An Historic Gift for Black Preservation
Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott’s $20 million gift to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is one of the largest ever received by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The historic Vernon AME Church in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is one of the recipients of restoration funds from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
Photographer: Christopher Creese/Bloomberg
In the aftermath of the 2017 white power rally and fatal terror attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, the National Trust for Historic Preservation launched a campaign to create a more accurate accounting of the full diversity of preservation-worthy U.S. buildings and places. With $25 million in funding, this new African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund set out to identify and save scores of sites important to Black history and American culture.
This week, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott nearly doubled that fund. Included in the $2.7 billion in charitable giving that she announced on Tuesday was a $20 million gift to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. It’s the largest non-capital gift ever received by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and one of the largest donations in the history of the U.S. preservation movement.