The National Trust Has Awarded Nearly $4 Million in Grants to Preserve Historic African American Sites
Forty sites representing African American history will be receiving funding for their protection and preservation thanks to $3.8 million in grants from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The grants were announced today and timed in recognition of Juneteenth (June 19). Recipients of this year’s grants focus on conserving Black modernist sites and preserving Historically Black Colleges and Universities, among other efforts.
The Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation that celebrated its fifth anniversary at the end of 2022, has raised more than $95 million to date and is the largest resource dedicated to preserving African American historic places. With amounts ranging from $50,000 to $150,000, Action Fund grants support preservation efforts across four categories: building capital, increasing organizational capacity, project planning and development, and programming and education.
“The history embodied in these places is emblematic of generational aspirations for freedom, the pursuit of education, a need for beauty and architecture, and joys of social life and community bonds,” says Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and senior vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “That’s why the Action Fund believes all Americans must see themselves and our shared history in this year’s grantee list if we are to create a culturally conscious nation.”
Eight grantees on this year's list represent a new focus on conserving modernist structures designed by Black architects. This initiative, Conserving Black Modernism, is led by the Action Fund with support from The Getty Foundation, and includes grant recipients such as: the the Charles McAfee Pool House in Wichita, Kansas with its distinctive modular shade structures; the Spanish Rancho- and Japanese-influenced Carson City Hall in Carson, California, featuring nautical-inspired forms; and Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with its dramatic clerestory walls composed of colorful staggered glass panels.
Other modernist structures that will receive funding also have significant ties to African American history and historical figures—including the Watts Happening Cultural Center in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles; Richmond’s Fourth Baptist Church’s educational wing designed by Ethel Bailey Furman, the earliest known Black woman architect in Virginia; and Charlotte’s First Baptist, designed by Harvey Gantt, the first Black mayor of Charlotte and the first African American student admitted to Clemson University.
“Our understanding of modernism in the United States will remain incomplete until we recognize the extraordinary contributions of Black architects and designers, whose buildings speak to the experience of Black communities in this era,” says Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation. “These grants will preserve important sites, deliver training to the people who care for them, and reveal new stories for all of us about the talents and resiliency of Black architects in twentieth-century America.”
Preserving HBCUs is another 2023 Action Fund priority: As part of its HBCU Cultural Heritage Stewardship Initiative, the Action Fund has awarded nearly $700,000 in funding to six HBCUs. Those recipients include Alabama’s Talladega College, which was founded by two formerly enslaved men and will be preserving historic buildings dating from 1869 like the college’s Slavery Library and the original home of the nationally recognized Amistad murals painted by noted artist Hale Woodruff. New Orleans' Dillard University, with its classically designed brick buildings dating from 1935 and mature live oaks, will also receive funding for its campus preservation efforts.
Additionally, Alabama's Tuskegee University, founded in 1881 under the leadership of Dr. Booker T. Washington, will develop a plan to create preservation strategies that address the effects of climate change on its historic resources. Other HBCUs to receive funding are Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina; Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia; and Jarvis Christian University in Hawkins, Texas.
The complete list of 2023 Action Fund grantees is a rich African American history lesson unto itself, celebrating Black achievements in art, business, craftsmanship, culture, design, education, and Civil Rights, among other endeavors.
For example, in Idlewild, Michigan, for example, Hotel Casa Blanca played a significant role in the town’s role as the premier recreational retreat from the urban city life for middle-class African Americans during the era of Jim Crow. Its capital project grant will help secure its structural integrity and anchor the economic redevelopment of Idlewild. In New Orleans, the Dew Drop Inn was known as the “south’s swankiest night spot” in the mid-1900s and acted as a symbol of the enterprising spirit of Black business; its grant will help create a new immersive exhibition on its history.
“Grants supporting projects designed by Black architects and at HBCUs will better acknowledge the power and creativity of those who have shaped and stewarded spaces and experiences that build more just communities,” says Justin Garrett Moore, program officer for the Humanities in Place program at the Mellon Foundation. “By elevating these places through much-needed organizational capacity, technical assistance, capital funding, and programming, these projects will help tell a fuller American story.”
The Action Fund also encourages the public to learn more about these historic sites and consider donating to their specific needs. Learn more at savingplaces.org/actionfund.
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