Brent Leggs

In the 21st century a national discussion of the role of monuments in preserving and perpetuating a racist view of the United States' history turned into sometimes violent attacks on historical monuments glorifying Confederate soldiers and politicians. In 2017 protests and counterprotests at Charlottesville, Virginia, led to the death of Heather Heyer. National outrage made this an exceptional event that remains a reference point in various aspects of US culture, including historical preservation.[2][9]

Following this event, in 2018 Leggs wrote in Essence about the history of saving sites significant to African American history and the multifaceted importance of doing so. He credited the National Association of Colored Women, led by Mary B. Talbert, for "inaugurating the Black preservation movement" by preserving Frederick Douglass' home in Washington a century earlier.[10][2] Pointing out that the National Trust for Historic Preservation was "chartered by Congress in 1949 to help tell the full American story," Leggs concluded that "when the past is blanched and distorted through lack of diversity and representation, it affects both our understanding of today’s issues and our capacity to grow in the future."[10]

In this context, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund came into existence "to move the narrative beyond confederate heritage and ensure the preservation of national treasures integral to the full African American story."[11] Leggs sees the Fund's activities as playing a role in "reconstructing" America's national identity.[11]

"The largest-ever campaign to preserve African-American historic sites," in its first year it "received more than eight hundred applications requesting nearly ninety-one million dollars in grants."[2] Set up as a multi-year effort[10] with funding from public and private sources, it does not receive federal support since "the federal government stopped allocating funds to the National Trust in 1997."[2] Leggs has been responsible for much of the Fund's financial support, persuading both wealthy individuals and mainstream nonprofits such as the JPB Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to contribute.[2]

Side effects of the Fund's activities include training young people in the skills needed for preservation work and developing research on the role of preservation of historical sites for community resilience. The Fund uses these results as leverage to persuade policy makers and community leaders to recognize the value of preservation work.[6][11] Understanding "the economics of historic preservation" to be both profitable as well as costly, Leggs and the Action Fund help communities wanting to save historic space find "adaptive reuses" for such spaces that often challenge traditional notions of what historical preservation is about.[2]

"Along with elevating forgotten places," Leggs has written, the Fund aims "to reveal the hidden, and sometimes willfully obscured, layers of history at all historic sites."[10] This has involved retroactively adding information to existing recognized historical sites that might previously have ignored significant African American history associated with them, especially where the history of slavery in the United States is concerned.[2] The foundation for this retroactive move might be seen nearly two decades earlier, when Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., added language to an appropriations bill "encouraging" the National Park Service, as part of its US heritage tourism activities, to "acknowledge" the role of institutionalized slavery "in all of their public displays and multimedia educational presentations."[2]

While he may be "typically contacted to help preserve something" that may have deteriorated badly, in 2013 Leggs got involved with ongoing attempts to save Shockoe Bottom in Richmond, VA, a place where much of the archaeological remains had been destroyed.[2] The Fund accepts as a principle that historical sites may remain important to cultural memory even in such cases, perhaps especially so in the case of African American history.[2]

The appearance of the award-winning film Green Book in 2018 drew attention to The Negro Motorist Green Book. Sites listed there are part of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund's future plans and its current call for financial support.[12] Awards are announced annually. In 2019 new sites receiving support included Langston Hughes‘ house in Harlem, NYC; The Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, NY; Satchel Paige's home in Kansas City, Missouri; the Emmett Till Memorial Commission in Sumner, Mississippi; The Forum in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood; the African Meeting House in Boston, MA; and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.[13]