 Good afternoon everyone. I'm Brent Legs, the Executive Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. I want to welcome you to the 15th anniversary of the African American Preservationist Meeting. I'm delighted to be joined by my colleagues, Luana Holland Moore and Tiffany Tobart, who you will hear more from in just a few minutes. So the run of show today is I will provide brief introductions. Luana will provide an update and background on the Action Fund National Grant Program. And then you'll hear from Tiffany, who will also provide background and update on our HPCU Cultural Heritage Stewardship Initiative. Following those remarks, we will have about 40 minutes for Q&A and discussion. And as always, the goal is to facilitate conversation about the issues and opportunities facing the Black Preservation Movement in the US. So as I said, it's the 15th anniversary. The Action Fund is proud to be this year's sponsor of the Promoting Equity and Justice through Historic Preservation Track. We are about to celebrate our fourth anniversary on November 15. And for many of you, you know that the Action Fund was created in the aftermath of Charlottesville. That was an opportunity for the National Trust and for the US Preservation profession to provide leadership and to demonstrate that preservation was a tool for equity and justice. And just four years, we have raised more than $50 million. We have supported more than 200 preservation projects nationwide. And in my view, the Action Fund is a revolution in historic preservation. It is inspiring a commitment to social justice by national statewide and local preservation organizations, and it is shifting practice. As I shared last year, and what I'd like to remind you is that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Black people have been preserving informally our cultural landscapes and historic buildings, partly out of necessity and need, but partly because we have always had a tradition of preserving our stories and our collective memories. Formally in the early 20th century, under leadership of Mary Talbert and the National Association of Colored Women, they organized the first successful national preservation campaign to pay off the mortgage of the home of Frederick Douglass called Cedar Hill, which is located here in Washington, D.C. and in their celebration and in their joy when they burned that mortgage in those ashes, they would berth black preservation movement. So we continue to build on their important legacy. Many of you have heard that we were fortunate to receive a $20 million investment by Mackenzie Scott and Dan Jewett in June of this year. And I just want to give you an update on the investment strategy for those dollars. We were committed to equitable investment so a 5050 split where $10 million is helping to grow our existing endowments from phase one. So in total, we have just established a $14 million endowment. The first of its kind at the National Trust, and among the largest endowment dedicated to the preservation of historic African American places in the nation. The balance of the $10 million is supporting short term outlays that helps to increase our grant making, which will support the protection via easements of a small collection of black landmarks, and then to increase the staffing capacity of the action fund so that we can continue to provide national leadership in this space. I want to take this opportunity to thank a lot of folks and I want to thank our partners like Ford, the JPB and Mellon Foundation for their ongoing commitment to this work and financial investment and black communities and preservation projects. I want to thank our local and statewide preservation organizations for their ongoing leadership and growing commitment in this space. Organizations like Preservation North Carolina, Cincinnati Preservation Associates, Preservation Resources of New Orleans, Historic Boston and so many more. I also want to recognize, applaud and thank the black statewide heritage councils and commissions that are providing crucial leadership organizations in Maryland and Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and others. Thank you for the contributions that you make to our field. And last, I want to thank all of you. You consider yourself a former preservationist, a grassroots leader or just a community advocate. It is because of you that we are helping to tell the full history of our nation that we're able to shine a spotlight on the contributions of African Americans to our nation. And most importantly, we are beginning to redefine and redeploy historic preservation to uplift black communities. In essence, our collective work is helping to expand the American story and highlight places often overlooked in American history. So with that being said, I want to invite my colleague Loana Holland Moore to share background on the national grant program. Loana. Thank you, Brent. I'm Loana Holland Moore. I'm the program officer of the Action Fund. And this nation has been rich in history but poor and fully representing it and funding its protection conservation recognition through our national grant program and involvement in communities such as our historically black colleges and universities cultural stewardship initiative in partnership with National Endowment for Humanities, which you'll hear Tiffany speak more later. We've been able to see and bring awareness to the breadth of African American preservation needs. Since our inception in 2017, our national grant program has become known as a signature program of the action fund. Since January 2018, we have vetted over 2000 project proposals requesting over $190 million and have awarded over $7.3 million to 150 awardees nationwide. In July 