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African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund announces $3.8 million in 2023 grants to preserve 40 historic sites

2023-06-13T17:43:00-04:00

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has announced $3.8 million in 2023 grant funding to protect and preserve 40 sites representing African American history. Established in 2017, the Action Fund, which has raised more than $95 million, is the largest U.S. fund dedicated to preserving historic African American sites.

Since its inception, the Action Fund has received a total of 5,638 funding proposals requesting $655 million. The program has been able to support 242 grantee projects through its investment of $20 million.

2023 grant site: Morgan State University’s Jenkins Hall in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo: Troy Pumphrey Jr., image courtesy National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“The Action Fund’s investment in and celebration of 40 historic African American places illustrates our belief that historic preservation plays an important role in American society,” said Brent Leggs, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund exe...

Hood Century's solitary quest to preserve Black modernist heritage is spurring social media users to action

2023-01-18T13:20:00-05:00

Jerald Cooper, who lives in Cincinnati, wants to recognize and help preserve modern architecture and interior design that have added to the aesthetic and culture of many Black communities. His aim is to make architecture and design more accessible by using layman’s language to break down barriers typically set up by white academics with advanced degrees, and educate more people who are now empowered through social media to comment on the structural beauty of a modernist tower.

The music industry marketing consultant started the passion project after a treasured local West End church was demolished in order to make room for Populous’ $250 million new Cincinnati F.C. stadium in 2019, an act which he calls “infrastructural trauma.” Since then, he has grown an online audience of more than 83,000 followers with his Instagram account Hood Century, offering analysis that breaks down Black modernism into three categories: made for, handed down, and claimed.

The effort places him in line with others, such as the newly-funded Conserving Black Modernism project from the Getty and National Trust for Historic Preservation. Jerald Cooper represents the potential for social media adept architecture aficionados to combat what he called a “lack of knowing” in their own communities. As the former USC architecture dean Milton Curry says, “the complex story of Modernism cannot be fully revealed without new research on its impacts in and on the Black communities that it has t...

New $3.1 million Conserving Black Modernism grant program announced by the Getty Foundation and National Trust for Historic Preservation

2022-09-19T14:37:00-04:00

The Getty Foundation together with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has announced the commitment of $3.1 million in the form of institutional grants to individuals and organizations that are working to preserve the legacy of historic modern architecture designed by Black architects nationwide.

Under the title Conserving Black Modernism, the two-year grant program, part of a larger $80 million effort overseen by the Action Fund, will support the documentation of 16 overlooked sites across the country while providing useful preservation training and storytelling resources to their future stewards.

The Getty says they are remiss at not including any works by one of America’s many underappreciated Black designers in its otherwise successful Keeping It Modern initiative and will look to address this absence with a new program that helps enshrine their contributions to what became the most defining architectural movement of the ...