The Black Georgetown Foundation—formally the Mt. Zion / Female Union Band Historic Memorial Park, Inc.—is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation, stewardship, and interpretation of the historic Mt. Zion and Female Union Band Society Cemeteries in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Founded in 2005, the Foundation works to protect these sacred burial grounds—among the oldest Black cemeteries in the nation, where free and enslaved African Americans were laid to rest beginning in the early nineteenth century—and to honor the generations of Black residents whose lives shaped Georgetown and the broader city.

Through preservation, commemoration, and public education, the organization ensures that these landscapes of memory remain vital sites of historical reflection. By safeguarding the cemeteries and elevating their stories, the Foundation affirms the enduring legacy of Black Georgetown and its central place in the history of Washington, D.C.

The Black Grassroots Heritage Preservation Network (BGHPN) is a national initiative documenting, amplifying, and supporting Black-led grassroots preservation efforts across the United States. Through oral history, multimedia storytelling, and digital humanities tools, BGHPN centers communities working to preserve cultural memory, protect historic spaces, and sustain place-based histories overlooked or excluded from dominant preservation frameworks.

Its core platforms—including the Black Preservation Stories podcast, narrative writing, and the Black Roots Across America interactive map (a growing database of 400+ projects)—serve as tools for advocacy, public education, and community-building. BGHPN works to connect preservationists, strengthen networks of support, challenge inequities in the field, and expand access, visibility, and long-term sustainability for Black cultural heritage initiatives nationwide.

Black Heritage Cache is an experiential history platform dedicated to reshaping how the African American experience is understood and engaged. Through a blend of storytelling, place‑based experiences, and cultural interpretation, the platform transforms heritage into a living journey. By preserving the porch stories that anchor the collective memory of African Americans, this community creates a space where those stories can continue to be heard.

Black Pearls of Genealogy (BPOG) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to honoring Black history through memorialization, genealogy, education, and public history. At the heart of its mission are the BPOG Memorial Projects, which create lasting tributes to overlooked ancestors, historic communities, and people whose lives and contributions deserve permanent recognition. Through these memorials, BPOG works to restore dignity, preserve truth, and ensure that names, stories, and legacies are not lost to time.

In addition to its memorial work, BPOG provides free online genealogy tools, digital archives, educational resources, cemetery mapping, and culturally grounded research support that help individuals and communities reconnect with their ancestral roots. Founded by David Anthony Taylor, BPOG brings together remembrance and research to make Black history visible, accessible, and enduring for future generations. 

The Brister English Project is dedicated to illuminating the rich heritage of American Descendants of chattel slavery, fostering self-discovery and unity through genealogical exploration. Its mission is to provide an inclusive, supportive platform that celebrates ancestral roots, strengthens cultural bonds, and inspires future generations to embrace their unique legacy with pride and purpose.

Central Louisiana African American Historical Society is dedicated to documenting, promoting, and preserving African American history and culture in central Louisiana and beyond, through programs, events, and the preservation of artifacts and architecture; and to encourage and facilitate research that fosters appreciation and understanding of America’s historical and cultural diversity.

The mission of Chesapeake Heartland: An African American Humanities Project is to preserve, digitize, interpret, and make accessible materials related to African American history and culture from Kent County, Maryland, and across Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Launched through a collaboration between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and Washington College’s Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the project has grown into a regional network of descendant-led organizations, churches, schools, and archival partners. Since 2020, it has digitized thousands of items, supported by more than 100 community contributors to the digital archive and more than 200 student workers.

The Clotilda Descendants Association (CDA) was founded by descendants of the Africans brought to Alabama aboard the Clotilda in 1860, the last known ship to illegally transport enslaved people to the U.S. Based in Africatown, Alabama, the CDA is dedicated to preserving, protecting, and sharing the history, culture, and legacy of the Clotilda survivors and their descendants.

The Contraband Historical Society is a public history organization dedicated to preserving and sharing the story of the Civil War–era “contrabands”—enslaved African Americans who liberated themselves by seeking refuge with Union forces, particularly at places like Fort Monroe. Centered in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, the organization works at the intersection of historical research, community engagement, and descendant-led storytelling to ensure that this pivotal chapter in American history is both visible and accurately understood.

Through educational programming, exhibitions, genealogical initiatives, and descendant outreach projects, the Contraband Historical Society elevates the lives and legacies of Freedom’s First Generation while fostering connections among their descendants today. By grounding its work in community memory and lived experience, the organization not only preserves the past but also creates space for descendants to shape how that history is interpreted, honored, and carried forward.

The Dark Branch Descendants Association (DBDA) is a North Carolina-based non-profit dedicated to protecting the community of Dark Branch, a historic African American freedom settlement in Brunswick County. It works to preserve local history, including the Dark Branch Cemetery, and represents descendants of those enslaved on or affiliated with the Lilliput, Kendall, Orton, and The Oaks plantations.

The Deep Greenwood Foundation supports descendants of Greenwood through advocacy, education, preservation, and economic programs. Our mission is to protect its legacy, honor its history, and ensure its future remains in the hands of those connected to its roots.

