Alliance of National Heritage Areas: A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lens

"I am a brave, new son still traveling; a strong, shining beam of light with the beauty of life and wisdom radiating from within, ready to share stories of struggle and triumph and the lessons that my traveling spirit has learned.

There are places where travelers go to renew their spirits, travelers like me who have stories and lessons of transformation to share. . . we are fighting to tell the stories of spirits that came before us, stories that live on in places hidden and places found." From “Sacred Ground, Traveling Light: Personal Reflections on University Community Tourism Engagement” in Impressions, Ruminations, Treatises, 2013

Black History Month, February 2022

I am flipping through pages of the current issue of Memphis Magazine, seeing if I can locate it. Locate the article that I was told would be published about the Civil Rights heritage development work that we have been doing in the Mississippi Delta.

Not the royal “we” but, rather, the collective “we” across the region that includes a diverse cross-section of entities, from municipalities to higher ed institutions to museums to local nonprofits.

At least, this is what I attempted to convey when a Memphis Magazine staff writer interviewed me about the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area’s role in promoting Civil Rights education, interpretation, preservation, and tourism in the region.

I felt very confident about sharing insights about the Heritage Area’s role, because just a few months ago, the Alliance of National Heritage Areas (ANHA) had ratified its first-ever position paper, of which I had the honor of serving as lead author. “Racial Equity, Community Empowerment, and Social Cohesion: Sociocultural Impacts of National Heritage Areas” served as an immediate resource that I was able to share with the staff writer. I hoped that by doing so, he would see and understand exactly what National Heritage Areas are and what they do through partnerships and collaboration, particularly regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

In the aftermath of racial and social justice events in recent years, we have received various inquiries about how the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area – through its management partnership with The Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University – is serving as a Civil Rights heritage resource for the region and the nation.

Indeed, the Mississippi Delta is recognized as the “Birthplace of the Modern Civil Rights Movement” via the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till. In 2021, after making our online Mississippi Delta Civil Rights Heritage Archive available to the public, our Heritage Area was added to the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Network.

This year, the ABC national television series “Women of the Movement” has garnered critical acclaim for telling the story of Emmett Till and placing his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, front and center for her bravery.

The series also has put the historic Black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, on the national radar, along with the larger-than-life yet heretofore little-known Civil Rights leader Dr. T.R.M. Howard, who gave Mamie Till-Mobley safe haven in Mound Bayou during the Till murder trial.

The Delta Center and the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area together have served as connective tissue in the region, showing residents and visitors how Civil Rights activists, communities, and events—Emmett Till, Mamie Till-Mobley, Dr. Howard, Mound Bayou, Medgar and Myrlie Evers, Amzie Moore of Cleveland, Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville, Dr. Arenia C. Mallory of Lexington, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership conferences held in Mound Bayou—all connect with each other AND connect with present day conditions in the Mississippi Delta.

This is the DEI cultural heritage development work that National Heritage Areas do through local, regional, and national partnerships. I was honored when ANHA leadership invited me to write this position paper with a DEI focus. I knew that it would provide an opportunity to illuminate the critical DEI roles that National Heritage Areas play.

The work that National Heritage Areas do to create equitable spaces, to empower, and to strengthen networks generally happens behind the scenes, ofttimes as inputs to a final product such as a community event, a publication, a podcast, a website, an exhibit, or a digital archive of oral histories. Because they often bring and hold together a coalition of community actors for a project, National Heritage Areas also often do not get invited to stand center stage in the limelight and receive the applause that they deserve. This must change.

My primary goal in writing the position paper was to center National Heritage Areas in an American narrative that is still unfolding. National Heritage Areas are protectors of American democracy because they hold honored space for everyday American people, stories, and cultural practices that live in invisible landscapes, in mellowed memory, in cracked voices, in kudzu-covered fallen storefronts, in staircases to nowhere, in songs that still captivate, in dances that still enliven, in recipes that still make mouths water, and in laughter that still rings. Actually, National Heritage Areas are even more than protectors of American democracy. National Heritage Areas are protectors of American communities’ diverse lived experiences and our shared humanity.

I flipped through the pages of this month’s issue of Memphis Magazine and found the article “Beautiful Agitators: Bringing civil rights heritage to life in the Mississippi Delta.” I saw the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area and The Delta Center fully represented for what these organizations do for the region known as “The Most Southern Place on Earth.” I saw a reflection of my traveling spirit fully represented as well. The staff writer at Memphis Magazine “got it,” because he read the ANHA position paper.

As you read the position paper, I hope that you will get it, too. I hope that you will learn and appreciate fully what National Heritage Areas do for thousands of communities, organizations, and people across our nation. I hope that you will see that National Heritage Areas represent American stories that live on in places hidden and places found.

I also hope that your traveling spirit will be inspired to visit a National Heritage Area or two, or maybe more, and become renewed. We look forward to welcoming you and everyone with open arms.

Rolando Herts, Ph.D. serves as Director of The Delta Center for Culture and Learning, and is Executive Director, Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area at Delta State University. This article originally appeared in the Winter 2022 edition of MappingOnward.