2020, we awarded 40 sites and organizations $3 million, such as the Olivewood Cemetery in Houston, the three filling station in Oklahoma, our first awardee in Puerto Rico, Paula natural Lisa, and Roberts temple church of God and Christ in Chicago. Here are four categories you can apply under capital projects, which is bricks and mortar organizational capacity which is board and organization strengthening and training, programming interpretation and project planning. The applications will be available on our website, savingplaces.org and you can see the link in chat, and those will be out on December 3 with the deadline of January 15. I encourage you to apply. The process is simple and was intentionally designed to be so as we recognize that so many of you out there are one person doing it all. And we've also recognized you might not have that grant writing or development experience and that shouldn't keep you from still being able to apply and possibly be an awarding. Excuse me, I'd also like to tell you about the new telling the full history preservation fund grant as well, which provides $25,000 and $50,000 grants to interpret and preserve historic places of importance to underrepresented communities. It was just announced and opened yesterday, and it's that line is December 15. And also as a note, for those of you out there who are in states that are voting today, please make sure you take a time out sometime during conference today to go vote, make your voice be heard. And I'll go ahead and now turn it over to Tiffany, who will share updates about the HBCU initiative. Hi everyone, I'm Tiffany Talbert associate director of the action fund here at the National Trust, and I'm happy to share and talk to you all about our HBCU cultural heritage stewardship initiative, and just provide some updates on the program. So I'm going to share my screen, and just go through a couple of highlights. Hopefully you all have heard about the HBCU cultural heritage stewardship initiative. We launched the initiative in 2020 in partnership with National Endowment for the Humanities. This program was conceived to as you can see on the screen, empower HBCU to the resources to protect preserve and leverage their historic campuses buildings and landscapes, and sharing these academic institutions and symbols of African American pride are preserved to inspire and educate future generations. Again, the initiative is supported by National Endowment for Humanities for Foundation JPV foundation and the Kaplan fund. And of course the African American cultural heritage action fund, and I'll talk about our newest donor in support of the initiative in just a minute. This program provides grants to HBCUs to develop cultural heritage stewardship plans, either for their campus as a whole or for individual sites and historic places on their campus. And so this year, we inaugurated our first group of grants and we announced them in February and you can see them here on the screen we awarded grants to eight HBCUs across the country. And State University and Jackson State University received $150,000 to complete campus wide plans and Benedict College, Lane College, Belander Smith, Stillman Tuskegee and Stillman received individual site grants. And so they're all actively completing preservation plans around these historic buildings and their whole campuses and we're really excited that we were able to fund these projects as the inaugural group of grantees to the initiative. If you want to know more about these projects, there are a couple of ways to learn. One, we are each month releasing a Q&A with from each HBCU and those are being posted on savingplaces.org in the editorial section. We have our first two that are up highlighting the work at Spelman with the Rockefeller Fine Arts Center and Jackson State University and coming up this month we'll have our Q&A from Stillman and Tuskegee, and from Elisa, Alabama. So I do invite you to learn more about this work that the schools are doing from their own voice and what they hope to achieve and what this will mean for the future preservation of that campus, as well as their students there. We're excited that recently we were announced to receive from the Mellon Foundation a $1.15 million gift for the initiative, which will allow us to continue to offer this grant program for the next two years. And so we are looking to award eight grants per year for the next two years to additional HBCUs and bring them into the initiative. And so that is open right now and the LOIs for that program are actually due this Friday and so it starts at the letter of intent and full proposals will be due in January. So if you know HBCU connected to HBCU and you don't think they know about this program, please share the information you can go to savingplaces.org slash HBCU to get information on the current grantees, the initiative, as well as access to the proposal. And I want to say that the initiative is not just about providing grants, this is a dedicated program that also provides technical assistance so we are working with all of these schools intensely providing direct technical assistance, helping them with their RFPs their scopes of work, and giving them the guidance to develop a process of how to do preservation on their campus so we're really excited about the initiative and we're very happy that it will be continuing with support from our existing funders as well as new funders like Mellon Foundation. So that is an update on the HBCU program so I'm going to turn it over to Brent to get us started with our discussion. Thank you Tiffany and LaWanna. All right so this is the moment we have a chance to talk. It is not the preferred format, given that we are not in person and can engage in that