 Well, I want to thank everyone for joining us today for the National Trust for Historic Preservation Virtual Preservation Month event. I'm Brent Legg, the Executive Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust. I'm delighted to be joined by the legendary Miss Felicia Rashad. Today's event is sponsored by American Express and hosted by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. We thank American Express for their continued generosity and support. For those of you that are on social media, please feel free to tweet and share on social using the hashtag at Saving Places and at Tell the Full History. And for those listening by phone, please place your phone on mute. I appreciate that very much. Our conversation today will explore the power of preservation. Historic African American places that inspire all of us to build a better world and why the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund matters. From personal stories that connect us to place to the important role that all Americans can play to help tell a more inclusive American story, this interview and conversation will amplify the critical importance of preserving African American historic places. Before we begin, I want to formally introduce our noted guest. Whether he is entertaining audiences on stage and screen, breaking new ground as a director, or teaching the next generation of artists, Felicia Rashad is one of the entertainment world's most extraordinary performing artists. Felicia Rashad became a household name which he portrayed, Claire Hustable, on the coffee show, a character whose enduring appeal has earned her numerous honors and awards for over two decades. While television was a catalyst in the rise of her career, she has also been a force on the stage, appearing both on and off Broadway, often in projects that showcase her musical talent, such as Jelly's Last Gem, Into the Wood, Dream Girl, and The Wiz. Felicia made her critically acclaimed directorial debut at the Seattle Film Theatre with August Wilson, Gem of the Ocean. Felicia received both the drama Desk and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her riveting performance as Lena Younger in the Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. In 2016, Felicia was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. And as important, Felicia is the co-chair and brand ambassador of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Thank you, Felicia, for joining us today. Thank you, Brent. Thank you very much. How are you? How are you? I like talking to you. We always have a great conversation. I'm looking forward to this one. Yeah, same thing here. And I remember the first time that we met. And I instantly knew when Randy Bryant made introductions to you that you were so generous by covering your own expenses to meet us at our headquarters in D.C. And when we first connected and to learn about your personal connection to preservation, it was inspiring. But before we get into your intro to preservation, and I can share my story as well, how are you spending your time during these challenging moments with COVID-19? Well, like everybody, I've spent a lot of time at home. It's allowed me to clean cabinets and drawers and drive it. Important work. Important work. Don't discount. It's very important work. I've also made some contributions to programs to help feed people. And I participated in a number of Zoom chats and calls for 2020 graduates. I had a couple of classes, a Zoom class with Carnegie Mellon, and another conversation with a great number of students at SCAD, South Carolina School of Art and Design. Yeah. Very good. Cool. Yeah. Cooking, cooking. Cooking. It's really been a time of immersion in endomesticity, yes, but also a time of reflection too. This time reveals so many things, and it really puts to the forefront of our awareness what is right with the world and what's not so right with the world and how simplicity is best and things we can do to move the world forward in a better way, to create a better world. And one of the things that I see so very, very clearly is going back to this word simplicity. People used to live very simply, and they lived well. And I'm thinking right now about my grandfathers, especially my grandfather Papa Ed from Chester, South Carolina, who really took issue with family members who left the South to go to New York. He said, why are y'all going up there? Why are you going up there? You're going starved to death. And he was right because it wasn't growing any food in New York City. And Chester, like a number of southern communities, you know, in their yards, people had teach trees and they grew tomatoes and bees. You know, it's just living simply, you know, living simply. So I had a lot of time to think about living simply. Yeah, that's beautiful. Well, the one thing that I have done is learn how to cook. And I have not been in my adult life a big cook, but I am learning to enjoy the process of being in the kitchen and cooking a good meal. All right. All right. Is that an invitation? Is that an invitation? It's an invitation, yes. You can be my guinea pig. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, Felicia, we have asked our viewers to submit questions. And I want to open this up with a question from one of the viewers who wrote. They said, thank you, Ms. Rashad, for being associated with a power of preservation. How and when did you realize your interest or passion? Oh, well, I... I would say, really, truthfully, my passion was with the purchase of the historic state of Brainerd Institute in Chester, South Carolina. This is a school that was founded by the Presbytery in the late 1800s for the freed descendants of African slaves. My mother attended. Her parents attended. Her grandparents attended. And as a child, I used to play on that campus all the time. It wasn't a school anymore. It was empty buildings, but I loved it. I loved the place. And in kind of the exact year, my mother would get very annoyed with me. But she called me to her house and she said, the brain of the state has come up for sale. And somebody plans to put some cheap apartments on it. And she looked me in the eye and she said, somebody ought to do something. And she said... All the action. And somebody ought to do something. So I knew who somebody was and I knew what it was I was supposed to do. And I was very thankful to be able to do it. To just make that purchase and to offer it to my mother's 501c3. My mother, Vivian Ayers, well, the little background. My mother is a poet and an arts activist. And she was on the advisory council to the National Endowment for the Arts. So always very active in this way. So that's when I realized my passion for it. Because even after making the gift to her, I remained actively involved in assisting her in getting to people and places she needed to be to help her to restore that one remaining building. Wow. Well, Sendar, thank you to your mother for introducing you to preservation and tell us a little bit about Brainerd Institute. Why does Brainerd matter and what's the big dream for the future of this place? Well, it matters like I just told you because of my family history that's connected to it. But also the number of families in York County and Chester County are connected to the history of this property. As I mentioned before, it was founded by the Presbyterian late 1800s. There were two missionaries. It's always the same story, whether it's the Gullah Islands or whether it's Brainerd. Two female missionaries who came and started this school in a one room schoolhouse. And Chester was a rural community. In my mother's youth, it was a mill town. So this is how the school began and there was no education for black people in the area. There was no education. There was no free education. There was no education. So this was the education and it went from kindergarten all the way to high school graduation. And the graduates, most of them would attend, well, see they'd go to Smith College. No, no, no. I was at Johnson C. Smith in Charlotte, which was a teacher's college. A number of them were becoming teachers. So my mother used to like, my mother loved to regale me with stories about how Ruby B. as a child would come to Chester because her stepmother was a teacher there. And how she played with Ruby D. And they connected again. They connected again and they were friends still. It was really kind of sweet to see. There's a power and a sweetness, you know, because oftentimes in hearing and learning about the history of African-American people, there are so many associations with that which is painful. And that is true. Let's face it. That is true. There's also another aspect of our history. And that is the spirit of activism, of actually doing things to move the next generation forward. You know, simple people who didn't necessarily have an education, but who were insisting that their children be educated and that their children's children be educated. So much of it. When we did a, we did a benefit once in Town Hall. We honored Ivan Van Sertema and Catherine Dunham. And when we extended the invitation to Ivan Van Sertema, you know, Ivan Van Sertema was noted historian. He was out in Princeton. No, he's in Rutgers. Anyway, he said, he had never heard a brain before. And when we told him the story, he got so excited. He said, oh, yes, I will come. I will come. He said, because this is a story that isn't about drudgery. This isn't a story about pain and anger. This is a very positive story and a very true story that extends through generations. And this is a story and a history that needs to be revealed and told again and again and again. Well, that's similar to my introduction to preservation. And I appreciate that you framed us around activism and achievement. So when I was in grad school at the University of Kentucky, I was asked to conduct a statewide inventory of historic Rosenwald schools in my home state. And this is a massive school building program that was envisioned by Booker T. Washington and funded by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. And together they helped to fund the construction of over 5,000 schools in 15 southern states. And during this research project, I learned that my mom and dad attended Rosenwald schools. And I remember learning about this connection and starting to understand that that early moment in my professional development, this quiet power of preservation, that it was a through line to the next generation that the preservation of a Rosenwald school literally helped to keep Booker T. Washington's vision of lifting the black community and that it was real and that I was being directly impacted through my parents attending Rosenwald schools. So for me, places like Rosenwald