The Museum of Healing and Reconciliation (MHR) is a public history, research, and community-engaged initiative based in northern Ghana. It is dedicated to documenting, preserving, and interpreting the histories and enduring legacies of inland slavery, slave raiding, and colonial violence in West Africa.

Grounded in extensive fieldwork in northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso, the museum centers the experiences of communities historically affected by slave raids—communities whose histories have often been marginalized within dominant narratives of the transatlantic slave trade. By shifting attention from coastal sites of departure to inland sites of capture, resistance, and survival, MHR seeks to expand global understandings of slavery and its afterlives.

The G. C. and Frances Hawley Museum®—also known as I Remember Our History®—is a virtual museum and archival initiative dedicated to uncovering, preserving, and sharing the often-overlooked histories of Black families in North Carolina and across the United States. Founded in 2017 in response to the persistent absence of Black representation in traditional state collections, the museum serves as a digital clearinghouse for family histories, cultural memory, and community narratives.

History Before Us, founded by award-winning filmmaker and mental health counselor Frederick Murphy, is a documentary and content creation platform dedicated to preserving and sharing often-overlooked stories of African American history, culture, and resilience. It highlights grassroots history through site visits, interviews, and documentarie.

Kinfolkology is an open archive, database collective, and collaborative community dedicated to remembering enslaved ancestors as kin and kindred. Kinfolkology integrates datawork with rootwork and research with care, guided by an understanding that while enslaved ancestors are no longer living, they were and are part of communities and families that are very much alive.

Our Mammy’s is a Louisiana-based public history and genealogy initiative dedicated to preserving and sharing the stories of African American communities through genealogy, storytelling, and historical interpretation. Rooted in founder Gaynell Brady’s own ancestral history, the organization brings overlooked histories to life by centering the experiences of domestic workers, caregivers, laborers, and everyday people whose lives shaped Louisiana’s past. Through immersive educational programming, genealogy workshops, and community engagement, Our Mammy’s makes African American history visible, personal, and unforgettable for audiences of all ages.

The Ruby and Calvin Fletcher African-American History Museum is Connecticut’s first dedicated African-American history museum. Opened in October 2021 by Jeffrey Fletcher to honor his parents, it offers immersive, chronological tours from 1619 to the present.

Sankofa: Cimarroneando el Archivo emerged in 2024 at the intersection of visual arts and research, rooted in the project Blackness in Resistance: Territory and Regime Violence in Uruguay, initiated in 2020 by historical geographer Ana Laura Zavala Guillén. Her work within colonial archives opens into the study of histories of fugitivity of women in the Río de la Plata, in dialogue with Afro-Uruguayan artists Karen Antúnez, Yully Da Chaga, and Mary Porto Casas. From this encounter, the collective was formed: a space where research becomes a practice of acuerpamiento, and where the archive is engaged through the activation of the descendants’ personal and inherited memories as forms of knowledge through visual arts. Their practice analyses maroon geographies of resistance while enabling processes of re-existence for their descendants and for those who are no longer present.

Rooted in the Adinkra principle of Sankofa — returning to the past to reclaim what is necessary to transform the present — the collective draws from decolonial thought and decolonial feminisms from Abya Yala. Within this framework, Sankofa: Marooning the Archive develops practices of marooning the archive that foreground and preserve historical fugitive knowledge while making it visible in creative formats, opening space for revision, relation, and continuity.

The Shelton Heritage Society of Georgia & Historic Possum Trot is dedicated to researching, honoring, and preserving the legacy of Hardy and Mary Bearden Shelton and their descendants, including the 1874 founding of a settlement in what is now known as Possum Trot, the Shelton Family Cemetery, post-emancipation life in Coosa, Georgia, and descendant-established landholding and community-building history.

The Slave Dwelling Project, founded by Joseph McGill in 2010, identifies, preserves, and documents extant 17th-to-19th-century slave dwellings across the U.S.. By organizing overnight stays in these spaces, the project aims to bring attention to overlooked history, foster conversations about the legacy of slavery, and support Descendant communities.

The Slave Dwelling Project envisions a future in which the hearts and minds of Americans acknowledge a more truthful and inclusive narrative of the history of the nation that honors the contributions of all our people, is embedded and preserved in the buildings and artifacts of people of African heritage, and inspires all Americans to acknowledge their Ancestors.

The Slave Legacy History Coalition is a consortium of individuals, organizations, and institutions engaged in the preservation and promotion of the history of enslaved New Englanders.

Stopping Stones is a national place-based public art program that brings together local partners to honor the memories of enslaved individuals in the locations where they lived, worked, or prayed. Through brass and stone micro-monuments and multivocal, community-based installation ceremonies, Stopping Stones bring these stories to life. The program informs and engages residents in support of local efforts towards racial healing, reparative justice, and greater equity.

Founded and curated by Tealoni Butler, Teary Eyed Archive is an independent archive documenting lost and resold Black family photographs.