way but I'm hoping that we all have enough experience and comfort and sharing and exchanging on on zoom. And so I want to open it up with the first question. What are the top priorities impacting black preservationist and black preservation projects nationwide. LaWanna can you type it into the chat for us. What are the top parties impacting black preservationist and black preservation projects nationwide. You can use your hand, use the hand button. And, and then you will be unmuted, and I'll ask you to speak and to share your comment, or even pose a question to any of us on on the Action Fund team and it looks like Cory Shaw is going to be the first one. Hey Cory. I'm glad to be here. In my experience, I, I've seen a lot of preservation projects manifested aimed at redress and repair. What that looks like. There's a lot of semantical arguments about you know whether or not we should refer to it as reparations. I recognize reparations is polarizing for some folks and so I think redress and repair is the best way to put it. In some ways, right there are projects like the one taking place in Brown Grove, Virginia, where there's definitely, you know, a reparative aspect to what they're trying to do and trying to right the wrongs. The environmental injustices on this African American community, but they are also trying to find ways to preserve the history that's there. In another, Wegmans is trying to build a distribution center there, and they're very actively trying to push back because there are a lot of African American burial sites on the land in question. In the district where I'm where I reside and kind of I'm operating my own little home base of sorts. Very much the same thing. I'm working on a project in the district where I guess to keep it brief. I have a family goes back to like 1840 and the land was taken in 1929 by the district to build a park and a school. And, again, right like there's this very real restorative justice kind of reparative lens that is being brought to historic preservation of African American spaces. If I can and closing I posed the question. How do we as as advocates and people working in these spaces, how do we properly frame historic preservation, right without just kind of using it as a tool, right to say, you know, preserving history and promoting the history of African Americans and the erasure of communities. How do we go about using historic preservation, not just as a tool, but as a means of educating people. Thank you for that court and before I respond and ask my colleagues if they want to provide any response. Where are you from, what project or are you supporting, if any, there are a few projects that I'm working on right now. I'm associated with the African American Redress Network and supporting efforts in Brown Grove, Virginia. I am associated with the Greater Washington Urban League helping them with housing policy things in the district. I'm associated with UDC and helping them, helping a professor with a reparations project and serving as the chair for the policy implementation group there. I'm also supporting another effort at Mount Zion female Union Band Society Cemetery the oldest black cemetery in Washington DC, and kind of structuring a capstone course around that. I also worked with the National Trust over the summer in the Hope Crew project, working with them to kind of do grounds clearing and then archaeological surveying of Mount Zion cemetery. Excellent. Well you are a busy man so I'm glad you made time for this meeting. So I, I agree with you fully that the word and the connotation behind the word reparations is loaded and an often wanted to use it. It presents white fragility in a very clear way and it can often shut down conversation around this topic. So we'd like to use words like restorative justice repair to be able to end and words like equity because when I look at the action fund and in some form it is. It is a pathway for repairing the cultural inequities that we see within our historical record within our national register, or even on across the American landscape. There is significant erasure. There is loss of cultural capital loss of financial capital. And what I think is the ongoing issue in our movement. We've often been excellent at making moral arguments for telling the full history, or for some of this reparative justice work. We've often been as strong as making the economic development arguments and defining an asset based strategy for moving what might appear as liabilities within historic built environments, underutilized and bacon historic buildings and and transitioning to the assets that anchor communities. And once we start to be as equipped with moral and economic arguments I think we will grow as a movement as a profession and have greater influence to secure both federal and public investment to sustain this work. Do you have any anything you want to add to that. I'll add to Brent's point. I think it is about doing both sometimes with preservation, we do it as a either or, and that if you're talking about preservation you're not talking about economic development and not talking about community development safety these quality of life issues. We have to start to merge those into the conversations we're having in our community about all of these things that impact our African American life. And so you can talk about both at the same time, because if you are not your it's hard to get things to move forward. And a lot of it is to say that preservation is economic development preservation is safety preservation is how affordable housing preservation is education and finding things that we can naturally tie our preservation goals to in our community. We're aware of zoning we're made aware of