schools, Brainerd Institute, HBCU, Brown versus Board of Education, buildings, they all were responding to a crisis in black education. So we're not just preserving the physical evidence of our past. We're also preserving that legacy of innovation and partnership and community. Exactly. That's what we do at Brainerd right now. You know, the literacy rate in that area of South Carolina, my mother told me it was like 70 to 75 percent. And we started a preschool literacy program and we started doing it every summer. And it was free. Everything was free. No charges and we got certified teachers to volunteer and we had young people volunteering as assistants. And we had teachers come from Atlanta who were reading recovery specialists to participate. We had a conductor of classical music, Dr. Reginald House. From Charlotte, he would come every single day to expose children to literacy through the arts, through music. It was amazing to see their little eyes light up. Because the one thing we wanted them to learn was that they are smart, that they are capable of learning. And you ask about the future vision, you know, I'd like to see this property restored to education in this way and not just for preschoolers and elementary students and high school students, but also a think tank for teachers and those who are training to be teachers. And we see now that education is going to take a little different kind of turn and we don't know what that turn is going to be. But what is going to be, you know. Yeah, that's a beautiful vision. So I also remember when we first met, I was telling you about our work to create a national monument in Birmingham that would honor the American Civil Rights Movement. And as a centerpiece was the AG Gaston Motel, one of our national treasure campaigns. And I love this place. It's a place that is so important, arguably one of the most important civil rights landmarks in the world. It also has multilayered history, stories of entrepreneurship, arts and culture. But I remember sharing background on our preservation work and you had a personal connection to the AG Gaston Motel. Yes. You remember that as a kid? Yes, as a kid we were traveling, we would travel from Houston to Chester, South Carolina. So you'd make stops along the way. And I remember spending a night at the AG Gaston Motel. I remember that. But one of our viewers has asked this question, what do you remember about Jim Crow in the 1960s that directly impacted your life and determination to succeed? What I remember about Jim Crow was that somewhere in my young mind, I figured out it was limiting not only for African Americans, but for Caucasians as well. I figured that out in my mind. One day I was in the supermarket with a little girl and there were these fountains, white only and colored only. And I've been seeing those things for a long time. So I was looking at it one day and I said to myself, hmm, wonder why that's like that for real? Hmm, I'm going to go taste that water. And I went over to the white only fountain. And that's right from the fountain. And it was the same water. And without being able to fully articulate it the way I can today, what I understood was that humanity had tricked itself. It had tricked itself into not seeing itself fully within itself. And I just thought, well, OK, now this is really dumb. This is really stupid. It never made sense to me. I never understood the reason for it except that it was limiting and it was rooted in stupidity and ignorance. And I was so grateful that my mother reared us the way she did. Because she found ways around that to provide us with all of the lessons that we needed in arts and education. We had literature all over the house because my mother is a writer. She took us to every lecture she attended, knowing we couldn't understand the subject, but took us anyway because we'd be exposed. And when I was 13, she took us out of the country to live for a while. And we went to an international city. We went to live in Mexico City for a while and then I came back. And once again, I just looked around and I thought, there's no truth in this. It's a lie. It's rooted in a lie. And it's hurtful to everybody. Everybody. Even people who think they're on top. It's hurtful to them too. Yeah, in many ways it was a continuous to be, but at that time it was a fight against immorality. And that's why it's so important to preserve places like the Gaston Motel. Places like the home of Nina Simone to be able to amplify and to make sure that voices of the Civil Rights Movement is still being heard today and that people can draw power and inspiration to implement positive social change in our communities. It's so important because this is a time when ordinary people were doing the most extraordinary things. I remember the images you'd see on television in the evening news of what was happening in Mobile, what was happening in Birmingham. I remember those images and it was hurtful to see young people being battered. It was hurtful to see men and women being pulled apart by dogs. It was hurtful to see and then that kind of behavior could be justified in any way was just unthinkable to me. And it is important to preserve the legacy because ultimately what the legacy shows is the transcendent and the power of the human spirit to persevere and move beyond and to create anew. Yeah, that was beautifully said. So I'm going to ask you