.com of the Trust’s decision to involve itself in the country’s sharpening debates about its racist founding and history following the Charlottesville conflict which was partially fueled in response to the city’s removal of long-standing monuments to the Confederacy.How can historic preservation help bridge America’s deep racial divide?“We realized that preservation of historic sites where African-Americans changed the American landscape could be one way our nation comes to understand the need to create a more fair and just society,” Leggs said. “We saw a more inclusive approach to historic preservation as one step on the long road to heal the divisions between us.”MORE FOR YOUTo get there, the Trust and its partners are working to raise $25 million for the AACHAF to support the preservation of 150 black history sites across the U.S. This represents the largest preservation campaign ever undertaken on behalf of African-American history. Since announcing the program, the Trust has raised over $23 million, using these funds to, “diversify our existing programs at the National Trust so that we are living a culture of equity and justice,” according to Leggs.Additionally, the Trust established a national grant program funding communities to protect, restore, and interpret African-American historic sites and uncover hidden narratives of the African-American contribution to the American story.&nbsp;The third round of annual grants were announced in July, providing . In just over two and a half years, the Trust has invested almost $5 million into 65 preservation projects that begin to tell a fuller American story.“Given the current cultural revolution happening, the fight to preserve African-American History and historic places is even more relevant and important so that we can confront the historical miseducation of Americans and so that all Americans begin to understand the black experience as an origin story, and that it is fundamental to the founding of this nation,” Leggs said.For all the work that has been done, more remains. Since launching the AACHAF, the Trust has received almost 2000 proposals from sites requesting $190 million.“That $190 million is just the teaser of the full need to restore and to interpret, program and support the operations of these places,” Leggs said. “That statistic highlights that African-American historic places have been undervalued and underfunded and I hope that our nation–public and private funders–will begin to understand the imbued economic, historical and cultural value of these assets, and began to make new investment in them.”Grant recipients for 2020 come from big cities–Founders Church of Religious Science in Los Angeles, Muddy Waters House in Chicago, Paul Robeson House and Museum in Philadelphia, Tenth Street Historic District in Dallas–and small towns–Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, May’s Lick Rosenwald School in Maysville, Kentucky, Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center in Joseph, Oregon–with financial support coming from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.Also among the chosen was a living history site, a departure for the Trust. The city of Minneapolis will receive funding to document the history being created there now following Floyd’s murder.“The city had actually applied and was not selected, but after the horrific events that happened, they reached out to us, to ask us to take a second look at their proposal,” Leggs explained. “We wanted to provide some funding as a way to help uplift a community that had experienced a really difficult moment and we understood that even though this is living history, that it would be remembered for catalyzing the Black Lives Matter movement for generations to come.”The Trust is making a $50,000 investment in Minneapolis asking the community there to identify strategies for commemorating the arts, memorials and places associated with Floyd’s murder and the protest movement which followed it, while also paying attention to the city’s historical assets which share its African-American experience. It’s further evidence of the Trust’s commitment to crafting a narrative expanding the view of American history and, ultimately, beginning to reconstruct our national identity while inspiring a new generation of activists to advocate for diverse historic places.“Our strategy is to begin to tell a fuller American story to foster healing, truth-telling and reconciliation and in many ways our big goal is for all Americans to begin to see themselves and their history and their potential in the African-American historic places that surround them,” Leggs said, adding, “that is a bold vision for a nation.”&nbsp;or&nbsp;.&nbsp;my&nbsp;.&nbsp;

BETAThis is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by&nbsp;Aug 17, 2020,When a between white nationalists and supporters of racial equality turned violent during the spring and summer of 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, the National Trust for Historic Preservation took action. Those events prepared the 70-year-old organization dedicated to saving America’s historic places for the nation’s latest round of racial upheaval experienced this year following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police and the of Ahmaud Arbery.Creating the , the Trust aspires to save the...

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National Trust For Historic Preservation’s African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund Telling A Fuller Story Of U.S. History

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