comprehensive plans we're making sure these things that are concrete that have funding attached to them, and being able to show that they equally support preservation, so that we're not seeing preservation as a competition against other things that we think are important in our communities. And so we just as again it's the conversation is how we're presenting what we want our goals and making sure it's directly tied to everything else and that helps those leaders those decision makers, those funders both public and private, get it, and support that. Thank you, Tiffany. So now I'm going to invite Alicia, and then Lisa, and then Deca, and then we'll move on to our second question for others to be able to contribute. Yes. Good afternoon, I guess I'll put my picture on. One of the top priorities that I see I live in Loudoun County is all over the news right now because of the voting. And you've been out to Oakland's so you know where Loudoun County is. And one of our priorities which I would see probably across the country would be development. There's coming in and getting ahead of the community and knowing when things are going to be developed zoning and rezoning, sometimes families and historically black villages and communities. They're not even aware that their community has been rezoned. Um, I guess that goes to the idea of ensuring that there is almost African American participation in all of the areas that surround our community somebody's got to be on the Heritage Commission. Someone on the Heritage Commission, someone has to be on the zoning commission, and if you aren't, then you're not in the know. And if you're not in the know, the rug will be pulled, the bulldozers will come in, and you will not even know that they were coming. The territories might be touched in and and disrespected a church may come down that was built in 1801 a school just, you know, before the Civil War even. So I guess I would say I know a lot of people and I'll stop at this but the main thing for me is development rezoning and awareness. So I hope that helps. And what you just described as a national issue confronting diverse communities, and your solution was spot on, we've got to have representation that's equipped inside of those spaces to be a part of the conversation advocating on behalf of our community. That's why I love to use local landmark designation to protect historic buildings at the local level because it does provide some legal protection, which is critical. And as a movement we've got to locally designate more black spaces and landmarks. I also love easements, we recently know we protected Madame CJ Walker's Villa Loire on Nina Simone's childhood home and recently, the Mary and James heard house in DC that's associated to us Supreme Court case, argued by Charles Hamilton Houston that desegregated the racial covenants in DC and, and that tool ensures permanent representation of black stories and places. So I love easements local landmark designation but your spot on we got to be represented in these kind of places. Lisa. Hi there. Thank everybody for being able to present today and everyone who's present with us. I think one of the major issues that we're facing is loss of heritage property. I don't even know if that's the proper term but it describes it pretty well. It's a main street program so I do a lot of preservation and things for the city that I live in but also my family is from the Gullah Gechi community, and I guess it's just a lack of knowledge you know where someone owned property it was being passed down through the family and I didn't know everyone else had moved off for education and work and did not know, and a big company like Bigelow comes in and says we would like that property because it's a great place to grow tea. The family not being, you know, real estate experts is just really going through a whole lot trying to figure out how to keep the property or get a clean deed with a lot of descendants. It's a big thing that's been going on for a long time in areas like South Carolina, especially in the Charleston area. It's just pretty overwhelming, you know, because you don't know where to begin or how to fight the dragon. Well, you bring up a point it really builds on the last conversation because a lot of the threats to Gullah. One of the cultural heritage is because of development threats and desirable locations for the Mac mansions or kind of a second home for for tourists and it's been devastating and the air property rights challenges that exist to has been difficult to untangle. I think what the administration is directing some resources that will support going through the titles and identifying ways so that families can actually understand ownership and have more control in that space. We funded two Gullah projects last year as part of our 3 million investment and 40 projects, and they both were in Georgia, but one of the organizations is working directly with the Gullah community, and they are creating a new pilot program that will help them with aired property rights, and hopefully it will learn some best practices and that that we can share with all of you. Wonderful, thank you. I know before I'm we're going to go to DACA and then Luana I'll turn it over to you. Hi, my name is DACA Hussain Wetzel and I live in Cincinnati and recently got the black sites of Cincinnati researcher position, which is a newly funded position that's through the since I preservation association. And there are a number of challenges that I've started to see through that that relate to the need necessary outreach utilizing community input and trying to pursue community, what I literally was just started to call community preservation, and essentially this idea that I think communities