a question from another viewer and this is related to your hometown in Houston, Texas. Okay. It says, which sites do you wish would have been preserved in Houston, Texas? Oh, oh yeah. Okay. Well, first and foremost was the McGowan YWCA. This wasn't a very extraordinary large entity, but it served very good purpose. It was the site of social and educational activities, high school dances on Friday night, social. And when I was a young girl and my mother was having literary meetings there, she would take us. And what I remember, this was my introduction to Harriet Tubman because the noted artist, John Biggers, had painted a mural. He had painted a mural on a wall that was kind of in the lobby as I remember. So I remember sitting there and I would sit for the entire time my mother was doing whatever she was doing. I would sit looking at this mural and in it was depicted this very strong black woman. And she held a torch in one hand and over her other shoulder was a wounded man. He was draped over her shoulder and she was supporting him with the other arm. She was holding this torch and there were so many people behind her, so many people. And she was leading the way. Just sit and look at it. I was mesmerized by it. And I hadn't read anything about her and she had never been mentioned in school yet. At that point, I was like seven years old or so, but I remember that mural. I remember that. And art is so important because the power and the spirit of her intention and the importance of the mission was coming through that art. It was coming through and I was captivated by it. And when I did finally read about her, which was just maybe a year or two later, when my brother brought home a book from his junior high school library, I was really taken in. But I felt like everything that I was reading, I had already seen. I had already seen in this mural. And I wish that could have been preserved because images are so important. And for young people to have access and exposure to images such as these is so very, very important, I think. Yeah, I agree. And preservation is bigger than just preserving a historic building or landscape. It is the objects and the murals and the art and everything that helps to tell an important story. And another similar project in Houston, Project Row Houses and Rick Lowe and artists. Yeah, I'm sure you've heard about that project, but Rick Lowe was inspired by a bigger painting that depicted shotgun houses in the black community. And when 22 shotgun houses were threatened with demolition in the third ward of Houston, he assembled a community of support and today the Project Row Houses thrives. They preserve these buildings and use it for various community purposes. We'll have to do something on bigger is one of these days to honor him. That would be great. I want to get your. Amplit about the importance of preserving other places associated to art. And I'm thinking when we first launched the action fund in November 2017. We wanted to have substantial impact and we designated for new national treasure campaign. The other three were associated to art, arts and culture for the home of John and Alice Coltrane in New York. It's where John composed the Love Supreme. It's where Alice recorded her first five albums in their basement studio. We also designated Southside Community Art Center in Chicago. Gordon Parks and Margaret Barrows and legends and the Black Arts Renaissance all spent time and created art there. And then of course the birthplace of Nina Simone. So one of our viewers has asked an important question. Why is it significant that artists like yourself help to preserve American history? And what role can artists play in the work of preservation? Oh, you know, I can think of. Okay, first of all, historically speaking in every culture. Art is the great historian. We know about Egyptian culture because of the art. Yeah, we know about Mayan culture, Aztec civilization. We know about all these ancient cultures because of the art because the art survived. They won't let us into those caves in Europe because they have to preserve them. But from the pictures of them, we know a lot about prehistoric man because of the art. Because art is essential to human development. As soon as a child can stand, a child is dancing. Before a child speaks, a child sings. And before a child writes a single word, a child draws a picture. It's fundamental to human development. It's not just entertainment. It is fundamental human expression and it is a great historian. So in contemporary times, we look at artists, Romare Bearden, we look at John Biggers, Elizabeth Katnick. We look at these artists and their creations and their magnificence. And they hold the history of the people within them. You see it and you feel it and it's undeniable. In the film industry, well, hidden figures, red tails, the great debaters, glory. These films depict things that happened in history. Young people may not be taught these things in their classrooms. Adults may never have heard of some of these things. I know I hadn't heard of the women in hidden figures before. I hadn't heard that story before. And my mother worked at NASA for a while, but she had never heard of that either. These are very important. It's not just entertainment. August Wilson chronicles a century of African-American history in his 10 plays. And if you look at each play, it's a different