Biennial Report for Board Members - Flipbook - Page 5
LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
After just five years, we look around and see what remarkable
progress we have made with our community partners to uncover
some of the most significant pieces of American history that will fill in
the blanks and tell an inclusive story. A story that is rooted in one of
the oldest African American Baptist churches in the country. In 2022,
we continued to work with the dedicated team at the Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation9s Archaeology Department; the Institute of
Human Biology and Earl Gregg Swem Library at William & Mary; the
University of Connecticut; and the expanded descendant community to investigate the church9s
site at Nassau Street; collect, identify and study thousands of artifacts and human remains
buried at the site. We listened carefully and took direction from the descendant community,
which guided every decision made on the archaeological project. The descendant community
answered our call to share documents, photos, and other important items held by their families
and friends that will assist in telling this important story and has entrusted the Foundation and
our partners to catalog, study, care, and keep them so that we can share them with the public.
We still have a lot of work to do, but we consider the work that we have done to be one of the
best examples of engaging descendant communities found in the country. With the
assistance of the Lemon Project
, the young people have gotten
involved, and began to study their genealogy by conducting independent research and
interviewing their parents, grandparents and, in some cases, great-grandparents to hear and
record oral histories. This has become a source of pride and has helped the historians to fill
in the blanks that are so important in telling a complete story.
We thank all of YOU that have shown us that you believe in the work that
are doing. We
are grateful that the grants that we received have provided full funding for major work on the
1956 building located at the current site of the Historic First Baptist Church. We completed
more than $250K in major repairs that posed immediate safety issues for the congregants and
the visitors to the church with full funding provided by grants from the National Fund for
Sacred Places in partnership with the National Trust for History Preservation; Virginia
Museum of History & Culture; and the Clark Foundation. This has allowed visits and tours to
return to pre-pandemic levels for educators, students, and visitors from across the country
and around the world.