need to have. They need to be things to be more accessible, and they need to be able to more easily understand things related to preservation whether that's what a nomination is difference between local and national, you know landmarks and stuff like that. And also, you know, just getting their stories heard and so before I started this position, I had worked on a podcast called urban roots, and that's out and I'll send information in the chat here but the whole point of this first season which was funded through a Cincinnati local grant was to try to tell the lost voices of Cincinnati's stories I wanted the people in the community to actually tell me what they felt was important and highlight the, you know the buildings or the stories on, you know racist housing in the past, and urban renewal, and I feel so that, you know a lot of the feedback from the community, people in Avondale and evidence in the net neighborhoods I interviewed people and other folks in the neighborhood listen and have been like you know I just made me cry. This really made me like feel that you know, a somebody is paying attention to us and be that other people can start to hear why these communities are important in these communities of color. So I really want to say I just really appreciate the you know you said when you guys say use of active voice to tell the full story. That's something I'm really trying to do and I really think it's just, you know please reach out to me if anybody else is trying to do the same thing. I don't want to leave my my info but yeah I mean I think what's what's happening now is great and I think, maybe one of the challenges that I have seen is with the digital preservation component with podcasting. It's harder to get those funds. So, you know, I was very fortunate that that there was an outlet and opportunity, but then kind of taking that and leveraging it or things that you know I would love to have some some, you know, feedback on and have discussions on. And I appreciate that. It was good to see you two weeks ago and since he want to. Yeah, I was just going to say that, you know it's so important to have those stories heard in the first place. All too often, you know our communities have issues with our resources reaching a point of crisis just because people don't know they exist, or that they were important to the community in the first place. So being able to talk to those knowledge holders, going out into the community and actually finding out what is important to the community with itself is such a huge huge important factor in helping to continue to make sure that these places remain. If you don't know about them, we can't talk about them we can't continue to save them, and it shouldn't have to reach that point of crisis it shouldn't have to reach it being lost for it to finally be known. And I'm going to go ahead and transition to our next question, which is, what are the challenges, obstacles, and concerns that you have encountered in your work. I would like to see Shauntisha that you have your hand up. Yes. Greetings. Hello everyone thank you. Um, concerns from my experience thus far and I have limited limited experience. I'm trying to connect myself into the world of preservation and doing a lot of self study and trying to connect with folks but from my experience thus far as ownership. There are these abandoned sites or that once were viable or vibrant within the community and now that you know the demographics of the community may have changed and these facilities and in my case is a church. It's the A&M Zion church in Watertown, New York. It's just, it's just sitting there is sitting in the middle of a residential area the congregation is no longer there, but there's a need or desire to preserve and restore the church but although it belongs to a particular organization A&M Zion organization that single point of contact just doesn't exist. That has been a bit frustrating for the small myself and the small group that I've been working with the volunteers to try to establish ownership, because we want to respect the history as well as the connection to the A&M Zion church but at some point he kind of got a, you don't want to step on people's toes but at some point someone has to make a decision to what to do to move forward. So from my experience thus far trying to establish ownership and even over the summer I had the chance to visit my father's hometown in Hopkinsville, Kentucky and it was a black community and there is these schools and buildings and businesses that the building is still there and they look in pretty good condition but the need for them is not there and you want to save them but you know there's no ownership there's no no intended in you so trying to talk between preserving these spaces but trying to establish ownership and trying to establish a legitimate in use for them has been a challenge that I have seen thus far. And I just want to say ditto to everything that you just said and and we currently are working on stewardship planning that will help black property owners retain their property and even understand estate planning so that the next generation of family members are equipped to be able to steward these cultural assets ownership is is key and even succession planning, as you just described in transitioning important building to the next generation of stewards. So, part of our, our one of our funding categories to our national grant program is project planning. I would encourage you and your organization to consider submitting a letter of intent in December, January to conduct pre development planning activities for this site and if you can get owner consent, then you would be able to work with a consultant that will help you to develop