aspect of life. Most of it except for Marrani is happening right there in Pittsburgh. But when you look at it in depth, what you see is a yearning. You see the human spirit moving forward, trying to move forward. You see the obstacles that were encountered. I mean, his plays cover everything from slavery to eminent domain. My lord. Preservation knows about eminent domain. You see what I mean? It's like it's there. Art is very important. And this is why I'm interested in preservation. I'm passionate about preservation. I'm also very passionate about art education for this reason, you know, for this very reason. They go together. They go together. It does. And when I think of contemporary artists like Adam Pendleton and the three artists that as a form of arts activism and politics, when Nina Simone's birthplace was threatened with demolition and foreclosure, their base in New York City became aware of this, created in LLC. And now they have partnered with the National Trust to ensure that Nina Simone's birthplace and her legacy has a bright future. There's so many ways that artists can be part of the preservation movement, whether it is creating plays to honor folks like August Wilson, Harriet Tubman, Nina Simone, or actually helping to acquire own and steward black spaces. And I'm proud to say that through the Action Fund at our National Grant Program, we last year provided a $50,000 grant to the Harriet Tubman Home organization in New York. Supporting the development of a strategic plan. We have provided funding to the August Wilson group that is working to preserve his home in Pittsburgh. You know, there's so many connections between the Action Fund and preserving the legacy of artists. I now want to shift to HBCU, Historically Black Colleges and Universities. And since you are a graduate of Howard University, one of our premier and esteemed HBCU, and at the National Trust, as you know, we've been working for years to elevate the significance of HBCU, but also to equip HBCU administrators with the tools to be able to preserve their historic campuses and historic buildings. One of our viewers asked the question, can you speak about Howard University's impact on your acting career and your love of the art? And how did your experience at Howard prepare you for this work and preservation? Mm-hmm. I attended Howard at a time of social upheaval and change. It was during the time of the Vietnam War. It was the Civil Rights Movement was still very active. Martin Luther King was assassinated in my sophomore year. Young people were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Eurocentric studies only. And we wondered why in this mecca of learning are we not having more Afrocentric courses, courses of history, why is the curriculum not being designed in this way? And we did just wonder about, Chow, we took over the A Bill and we said, we're going to stay up in here till y'all get it right. Yes. It was bold. It was bold. Student power. Yes. Well, you know, it was done respectfully. I have to tell you, because the whole time we were in that building, we weren't running rampant. We were studying because we had final exams coming up and we didn't want to fail. So we were in there. We had study groups. We were studying. And people in the community were bringing us lunches. They were supporting us. Oh, yes. It was very purposeful and contained. So what that experience did for me was strengthen what I had already been given by my mother. And that was a sense of personal power. You have the power to make change. You have the power to affect change. You have the capacity to serve. It strengthened these things of me. I had been given so much before I arrived at Howard and Howard augmented it, you know, and become very increasingly aware of African-American and American history and how so much of it was discarded or disregarded or lost. And what a travel state that has been for the whole of the nation. The beauty of America is that America is like, in terms of its people, in terms of its inhabitants, in terms of cultural origins and ethnicities, we are like the most beautiful tapestry, the most beautiful and exquisite tapestry on the face of the earth. And when you pull one thread carelessly, you undo the entire work. All of it needs to be regarded and handled with care. All legacy needs to be regarded with care. Well, we designated Founder's Library at Howard University, a national treasure. This was several years ago. And we were inspired not only because the building was designed by Albert Grissel, a pioneering black architect. And as you know, HBCU steward the most diverse collection of historic buildings designed by black architects in the world. This building had a civil rights story and to learn that Howard Law School was once housed in Founder's Library, that Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall devised the legal strategy inside that building to desegregate America's public schools. Founder's Library has a story to tell and then also thinking about the contemporary impact. I remember when Tony Hesse Coates said that he was writing his first book and he was inspired by reading James Baldwin's A Fire Next Time Inside of Founder's Library. Do you have any Founder Library stories or what did that place mean to you? It was the center of the university. This was the center. It's at the center of main campus and beyond it is what we call debt valley because all the science buildings down there. Those nerdy scientists. