The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded two grants totaling $3.4 million directed at preserving the historical narratives of Black communities in the United States.

A $1.5 million grant to the Miami Center for Racial Justice will help expand the center’s Teach the Truth tours, which take high school students traveling with a parent or grandparent on all-expense-paid trips to visit locations in Florida where racial violence has taken place. The program—created and led by the center’s founder Marvin Dunn—received $150,000 from Mellon in 2023. The latest grant will enable the program to expand to Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.

“It’s all of our history,” Dunn, a professor emeritus in psychology at Florida International University, told the Miami Herald. “It’s all of our pain. It’s not just Black pain or white guilt: it’s all of our pain, it’s all of our responsibility to correct this record.”

A $1.9 million grant to Detroit Sound Conservancy (DSC), will fund the restoration of the Blue Bird Inn, an historic neighborhood jazz club on Detroit’s Old West Side, which once featured performances by jazz greats including John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Over four years, the rehabilitation effort will restore much of the Blue Bird’s original character and include the original seating layout and lighting, reinstallation of the stage, rebuilding the bar, and refurbishing historic details and finishes. The latest funding follows a $100,000 grant from Mellon in 2020 and will be pooled with $300,000 from the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation and $500,000 from the State of Michigan.

“After years of work and advocacy, the Blue Bird Inn will once again become a welcoming home for Detroit’s ongoing musical story,” said DSC director of operations Jonah Raduns-Silverstein.

(Photo credit: Detroit Sound Conservancy/Shelby Robinson)