A New Black Alliance Expanding Its Impact
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By Laura Longley
roving there is strength in numbers, Loudoun’s newly formed African American Community Alliance (AACA) of 18 charitable organizations received its first major grant—$250,000 from the Claude Moore Foundation—and within weeks demonstrated how the individual groups could reap the benefits. No sooner were the foundation funds in the bank than the AACA distributed the first of its “Extend Your Impact” grants at a December ceremony at Leesburg’s Douglass Community Center. AACA selected 15 member organizations to receive grants ranging from $5,000 to $14,230. It will enable them to expand their reach and provide more resources and services in areas such as health care, education, technological training, scholarships, and scientific and cultural enrichment. Among the recipients was the NAACP Loudoun Branch, chartered in 1940 to support equal education. Its first major cause: to advance the Black community’s campaign to establish a county high school for Black students, an effort that culminated in the construction and opening of Frederick Douglass High School in 1941. The NAACP of Loudoun has never lost its focus on education, and, in 2024, will award three scholarships to assist Loudoun high school graduates of color. The Douglass High School Alumni Association, which has given more than $300,000 in scholarships to Black high school students over the past 35 years,
Claude Moore Charitable Foundation Executive Director J. Hamilton Lambert, center, joins leaders of the new African American Community Alliance to present a grant of $250,000. also benefited from the new AACA program. Other Alliance member organizations that primarily focus their charitable giving on scholarships include the Psi Rho Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, which annually awards its Pearls of Loudoun Endowment Scholarship to a college sophomore, and the Zeta Upsilon Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity’s foundation, which provides scholarships and mentoring. Another eight Black sororities and fraternities support young people with scholarships. Alliance grant funds will assist the two-year-old, Ashburn-based NOVA Data Center Academy in offering Loudoun’s African American residents, young people in particular, hands-on training, IT industry certifications, and workplace readiness development so they can compete in the information technology field. Also receiving a grant is the Loudoun Freedom Center, best known for its work in reclaiming and restoring the African American Burial Ground for
the Enslaved at Belmont outside Leesburg. At the top of the Freedom Center’s list is commitment to Leesburg’s Union Street School. Last June the Loudoun Freedom Center was granted a $1 a year lease from Loudoun County to develop the historic school as a living museum, cultural resource, civic hub, and education center. The school building served Loudoun’s Black students until 1939, when the Virginia Department of Education recommended its closure due to unsafe conditions. Meanwhile, the Friends of Thomas Balch Library’s Black History Committee will put the AACA grant funds to use on a special research project. The BHC is an organization that has worked to preserve Loudoun’s African American history for the last 24 years by collecting photographs and artifacts, producing oral histories, publishing books, hosting presentations, and conducting an award-winning tour of historic places. According to Donna Bohanon, BHC chair, the Alliance grant will help the committee resume its Preservation Equity Initiative (PEI) this summer, working with George Mason University’s Center for Mason Legacies. The PEI project will focus on three of Loudoun’s historic Black communities—Willard, which was vacated and bulldozed for the construction of Dulles Airport; St. Louis, a few miles west of Middleburg; and Mt. Pleasant, also known as Scattersville, near Lucketts. For more information, visit aacAlliance.org.
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