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The College of Pharmacy, the biology, the chemistry building, the physics building way over there in the corner somewhere. And it was full and it was majestic and it was like the center of the world as a student there. It was like the center of the world and even without knowing all of the actual history and everything that happened there. Without consciously knowing when you entered the building as is often the case, let's say when you visit the Gullah Islands or you go to Hampton University or you go to Tuskegee. When you enter the space, you feel it. You feel a presence of something that you can't articulate and you can't fully understand it until you begin to learn the history. You say, oh, that's what I was feeling. Oh, that's what that was because the power of intention lived on. Yeah. I had that same experience the first time I walked through the gate at Madame C.J. Walker, the little world in Irvington, New York, America's first self-made female millionaire. In 1918, she constructed an elegant estate literally in her words to inspire her race to reach its highest potential. And knowing that a black woman in America before women had the right to vote would have the fortitude and belief in herself to become a successful entrepreneur. And she was committed to uplifting black women across our nation and to walk inside this building with its beauty and grandness. The hairs stood up because this history was real. Madame C.J. Walker wasn't just a black history historical figure, but her life was real when I got to interact with that historic space. It's like that. It's like that when you go to places with that history and that power of intention embedded and rooted in it, it really does affect you physically. You feel it. Well, in our kind of closing segment, I want to thank you and acknowledge your leadership as the co-chair and brand ambassador of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. As you know, but many of our viewers might not know, it's the largest preservation campaign ever undertaken on behalf of African American historic places by a national nonprofit organization. And having you in the initial stages, the early stages of even envisioning something that was just a big idea to lend your voice and your credibility to this, given that you have been a lifelong champion of advocating on behalf of black culture, history and our heritage. But I want to thank you and I just want to share with our viewers that in just two and a half years, we are almost about to complete phase one and having raised almost $25 million. We're currently almost at $23 million. We have supported 86 preservation projects across the country. We are in our final stages of review of 53 grant proposals to our national grant program that are competing for $1.6 million and will make awards in July. I could go on and on about the good work of the Action Fund, but I hope that others are inspired by your contribution and your service. I hope that we can continue to amplify the need to preserve African American historic places and these stories that uplift us that inspire us. Also understanding our responsibility to preserve the places of our painful past like Chaco Bottom in Richmond, Virginia, or the other places where we can find joy and excitement, places like the Whiff and Dell Ladies Club in Los Angeles. Your last question. What is your big dream for the future of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund? Wow. I would like to see the work expand and continue carried forward by young people. I would like for us to inspire this upcoming and next generation to the importance of this work and to giving themselves to seeing it through. And I think I should not get off this call without saying thank you for your leadership, Brent. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. We've accomplished a great deal because of your commitment and your promise as a leader and thank you very much for that. Yeah, I appreciate you. And I want to acknowledge our esteemed National Advisory Council members. Your other co-chair is Darren Walker, who is the president of the Ford Foundation. And we have the most amazing community of leaders supporting the Action Fund. And if you remember our first Cultural Preservation Leadership Summit in New York. And we opened up that night you co-hosted with Darren and we had a private event on the stage of the historic Apollo Theater. We were blessed with the music of Wynton Marsalis and we heard Poetry being read by Port Laureate Elizabeth Alexander. I bring that up to say that the Action Fund is helping to build a new community of support. And a lot of that is due to your leadership and your contribution. And I just want to encourage all the viewers to go to our website at savingplaces.org. Pledge your support. Be part of this emerging social movement so that we can begin to work to reconstruct our national identity. Tell stories that are often untold. And most importantly that we can save these places to ensure that the next generation can follow in the footsteps of the legends that we preserve. Thank you so much for joining the National Trust for Historic Preservation Virtual Preservation Month program. Thank you. Thank you Felicia. Thank you Brent.