Abstract: Martha's Vineyard, a Massachusetts island profiled in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, is best known for Black respite, not Black resistance. Yet African Americans of every income, complexion, nationality, and ethnicity have repeatedly countered destruction, displacement, and discursive erasure of community refuges such as the Bradley Memorial Church in the island town of Oak Bluffs. This article posits mainstays in African American place preservation—Black church congregations, community associations, charitable organizations, and civil rights and cultural institutions—make space in the pluriverse of African American place preservation for newfound heritage guarantors experienced in community development and philanthropy. Equity planning practiced by organizations seeking to save the Bradley Memorial building and landscape—both the Island Affordable Housing Fund and Island Housing Trust and Martha's Vineyard branches of Habitat for Humanity and the NAACP—reveal that interracial, interfaith consensus on Black placekeeping can result in Black heritage loss, including foreclosure, auction, and demolition. Still, I argue, tangible benefits for intangible heritage materialize, such as funded development pro formas, approved design plans, demolition delays, and tested partnerships. This case study draws on archival sources and engages living stewards to demonstrate that people of color who entrust their heritage's preservation to emergent Black allies neither abstain from conservation nor acquiesce to real estate speculation. Rather, Black heritage futures develop with housing and community land trusts—and the foundations and charities that fund them. This case indicates resistance to hollow placekeeping partnerships with preservationists long entrusted with white placemaking.
Fallon Samuels Aidoo (Fri,) studied this question.
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