Advocacy
New York City, NY.
May 2023
Support the local landmarking of the last remaining colored school in the borough of Manhattan, located in its Chelsea neighborhood!
Harlem-based independent scholar and author Eric K. Washington has been advocating for the landmarking of Former Colored School No. 4 since 2019.
To support Colored School No. 4, please send written testimony by 5pm on Fri., May 19, 2023, to testimony@lpc.nyc.gov.
How to send written testimony/letters on the city's website: click here.
New to writing a preservation commission testimony for a potential landmark? No worries.
Watch the Proposed Designation Hearing before the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, held on April 25, 2023: click here.
Change.org petition organized by Eric K. Washington: click here.
St. Helena Island, South Carolina.
April 2023
Brooklyn, NY. December 2022
If you can, please support the United Order of Tents, a historic Black women's aid group with a history as far back as their support of the Underground Railroad in Brooklyn, NY, as they fundraise for $250,000 to preserve their Brooklyn Headquarters.
To donate, visit their gofundme site - click here.
To watch a documentary about their history, click here.
Visit their website, click here.
Black in Historic Preservation's
Letter of Support for the
Montpelier Descendants Committee
New York, New York, April 11, 2022 — We, the members of Black in Historic Preservation, people who are descendants of Black and Indigenous people enslaved by Europeans in the United States who are practitioners and students of historic preservation around the world, support the Montpelier Descendants Committee (MDC). We support their efforts in telling a fuller history about their 300+ ancestors who James Madison, Sr., and then President James Madison and his wife, and Dolley Madison enslaved, whose families they separated, tortured, and sold for their own financial benefit and status. We stand in support of their work and current efforts in reinstating the much-celebrated board of directors structural parity, i.e., 50 percent board membership with The Montpelier Foundation (TMF).
Descendant communities have as much, if not more of a say in the practice and governance of places of contention, i.e., plantations, i.e., forced labor camps of the United States. The rejection of structural parity by TMF is unacceptable and does not honor the legacy of the people enslaved by James and Dolley Madison who built and maintained Montpelier.
We celebrate MDC in organizing themselves as a 501(c)3, an effort that shows their commitment to self-determination. We honor them in their request to TMF to issue a statement following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in 2020 that told a fuller story about James Madison. And, we call upon TMF to reinstate the structural parity that grants MDC the autonomy to select among their contingency the board members for their representation, which is the just thing to do.
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Black in Historic Preservation (BiHP) is a program of kennedy Whiters and Associates, LLC. In February 2021, it premiered with the launch of the Black Preservationists Directory. Since then, it has produced a Job Board that is a resource of equitable practices in hiring.
Revision posted on April 12, 2022 at 1:30pm EST: Previous version of the letter published on April 11, 2022, incorrectly stated in the concluding sentence, “reinstate the structural parity that grants TMF the autonomy…” instead of as it now reads, “reinstate the structural parity that grants MDC the autonomy…”. Thank you for the revision and grace for the mistake. The statement now reads in full support of MDC.