Brent Leggs facts for kids

Demond "Brent" Leggs (born November 22, 1972) is an African American expert who helps save old buildings and places. He is from Paducah, Kentucky. He works for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He started something called the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Since 2017, this fund has collected over $150 million to help protect important Black historical sites all over the United States.

Brent Leggs believes that saving old places is not just about history. He says it's also about helping communities grow and empowering people. He thinks that preserving these sites can bring economic development and make communities stronger.

How Brent Leggs Got Started

Brent Leggs went to the University of Kentucky. He studied marketing and earned a business degree there. He also studied how to preserve historic places. The National Trust for Historic Preservation helped him with a scholarship during his studies. He is one of only a few African Americans working in this field, and he helps other people learn about it too.

His first hands-on work was looking at Rosenwald schools in Kentucky. These schools were built for African American children a long time ago. He found out that his own parents had gone to Rosenwald schools! This experience showed him how much power old buildings and places have in shaping our memories and culture.

Saving Important Places

Brent Leggs has helped save many important places. He was a project manager for sites like Joe Frazier's Gym in Philadelphia, Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey, and Villa Lewaro, which was Madam C. J. Walker's home in Irvington, New York.

Using his business knowledge, he created a program called the Northeast African American Historic Places Outreach Program. This program helps leaders in different areas learn how to save African American landmarks. Brent Leggs advises city leaders and property owners on how to use historical sites to benefit their communities, both culturally and economically.

He has worked on many sites connected to the Civil Rights Movement, especially in Birmingham, Alabama. He has also helped preserve buildings at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Other places he helped save include the birthplace of musician Nina Simone in Tryon, North Carolina, and the home of jazz legends John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane in Huntington, New York. Saving Nina Simone's birthplace showed how important it is to work with local people to find new uses for historic sites once they are preserved.

Brent Leggs has played a big part in getting many African American sites recognized as historically important. In 2024, he was featured in a Bloomberg article about the Action Fund's work. He explained that the preservation industry often focused on grand mansions, but Black historical sites are different. He said it was a big step to change how the industry understood what places were worth saving.

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund was created to help save important Black historical sites. It also aims to tell the full story of America, not just parts of it. Brent Leggs believes the Fund's work helps "reconstruct" America's national identity.

This fund is the largest effort ever to preserve African American historic sites. In its first year, it received many requests for grants. The Fund gets money from wealthy individuals and large foundations like the JPB Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The U.S. government stopped giving money to the National Trust in 1997, so the Fund relies on other sources.

What the Fund Does

The Fund does many things. It trains young people in the skills needed to preserve old buildings. It also researches how saving historical sites can help communities become stronger. The Fund uses these findings to convince leaders that preservation work is valuable. Brent Leggs and the Action Fund help communities find new uses for historic spaces, even if those uses are different from what people usually expect for historical preservation.

Brent Leggs has written that the Fund wants to show the "hidden" parts of history at all historic sites. This means adding information to existing historical sites that might have ignored important African American history, especially about slavery in the United States.

Sometimes, Brent Leggs is asked to help save places that are in very bad condition. In 2013, he got involved with efforts to save Shockoe Bottom in Richmond, VA. This place had many old remains destroyed. The Fund believes that historical sites can still be important for our cultural memory, even if parts are gone, especially for African American history.

Places the Fund Has Helped

The movie Green Book (2018) brought attention to The Negro Motorist Green Book, which listed safe places for Black travelers during segregation. Sites from this book are part of the Fund's future plans.

Each year, the Fund announces new places it will support. In 2019, some of the sites that received help included:

• Langston Hughes' house in Harlem, NYC
• The Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, NY
• Satchel Paige's home in Kansas City, Missouri
• The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
• The Forum in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood
• The African Meeting House in Boston, MA
• The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina

Awards and Teaching

Brent Leggs has taught at several universities, including the University of Maryland, the Boston Architectural College, and the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. This honor is given to people who are passionate about making communities better.

He helped write a book called Preserving African American Historic Places (2012). The Smithsonian Institution called it a very important book for saving African American historic sites. He also contributed to another book, Preservation and Social Inclusion (2020). He has appeared on C-SPAN several times to talk about his work.

In 2018, he received the Robert G. Stanton National Preservation Award for his important contributions to the field.