Editor’s Letter
“Preservation today can be a form of activism and a pathway for equity.” BRENT LEGGS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund 1, shared this eye-opening characterization of preservation with me last fall. I’d called him on the suggestion of my mother-in-law, after mentioning to her that working on an upcoming Veranda issue dedicated to Southern design had stirred my curiosity about preservation of antebellum sites. After all, how can one truly understand Southern style today without exploring its origins—and the ugly, often untold stories that lie therein? Of course, those stories are not just Southern but American, and they’re not limited to antebellum sites, as Leggs was quick to point out. In fact, of the more than 100,000 places on the National Register…