Carl Westmoreland

Carl B. Westmoreland is an American community organizer, preservationist, and senior historian at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.[1] In 1967, he was one of the founding members of the Mount Auburn Good Housing Foundation, with money provided by private donations.[2] The purpose of the Mount Auburn Good Housing Foundation was partly in response to the "rampant crime, decrepit housing owned by absentee landlords, and no influence within City Hall" and one of the best ways to improve these circumstances was to "help more young people by helping them find a decent place to live and getting them jobs."[3]

Throughout his distinguished career, in addition to serving African American communities throughout Cincinnati, he would also go on to become the "first African American to serve on the National Trust for Historic Preservation." Carl Westmoreland is currently Senior Historian, and a founding staff person of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. In his work at the Freedom Center, her has been involved in researching the history of the Internal Slave Trade and the historic role that class, gender, race and slavery have played on contemporary political, social and economic issues. He attempts to use historic research that often explores the unpleasant as a positive tool that can bring resolution to diverse communities. In addition to the research generated by the demand of his speeches, he was the Curator of the Freedom Center's largest exhibit, a Slave Pen. Slave pens were used as 1 million enslaved African in America were shipped from coastal states to Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. The Pen is one of the few still in existence. Westmoreland also advises the senior staff on national and international freedom issues. In addition to having overseen millions of dollars in community restoration projects, Carl Westmoreland has taught as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Cincinnati (Graduate School of Community Planning), traveled, studied, and lectured in Poland, Italy, Germany, China and Mexico. He has lectured to a wide audience from neighborhood groups, churches, leader of U. S. and Mexican governments and to executives of major corporations in America. Carl Westmoreland has served as an editorial writer for a major newspaper, reviewed books for major publishers, and lectured at major American universities. A major focus of his civic work has been bringing attention to the leaders of all races the cross-cultural importance of the physical preservation of the African American Church. Westmoreland has served as the keynote speaker at the 36th bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama and successfully lobbied the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the mid 1990s to declare Black Churches an Endangered American Historic Resource. He has also assisted Black churches in historic buildings to secure listings on the National Register of Historic Places such as the Union Baptist Cemetery in Cincinnati, and the Saint James African Methodist Episcopal Church and Cemetery in Havre De Grace, Maryland. "[4]