Applying for historic designations can be a long and tedious process, hampered by the need to do a lot of research. Cincinnati Preservation will use a just-awarded grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to compile important information to help speed up the application process.
The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust, awarded the $50,000 grant that's being combined with an additional $15,000 grant from the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation for the work.
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"The National Register, which is the national listing of historic sites and historic buildings throughout the country, has less than 2% of sites associated with Black history, and so this fund and this program (were) set up specifically to help make that more equitable and to raise the awareness and raise the amount of sites associated with Black history that are recognized and celebrated," says Beth Johnson, executive director of Cincinnati Preservation.
The organization aims to complete a year-long context study. It will collate all kinds of background information on education, religion, civil rights, politics, businesses, and more. Local groups with ties to Black and African American history can then use that information to put their sites into context when applying for historic designation.
"Whenever you write a designation report, whether it's for the National Register or locally, you have to put a historic site in the context of its history," Johnson explains. "If you're talking about religion, you'll need to understand what the context of religion as a whole is within the Greater Cincinnati region, and then you talk specifically about that site. What this does (is) it creates that context. Then when people do these nominations and designations, they only have to really concentrate on talking about their site and not doing all of that other background information."
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Johnson says Cincinnati Preservation is focusing on the region within the I-275 loop for now, but she acknowledges there are lots of sites beyond that with important significance.
"Through our Black Sites Initiative, which started in 2022, and through the work of mostly volunteers ... we've identified almost 200 sites already," she says, adding, "but we know that that's just the tip of the iceberg."