a market driven strategy for reusing that vision, developing a five to 10 year pro forma so that you understand the financial implications of reuse. And once completed that shouldn't empower you to be able to secure private capital to be able to launch the project, if you have support of the property owner. Particularly establishing ownership. It can be difficult with some of these properties, especially if it's a generation or two out from the original owner. And even with churches, it can be even more difficult because of some of our black churches. The title necessarily wasn't clear maybe a family just donated the land but not an official capacity so once you start actually going through, you find that it's a little more complicated, but there are ways and best practice if you're going into a community to work through the African American community to start getting answers but it's kind of a hunt sometimes to find out the best way and it's really just an old fashioned having conversations, looking at ownership in the community whether it's churches, you know elected officials just word of mouth like go talk to this person and it shouldn't be that difficult, but it's an understanding of doing African American preservation in some areas that's what has to occur. But it doesn't hurt to just say I'm going to have to just do this, you know, just figure this out and find that communication strategy on my own. I'm going to have my hands raised, if we can have Haley and then the money. Haley. There you go. Okay, sorry about that. Good afternoon everybody we have such a great discussion. So something I'm experiencing in my line of work I am having trouble kind of communicating what preservation in itself is and all that it entails to the black community specifically specifically people back home or from Atlanta, graduated state, you know shout go get your culture all that. And a lot of people back home, you know they're like oh what do you do and then I'm like well I'm community preservation specialist and I do that. And they're like, oh, okay that's nice what you know whatever that is like and it's hard to really like bring out, you know, I guess real discussions around because it's, it's like a blockage of I guess the wording, you know, of what is this that we do like how do we communicate like around that because I think that's also another like disconnect when it comes to getting us in those important spaces. You know people don't know how to look for those avenues because they don't know what it's called, you know the planning commission versus the preservation commission versus the this you know and that and the paperwork and all this. We of course have historically been, you know, educated a little bit less. And so, I don't want to say like that but historically, things have been left out from us. So I've talked to high school students from other cultures and they can recite different house histories and tell you conservation methods and you talk to a high school or from a predominantly black school, and they're like well I don't know like what exactly what is this I don't even like history and it's, it's discouraging because that's something that us as a black community we really need to hold on to is our history so there is. Thank you all. You know I've heard that a lot. I've had a lot of people tell me. Oh well you know I'm doing preservation work but I don't call myself a preservationist. I don't think I'm a preservationist. And the thing is that there are so many ways that African Americans doing preservation work, you know whether it's maintaining family cemeteries or a church building fund, you know, there are we're doing that preservation out there. So you know being able to communicate to tell everybody this is the work that we're doing is a way of framing it in terms of helping to keep our history alive. How do we do that. How do we go forward and do that. Yeah, I would say I think Haley and hey Indiana Haley was on here. It's something I think we've all faced as professional preservation is coming into the field. The scariest question is someone asking you like what you do because you can't just say I'm a lawyer I'm a doctor, you know, I'm a teacher. And that saying that the simplest helps you know and taking it back to something that African Americans, we understand that we understand preserving a cemetery we understand preserving a church we understand, saving a sort of place. That's fine. And then you can go deeper in the conversation, but, and this is not just for African American use people a color this is in general, it's just not a common lexicon in just general conversation about a preservationist as a career. But you can talk about, I say historic places I work with museums, I do this people get that and then that enters the conversation. There is a disconnect in younger people students understanding preservation as a career path, and that's something we seek to address with HPC, HPCU initiative, we work with all the schools to develop how to engage students so having a student on the project planning team. So they're working with the consultants they're gaining that professional development experience. Our fellows program which LaWonna manages introducing to different areas of preservation you have the technical aspect but you also have the marketing aspect you have community development you have engagement you there are different levels of support and work in preservation. And so we have some work to do, both at the high school level in the college level, but I do believe and I think we believe there's no better place to do that than at our HPC use. And to start that growth and that experience there with students to understand there is a place in architecture