The descendant associations, nonprofits, and federal programs working to protect these endangered sites.
The Federal Layer
At the federal level, the principal institutions involved in the preservation of historic African American burial grounds are the National Park Service (which administers the National Register of Historic Places, the African American Civil Rights Network, the African American Civil Rights Grant Program, and now the African-American Burial Grounds Preservation Program established by the 2024 Act), the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (which oversees the Section 106 review process), and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (which serves as a research and interpretation hub). Each of these institutions can be approached by local advocates and descendant communities for technical assistance, funding, or simple recognition.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Congressionally chartered private nonprofit, has emerged in the past decade as the most consequential national advocate for the preservation of African American historic places, including burial grounds. Through its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, established in 2017 with an initial commitment of $25 million and substantially expanded in subsequent years, the Trust has provided grants supporting hundreds of African American historic sites across the country, including cemeteries. The Trust also operates the HOPE Crew program, which trains young people in preservation trades through hands-on work at historic sites, and several Trust-affiliated sites are themselves historic African American properties.
State Historic Preservation Offices
Every state operates a State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), funded jointly by the federal Historic Preservation Fund and state appropriations. SHPOs administer the federal review programs at the state level, prepare statewide preservation plans, and provide technical assistance to local communities seeking to nominate properties to the National Register or to access federal preservation funding. The receptiveness of any particular SHPO to African American preservation work has historically varied considerably from state to state, but the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers has in recent years made the inclusion of African American sites a priority.
Descendant Associations and Local Networks
The most consequential preservation work for any individual historic Black cemetery is almost always undertaken by descendant associations and local networks. These organizations, often operating on shoestring budgets and with all-volunteer labor, perform the daily work of clearing brush, resetting stones, tracking down family records, organizing Memorial Day commemorations, and confronting local governments and developers when the cemetery is threatened. Many descendant associations are formally incorporated as nonprofits; many others operate as informal networks of cousins and neighbors. Either way, they are the indispensable backbone of African American cemetery preservation in the United States.
Specialist Nonprofits
A growing number of specialist nonprofits work specifically on African American cemetery preservation. The Black Cemetery Network, based at the University of South Florida, maintains a national database of historic Black cemeteries and supports descendant communities with technical assistance. The Hidden Cemeteries Project documents lost and threatened African American burial grounds. The Mary Boyle Foundation, the Sankofa Burial Ground project, and many regional organizations supplement the national efforts. The work is geographically uneven, but the network is denser today than at any prior point in American history.
How to Support the Work
Anyone moved to support the preservation of historic African American burial grounds can do so in several ways: by supporting the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, by volunteering with a local descendant association or cemetery friends group, by contributing genealogical or oral history information to descendant networks, by writing to elected officials in support of full funding for the African-American Burial Grounds Preservation Program, or by simply visiting a historic Black cemetery in their own community and taking the time to learn the names.