African American Heritage Project

Winding River Communications has undertaken the African American Heritage Project to provide an online and printed travel guide to African American historical sites in Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas. We are humbled by the extensive database archives of historical sites now available online. National initiatives, such as theclio.com and blackpast.org, along with regional efforts like Omaha's northomahahistory.com and Kansas City's aahtkc.org, provide extensive crowd-sourced and personal collections of Black historical sites. Even more humbling is the publication and indexing of historical research on historic sites, such as Discovering African American St. Louis  by John A. Wright, which details landmark sites in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

However, these databases can be daunting for individuals with a casual interest or for a parent or grandparent wanting to share this heritage with a child or grandchild in an afternoon or weekend getaway. Our project provides the opportunity to spend quality time with family visiting sites that showcase the African American experience with artifacts, interpretive signage, displays, and other educational media. We hope these experiences can spark curiosity and encourage further exploration through the extensive databases and archives being developed.

We aim to publish the guide by the fall of 2026. In the meantime, we invite you to enjoy the photo galleries and our Facebook page as we work to develop this guide.