More Ways to Give
A community-led program where we endeavor to combine the best parts of our community’s local history and genealogical research with the wealth of our region’s oral histories and justice-oriented reparative activism. Give to a specific CLK program below.
Mapping C’ville is the first regional project to comprehensively map inequities through Charlottesville & Albemarle County’s past and present. The project logs and plots property deeds that contained racist covenants from 1888-1968, which prohibited the sale of real estate to African Americans.
To create the broadest understanding of these covenants’ impact, we’re also mapping Black land ownership.
Central VA Black Oral History Archive
A series of ongoing oral history projects that expand an existing archive of +100 oral histories with Black community members recorded from 1980 to today. Interviews, both audio and video, taken with students who attended the Jefferson School through 1965, along with those of residents of our various historic neighborhoods, combine to narrate the rich history of Black Charlottesville.
The “Swords into Plowshares” project seeks to create a new work of public art through a community-wide democratic engagement. Democratic engagement causes us all to think about the ways in which our equitable cultural values are represented in the public landscape.
Through various educational moments, we hope to build a new work of public art that speaks to the past, the present, and the future.
Liberation and Freedom Walk/ Run
On March 3-6, 1865, Union cavalry arrived locally, causing town and university officials to surrender the current site of the UVA Chapel. In 2017, the City of Charlottesville declared that Liberation and Freedom Day be observed on March 3. We commemorate this day with a run/walk that both raises funds to support Black-led organizations and awareness of the City’s many African American historical sites.
Learning & Engagement
Creates opportunities for educational transformative experiences that help our audiences more fully understand the historical context of Charlottesville and Albemarle and the present-day relevance of that history. We strive to work with our community to amplify local African American stories of persistence, collaboration, and community.
Through online resources like our Yearbook project, we help teachers develop a local history-based curriculum. We also work with teachers to create place-based learning experiences through tours of our historic building & surrounding community. We provide tours for UVA students, faculty, & local businesses. Through our Evelyn Barbour Lectures we consider issues intrinsic to understanding the social & cultural work of African Diaspora communities.
Our mission is to create and sustain a rigorous performance-based curriculum meant to develop a new generation of Black artists with a deep understanding of the Heritage they are carrying on.
This helps the community understand the important history and influence of Black art.
We do this through our conservatory-style arts education program, which is tailored specifically to African American children ages 4 to 18.
Charlottesville Players Guild is dedicated to bringing powerful, culturally rich theater to the heart of Charlottesville.
Through an ensemble of Black actors, directors, and playwrights, we expose our community to works written by Black playwrights written in Black vernacular.
We are one of the few programs in the community that share our ticket proceeds with our ensemble.
Trailblazers is a dynamic museum studies program that prepares young African Americans to give tours of our permanent and temporary exhibitions. As a Trailblazer, students learn the history of Charlottesville’s African American community.
Through discussion, project-based research, and field trips, they acquire the skills to become community educators. Students are paid for their training and tour guide work.
Let Us Help
If you would like help with your gift, please contact Paige Kelly,
Director of Development, at 434 260-8724 x 303 or advancement@
Director of Development, at 434 260-8724 x 303 or advancement@
Hours
Heritage Center
Tuesday – Friday 1.00 pm – 6.00 pm
Saturday 10 am – 1 pm
Closed Monday & Sunday
Jefferson Heritage African American Center © 2020. All Rights Reserved