What does it mean not only to preserve a historic home, but to sustain a tradition of Black creativity, reflection, and renewal?

In Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Five Acres—the home and writing cabin of poet, diplomat, NAACP leader, and “National Hymn” author James Weldon Johnson—served as a retreat from the demands of public life. Johnson’s “National Hymn,” later widely known as “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and recognized today as the Black National Anthem, became one of the most enduring works in African American cultural and political history. Purchased in 1926, became a place where Johnson could write, rest, and imagine beyond the pressures of racism, politics, and national visibility. Nearly a century later, after the property fell into disrepair and faced possible demolition, literary executor Jill Rosenberg-Jones and her husband Rufus Elmer Jones Jr. acquired and restored the site, transforming an endangered private site into the foundation of a broader effort to safeguard Johnson’s life and legacy.

In this episode, Foundation Chair Jill Rosenberg-Jones and President Rufus Elmer Jones Jr. reflect on the restoration of Five Acres—from Jill’s discovery of the deteriorating property in 2011 to the launch of an artist residency in 2017 inspired by Johnson’s belief that “no people can be deemed inferior who produce great art and literature.” Together, we explore preservation as stewardship, rest as resistance, the contested public memory surrounding the “National Hymn,” and their vision for a future Center for Culture and Convening that would expand Five Acres into a national space for Black artistic and scholarly renewal.

jamesweldonjohnson.org / @jamesweldonjohnsonfoundation

How can historic sites draw on the Revolutionary War and the often-overlooked role of Black participants to create meaningful conversations about race and historical memory in the present?

April 20, Massachusetts commemorates Patriot’s Day—marking the 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord that ignited the American Revolution. It also marks the seasonal reopening of the Robbins House Museum (@robbinshouse) in Concord, a site that challenges us to expand the story of American freedom.

Built around 1800 for the children of Caesar Robbins—a formerly enslaved man who secured his freedom by fighting in the Revolution—the House is one of the few surviving structures in New England linked to a Black Revolutionary War veteran. For generations, it was home to free Black families whose lives reflected landownership, education, and antislavery activism in a nation still struggling to uphold its founding ideals.

When the house faced demolition in the early 2000s, residents rallied to preserve it—not just as a structure, but as a vessel for lives and legacies that disrupt dominant founding narratives. Their efforts transformed the Robbins House into a museum that now anchors Concord’s evolving reckoning with race, memory, and historical truth.

In this episode, Executive Director Jen Turner and Board Co-Chairs Nikki Turpin and Joe Palumbo reflect on the grassroots effort to save the house, the campaign to rename Concord’s middle school for civil rights activist and educator Ellen Garrison, and the broader work of honoring and preserving Black life in early New England. Together, we explore how myth and memory shape American identity—and the urgency of including Black history within the nation’s founding narrative as the U.S. nears its 250th anniversary.

robbinshouse.org / bghpn.org

What does it take to preserve a Black not only a historic site—but as a living architecture of belonging, refuge, and enduring Black presence?

This episode centers on the A.M.E. Zion Church of Kingston, founded in 1848 and the oldest continuously active African American congregation in Ulster County, New York. Established in resistance to racial exclusion within white Methodist congregations, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church—often called the Freedom Church—emerged from a demand for dignity: the right to worship freely, to lead, and to build sacred space on Black terms. As one of the first denominations in the United States to ordain women as elders and to the pastorate, A.M.E. Zion carries a long tradition of Black women’s leadership, reflected in figures such as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. In Kingston, that legacy lives on in the early women ministers who traveled the Hudson Valley to preach and in the women who sustain the congregation today.

Congregants Rashida and Maisha Tyler, alongside their mother, Terry Smith-Tyler, reflect on the responsibilities of stewardship, the enduring role of Black churches in civic and cultural life, and the ways faith undergirds long-term preservation work—from grant writing and fundraising to repairing roofs, restoring stained glass, and planning for accessibility. The episode also follows the congregation’s efforts to document its history, challenge erasure in a city that foregrounds Dutch colonial narratives, and navigate the National Register process, culminating in its listing in March 2021. This recognition was followed by support from the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund through its Black Churches grant program in 2025.

bghpn.org / amezionkingston.org