and preservation for more black preservationist. But it doesn't hurt to continue talking because the more you talk the more you do expand but there's still going to be that disconnect in our terminology and people understanding what we do. And if we can have a mania and then we'll transition to Tiffany. Hi, good afternoon everyone. What a great conversation. So I work in the DC Shipple office, and I do historic preservation work where I am kind of doing the underground permit review style of work. And so I get a lot of calls from community residents property owners in historic districts who have historic homes for a low income a middle income and I hear all the questions of, I have a historic house. What are you asking me to do what what does this mean you're telling me to this is important you're telling me that I need to try to maintain this character. What character are you talking about and there is such a lack of understanding of just the building technology and the building integrity I think in our community just from a, our fathers fathers may have come over and fixed our, our leaky roofs and we really have that type of carpentry and trade system like we used to and so there's not those folks really providing that necessary background for for the building and so what I have noticed as a challenge is there's no documentation on your historic structure. No one, maybe we designated something in 1980, and no one's gone back and looked at that church to see how the roofs are maintained how the shingles are. Where are we now with the foundation and the structure and so when churches are looking to do something with their building or when churches are looking to do something, they're starting from scrap they're like listen I have this house, I, you know they say that I can demo it and build 1010 stories up that sounds like a great idea. They don't have any context to know that what they have is special is unique is one of a kind you're never going to get that window back you're never going to get that citing back you're never going to get that church to look like that again. It's really important. And so, explaining that and giving that back to the community, I think is, is really important so if I could recommend anything I love this conversation about HBC use, and getting them involved in going back into our community and doing that survey work on a student level and really updating these nominations and updating these new sites and so we have a really good wealth of information so when we go to these meetings and when we go to developers or when they come to us. We can say here is where the integrity of my building is this is what's important this is what can say what can you do around that. Anyway, the conversation shifts from not knowing necessarily what we, we should be doing to reuse the building but knowing exactly what we need to be preserving and having a stronger game plan going on to the, that to the table. So, thank you for letting me speak and I love to hear your comments. Move on. I know we do have some comments in there in the chat. But I want to get in our last question and give you all a chance to maybe have one or two live comments but I want you to add into the chat. So our last question is just, you know, anyone want to share any news about any big wins or successes or any best practices through your work. Feel free to add them to the chat but feel free to raise your hand and I'll call on you all. But, you know, a lot of these successes have come from you all they've also come from the National Trust and also through our 11 most endangered program which we are accepting LOIs for that right now what you're doing November 12. So we'll put that link in the chat but if you do have any projects that you all have mentioned that could use that support that attention to advocacy I encourage you to consider 11 most endangered. So, please feel free to add me a Nita has our hand raised. If you want to share any successes are big wins with the group and again, everyone please add any others to the chat. Well, hello everyone. Actually, I wanted to go back to your last conversation. But in terms of successes. The Historic District Commission in Rockville, Maryland. And we have lots, many of our black communities are still in place. And some of the buildings there like a historic school, you know, it's been designated as a site. And the problem with us. Well, the successes that we designated a building that's a success part. But the other party is it's not just saving the building but you got to maintain the building. For example, it's not just the outside of the building, which is fine but also the inside of the building. So how can we get government to understand is the entire building, even though with historic designation only refers to the outside of the building. If the government is in fact the landlord, and they know that a roof is falling in, and they don't care for it which could endanger that site, but you don't see it from the outside. How do we get them to understand that. And just say, because unfortunately needed we are running out of time, but I'm going to ask you to follow up with the money, who can give you advice about that. Maria was a shining star and student at the University of Maryland when I was teaching there and she works for the DC historic preservation office and she can give you the ins and outs of how to make arguments related to integrity and designation. Fortunately, we are at the end of our time, and we need to give you a break before the next session, but this has been awesome. Thank you for being generous with your time for contributing to our discussion, and we wish you a fantastic conference. Keep the conversation going. Bye everybody.