Black Grassroots Heritage Preservation Network

Year one looks like this.

Five organizations united by one shared belief—that the stories rooted in Black community, land, and memory deserve to be preserved, shared, and valued.

Black Grassroots Heritage Preservation Network was built in community, with organizations who share that conviction—and we’re just getting started.

Swipe to meet our year one collaborators 👉🏾

Black in Historic Preservation (). Culture Keepers Circle (). Urbanist Media (). Network. KR Design Studio (.designstudio). National Preservation Partners Network.

These are the organizations that support our work—the ones we learn from, build with, and grow alongside.

Today, we’re introducing BGHPN’s Advisory Board.

Ann Chinn, founder and Program Director of the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project, has spent decades doing the deep work of descendant community engagement and public memory—rooted in the histories of enslavement, migration, and resistance.

Shana Crosson brings 30 years of experience in public history and geospatial technology, using historical GIS and interactive mapping to make grassroots preservation histories more accessible and grounded in place.

Kathryn De Shields-Moon, Director of Programming at the Bellevue Passage Museum, brings expertise in media, technology, and audience engagement—connecting communities to their histories through innovative, meaningful programming.

The next phase of BGHPN is about deepening—deeper community engagement, stronger digital infrastructure, more powerful tools for mapping and storytelling. They’re part of the team helping us get there.

Swipe to meet them. 👉🏾

Today officially marks one year of BGHPN—and we can think of no better way to celebrate than by introducing the people helping shape what comes next.

Before formalizing our board, we convened a community-led visioning process that unfolded over several months—asking the people already doing grassroots preservation work across this country what this network should be, who it should serve, and how it should be held accountable.

The board you’re about to meet is the direct outcome of that process.

An intergenerational group of community organizers and grassroots preservationists whose organizations and experience span museums, historic homes, anti-gentrification work, housing advocacy, and community sustainability efforts across different regions of the United States.

Swipe to meet the people leading the BGHPN. ➡️

Today, we’re focusing on a year of the Black Preservation Stories Podcast.

Wherever possible, we show up in person.

That means travel. Whether that’s a five-hour round-trip by car or catching flights. Alabama. Florida. Massachusetts. Pennsylvania. North Carolina. South Carolina. New York. Mississippi. Maryland. Just to name a few.

It means walking the community, witnessing the work firsthand, sharing meals, and building relationships that don’t end when the recorder turns off. We always aim for the interview to be the first conversation, not the last.

Interested in place-based storytelling? Join us on the 26th for a conversation on place-based podcasting with Urbanist Media. Link in bio.

Swipe for a behind-the-scenes look at where we’ve been, the people, groups, and communities who trusted us with their stories, how far some conversations went, and some hints about what’s coming next. 👉🏾

Know a story that needs to be told? Reach out—we want to hear from you.

One year ago this week, the Black Grassroots Heritage Preservation Network launched.

We’re still here—and grateful for everyone who made that possible.
The Black Preservation Stories Podcast, where everyday voices tell the history that doesn’t always make it into the record. The Roots Across America interactive map—making visible what we’ve always known: this work is happening everywhere, and the people doing it deserve to find each other. Organizers. Historians. Everyday people protecting Black heritage in their own communities.

And the network itself is growing—more people, more partnerships, more communities doing this work together inspired by a calling and a moral vision.

None of this happened alone. This week, we’re and sharing and celebrating not just what we’re building, but how we do the work, and with whom.

Stay tuned all week. We’re sharing the stories, the people, and the work behind this first year.

Black history lives in communities. In grassroots museums. In the places mainstream institutions overlook.

Marcus Smith, Founder of the Black Grassroots Heritage Preservation Network (), and Deqah Hussein-Wetzel, Founder and Director of Urbanist Media ()(), are coming together for Place-Based Podcasting—a live community building event rooted in Black cultural heritage, memory, preservation, and community care.

Our organizations share overlapping missions and audiences, and a shared conviction that Black stories, told by Black people, are how community memory survives. Not just the tangible artifacts of history —but the intangible stories of the people who gave those places meaning. This conversation is an extension of that ongoing relationship and collaboration.

Podcasting is one of the ways we do this work—one medium among many for documenting, archiving, and bringing community voices into the historical record where they belong.

Public history and cultural preservation in conversation—about the stories worth telling, the places worth protecting, and the communities at the center of it all.

Free and open to all.
Link in bio.🎙️

What does it mean not only to preserve a historic home, but to sustain a tradition of Black creativity, reflection, and renewal?

In Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Five Acres—the home and writing cabin of poet, diplomat, NAACP leader—served as a retreat from the demands of public life. Johnson’s “National Hymn,” later widely known as “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and recognized today as the iconic Black National Anthem, became one of the most enduring works in African American cultural history. Purchased in 1926, Five Acres became a place where Johnson could write, rest, and imagine beyond the pressures of racism, politics, and public life. Nearly a century later, after the property fell into disrepair and faced possible demolition, Jill Rosenberg-Jones—literary executor of the James Weldon Johnson estate—and her husband Rufus E. Jones Jr. acquired and revived the site, turning Five Acres into a growing center for preserving Johnson’s life and work through the James Weldon Johnson Foundation ().

In this episode, Co-Founders Jill Rosenberg Jones and Rufus E. Jones Jr. reflect on Jill’s discovery of the deteriorating property in 2011, the launch of an artist residency in 2017 inspired by Johnson’s belief that “no people can be deemed inferior who produce great art and literature,” and their vision for a future Center for Culture and Convening. Together, we explore preservation as stewardship, rest as resistance, and the evolving public memory surrounding the “National Hymn.”

BGHPN.org / jamesweldonjohnson.org

(S2E6) Five Acres, Still Singing: The James Weldon Johnson Foundation What does it mean not only to preserve a historic home, but to sustain a tradition of Black creativity, reflection, and renewal? In Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Five Acres—the home and writing cabin of poet, diplomat, NAACP leader, and “National Hymn” author James Weldon Johnson—served a...

How can historic sites draw on the Revolutionary War and the often-overlooked role of Black participants to create meaningful conversations about race and historical memory in the present?

April 20, Massachusetts commemorates Patriot’s Day—marking the 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord that ignited the American Revolution. It also marks the seasonal reopening of the Robbins House Museum () in Concord, a site that challenges us to expand the story of American freedom.

Built around 1800 for the children of Caesar Robbins—a formerly enslaved man who secured his freedom by fighting in the Revolution—the House is one of the few surviving structures in New England linked to a Black Revolutionary War veteran. For generations, it was home to free Black families whose lives reflected, landownership, education, and antislavery activism in the in a nation still struggling to uphold its founding ideals.

When the house faced demolition in the early 2000s, residents rallied to preserve it—not just as a structure, but as a vessel for lives and legacies that disrupt dominant founding narratives. Their efforts transformed the Robbins House into a museum that now anchors Concord’s evolving reckoning with race, memory, and historical truth.

In this episode, Executive Director Jen Turner and Board Co-Chairs Nikki Turpin and Joe Palumbo reflect on the grassroots effort to save the house, the campaign to rename Concord’s middle school for civil rights activist and educator Ellen Garrison, and the broader work of honoring and preserving Black life in early New England. Together, we explore how myth and memory shape American identity—and the urgency of including Black history within the nation’s founding narrative as the U.S. nears its 250th anniversary.

(S2E5) Stand Up for Ellen: The Robbins House and Black History at the Birthplace of the American Revolution How can historic sites draw on the Revolutionary War and the often-overlooked role of Black participants to create meaningful conversations about race and historical memory in the present? April 20, Massachusetts commemorates Patriot’s Day—marking the 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord that i...