ST. PETERSBURG, FL— Like many organizations, the African American Heritage Association was forced to end its public programming, including its historic tours, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and find new ways to engage residents and visitors.
The group, which incorporated in 2014 with the mission of preserving the history and genealogical heritage of African Americans in St. Petersburg, turned to a project that had long been on its to-do list: digitizing its African American Heritage Trails.
The new digital trails, which are available online here, will be unveiled Saturday evening, 6 to 8 pm, at The Factory, 2622 Fairfield Ave. S. Attendees will learn how to access the new mobile guides and also check out the displays of each trail marker.
The markers will be on display through the end of the month. A limited number of gallery-wrapped canvases will be available for purchase as a fundraiser for the organization.
“When COVID hit and we stopped doing tours, we still wanted the trail to be accessible to the public,” Nicole Slaughter Graham, digital trail project manager, told Patch. “We had ideas about how to make that possible. Maybe we would do a digital series. Maybe we would do something else.”
Then, the Florida Holocaust Museum stepped up to help the association create a mobile guide for the trails, which includes about 20 markers along the 22nd Street South corridor and the 9th Avenue South corridor.
The mobile guide “works like an app on your phone,” Slaughter Graham said. “For each trail stop, there is a guide that pops up on your phone. The beauty of the guide is that it’s interactive. So, it has video content. It has written content. It has historic photos. In the videos you hear the voices of community members who lived the history that you’re looking at.”
Much of the content is narrated by Gwendolyn Reese, the association’s president, and Jon Wilson, vice president.
The project was funded through a $60,000 grant from the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg
“Our community partners made this possible. We never would have been able to do this without everybody coming together,” Reese said.
The committee that went on to become the African American Heritage Association first met in 2011, formalizing several years later when the city received a $50,000 grant from the Florida Department of State’s Division of Historical Resources.
“We’re talking three years of a group of volunteers researching, taking pictures, collecting memorabilia,” Reese said. “It was a labor of love, but it was very intensive.”
Initially, they didn’t plan to create a 20-marker trail. But when then-Mayor Bill Foster spent time with the African American community, he told Reese, “I heard the most incredible stories, but then you never hear them again. How do we get these stories out?”
The African American Heritage Trails, which both start at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Museum, were born from these conversations.
Markers along the 22nd Street South commercial corridor share stories about local businesses and institutions like Harden’s Grocery, the Sno-Peak Drive-In, the Royal Theater, the Manhattan Casino and Mercy Hospital. The trail along 9th Avenue South focuses more on educational and religious institutions.
It was imperative that they eventually digitized the trails, Reese said. “It’s going to expand our audience. Our story is so significant, so important. And so many residents, particularly African Americans and others, live all over the country, the world. So, a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to come here and walk the trail.”