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.

“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 executive director and National Trust for Historic Preservation senior vice president. 

“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,” added Leggs. “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.”

New to this year’s announcement is a focus on conserving modernist structures designed by Black architects. In the first grant round, eight historic structures will receive $1.2 million to help advance long-term preservation planning. The funding is part of the Conserving Black Modernism partnership led by the Action Fund with support from the Getty Foundation.

In addition, this year’s grant funding will also focus on the preservation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Through the Action Fund’s HBCU Cultural Heritage Stewardship Initiative, six HBCUs will receive close to $700,000 in funding to ensure the protection of their cultural assets. 

“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,” said Getty Foundation director Joan Weinstein. “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.”

Action Fund grant amounts range from $50,000 to $150,000, supporting preservation efforts across four categories. They are Building Capital, which supports the restoration and rehabilitation of cultural assets important to Black history; Increasing Organizational Capacity, which aims to provide leadership staff positions within nonprofits stewarding Black heritage sites; Project Planning and Development, which will fund planning activities tied to the development of preservation plans, feasibility studies, and fundraising; and Programming and Education, which will advance storytelling through public education and creative interpretation.

“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,” said 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’s 2023 list of grantees includes sites such as Idlewild’s Hotel Casa Blanca in Michigan, the Charles McAfee Swimming Pool and Pool House, and Tuskegee University. The complete list of grantees can be viewed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s website here.